Table of contents for September 2022 in APC

Welcome to this issue – and if you’ve come to us from our sister title TechLife – welcome to the world of APC! After many long years of serving up expert tech advice to Aussies, TechLife has now merged with APC. If you’re familiar with both mags, you’ll know that APC and TechLife have much in common. A very long time ago TechLife was known as PC User, and along with APC it helped Aussies discover the latest in tech for decades. TechLife always had the PC at its core, and you won’t find better computer coverage than right here in APC. But APC goes beyond the PC, just as TechLife always did, too. We’re all over the many important areas that orbit your digital life, and in APC you’ll…

Sam Naffziger, AMD senior vice president, corporate fellow and product technology architect, expects high-performance GPUs with TDPs as high as 700W emerging before we reach 2025. The pictured chart isn’t specifically discussed in a recent interview with Venturebeat, but making GPUs more efficient is. With this lack of clear context, we are seeing the chart as an indicative warning about the industry by AMD, rather than a prediction of the direction of travel for AMD GPUs. Naffziger reveals some of the innovative ways in which AMD has avoided seeing its GPU TDPs balloon, and from the interview it sounds like AMD still has some tricks up its sleeves for RDNA 3 and RDNA 4. For RDNA 3, Naffziger asserts that AMD is targeting a 50 percent performance-per-watt improvement. RDNA 3…

Last month John Riccitello, the CEO of popular game engine Unity and former Electronic Arts CEO, ruffled a galaxy of feathers when he said in an interview that a consideration of monetisation during a game’s development period is essential for all but “fucking idiots”. That’s paraphrasing, and Riccitello has apologised exactly twice for the tone of his declaration. But, as with any statement from a gaming executive that deviates ever-so-slightly from the tenor of a corporate Siri, it provoked a lot of (mostly negative) reaction. It’s important to read the full quote though, which is actually pretty innocuous. When an interviewer at Pocket Gamer noted that “implementing monetisation earlier in the process and conversation… has seen pushback from some developers,” Riccitello likened those devs to manufacturers of luxury cars. In…

Last year, AMD launched FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR), an upscaling algorithm promising improved performance, possibly inspired by Nvidia’s DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling). Rendering at a lower resolution then upscaling can boost performance, and is almost a requirement to play games at 4K and maxed out settings, especially with ray tracing. FSR was a good first effort but it relied on spatial upscaling using only the data present within a single frame as input. It applied an upscaling and customised Lanczos sharpening filter, a relatively low overhead way of doing upscaling. However, artefacts were visible at higher upscaling factors and it did nothing to combat aliasing. DLSS uses temporal upscaling, with data from multiple frames combined with motion vectors and the depth buffer and feeding that into an AI enhancement…

FUTURES WE EXPLORE THE TRENDS AND TECHNOLOGIES THAT ARE SET TO SHAPE THE FUTURE The past few years have seen record wildfires in Australia, California and Europe, with conflagrations worsened by hot, dry conditions caused by climate change. That makes fighting such fires all the more costly – financially and in terms of firefighters’ lives. The best solution is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to rein in temperatures, but technologies such as drones, AI and sensors are also lending a helping hand to predict, track and fight fires. There’s a host of ways firefighters already use such technology. UK-based FireAngel uses AI to predict incidents (tinyurl.com/ APC510FIRE) for at-risk people, such as dementia sufferers, while US government agency NIST developed AI to predict flashovers (tinyurl.com/APC510NIST). This is the phenomenon when…

NORDVPN | NordVPN 2-Year Plan US$5.24/month, NordVPN 1-Year Plan US$6.88/month, NordVPN 1-Month Plan US$11.99/month | www.nordvpn.com EXPRESSVPN | ExpressVPN 1-Year Plan US$8.32/month, ExpressVPN 6-Month Plan US$9.99/month, ExpressVPN 1-Month Plan US$12.95/month | www.expressvpn.com As you may already know, a virtual private network (VPN) is a service that hides your IP address and virtual location whilst encrypting your internet traffic. This vastly improves your online security and privacy, which is something we should all be keeping tabs on these days. Although the old adage about “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” often comes up in discussions about internet privacy, a VPN does more than simply hide your internet browsing history. In an era when almost our whole lives are spent on the internet, it goes without saying that you don’t want prying…

