Table of contents for January 2020 in APC

Naturally, quantum computers remain a very niche – not to mention hugely expensive – proposition, but there’s no shortage of customers wanting to experiment with its power. The new AWS Braket service, revealed at the re:Invent 2019 conference, pairs up scientists and developers with quantum hardware providers and provides a unified development environment in which to operate.…

In an expected but much-anticipated announcement, AMD revealed that it has a 64-core 128-thread processor coming to market in 2020. The chip’s beastly 280W TDP helps explain why AMD moved forward to the new sTRX4 socket, though, as the hefty processor will surely need a beefier power delivery subsystem. The new Threadripper 3990X will likely drop into the newly-minted TRX40 platforms, but like the new Threadripper 3970X and 3960X, it won’t be backward compatible with existing X399 motherboards. Aside from noting that the chip will have an unbelievable 288MB of total cache, AMD didn’t reveal any further details. However, given what we know about the Threadripper 3000 architecture, we know the chip will support PCIe 4.0, though the number of lanes it will expose to the user remains unknown. The…

Mozilla has removed four Firefox extensions created by Avast and its subsidiary AVG after receiving credible reports that the extensions had harvested user data as well as user’s browsing histories. The four extensions which have been removed are Avast Online Security, AVG Online Security, Avast SafePrice and AVG SafePrice. The snooping was discovered by AdBlock Plus’ creator Wladimir Palant who sent a report to Mozilla.…

University of California at Los Angeles researchers want to do the unthinkable: kill the motherboard. In a recent piece for IEEE Spectrum, the researchers said this act of technological matricide would enable the creation of more powerful systems that aren’t constrained by the printed circuit board (PCB) used today, all thanks to a new silicon-interconnect fabric that can be used in the motherboard’s stead. The researchers, Puneet Gupta and Subramanian Iyer, said this change would enable the development of all kinds of systems. They contend that relying on PCBs makes it harder for companies to develop smaller devices like smartwatches while also inhibiting the growth of larger devices used in data centers. Their silicon-interconnect fabric is supposed to enable smaller and larger devices. They explained: “Our research shows that the…

“Despite disabling Location Services, the device still appeared to be transmitting location data. ” As Google’s invasive data collection practices become better known in the mainstream, Apple has positioned its iPhone brand as the best option for privacy conscious users. “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone” reads one of its recent advertising campaigns, and whether that’s entirely true or not, it demonstrates that Apple wants to capture a portion of the market increasingly anxious about privacy. So when it was discovered last month that the iPhone 11 Pro was sending out user location information, even when Location Services were entirely disabled, critics were rightly quick to pounce. Respected security reporter Brian Krebs broke the story, after discovering that despite disabling Location Services, the device still appeared to…

“Good things come in threes,” the Dutch social enterprise must have thought when planning the Fairphone 3, its newest ethically made mobile device, sporting a modular and repairable design. MAJOR TECH SPECS ■ 5.65-inch IPS display with 1080x2160 resolution (427 ppi) ■ Qualcomm Snapdragon 632 SoC ■ 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage ■ 12MP f/1.8 rear camera and front-facing 8MP f/2.0 camera ■ 3,060mAh battery ■ Fingerprint sensor, headphone jack, and IP54 rating KEY FINDINGS ■ We start by removing the back cover – no tools needed. Compared to the bumper-like casing of the Fairphone 2 – as well as the two-piece “slim” version that replaced it midway through the product cycle – this is definitely an improvement. If you liked the added protection offered by the bumper,…

While all computer manufacturers do their best to keep some consistency between device updates, few take the commitment quite as seriously as Microsoft. Its latest Surface Pro 7 uses the same 12.3-inch, 3 x 2 PixelSense display at the same 2,736 by 1,824 resolution as its two most recent predecessors. It also fits into the same 29 x 20 x 0.9cm chassis and weighs an almost identical 790g. If we then consider the Surface Pro 7 also offers the same four, eight and 16GB RAM configurations and identical 128GB to 1TB storage options, then the only real difference between the confusingly named (5th Gen) Surface Pro, its successor the Surface Pro 6, and the latest Surface Pro 7, is the processor. “Microsoft has finally swapped out the Mini DisplayPort for…

It was as recently as early 2017 that Intel’s high end desktop platform peaked at ten cores. Then everything changed with the release of AMD’s 1st-gen 16-core Threadripper 1950X. Intel’s response was the i9-7980XE – an 18-core monster sourced from its enterprise Xeon range. This kept Intel on top until AMD launched the powerful 32-core Threadripper 2990WX, which Intel countered with a refresh of the 7980XE – the 9980XE. Now that the quicker Zen 2 Threadripper 3rd-gen is here, and with a 64-core model to come, AMD has dramatically upped the ante. Intel’s response? Refresh the refreshed 9980XE into the 10980XE. Refreshing once raises an eyebrow, but twice is stretching the bounds of credibility, and that’s where we are now with the i9-10980XE. Though Intel refers to the 10980XE as…

And now for something completely different. Much of this month’s APC is spent covering the high end desktop processors. The simple truth is that not everyone needs a huge core count or high powered performance. Some folks just want a cheap and cheerful but still fully functional PC for general tasks. Enter the AMD Athlon 3000G. At $79 dollars it offers tremendous value for a basic PC. “We simply couldn’t let the 3000G go without trying to overclock it.” The Athlon 3000G utilises older 1st generation Zen CPU cores, built on the 14nm process. It’s a two-core/ four-thread CPU with a 3.50 GHz clock speed. The 3000G doesn’t have a boost clock, so 3.5GHz is the maximum it will run at. Perhaps the most interesting feature is the inclusion of…

