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Whether you embrace it or not, AI is shaping the future of Google Search. Google is bringing AI Mode to Google Search for every U.S. user. Google in May 2024 launched AI Overviews, which aims to answer your question before showing the traditional list of links. AI Mode is the next step: From what Google has shown, the list of links will disappear entirely, replaced by tiny link icons that link back to the information Google is slurping up. Google’s Liz Reid, a Google vice president and head of Google Search, said that AI Overviews totals 1.5 billion users and will be expanded to over 200 countries. At the beginning of May, Google migrated AI Mode out of its Labs environment into a small subset of users in the real world and…

Arm-based Windows laptops running Qualcomm Snapdragon processors are all the rage, at least if you hear it from Microsoft or its manufacturing partners. But they aren’t exactly affordable, or even a good value compared to Intel or AMD. But the newest mid-range offerings from HP will start at $800, paired with 16GB of RAM. That’s a number that makes my eyebrows pop up. The OmniBook 5 14 (ugh, not great names, folks) is getting that impressive base price, offering an 8-core Snapdragon X Plus processor, 16GB of RAM, and a rather paltry 256GB of storage in that introductory $799 price. Upgrade options include a faster Snapdragon X (sans Plus) processor, 32GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of storage, though we don’t yet know how much those will run you.…

Sometimes AI just feels overwhelming, like it’s another thing to manage. Google, however, is announcing a couple of features within Gmail that will use AI to actually simplify your life. At PCWorld, we’ve written numerous articles on ways to clean out your Gmail inbox. There’s nothing worse than seeing a notification that your cloud storage is out of space, and trying to decide whether to take the time to clean it out (and risk losing something!) or pay more for additional space. And cleaning it out is no fun at all, either. What email should stay? What should go? Trying to decide what’s important is a headache, but then trying to navigate through the Gmail interface is a pain. That’s why I’m honestly excited that Google plans to apply Gemini…

Microsoft once pushed tablets as the future of Windows, but the world didn’t bite. Now the company mostly plays it safe with traditional laptops and mouse-friendly interfaces, and yet it keeps making Surface devices. The latest is the Microsoft Surface Pro, more often called the Surface Pro 12 or Surface Pro 2025. This compact tablet runs on a Snapdragon X Plus chip and is built for casual browsing and office work. It’s not high-end, but it delivers a solid, fanless experience Windows tablets have long struggled to provide. And with Qualcomm’s Hexagon NPU, it’s got impressively snappy AI, too. QUIET AND COMFORTABLY COOL So it’s completely silent cooling, and I don’t even think it ever gets annoyingly hot to hold the tablet—a little disturbingly lukewarm, but nothing unpleasant. It throttles…

If you haven’t heard, Dell dropped a bombshell earlier this year. It announced the company has done away with its well-known Inspiron, XPS, and Precision brands and instead opted for an entirely new hierarchy. At the bottom of this hierarchy, you’ll find laptops like the Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1. Last year, this would’ve been called a Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1, and despite the change in name, it still fills its role of providing an affordable entry point into computing. SPECIFICATIONS The Dell 14 Plus 2-in-1 that PC World received for testing is an entry-level AMD configuration with an AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 processor at its heart. Dell offers many different Ryzen AI processors, as well as Intel models, but this is among the least powerful configurations available. CPU: AMD…

This year’s Computex—the premiere PC industry event of the year, where manufacturers reveal the hardware you’ll be able to buy during this year’s back to school and holiday shopping seasons—felt more muted than any in recent memory. It’s no surprise. US tariffs on Chinese goods have frozen the PC industry, and vendors are hesitant to announce (much less release) new hardware in such an unstable economic situation. But still, the show went on—and it’s a good thing it did, because while we saw fewer PC announcements at Computex this year, we also saw some certified bangers. Which reveals got us deeply, personally excited? This is the best hardware of Computex 2025. Giddy up. AMD RYZEN THREADRIPPER 9000 In a Computex curiously devoid of chip announcements (well, aside from the new…

If you’ve been browsing Ethernet cables online, you may have seen they come with names like CAT 5, CAT 6, CAT 7, and CAT 8. And no, we’re not talking about the feline kind of CAT…meow! So what does all that mean, and is there any difference between these various Ethernet cables? DEFINING CAT IN ETHERNET CABLES The CAT label in Ethernet cables stands for “category,” which denotes its standard and specification. You can tell which category the cables belong to by the number suffix each one has. The main difference between the different categories is the rated performance of each. They also have different wire configurations and other variations in how they are made, like how tightly they are wound, and some have inner plastic tubing. Just like USB…