$3,753.60 | dell.com/en-au Dell’s XPS 13 has always been a leader in the ultra premium laptop market, but as the new Plus naming convention might give away, the new range of XPS 13 Plus devices are adding even more to the overall experience. Some of the headline features in this update include a notably more powerful Intel 12th generation CPU, an optional OLED touchscreen panel, an integrated glass touchpad palmrest and a neat capacitive touch bar. You’ll still be able to get a non-Plus XPS 13 in 2022, but it comes with a 9W i5-1230U or i71250U processor and misses out on the fancy touch bar and a few other luxuries for a much more competitively priced device. This gives plenty of room for the XPS 13 Plus to justify…

$220 | www.bequiet.com Be Quiet has earned itself a reputation as a manufacturer of low noise products, as its name suggests. Unlike Be Quiet’s traditionally subtle designs, the Pure Base 500FX departs is something different, being a high airflow design with lots of RGB lighting. Can it stay true to Be Quiet’s core philosophy of quiet computing? The Pure Base 500FX is a mid-tower that’s based on the existing 500DX. So, it’s not Be Quiet’s first foray into higher airflow designs, but it’s the first to do so with an emphasis on RGB lighting. A lot of it is due to the four Be Quiet Light Wings ARGB ring fans. There are three 120mm models at the front while the one at the rear is a 140mm version. There’s a…

$249 | motorola.com.au Motorola has form when it comes to building great smartphones at low prices. The Moto G22 certainly ticks the latter box, costing only $250 for a fully featured Android 12 phone, even it’s hard to get excited about a phone with so much evident cost-cutting. Not that this is obvious at first glance. Though fairly chunky at 8.5mm, the G22’s casing is nicely curved and feels well put together. Unsurprisingly it’s all plastic, but it doesn’t feel flimsy, and both the Cosmic Black and Iceberg Blue finishes have a shimmer effect on the back that adds a touch of class. "It does the job and it’s currently one of the cheapest smartphones you can buy." The screen, however, has obviously been specified to a budget. It’s a…

macOS 10.13 or later | US$42 | noodlesoft.com Hazel makes it easy to create scripts to perform actions on files using a similar interface used to create smart searches in Finder. The biggest addition in version 5 is the ability to pull text strings from lists or tables in order to create conditions. You can either create the lists and tables in Hazel itself, or point it at a file. So, say you had files containing notes on clients and the file names contain the surname of the client. You could create a table, or use an existing one, that had the surname in one column and their first name in another. You could tell Hazel to look up the table for the surname, match it to a first name…

WHAT CAN YOU DO • Switch your router to a faster, less congested channel • Stop the bright lights on your router bothering you • Get alerts when new devices connect to your network • Update your router’s firmware to improve its speed • Ensure your router hasn’t been hijacked by malware • Extend your Wi-Fi coverage using powerline adapters • Create a heatmap of your Wi-Fi signal We’re all guilty of taking our Wi-Fi for granted until the point when it becomes frustratingly slow or starts knocking our devices offline. And, regardless of the connection speeds promised by our internet providers, it’s safe to say that few of us enjoy consistently fast and reliable wireless signals across every area of our homes. There are plenty of reasons for slow…

Just because you’re not a large enterprise or a household name, that doesn’t mean your business can blithely ignore security breaches. Indeed, it might surprise you to discover that the truth is actually quite the opposite: smaller businesses are the most likely to be vulnerable. Even worse, attackers know it. A 2021 cybersecurity breaches survey found that only 31 percent of businesses surveyed had cybersecurity-related continuity plans and less than 15 percent had carried out a cybersecurity vulnerability audit, and I can assure you that businesses at the smaller end of the scale are most likely to be unprepared. It’s understandable. Small businesses “have less time and fewer resources to focus on cyber security, which often takes a back seat to sales-related activity,” Hemant Kumar, CEO and co-founder at Enpass,…

YOU WILL NEED Windows 10 or 11 TIME REQUIRED: Two hours Once upon a time, back in the earliest days of personal computing, deleting a file meant it was gone for good. That was the assumption, anyway; then, in 1982, Peter Norton released the UNERASE tool, which could be used to magically restore files that had been wiped using the ERASE command in MS-DOS. Subsequently, Microsoft added its own official UNDELETE command to MS-DOS 5. For careless computer users these tools were a godsend, but for businesses that had made the early investment in storing sensitive information on computer disks, the idea of undeleting files was an alarming threat to data security. Since then, the threat has only grown: almost all of us have our own personal information stored somewhere…