I say ‘shipping container’, because the rugged industrial style makes it look like one. Functionally that’s also what it does, and as far as portable external storage goes, as WD and Seagate well know – the marketing battleground is all about styling with these things. “At around $380 is offers nothing that non-gaming-branded external portable drives can’t handle.” WD has five new drives marketed as game storage for PC, PS4 and Xbox One, varying in capacity and whether it uses an SSD or HDD. The model with the highest capacity is the 12TB WD Black D10, and we’re testing the 8TB model here. We chose to look at the D10 because unlike the rest of the range, this one has active cooling so that makes it ever so slightly more…

$4.49, OFFERS IN-APP PURCHASES | FIFTHSTARLABS.COM | NEEDS IOS 11 OR LATER Sky Guide’s mission is simple: to help you learn more about what’s going on in the sky – and to help you have fun doing it. It succeeds beautifully. From the moment you launch this app, you’re greeted with calming celestial music (you can turn it off in settings). Sky Guide has three main sections. The main screen displays constellations, planets, moons, satellites, and other celestial bodies. Tap the compass and point your device at the sky, and Sky Guide displays those bodies currently in the location you’re pointing at. If you have an AR-capable iPhone or iPad, tap the camera button and you’ll see the view of the sky as seen by your device’s camera, with constellations overlaid…

It’s been five long years since Intel’s very first 14nm CPUs came to market. That’s worth repeating. It’s taken fully five years for Intel to roll out the 10nm successor to its 14nm production node. This from the company that has led the industry in manufacturing integrated circuits for decades. More than anything, it’s Intel’s advantage in chip manufacturing that has defined the company. But only now is it ramping up production of 10nm silicon as part of its new 10th generation of Core processors. Of course, this is Intel, and nothing is ever simple. Strictly speaking, Intel trickled out a few dual-core 10nm chips in 2018. But if you can point us at an available retail product that uses these ultra-rare Cannon Lake chips, you’d be smarter than us.…

The PC. The personal computer. The IBM-compatible. Whatever you want to call it, somehow this machine has maintained a dominant presence for nearly four decades. If you try to launch a program from the ’80s to the 2000s, you have a good chance of getting it to launch – your PC has backward compatibility going right back to the ’70s, enabling you to run pieces of history as though they were from yesterday. In fact, your computer is brimming with heritage, from the way your motherboard is laid out to the size of your drive bays to the layout of your keyboard. Despite the weight of all of this lineage, we have an extraordinary range of devices that somehow get lumped under the category “PC.” Go back to the early…

Without the Apple II, it’s possible the PC would never have existed. Although a subject of debate, it’s generally agreed that the Apple II was a primary influence on the PC. Many IBM engineers owned one – as did many customers, who found that they could easily do jobs, such as working on spreadsheets, that were nearly impossible on a giant mainframe. Sporting an 8-bit MOS 6502 processor, with between 4KB and 64KB of RAM, it debuted in June 1977 for a base price of US$1,298. It had an incredible production run, selling from 1977 to 1993. Developed by Steve Wozniak, the Apple II stands in stark contrast to products developed by Apple’s lesser Steve (Mr. Jobs). Chiefly, the Apple II is designed around an open architecture, with a removable…

Be Inc. (founded by ex-Apple executive Frenchman Jean-Louis Gassée) launched the BeBox in October 1995, running its own operating system, BeOS. Optimised around multimedia performance for the masses, BeOS was intended to compete with both Mac OS and Windows. Lightning fast and free of the legacies of old 16-bit hardware, BeOS had features such as symmetric multiprocessing for multi-CPU machines, pre-emptive multitasking, and the 64-bit journaled file system BFS. Although the BeBox itself was unsuccessful, BeOS was ported to the Macintosh in 1996, and almost became the new system to replace Mac OS. Gassée’s US$300 million asking price was too steep, however, and Apple went with Steve Jobs’s NeXTSTEP OS instead. BeOS was then ported to the PC in 1998, along with a free stripped-down BeOS 5.0 Personal Edition, but…

When Microsoft released its proprietary Windows Store, Valve’s Gabe Newell described it as a “catastrophe for everyone in the PC space.” Valve felt that the Windows Store threatened Steam’s existence, and decided to branch out with its own platform, using Linux as a base. First, Valve released the full Steam gaming client for Linux in February 2013, followed by its own platform, SteamOS, based on Debian Linux in December 2013. (Linux and SteamOS applications are generally cross-compatible.) However, SteamOS failed to gain much traction, and most of the user base would come from the regular Linux client. Perhaps following the advice of id Software’s John Carmack, Valve re-focused its attention from encouraging native SteamOS/Linux ports to perfecting Wine, the Windows compatibility layer for Linux. In August 2018, Valve released Proton,…

One of the factors that contributes to our pessimism surrounding reinstalling Windows is that we desperately don’t want you to lose anything. We’re kind like that. But there is another, slightly frivolous way to do a reinstallation if you’ve got working hardware to play with: you can turn one Windows installation into two. If you have a second drive that is able to support a Windows 10 installation, or enough access to your current Windows 10 installation (and enough free space) to be able to trim down its drive using Disk Management then create a new clean partition, you can install a second copy of the operating system alongside the first. Simply select a custom install, and then point Windows 10 at that spare disk space – it should then…

Reinstalling is, or should be, a last resort – and if you ever come to the point where you absolutely have to reinstall Windows and don’t have copies of your files, it might be too late. A hardware failure, a cryptographic malware attack, whatever the case may be, you don’t want to be left stranded. We’ve talked about using Windows’ File History tools elsewhere, which is a good way to keep regular copies of your personal files, but Windows also includes a more thorough backup procedure in the form of Backup and Restore (Windows 7). Now, we can’t be entirely sure how long this is going to last, given its archaic name, but for now, it works, and we’d wager that Microsoft will supply a tool to restore its backups…