#playALLYourgames, proclaims the first bit of marketing copy for the ROG Xbox Ally, the third-gen Asus handheld PC that’s also borrowing Microsoft’s Xbox brand. “This is an Xbox,” declares the very next line. The design even gets a new, dedicated Xbox button right on its face. But between the bombastic branding and the lack of the familiar bottom taskbar on any of the promotional images for this redesigned gaming gadget, it’s hard to tell that this is, in fact, a Windows-powered gaming PC. Asus and Microsoft seem far more interested in talking about a revamped full-screen interface for the dedicated Xbox app and the accompanying Game Bar than the underlying operating system that lets you play all your games. It’s the defining feature of most handheld PCs versus Valve’s Linux-powered Steam…

When it comes to phones, most software is updated through a unified process. With an iPhone, you get all your operating system updates from Apple and all your individual app updates from the App Store. Android phones are similar, if slightly more fragmented. Now what if Windows worked in the same way, centralizing all your software needs and updating everything in one spot? Microsoft wants that. Microsoft product manager Angie Chen announced the new Windows Update orchestration platform (a classic Microsoft name if ever I heard one) via the IT Pro blog. There’s a lot of technical jargon on the page, but it boils down to this: Developers will be able to join the platform to deliver software updates for just about anything from within Windows—from the tiniest programs to…

Ancient technologies like Windows XP, Commodore 64, and legacy COBOL programs are still used for all kinds of critical functions, and here’s another example to add to the list. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration still relies on Windows 95 and floppy disks for the controls that manage air travel, though hopefully that won’t be the case for too much longer. NPR reports that the FAA wants to finally bring the U.S. aviation control system up to 21st-century standards—and that means getting rid of floppy disks. The legacy storage format is still used in many air traffic control towers, in computers that still run on Windows 95. In some cases, paper flight strips are still used. THE 1990S CONTROL AIR TRAFFIC IN THE U.S. The lives of millions of passengers and crew members…

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 Gen 10 Aura Edition is a 14-inch business laptop that combines Intel’s Lunar Lake CPUs with a proven ThinkPad convertible design. This is a high-quality business laptop for people who want a snappy desktop experience in a 2-in-1 form factor with a pen. It’s optimized for getting things done. While it may be a bit pricey, it’s typical of business laptops. If this machine fits your budget and you prize battery life and portability, it’s difficult to argue with what Lenovo has put together here. SPECS Lenovo offers the 14-inch ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 Gen 10 in various configurations, and all of them are branded as the Aura Edition. The base model starts at $2,125 and includes an Intel Core Ultra 5 226V processor, 16 GB of RAM,…

The Alienware 16 Area-51 is a high-end gaming laptop with a high-end Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and Nvidia RTX 5080 graphics, which were both just recently released. It’s a beautiful machine with premium touches like a mechanical keyboard. While it’s no budget gaming laptop, it’s competitively priced compared to other laptops with similar hardware—and Alienware’s version may just be a better package. SPECIFICATIONS The Alienware 16 Area-51 is a 16-inch gaming laptop that combines a 24-core Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU along with an Nvidia RTX 50-series GPU. Our review model had an RTX 5080 GPU, but you can also get this machine with an RTX 5070 Ti or 5090 GPU. While the model we reviewed retails for $3,349, the base model starts at $2,999. That Intel Core…

Having a full Windows 11 taskbar at the bottom of my display seems like a waste of space to me, seeing as I tend to pin just a few icons to it—my browser, Word, Teams, and Zoom. In fact, the taskbar just obscures part of my wallpaper, takes my focus off the apps I’m using, and makes my desktop look banal—like everyone else’s. That’s why I’ve now made it transparent, and I’m loving the minimalist vibes I get. Windows 11 offers a native transparency in Settings > Personalization > Colors, but it’s more of a frosted glass effect that doesn’t really give me what I’m looking for. To make the taskbar fully transparent and achieve a cleaner aesthetic, I use the TranslucentTB app, which you can download for free from…