YOU WILL NEED Some or all of the following tools: Bulk Crap Uninstaller, CCleaner, TreeSize Free, Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder, SteamMover (all free) The emergence of smaller, faster boot drives has resurrected an age-old problem: how to stop your hard drives from filling to capacity. What wasn’t such an issue with a 2TB drive is now a hot topic as you struggle to maintain Windows 11 and your apps on a super-speedy 256GB NVMe boot drive. In this tutorial, we’ll reveal a range of tips, techniques, and tools to help you bring back some semblance of order to your drive’s contents while ensuring you have plenty of room to allow your personal files to sit side-by-side with Windows, your games, and other apps. We’ll start with a quick tour of…

Beautifully styled and quintessentially European, the Oric line started life in the United Kingdom’s highly competitive microcomputer market, before finding a new home in France. With the Oric line, retro gaming fans can find new variants of classic European titles, as well as titles exclusive to the system. So join us as we take a brief history tour, then show you how to emulate these computers on a modern PC. Development and launch – Oric-1 The Oric line was developed by a UK company, Tangerine Computer Systems. Tangerine had already carved out a niche for itself with 1979’s Microtan 65 – a chunky, PC-sized ‘microcomputer’ aimed mostly at laboratories. With the release of 1982’s Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Tangerine focused on the home market, intent on beating Sinclair with a better…

In 1976, some people found themselves standing at the end of a road before a small brick building, surrounded by a forest, pondering “What next?” They would enter the building, get a lamp and some keys before going down, down and south in order to unlock a grate. Eventually, they would start to explore a series of colossal caves, performing various actions they’d unlikely get away with today such as throwing an axe at a dwarf (and having a second attempt if they missed). But such was the joy of Will Crowther’s highly influential game, Adventure – the first of its kind ever written. Also known as Colossal Games Adventure, this classic for the PDP-10 mainframe computer was tackled by typing words such as “get keys”, “go down” and, perhaps…

Following a historic 33 percent decline in shipments year over year (YoY), the HDD market in 2Q 2022 seems to be on the verge of an apocalypse – or at least standing at the doors to purgatory. Weakening demand on the client side prompted this faltering shipment situation for one of the longest-lived storage mediums. Density increase achievements aren’t enough to buoy this particular market. HDD shipments across the various market segments (client and enterprise) only totalled 45 million units – a far cry from the 2010 peak of 651 million units. The biggest change was in the 2.5in form-factor, which saw a staggering 40 percent drop quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) to around 11 million units. The drop is explained by weak retail shipments and a softening mobility market that has largely…

The rumour mill is in overdrive right now. Whether it’s about CPUs, GPUs, or motherboards, we know for sure that the back end of 2022 is shaping up to be absolutely mega for PC enthusiasts. Intel is getting ready to launch its 13th Gen Core CPU range, codenamed Raptor Lake, and its accompanying 700 series motherboards. Being based on the LGA 1700 platform, with backwards compatibility with 600 series boards confirmed, we have a good idea of what to expect as far as features go. But less clear is that, despite the platform supporting PCI Express 5.0, confirmation as to whether 700 series motherboards will actively support PCIe 5.0 M.2 drives is less certain. According to a picture leaked from a presentation at an Intel NAS workshop in China (via@9550pro…

As a healthy, somewhat outdoorsey, 32 year old, physical disabilities and chronic ailments were not exactly front of mind for me... that is until I broke my leg surfing in May, this year. It was a bad break. Bad enough that a friend of mine who is a surgeon laughed when he saw the scans, and every time I’d go for an X-ray or MRI the radiologists would huddle around the monitor and ask if they could take a photo. My mother still likes to impress upon me “well what did you expect trying to do air reverses at your age?” My orthopaedic surgeon told me it’d be 12 months before I’d be back in the water surfing, but as a long time TechLife writer my brain naturally went down…

We are living in very strange times indeed. The two years of Covid appears to the general public to have finished, but a recent tech conference in the USA appears was a super-spreader event, with many falling ill afterwards. The cost-of-living crisis, accelerated by Russia invading Ukraine, means that all the accepted norms of how household and business budgeting work have been thrown up in the air. Some wise sages claim that these price squeezes will help propel us to a greener future with houses warmed by heat pumps, and electric cars filled by roof-top solar panels. Which is a fine prediction, but wholly inappropriate for those living in cities or the vast majority that simply can’t afford to take that sort of capital investment. It almost feels like an…