If there’s a technology award for 2019, it must go to AMD. The company was already competitively strong with the Ryzen 2000 series at the beginning of the year, but since launching its Ryzen 3000 series CPU line-up in July, AMD has barnstormed the market. According to German retailer Mindfactory, its CPU sales figures show that AMD now represents over 80% of all CPU sales! It’s rather insane. When you look at what Intel has done in the past year on desktop, you can see why. All it’s released that’s of interest to power users is the i7-9900KS, which is just a better binned and factory overclocked i7-9900K – which itself is now over a year old. Intel has stagnated on the desktop. Intel did just release the 10th Gen…

While Photoshop Elements is an extremely powerful image-editing app that can be used to create complex layered compositions, you can also use it to touch up your selfies. There’s more to the program than Expert mode, and by dropping down the Enhance menu, no matter which of the three modes you’re in, you’ll find a host of useful features that can transform an image. Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll find those fully-automated tools have close cousins that allow you more control over the results, so you end up with a natural-looking photo rather than an over-saturated, purple, excessively sharpened mess. We’re using the 2019 edition of the software here, but you can follow the steps in any recent version. Download a free trial from http:// bit.ly/PSE19trial. Edit with…

The release of iOS 11 in 2017 made some changes to the way Wi-Fi and Bluetooth worked on iOS devices, and it led to some confusion. When is off really off? How does it affect AirDrop and AirPlay? Why did they switch back on when I went for a walk? A simple rule of thumb is that using Control Centre to turn Wi-Fi and Bluetooth off is enough to drop any existing connections for the rest of the day, but the system remains available. If you want to turn them off more permanently, you’ll need to use Settings, or put the device in Airplane Mode – which isn’t ideal if you still want to receive calls. Apple recommends that you keep Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned on to get “the best…

One of my high bars for a strategy game’s sequel is that I can unreservedly recommend the game over its predecessor. Unity of Command II is one of those games, though I was initially wary of all the new mechanics added to an otherwise delightfully simple wargame. Unity of Command II has the same baselines that made the first UoC a success. Every division on the battlefield is made up of sections called steps, each represented by a little dot below the unit’s model. Sometimes divisions have ‘specialist steps’ of attached assets – like a detached tank company temporarily assigned to support an infantry division. Steps are either active, a full circle, or suppressed, an empty one. When a unit attacks or defends its active steps are multiplied by their…

Yes, the venerable classic is being wheeled out again – not quite new, but definitely improved. It wears its two decades well, but the years are still there hidden beneath polish and new art and myriad tweaks. Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition wavers between remaster and remake updating nearly everything from the art to the AI, but reverence for the original means that the changes, though broad and welcome, are somewhat restrained. This remaster makes it easier to appreciate why the original had the impact it did. Finally, in 2019, Age of Empires 2 lets you tell your villagers to automatically reseed farms! No more returning from a war to find the fields fallow and my villagers twiddling their thumbs. This might be the most exciting change for me,…

ISSUE 476, JANUARY 2019 Please note that these exclusive downloads will only be available for a limited time, from 30/12/2019 to 16/02/2020. REIN IN YOUR SONICS EDIT, ORGANISE AND BURN WITH ASHAMPOO MUSIC STUDIO 2019 FULL VERSION WORTH $30. Ashampoo Music Studio 2019 is a fully featured music software suite used to edit, rip, organise and burn music and sounds in general. You can even design fitting covers for your projects, create device-compatible playlists or turn your songs into the perfect mix tape for your next party! DOWNLOAD LINK: www.ashampoo.com/apc MAINTAIN PEACE OF MIND AVERT THE SCOURGE OF HACKERS WITH ABELSSOFT HACKCHECK FULL VERSION WORTH $50 HackCheck takes your email addresses and instantly checks if they have been stolen during a hacking attack. The program tells you which online service…

Intel’s NUCs are small ‘mini PCs’ themselves, with fully-contained systems that often dip down to smaller than a litre. Intel designs and sells the motherboards for the barebone systems, and you can also order NUCs with components already installed, like memory and storage, from third-party retailers. However, the term ‘NUC,’ which is short for Next Unit of Computing, is an Intel branding for those small systems, so AMD has officially embraced ‘Mini PC’ branding, although a few of its partners are using NUC naming conventions for their products. Unlike Intel’s approach with NUCs, which involves creating the motherboards and selling them to third-party vendors that add their own differentiating features, AMD’s Mini PC efforts consist of enabling an ecosystem of partners to use its Ryzen Embedded V1000 and R1000 processors…

OSPREY TRANSPORTER $149.95 | WWW.OSPREY.COM/AU Christmas may be over for another year, but the Osprey Transporter will keep you feeling like Santa a little longer. There’s three sizes in the range: 20, 25 and 30L, each with a slightly different access designs. The 20 and 30L packs feature a zip-top and flap while the 25L we looked at boasts a rolltop. It’s essentially a giant sack for your stuff. There’s a dedicated space inside for your 15-in lappy (the new Mac 16-in will easily fit), as well as more spots for documents and smaller items. Hidden on each flank on the outside are huge, zippered water bottle pockets. Yes, hydration is important, but we used one as a quick-acess space for our wallet and keys. KOALA SUPER-GRIP PHONE HARNESS ~$35…