Hey, PCWorlders! Today I want to show you a neat trick. As you no doubt understand, discovering you have dead batteries in any device can be a real drag. To stop that happening, I frequently swap my batteries out with fresh ones before they go totally flat. As to the old ones, I usually store them in a bag to recycle later—or to use in a pinch. But on the odd occasion when I forget to swap out my battery, get a flat in my device, and have no spares left, I have to rifle through that bag and test out each battery to find one with enough charge left in it. Correction: That’s what I used to do. Now I have a method that saves me a bunch of…

At Google I/O 2025 in May, we saw some pretty exciting innovations. In addition to a new AI search in Google (see page 7) and the ability to try on clothes virtually before you buy them, one improvement stands out for how it protects users who might be using inadequate passwords. It isn’t too difficult to come up with a strong password, but you need a unique password for every single account if you want to be truly safe on the web. One way to offload that burden is to use a password manager that stores your unique login credentials and enters them for you, relieving you of the need to memorize anything. Google Chrome already has a built-in password manager that can detect weak passwords as well as compromised passwords that…

Valve’s beloved Steam Deck is a delightful little device that makes PC gaming possible anywhere, but it suffers from some significant limitations. The Deck’s custom AMD Ryzen “Aerith” processor requires severe graphical sacrifices to hit playable frame rates in intense games—if you can run them at all. When you’re playing, you’ll blow through the battery in just a few hours. And while non-Steam games can be added to the Deck, it requires wonky technical workarounds that normie gamers probably won’t bother to troubleshoot. Enter Nvidia’s new GeForce Now native app for the Steam Deck, available now. If your internet signal is strong, and you pay for a premium GeForce Now subscription with advanced prowess and features, Nvidia’s app transforms the Steam Deck from a delightful device into an utterly magical one.…

The Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition is a 14-inch 2-in-1 convertible laptop with an Intel Lunar Lake processor. It combines a touchscreen and a 360-degree hinge with 32GB of RAM, a beautiful OLED screen, and the long battery life Intel’s Lunar Lake hardware is known for. Unlike some other Yoga-branded laptops I’ve reviewed in the last year, this model is a 2-in-1 convertible PC with the 360-degree hinge the Yoga name was once known for. This machine has the same CPU as the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 Gen 10, and I reviewed them both at the same time. The Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 is the consumer alternative to the ThinkPad X1 2-in-1, with the same CPU on the inside but a different design and a more entertainment-focused display choice. The battery…

The 2025 Razer Blade 16 continues the shaky tradition of packing some top-of-the-line PC gaming hardware into a laptop chassis that can almost be considered thin and light. For a 16-inch laptop, the Razer Blade 16 impresses at well under 5 pounds and under 0.7 inches thick, and yet it’s still rocking a solid aluminum design, a fantastic display, and more ports than you’d expect. There are always some downsides to this formula, as the new Blade 16 ranges in price from $2,399 to $4,499 as tested here in a high-end configuration and yet lags behind some cheaper competitors where performance is concerned. It’s that awkward balance of performance, price, and design that sees the Blade 16 struggle with value. Those who want the most performance can get it from…

The internet might be more sanitized than it was in decades past, but it’s still plenty dangerous. You’ve been warned that the web is a security minefield—that it’s easy to get in trouble. You can do everything right and still be taken by a malware infection, a phishing scam, or an invasion of online privacy. We want to help. THREAT LEVELS BLUE | Perfectly Safe This is the land of unicorns and fairies and candy raindrops, where nothing bad could ever happen. All joking aside, you’ll never run across such a site on the internet. GREEN | Slightly Dangerous You’ll get into trouble if you look for it, but your risk of being infected by malware or unknowingly having your privacy compromised is fairly low. YELLOW | Moderately Dangerous Tread…

Google Chrome has a built-in feature called Safety Check, first introduced in 2020 and regularly improved ever since, with its most recent revamp happening back in September 2024. Safety Check runs in the background and proactively keeps tabs on your passwords, your Safe Browsing settings, your Chrome version, your site permissions, your extensions, and potentially unwanted and/or abusive notifications. When Safety Check spots issues or areas with room for improvement, it’ll let you know along with instructions. Here’s how to use Safety Check: Navigate to Chrome’s Settings page by clicking on the three-dot menu at the top right and selecting Settings. In the left-side panel, navigate to Privacy and security. Then, in the right-side main area, look for the Safety Check section and click on the button labeled Go to…