1 BONELK ELEVATE LAPTOP STAND Solid style. $99 | bonelk.com If you didn’t buy a proper laptop stand during the first half of 2020 as we ll rushed to the home to work, here’s one, now. APC likes Bonelk gear because it’s usually metal, seems to be high quality and looks nice in an elegant, classy way. The Elevate comes in black or white and the all-important lifting arm is stiff and strong, and didn’t wobble under the weight of a 17-inch laptop. Rubber bits on all edges the laptop will touch protect your device. A large cutaway allows air to circulate and keep your battery and chips cool. It’s a little pricy at a hundred bucks, but this is one of the better stands we’ve seen, and it…

$848 (64GB) | consumer.huawei.com/au The beautiful thing about tablets is their simplicity. You really only need to ask yourself four questions before buying: does it do what I need it to do? Is it fast enough? Is the battery life good enough? And how good is the screen? Everything else is detail. I’ll tackle those four questions in reverse, starting with the excellent screen. The 11in diagonal that gives this tablet its name includes 2560 x 1600 pixels, equating to 274ppi – so close to Retina levels (300dpi) that I couldn’t tell the difference. It hit a peak brightness of 492cd/m2 in our tests, covering a glorious 91 percent of the DCI-P3 colour space. This brings us to battery life, which I would categorise as solid-to-good. In our straightforward video-rundown…

$79 | www.deepcool.com When DeepCool contacted us with details on its upcoming LE500 All-in-one CPU coolers, we weren’t particularly captivated until we saw the price. At just $79 for the 240mm LE500, this appears to be the cheapest 240mm AIO we’ve ever seen. But cheap doesn’t mean it’s automatically good. Sometimes it can mean quite the opposite. The LE500 needs to be capable if it’s to win our recommendation. The LE500 arrives in a well-presented box that wouldn’t be out of place with a cooler at three times the price. Everything is securely packed in individual bags and the assembly instructions are clear and easy to follow. The LE500 is confirmed to be socket AM5 compatible, making it suitable for a next generation Zen 4 build. And of course, it…

$1,199 | samsung.com/au How much functionality do you want from your PC monitor? Just the pixels? Or all the features? Arguably, the new Samsung M8 Smart Monitor gives you the lot especially if you want to use it as a business monitor. It’s built around a full 4K 32-inch VA panel. To that it adds niceties like USB Type-C connectivity with power delivery and a magnetic clip-on webcam. The really unusual bit is full Smart TV functionality complete with networking. What more could you ask for from any 4K monitor for your PC or Mac? "What more could you ask for from any 4K monitor for your PC or Mac?" With a brightness rating of 400 nits and 3,000:1 contrast, if the Samsung M8 ought to be pretty punchy it’s…

Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 | FREE | bcuninstaller.com BCUninstaller – or Bulk Crap Uninstaller, to give its rather crude full name – is recommended as it is the best alternative to the overrated Revo Uninstaller, and it’s constantly getting better at removing unwanted tools from your computer. Because it’s an open-source program, the developer can rely on help from users to report bugs and offer suggestions for refinements to features. As such, version 5.3 includes a raft of welcome tweaks. One minor but significant change is the renaming of the ‘Nuke an application’ function, which lets you drag a crosshairs icon from BCUnistaller’s toolbar over a program’s window to begin the uninstallation process. This is now called ‘Target an application’, which is perhaps more tasteful in light of…

LABS Free | gmail.com Google unveiled visual updates and improvements to Gmail’s recipient field last October, promising to complete the rollout a month later. That did not occur, but the company has now resumed the update’s rollout. The search giant announced in a blog post that the new changes to Gmail’s compose window are beginning to appear on many of the best laptops and Chromebooks. These updates were delayed because Google needed to “improve performance.” Google now expects to complete the rollout for all Google Workspace customers, as well as G Suite Basic and Business users, by the end of September. Perhaps the update’s headline change is a new right-click menu that allows you to view a recipient’s full name and email address, copy email addresses, and open a recipient’s…