There are many out there that have been advocating the benefits of high refresh rate, low latency gaming monitors for years now, and faster 144Hz displays are basically standard for FPS eSports pros – but we’ve often wondered how much benefit they offer the everyday gamer. Finally we have more than marketing spiels and bandwagon testimonials on how speedy screens actually improve gaming performance for everyone. While the research does come from Nvidia itself (which has a pretty obvious vested interest in promoting gaming GPUs and high-refresh screen technology), there’s also perhaps no company with as much access to relevant data and there are some third party tech reviewers that have shown similar results. Basically, Nvidia used data from an earlier study it did in March 2019 on how its…

1 Matebook 13 $1,599, WWW.HUAWEI.COM Huawei has been biding its time to take on the best Ultrabooks. But now, their time in the limelight is here. Like the Huawei MateBook X Pro before it, the Huawei Matebook 13 packs a ton of powerful hardware into a gorgeous shell, all while offering it at a price that’s more than reasonable. Those discrete graphics are also worth a mention – the Huawei Matebook 13 may be one of the tiniest laptops out there to come with an MX150 GPU. It’s not hard to see why the Huawei Matebook 13 is the best Ultrabook right now. 2 XPS 13 $2,038, WWW.DELL.COM The Dell XPS 13 has been king of the Ultrabooks for years, and while it’s been unseated by the Huawei MateBook 13,…

When AMD launched its Ryzen 3 range back in June 2019, we were teased with the 16-core 3950X CP. Straight up – the 3950X completely redefines what a mainstream CPU is capable of. It lights a fire under the HEDT platform. It’s almost obsoleted the entire Intel X299 platform. It’s the jewel in the crown of AMD’s range. It’s not often that we use the word ‘revolutionary’ when it comes to desktop CPUs, but that’s exactly what the 3950X is. Just a couple of years ago, an 8- or 10-core CPU was an HEDT flagship, requiring an expensive motherboard and quad channel memory. Now, we have the option of a genuinely high performance 16-core CPU that can be installed in a budget B450 motherboard with a cheapie dual channel memory…

If you’re a professional or creator who’s decided to upgrade to the new Threadrippers, then you’ll no doubt be looking at a motherboard to suit. The MSI Creator TRX40 is a serious motherboard positively packed with features. But is this board, with its steep $1,279 asking price, worth the money? Actually it’s far from the most expensive. With many X299 and TRX40 motherboards coming in at well over $1,000, things are a bit worrying. “If you’re contemplating making the jump to the mega performing Threadripper platform, you’ll need a board worthy of all that grunt.” Looking over the Creator TRX40 reveals some interesting things, notably MSI’s almost utilitarian design approach. It’s far from the flashy bling oriented gaming boards the company is typically known for. This is a board that…

This follow-up to Jabra’s excellent Elite 65t – one of the first sets of true wireless buds that ‘just worked’ – bundles together more than a dozen improvements in an effort to tackle with more-recent competitors. The upgrade has largely been a great success – as before, they’re comfortable and fast to both pair and reconnect, but the 75t’s more compact and discrete design also feels significantly tougher and more robust than its forebear’s, and they’re still exceptionally lightweight and well-balanced in terms of weight distribution. An extra 2.5 hours battery life, or 7.5 total, means they can effectively last a full working day, and the slimmed-down (and now USB-C) charging case somehow includes 3.5 additional full charges (28 hours) within it. Audio quality is likewise first-rate, although by default…

$8.99 A MONTH | DISNEYPLUS.COM Now that Stan has lost all of Disney’s back catalogue (but, sidenote, has maintained a tremendous library that gives local Netflix a serious run for its money), you’ll need to migrate over to Disney + to watch Star Wars and your favourite Marvel movies without having to fish out the Blu-rays you probably also own. Disney + will, more than likely, have something you care about, whether it’s a so-so new Star Wars TV series or every episode of The Simpsons ever released, and one account can be used across ten separate devices, which is fantastic. Putting aside whether or not Disney is openly damaging the entertainment industry with its gross, terrifying monopoly for a moment (although, sidenote: yes it is), Disney + is a…

Intel’s 10th-gen CPUs are here. But wait—what about the desktop? For now, there are three different families of 10th-gen chips and none are mainstream desktop processors. So, what gives? According to the narrative that has emerged over the last year or so, yup, the problem is 10nm. Rumors suggest that Intel is still having problems clocking the new process up, and also with yields. The first issue seems to be confirmed by the low clock speeds and relatively unimpressive TDPs of the first 10nm Ice Lake mobile chips. By way of example, the quickest quad-core low-power Ice Lake CPU tops out at 4.1GHz, while the fastest of the new 14nm Comet family, also part of 10th-gen, hits 4.9GHz. In the ultra-low power area, Intel rates Ice Lake at 9W to…

IBM was formed in the early 20th century by people who invented the kind of punch-card machines and tabulators that revolutionised the previous century. IBM introduced big data to the US government, with its equipment keeping track of millions of employment records in the 1930s. It gave us magnetic swipe cards, the hard disk, the floppy disk, and even ATMs. It would develop the first demonstration of AI, and be integral to NASA space programs. IBM has employed five Nobel Prize winners, six Turing Award recipients, and is one of the world’s largest employers. When it came to respected marques, you couldn’t get much higher than IBM, and the top brass knew it – to say the corporate culture was stuffy would be an understatement. Company pride and loyalty was…

After a 12-month development, IBM announced its new Personal Computer on August 12, 1981. The US$1,565 base model included 16KB of RAM, CGA graphics, and an input jack, relying on the user to provide a cassette deck (disk drives were optional and far more expensive). Rivals such as RadioShack and Apple were unconcerned, as they had many times more dealers, large support networks, extensive software libraries, cheaper products, and models with better performance. Steve Jobs bought one to dissect and was unimpressed by some of its old-fashioned tech. In its hubris, Apple took out a full-page ad proclaiming “Welcome, IBM. Seriously.” But it failed to recognise the weight a company like IBM carried with businesses. Even though IBM’s product was inferior in many ways to its cheaper competitors, businesses saw…

Previous versions of Windows were unsuccessful, but with 1990’s Windows 3.0, the PC desktop was seen as a viable alternative to the Macintosh and Amiga. Windows 3.0 had a new interface, multitasking abilities, and mouse-driven productivity suites that freed users from the command line. Meanwhile, IBM’s OS/2 had been trying to establish itself as the respectable GUI for corporate America. By 1990, the alliance between IBM and Microsoft had essentially finished, with the two becoming rivals. Although newer versions of OS/2 would be more advanced, for now Microsoft had the technological advantage. IBM was still hampered by 286 machines, keeping OS/2 primarily 16-bit, unable to use the advanced features of the 386. April 1992 finally saw OS/2 become 32-bit. In most ways, it was superior, with extensions to DOS, and…

The new century would start with Windows 2000 (arguably the best release of Windows) and Windows Me (arguably the worst). Win 2000 was based on Microsoft’s NT platform, finally moving Windows away from DOS, while remaining mostly backward compatible with Windows 9x and DOS programs. 2000 had the stability of NT and the minimal aesthetic of the 9x series, without the bloat of future releases. Later in the year, Microsoft released Windows Me (Millennium Edition) – still based on Windows 9x, which was still based on DOS. Often regarded as Microsoft’s worst operating system, it somehow managed to be buggier and less refined than previous 9x releases. Whereas Windows 2000 is remembered as an underrated gem, Windows Me brings cold shivers down the spines of IT staff who lived through…

So, you use Windows. You’re in a slowly shrinking but still three-quarters majority, so it’s not a surprise: Windows users are ubiquitous. Almost as ubiquitous as people complaining about Windows, because macOS and Linux users do that, too. Whatever your gripes, the thought of reinstalling Windows has likely crossed your mind at some point. Perhaps you’ve even gone ahead without thinking of the consequences. You might even have been left with a half-functioning machine that’s missing many of your critical files and programs. Let’s be clear at the start of this feature (one that’s ostensibly about reinstalling Windows): Reinstalling Windows is generally a really bad idea. Hear us out. Windows 10 is a much cleaner and more stable OS than its predecessors. There’s no good reason to reinstall it unless…

The act of reinstalling Windows 10 can feel daunting. Never fear: we’re going to step you through the entire process from booting from your Windows installation media to running carefully through the post-install setup options. If you’ve not yet done so, visit www. microsoft.com/en-gb/software-download/windows10 and click Download tool now to download and run the Media Creation Tool. Insert a blank DVD, or plug in an unused USB flash drive (8GB or larger). After launching the tool, accept the licence terms, then choose Create installation media… and follow the prompts (use recommended options when asked) to create your flash drive or generate an ISO file. If you choose the ISO file option, click Open DVD burner at the end to write it to your blank DVD. Once your installation media has…

Many people look at a Windows reinstallation as a way to fix any and all ills. However, we consider it as being more of a last resort. It’s a little like dealing with unruly children. Before taking drastic action and shipping your PC off to military school, you should really do everything you possibly can to fix the problems you’ve got, and find out the cause of its misbehaviour, because you might just find that a simple solution works better. Heav y-handed metaphor aside, keeping a keen eye on your PC’s actions isn’t particularly difficult, because Windows 10 includes all the tools you might need at your disposal: There’s the Task Manager (which you can pull up at any time with a quick Ctrl-Shift-Esc); there’s Resource Monitor (type “resmon” into…

MSi GeForce GTX 1660 Super ventus oc 6GB $389, WWW.MSI.COM With performance that comfortably outstrips the vanilla GTX 1660, the new Super variant is a great card at a great price, ideal for new 1080p gaming builds. In fact, it sort of makes the previously appealing 1660 Ti practically pointless, with performance that falls less than 5 percent short of its big brother despite costing less. In practice, the real-world difference is almost impossible to discern in 1080p gaming, making the 1660 Super an awesome prospect. It’s the best card in a crowded market right now, and while it misses out on proper ray-tracing support, it can comfortably run just about any game at above 60fps at 1080p ultra.…

Modern Macs come with limited storage that typically cannot be upgraded. If you have a 128GB drive, you’re likely stuck with it for the life of the machine. Run low on space and you may be able to work with external drives or the cloud, but those rely on extra hardware or internet access. You may therefore periodically need to take a look at what you’ve got and refine what you store locally. The quickest free, safe and manual way to make more space on your Mac is to identify large files you no longer require, and then get rid of them. This tutorial shows how to use built-in macOS tools for this, and third-party app GrandPerspective. Free from grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net (or $1.99 from the Mac App Store), this app complements…

1 CONTROL CENTRE The simplest way to turn off both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in iOS is to open Control Centre. Press the symbols for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (the stylised fan and runic B) and they’ll turn from blue (on) to grey. Active connections will drop. 2 BRING THEM BACK To turn them back on, just do the same thing, and the icons will turn blue again. This means you can still use AirDrop, Handoff, AirPlay and your Apple Pencil – none of these will work without Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. 3 SWITCH AUDIO OUTPUT While you’re in Control Centre, press and hold on the audio controls to open them up. Now tap the triangle-with-circles button in the top right to switch between internal speakers and others, including Bluetooth devices. 4 REACTIVATION…