YOU WILL NEED Windows 10 or 11 TIME REQUIRED: Two hours If you’ve been using a computer for around 20 years (or longer), you’ll remember how important it once was to keep your files organised. Hard drives were less common and – where they existed – were much smaller than the multi-gigabyte behemoths we take for granted today. This meant that a lot of files were stored on floppy disks and, when they got full, archived to Zip drives or CD-ROMs. If you ever wanted to find your work again, without a long and frustrating search across multiple disks, you had to label everything with care. "There’s no shame in saving every file to your Documents folder and relying on Windows to keep track of things." Once you found the…

Your privacy when in public spaces has been back in the news of late. A recent report from Choice Magazine revealed that a number of major Australian retailers (notably Bunnings, Kmart and The Good Guys) have been using advanced facial recognition on customers in their stores, allowing them to track who is coming and going, what the customers do when they’re there, and when and how often those particular customers visit the store. Using information gathered at checkout, they can easily link faces to identities, and have likely built up a rather substantial database of private information about their customers. "In the time since that report appeared, The Good Guys has ceased using the facial recognition software, but Bunnings and Kmart have doubled down, claiming that the facial recognition is…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to create a newsletter in Pages YOU’LL NEED macOS, Pages Apple’s Pages is part word processing app and part page layout tool. However, it’s the latter where it really comes in to its own, making it very easy to create a CV, brochure, flyer or a newsletter. There are lots of template options for each in the template browser, but the real fun and creativity is in using those templates as a starting point and coming up with your own unique design. Pages has some pretty powerful tools for tweaking and adjusting text, images, and other elements on the page so you can make them look exactly as you want them. In this tutorial, we’ll start with one of the templates…

Most of us can’t live without the internet these days, but for the last ten years, the apps that power the web have required a smorgasbord of programming languages from HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to Content Style Sheets (CSS) to JavaScript. Meanwhile, Python has swept virtually all before it to become the most popular programming language from beginners to AI experts. Now a new effort dubbed ‘PyScript’ aims to bring the two together and make it easy for anyone to use the power of Python in new web apps. Best of all, you can play with an initial test version right now. "While Python has become the launchpad for many coding beginners, it has also been at the centre of the boom in machine learning and deep learning over the…

$89.95 | PC, PS4/5, XB1/S/X | ea.com/en-gb/games/f1/f1-22 Remember the ‘live the life’ ethos of F1 2010? This game takes that to its logical conclusion, giving you an all-new living space for your multi-millionaire avatar, which you can kit out right away with furniture, wall hangings, and yes, dammit, soft furnishings of your choice. Other players can visit your space online and admire your race trophies, supercar collection, and choice of uplighters. It’s not very interactive, though; you can only flick between rooms with left and right, rather than walk around your new abode. But let’s stop right there. It’s the F1 you’re here for and, frankly, the supercars’ inclusion only highlights why F1 exists. Fortunately, the F1 content is the best ever. You get plenty of choice before you start…

CHIP CHATAPC REPORTS ON THE UNUSUAL SIDE OF TECH NEWS AI models are often trained from a state of no knowledge, where they are given a goal and stimulus and have to muddle through the learning process from scratch. We’ve often thought that this was largely what humans did too, however researchers gave an AI system a few basic assumptions that developmental psychologists theorise newborns may have about the movement and persistence of physical objects. The AI that was given the assumptions inspired by infant cognition was able to dramatically reduce the time taken to sufficiently predict object motion, requiring just 28 hours of video, and was more accurate overall. FBI CLAIMS PEOPLE ARE USING DEEPFAKES TO APPLY FOR REMOTE TECH POSITIONS Hackers are deepfaking it till they make it,…

China, despite its growing economic status and political influence, remains behind the likes of the USA, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea when it comes to its chip sector, and the US would like to keep it that way. According to Bloomberg, the US is pushing Dutch chipmaking technology firm ASML to stop selling China essential tech that’s needed to grow its chipmaking sector. "The US continues to link technological and trade issues with politics and ideology and uses them as tools to push forward its technological blockade and decoupling in an attempt to block others’ path, but it will only isolate itself in the end." ASML is the world’s largest supplier of lithography equipment, which is essential for chip production. ASML is already barred from selling its most advanced Extreme Ultraviolet…