Bodycams are chest-mounted cameras that have enough storage to record as much, oras little, footage as you like. Regularly used by police around the world, they’re also a favourite of certain vloggers. Bodycam footage could be anything from extreme sports to recordings of the San Diego Comic-Con and everything in between. Fancy a bodycam but unsure of whether you would use it? Thanks to the Raspberry Pi Zero, you can build your own. While the Model B boards are more suited to retro gaming and media centre tasks, the Pi Zero and its variants are perfect for camera projects like this. By combining the Pi Zero with a Raspberry Pi Camera Module, rechargeable battery and 3D-printed case, you can set up your own bodycam and record the day’s events for…

The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe delay announcement is the funniest way to push back a game The new edition was supposed to come out late 2019. The Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe edition is delayed, but you almost can’t be made about it. Developer Crows Crows Crows released a lengthy video featuring the game’s narrator allegedly responding to letters and emails from the fans (they’re definitely fake, though). The “letters” from “fans” serve as an ingenious way to comment on video game production production and fan expectations, packaged neatly and tied with a sarcastic little bow. “To characterise the game’s development as anything other than unhindered forward momentum, would be grossly inaccurate,” the narrator insists. After a few letters state the impossibility of completing the game before the end of the…

FREE | BIT.LY/TRIGGORE BROWSER Here’s a game that mixes horror with light-gun-style shooting. You’re trying to survive for as long as possible here, in a dimly lit house stashed with supplies and, less welcome, with advancing monsters. The deadly zombies, bats, wormy things, and skittering spiderlings are at once cartoonish and genuinely horrible as they explode in a satisfying shower of blood and bits. When you’ve killed enough monsters, you may find that dropped items, or candles, or containers have been covered in blood. So, how to clean them up so you can find them? One of the items is a mop. The other is a bucket. Putting two and two together, you can use both to clear up messes in the house. Triggore is a small game that keeps…

FREE | DEEPNIGHT.NET BROWSER In this shoot-em-up/ puzzler instead of piloting a ship, you’re piloting a dragon. Though it’s one that looks and handles more like a snake. Also, you’re not in space, but in a samey aquatic environment home to urchiny, coralesque enemies. Unlike our Earth coral, which sits around waiting for us to ruin it, the coral on this planet spews out streams of deadly bullets – one hit and you’re back at the checkpoint. That’s only when your red side is facing the bullets, however. Rotate the dragon so that its white half is pointed at the projectiles, and they’ll plink harmlessly off its armoured carapace. So it’s less a matter of switching forms and more of tactically slithering around the environment – while finding the time to…

This month sees the launch of both Intel and AMD’s high-end desktop platforms. Threadripper 3 in particular, as the name suggests, really increases the multi-threaded power available from a consumer level PC. Intel’s 10980XE isn’t exactly a sloth either with its 18 cores and high turbo clocks. The ever increasing number of cores available from the HEDT, and for that matter, the trend upwards in the number of cores available on the mainstream platforms begs the question: How many cores does the average consumer, gamer or PC enthusiast really need, and what’s the point if software doesn’t scale? Having a CPU with a lot of cores looks good from many perspectives. But is a 16-core CPU twice as good as an 8-core one? We’ve got a 64-core CPU coming, but…

19H2 Is the next big Windows 10 update. Known as 19H2 as it has passed through the Insider testing rings, the final name is the Windows 10 November 2019 Update. Brace yourselves. 171,000 Was the peak number of viewers of the official Fortnite Twitch channel as the popular multiplayer game sat there doing nothing last month. To cover server upgrades associated with the end of its first ‘chapter’, the entire game world was sucked into a black hole, which stayed for nearly two days before regurgitating a new level. 7 Of the high–profile partners in the Libra Association – the teams building Facebook’s putative digital currency – have quit the consortium. This includes big names such as PayPal, eBay, Visa and Mastercard. 24% Of Australian businesses plan to adopt 5G…

We gave Lenovo’s Yoga C930 five out of five in APC’s September edition (APC471), so this yearly update has some big shoes to fill. Like the Surface Pro 7 in this issue, the Yoga C940 is sporting one of Intel’s latest 10th generation 10nm Ice lake CPUs that bring with it Wi-Fi 6, better AI processing and a new GPU. The C940 is supposed to be one of the first laptops to be certified under Intel’s new Athena project – where Intel works with manufacturers to ensure the device has an all day battery life, instant on responsiveness and new low-power sleep states. Lenovo is hoping to leverage the new Intel AI tech by developing a software called Q-Control which will use AI to monitor usage patterns and tweak system…

“Forget about 10 cores being high end, or even 16. The entry level Threadripper 3960X CPU, is a 24-core beast.” The launch of Ryzen 3 has proven to be a great news story for AMD. It continues to produce products with more cores and performance and with the Threadripper 3 series, the HEDT takes another massive step forward. Forget about 10 cores being high end, or even 16. Now, the entry level Threadripper 3960X CPU, which we’re reviewing here, is a 24-core beast. It doesn’t stop there. AMD has announced the 3990X, a 64-core behemoth of a CPU that’s due to launch in 2020. The 3960X, with its 24 cores and 48 threads effectively makes Intel’s competing X299 platform redundant where pure multi-threaded performance is concerned. At $2,249, plus the…

The X299 platform might be somewhat venerable in late 2019, but with the launch of Cascade Lake-X, motherboard companies are taking the opportunity to deck out their boards with the latest and greatest features on the market. The high-end models are all well north of $1,000 now, a price level that would have resulted in laughter and mockery just a couple of years ago. Premium X299 refresh boards might be expensive, but boy do they pack in some next generation features! Gigabyte’s X299X Designare is one such board. It probably has the best specification of any motherboard we’ve reviewed to date. A visual inspection of the Designare reveals some interesting things. Cascade Lake-X really sucks power and this board is designed with that in mind. A 12-phase VRM capable of…