In January last year, Qualcomm spent $2 billion on buying Nuvia – that’s a lot for a company barely two years old with few tangible assets. What Nuvia had was expertise in processor design, particularly ARM-based chips, and also several ex-Apple engineers in its ranks. Qualcomm is a huge, but fabless, manufacturer of processors and other silicon. Its chips power about 30 percent of the world’s smartphones and high-end Snapdragon SoCs are found in tablets and laptops. Apple’s M1 chip has shown what could be done with a good ARM design. Qualcomm aims to build PC-level processors and take a bite out of the x86 market, starting with performance laptops but also becoming a proper desktop contender. Originally Qualcomm hoped to have a processor to rival Apple’s M1 by the…

A big hello to our TechLife readers joining us for the first time! My name is Chris Szewczyk. I’m a bit of an all-round geek with a focus on core PC components. I’ll try not to bore you with megahertz and gigabytes this time and instead tell you a little about myself and what I do for APC. "Like many of you, I work from home. I also play games, and have a PC plugged into a 4K TV for streaming. I need multitasking capabilities." I review almost all of the PC components here at APC. That includes things like CPUs, graphics cards, memory and motherboards. I consider myself very fortunate to get paid to do what I love. I try to write reviews in such a way that they…

Graphics cards are now returning to RRP – albeit the recommended pricing is still pretty painful. But contrary to expectations of higher prices, there is reason to think that trend could be reversed. Cheap GPUs for everyone? If not this year, then maybe next. The hard data here comes courtesy of Nvidia. Of course, Nvidia isn’t going to publicly say that graphics card prices are going to be slashed, and nor is that likely to happen. But there were some telling tidbits in Nvidia’s latest quarterly investors conference call that suggest the recent trend of falling prices is only going to continue. Firstly, attached to the call was an official Nvidia statement that said, among other things, “the reduced pace of increase in Ethereum network hash rate likely reflects lower…

1 AVERMEDIA LIVE GAMER DUO This card has dual HDMI inputs on the rear. Why? So that you can mix two feeds at once, of course. You might want to use an SLR camera for the pro streamer look or stream yourself building a PC with one camera on you and another on your build. It may only capture up to 1080p60 HDR, but this is one versatile card. $339, www.avermedia.com 2 ELGATO 4K60 S+ Elgato’s portable capture card is expensive, but it allows you to record 4K footage wherever you go. That’s because it can be used on its own, no PC required. It will capture 4K60 HDR footage directly to an SD card, and you can even plug in a microphone to record commentary as you…

From $1,099 | microsoft.com/en-au The original Surface Laptop Go was an impressive offering that managed to make a super affordable laptop feel both powerful and not overly dissimilar from premium devices. Like most of the Surface updates, the Surface Laptop Go 2 sticks pretty close to its predecessor by using the same 12.4-inch PixelSense display, keeping a similar compact and ultralight profile and not losing any of the networking and security features that elevated it above other mid-range laptop competition. While a lot of the best features remain the same, there’s also few major improvements to be found. The first is a new 11th Gen Intel processor that brings performance forward a generation. All Surface Laptop Go 2 units use the same Intel i5-1135G7 CPU and can be paired with…

$1,803 | anz.dynabook.com The Tecra range from Dynabook is designed for IT professionals and those looking for enterprise grade security systems that’ll allow employees to work securely from wherever they are. This means it comes with everything from Windows Hello fingerprint and face authentication through to optional smartcard slots. The 2022 Tecra A40-K isn’t all that different to the 2021 models. It’s got the same battery capacity, similar weight and size parameters, an optional 14-inch FullHD IPS touchscreen display and the same MIL-STD-810H resistance capabilities. There are some differences though. The most significant is the update to intel’s 12th Generation processors. The Tecra A40K range starts with an Intel Core i5-1240P CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and a 14-inch non-touch FullHD display that costs $1,235. From here you…

$599 | samsung.com Samsung’s Galaxy A-series phones generally emulate the style and features of its high-end models at a lower price. The A53 is a case in point: it might as well be called the S22 Light. The phone is large but not ungainly, measuring 160 x 75 x 8.1mm and weighing 189g. The rear camera bump isn’t too obtrusive, partly thanks to a curved surround that rises to meet it – an elegant design that’s marred only slightly by all the certifications and other details printed on the back. There’s no 3.5mm headphone jack, but there is an in-display fingerprint scanner, and an IP67 rating means the phone is highly resistant to dust and water. The screen is one of the best you’ll see on a phone at this…

macOS 10.14 or later | Free; Pro from $79.95 | emclient.com The all-in-one approach of eM Client makes it a good option for people who want to keep email, notes, and calendar together. The New Account assistant works with several types of email account, such as Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, Gmail, and POP and IMAP. We had no trouble setting up non-Apple accounts but had to search around on the website before stumbling across instructions for iCloud. Thankfully, eM Client is otherwise straightforward to use, and the app also supports iCloud and Gmail calendars and contacts, and others. The Apple Mail-like three panel view shows mailboxes, emails, and conversations, and the email that you’re currently reading. There’s also an option to display a right-hand sidebar that provides quick access to…