The Pump Air 2s are certainly some of the smallest earbuds we’ve tried, and their sound quality is fairly decent in spite of this, but unfortunately they suffer in a few other areas. They are relatively affordable for true wireless ‘buds, and this is certainly one of their more redeeming qualities, but that low price is felt when it comes to the cheap-feeling charging case, its micro-USB port and poor battery life. The four-hour playtime on the units themselves can be forgiven considering their diminutive size, but for the bulky and awkward charging case to only contain an extra 11 hours of juice in total is disappointing. As mentioned earlier, the audio is punchy and well-balanced, with solid bass and no signs of distortion at higher volumes. In fact, we’d…

Everything seems to be “smart” these days: phones, home appliances and yes, even smart cars. It was only a matter of time until case manufacturers jumped on the smart product bandwagon as well. Corsair’s latest mid-tower chassis has just the right amount of RGB bling and great thermal performance as well. But how does Corsair define smart? Measuring 467mm x 216mm x 465mm and weighing 8.16 kg, the Corsair iCue 465X RGB features steel and plastic construction with tempered glass panels on the front and left side. Painted in the buyer’s choice of white or black both inside and out, this chassis comes with a two-year limited warranty. Build quality and thermal performance aside, the case’s biggest selling points are the new design, the Direct Airflow Path layout, tempered-glass panels…

FULL VERSION $429.99, UPGRADE $179.99 | PAINTERARTIST.COM | NEEDS MACOS 10.13 OR LATER Corel has been bringing digital graphics software to the world since 1989, making it one of the longest-established developers offering these packages to the consumer and professional markets. With its Corel Painter 2020 suite, the company has refined the software and added smart new tools, further empowering digital artists of all levels to create stunning designs and blurring the lines between physical and digital artworks. On first boot, the application can run a performance optimisation process to automatically adjust its settings to suit your hardware. The base requirements are quite modest – a Core 2 Duo CPU running macOS 10.13 or later, and 2GB RAM. There’s a Brush Accelerator option in the preferences that, once run, will enable…

Over one teraflop of pure compute performance, support for ultrahigh resolution HEVC encode and decode, improved display pipelines, an enhanced rasteriser, variable rate shading, over double the performance in 3D rendering, and support for adaptive sync. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the elevator pitch for Intel’s new Gen11 graphics technology, as seen in the new 10nm Ice Lake mobile CPUs. In terms of actual in-game frame rates, Intel reckons that the fastest Gen11 integrated graphics core is typically around 80 percent faster than the Gen9.5 graphics found in eighth-generation processors, and sometimes over 100 percent faster. Much of that improvement is down to increased complexity. Gen11 graphics tops out at 64 execution units to the maximum 48 of its Gen9.5 progenitor. However, the 48-execution-unit iteration of Gen9.5 was limited to…

Contrary to popular belief, the IBM PC was not the first personal computer, nor was it the first desktop computer by IBM. Microcomputers existed long before “the PC,” and as for IBM itself, desktop computers had already been developed, though in very different forms to the PC we know now. In 1973, IBM developed a prototype computer called SCAMP, which emulated an IBM 1130 minicomputer in a “portable” (we use the term loosely) boxed form factor, with a small monitor and keyboard built in. Perhaps of most interest in relation to the 5150 Personal Computer is 1975’s IBM PC 5100. Before you start jumping up and down, here the “PC” actually stands for “Portable Computer.” This was similar to the SCAMP, but designed for mass manufacture, using an IBM PALM…

In February 2012, the successful Raspberry Pi was released, taking the industry by storm with a new form factor, often referred to as a single board computer (SBC). Made in Britain from a combination of cell phone and desktop parts, the Pi is barely larger than a credit card, for $35. The Pi was intended to get kids programming after the Raspberry Pi Foundation recognised a national decrease in programming skills, but it became more popular with hobby builders and the embedded computing industry. Unfortunately for PC giants, the Pi ran Linux on an ARM CPU instead of Windows on x86. Due to its popularity, Microsoft ported Windows to the system a few years later, and manufacturers started producing rival machines. For the ARM crowd, there are products like the…

Reinstalling Windows 10 is a fairly trivial task. Put in the right media, boot from it, grind away the old OS, and replace it with the pristine bits of a shiny new install. This can be a painless, if time-consuming, procedure that leaves you with a like-new PC, or perhaps an even better one if you were unlucky enough to buy a PC burdened with preinstalled trashware. Before you do this, make sure you’ve checked off a few prerequisites, all of which are good practice even if you’re not planning to wipe everything and start again. “Dig out the product keys for all your crucial software and keep them safe, as you’ll need to reinstall that too.” First, keep a record of your product key (if you have one –…

If you’ve gone to the trouble of creating new installation media for any version of Windows 10 past the Creators Update, you’ll probably feel a bit silly when you discover that Microsoft tucked a ‘fresh start’ option into its later Win 10 editions. Using it takes any Windows 10 installation back to the basics of a Windows install, even removing any preinstalled software your manufacturer might have included, and stripping away all your drivers – and it doesn’t require any special media. It’s basically a clean install without you having to directly perform the actions of reinstallation. You’ll find it in a corner of Windows Defender Security Centre, aka Windows Security – select Device performance and & health, then Additional info, before clicking Get started to begin. Again, make sure…

We’re at the point in the PC’s evolution where the overheads of virtualisation are proportionately so small, and the technology enabling it so plentiful, that running an everyday OS in a virtual machine is entirely reasonable. You obviously won’t get 100 percent of bare metal performance from a virtualised instance of Windows 10, but it has a host of advantages. When you’ve got a system running just as you like it, you can take a snapshot, then quickly return to it at any point in the future. You can whip up a fresh copy of Windows in minutes, without any risk to your existing install. You can fire up other operating systems, and run them simultaneously on the same machine. If you’re the kind of person who loves to settle…

PLE Computers Creative Cube $1,008 – TINYURL.COM/APC476PLE Coming in at just over a grand, this is about as basic a configuration as one can ask for if gaming is the goal. Suitable for 1080p gameplay, this’ll do a reasonable job in eSports titles and other less demanding games, but will struggle with AAA titles. The motherboard is the weakest link in this build; being an A320 chipset you’ll have no overclocking ability and limited upgrade options. We recommend spending $20-$30 at checkout and selecting a B450 motherboard instead, not only for better drop-in upgrade support, but better IO connectivity too. If budget permits, choose a GTX 1650 Super at checkout for an extra $40. It’ll boost gaming performance by 30%. Very worthwhile. Overall, a reasonable system for those on a…

SECURITY IS THIS RANSOMWARE? A few days ago, I spotted a couple of strange-looking folders on my data drive: Tprogram136 and Oapplication5. An internet search revealed nothing, so I tried deleting one of the files only for Cybereason RansomFree to pop up and claim it had blocked an attempt to lock my computer. I selected the option to remove the ransomware, but then another file popped up in its place: Tfiles37. Inside these are seemingly random files with various formats. Where are they coming from? John Buchanan After some extensive research and further scans using John’s other tools – Avast FREE, EEK and Malwarebytes – we suddenly had our eureka moment! The folders in question – hidden by default – are created by Cybereason RansomFree as bait. It monitors these…

1 OPEN SYSTEM INFO In the menu, select About This Mac. Click the Storage tab and then Manage. The System Information app will open, initially displaying recommendations regarding how to trim what’s on your Mac’s internal drive. 2 FIND LARGE FILES We’re primarily interested in deleting unwanted files here, so click Review Files next to Reduce Clutter – or you can select Documents from the sidebar. Next, click Large Files and then the Size column heading to see your largest files. 3 DELETE A FILE Select an item and click Show in Finder to view it and check it’s something you do want to remove. Or if immediately convinced, click Delete. But beware: this action has no undo – you cannot retrieve your item from the trash. 4 CHOOSE A…

With a Raspberry Pi Zero bodycam set up and running, you’ll probably have an eye on the limits of storage. After all, standard high definition video is going to fill up most microSD cards within a few hours. While timelapse is an alternative, it can’t be streamed – you’ll have to upload the combined video file later. A smart option, therefore, is to build the project with a Raspberry Pi Zero W (or the pre-soldered GPIO model, the Raspberry Pi Zero HW) and use your mobile device to stream footage directly to YouTube if you’re heading out. You’ll need a YouTube account to set this up, along with a channel stream key. You can find this in the Go Live option on YouTube; add it to your avconv command. It…

The difference between a roller coaster and a ring-tailed lemur is that when one has a problem it’s a mild irritation and when the other has a problem it’s a cause of unbridled panic and guilt. There are stressful components to every management simulation game, but where Planet Coaster’s mechanical breakdowns make me worry briefly about profits, Planet Zoo’s biological breakdowns make me feel like a neglectful, abusive monster who should be dragged off to jail and never allowed near another living thing ever again. Planet Zoo has several official modes: Career, Challenge, Sandbox, and Franchise, but its two actual modes are ‘Things Seem Fine’ and ‘Oh God What Have I Done?!’. My elephants, giraffes, orangutans, panda bears, and dozens of other furry friends can starve to death or die…

There have been quite a few games that play with the fun of gravity. Antichamber’s mind-bending puzzles, Dandara’s explosive wall-jumping and the upcoming Boundary’s zero-G shooting – all grant the player the ability to defy physics. William Chyr’s first-person physics-based puzzler, Manifold Garden, also lets you mess with the force of gravity, but in this game your playground is the never-ending, mind-bending realms of infinity. Waltz up to any visible surface in Manifold Garden’s geometric world and you’ll automatically flip gravity so that the wall becomes the floor. Using this ability, players are tasked with solving a number of gravity-manipulation puzzles and working out how to progress through Manifold’s many eternal spaces.You’re forever being confronted with colossal towers, cathedral-like edifices, massive windows, never-ending flights of stairs – it’s bonkers. There…

FREE | ROBINFIELD.ITCH.IO PC Old-fashioned dungeon crawlers might purport to be games about exploration or character-building, but really they’re games about chucking stuff – chucking rocks onto pressure plates, flinging daggers at kobolds, throwing junk to make room for not-quite-junk. Dungscoot gets it. It’s almost entirely about chucking stuff. About using projectiles to injure enemies in a dungeon. Like a compressed dungeon crawler, Dungscoot shunts you from one tiny room to another tiny room, each of which may contain monsters, or closets, or locked chests. From its point-and-click combat to its constant inventory wrangling, Dungscoot looks and plays like an old 2D CRPG, such as Dungeon Master or Lands of Lore – minus, slightly disappointingly, the open maps and puzzles. There’s also an element of randomness – some rooms will be…

The Mootrix VR is responsible for an all new cowspiracy. A farm just outside of Moscow is using custom-built VR headsets to show cows scenes of rolling summer fields in the hope that it will prompt them to produce more milk. Studies have shown that calmer cows produce more, better quality milk, so the experiment, which was announced by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food in the Moscow Region in a press release, makes perfect sense. We’re not sure whether The Mootrix actually improves the mood of the herd enough to affect milk yields just yet, but the results of the ‘Unique Summer Fields Program’ study are expected to be announced at the 6th International Agro-Industrial Dairy Forum in Russia. Signed Macintosh 6.0 floppy disk goes for over $11,000 DOES…