AMD’s Zen architecture revitalised the CPU industry, bringing much-needed competition and higher core counts to consumers everywhere. It’s hard to believe we languished on 4-core Intel CPUs as the top mainstream solution for a full decade, starting with the Core 2 Quad in early 2007 and lasting until the Core i7-8700K launched in late 2017. If you wanted more CPU cores, you had to move to the more expensive LGA2011 HEDT (high-end desktop) platform. AMD kicked that idea to the curb with its first Ryzen 7 CPUs, and we’ve been watching an arms race of escalating core counts and clock speeds ever since. Round four of Zen is now getting prepped for launch. At Computex and its Financial Analyst Day, AMD spilled the beans on much of what…

Save my old PC! I have a PC that I love very much (my first build), but it’s not compatible with Windows 11, so after 2025, this machine will die. Can you suggest what to do with it? I don’t want to sell it, so maybe start with Linux? NAS? Any ideas? The spec is: Intel i5-6500 3.20GHz, MSI B150 Gaming M3, 16GB DDR-4 RAM, 520 GB SDD, 1TB Seagate, Radeon R9 390. Thanks in advance. Cesar Rosadio "I’ve tried shrinking the Windows 10 system drive to free up 500GB of space using Disk Management, but it can only free up to 100GB." APC responds: That’s a decent spec that should last well beyond 2025, Cesar. APC would shy away from using your PC as a NAS, as it’s not…

YOU WILL NEED Windows 10 or 11 TIME REQUIRED: 30 minutes Your computer is full of personal data. From letters to your insurer and emails from your doctor to your tax return and list of your passwords, the documents and files stored on your hard drive are a treasure trove for an identity thief. Even if your data isn’t stolen, it could prove embarrassing if accessed by an unsuspecting friend or family member. Of course, as an APC reader, you’ll already know the importance of securing your PC using a unique and complex password, a thumb or fingerprint, or facial recognition. That said, we’ve all on occasions been called away to the phone or to answer the door and left our computers unlocked. Some of us may even lend our…

Personal information has never been more accessible. Your social profile and posts can give away all sorts of details to people you know, and people you don’t – from potential dates to employers and identity thieves. "Unfortunately, there isn’t a single, straightforward way to close every account." There are all sorts of steps you can take to reduce your exposure, but policies and privacy settings change over time, and breaches can’t be ruled out. The surest way to protect yourself is to shut down your social media accounts completely. It may also be good for your mental wellbeing to cut ties with any platforms that you feel are no longer enriching your life. Unfortunately, there isn’t a single, straightforward way to close every account. The process is different for each…

GAMES $11.99 | PC, XB1, PS4, Switch | cupheadgame.com Not many games refer to themselves as delicious, but who would deny it works for Cuphead? Studio MDHR’s painstaking recreation of a 1930’s Disney aesthetic oozes confectionary flavour, and even if this new dish of platforming goodness arrives a little cold – nearly five years after the original game’s release – it remains a succulent proposition. At least you can jump right into this DLC without completing the main meal. Finish the first mausoleum challenge early on and you release the star of this episode, Ms Chalice. From there, a clock-faced boatman will row you to the new fourth isle, where your task is to return the ghostly Chalice to corporeal form. To do that, all you need is, well, a…

Free-to-play | PC | thecycle.game A sub-genre has been brewing away amidst the tide of battle royales and hero shooters. The obtuse shorthand is PvPvE – which essentially means multiple players having to occupy and fight through a shared space full of baddies in the pursuit of competing goals. The Cycle: Frontier enters into this fray as a free-to-play title, arguably making it more accessible than many of its peers. You’re a prospector, a gun for hire in a sci-fi setting with a Western twang, dropped from an orbital station in a little pod onto a ravaged world to scavenge resources and supplies, left behind by the settlers who abandoned the place due to its regular mega-storms. Getting off the planet with your prized loot requires calling for a dropship…