Inhaltsverzeichnis für July 2018 in PCWorld

AMD just did Intel one better at Computex. On the Tuesday of the show, Intel wowed the Taipei crowds with a 28-core Core chip (see page 11), which the company promised by the end of the year. One day after, on Wednesday, AMD announced Threadripper 2—and at 32 cores and 64 threads, it will easily top what Intel promised. AMD’s Threadripper 2 announcement was the highlight of the company’s press conference, which didn’t have much to offer in the way of new announcements in graphics. AMD did say that PowerColor’s tiny Vega 56 Nano for mini-ITX systems is now shipping. The company also showed off a 7nm derivative of its Radeon Vega GPU for workstations, advising users to “stay tuned” for 7nm consumer GPUs. Finally, the company showed off a…

Project Precog is a concept PC formed of two shimmering sheets of glass. Asus showed it to us on June 5 at Computex in Taipei, and it’s an intriguing vision of future PCs. And it’s a vision that appears to have legs: Marcel Campos, senior director of PC and phone marketing for Asus, said the company hopes to ship Project Precog in 2019. Until then, we’ll have to wonder what it will cost and what its exact features will be. DUAL DISPLAYS ARE HOT (AGAIN) Precog taps into what could be a resurgence of the two-screen design trend that briefly took hold with initiatives like Project Taichi, a dual-screen device Asus showed at Computex in 2012. Precog is much larger, though, and looks more like a traditional convertible laptop that can…

Another contender might be ready to tee off on Apple’s $329 iPad, and no, we’re not talking about Chromebook tablets again. Microsoft plans to release a $400 Surface tablet, Bloomberg reports, possibly as early as this fall. The cheapest Surface Pro model available today costs twice as much, and every other configuration sells for $1,000 and up. The $400 tablet will shrink the Surface’s screen size from 12.3 inches down to 10 inches, Bloomberg says. We’d expect a $400 Surface tablet to offer a more modest resolution than the luscious 2736x1824 (267 PPI) display found on the pricier Pro models. The low-cost tablet will ditch the Pro’s stark, hard edges for rounded corners, the report claims, as well as introduce USB-C to the Surface lineup in place of Microsoft’s proprietary charge port.…

If you’ve been looking for a gaming laptop to trick your corporate IT department into funding your PC gaming—MSI’s GS65 Stealth Thin 8RE may be just what you’ve been looking for. On the outside is sedate black aluminum with bronze edges. On the inside are state-of-the-art, gaming-grade components with enough performance to basically put anything made before it to shame. THINK OF IT AS TWO BETTER THAN THE GS63 The GS65 is basically a complete rework of the ground-breaking GS63VR gaming laptop that made its debut in 2016. With the redesign, MSI said it wanted to make a laptop that could lurk in a conference room without making it look like your company splurged for a gaming laptop. The only outward signs would be the MSI logo on the lid. Open up…

With a new design and gorgeous screen, the OnePlus 6 is nearly impossible to pick out of a lineup among other 2018 premium phones. This superficial comparison doesn’t quite hold up when you really study the phone, but one thing is certain: OnePlus has finally graduated from maverick to mature. While previous OnePlus phones felt like they were living at least a half-year in the past—even the fantastic 5T, which ditched the home button and added an 18:9 screen, didn’t feel like a completely fresh phone when it launched after every other premium handset last year—the OnePlus 6 is right at home in mid-2018. From the gorgeous display to the stunning design and wonderfully minimal OS, everything about the OnePlus 6 feels like it’s on the cutting edge. Except for…

Nearly lost in the flood of Intel announcements (see page 11) at Computex—Intel’s 28-core chip, the 8086K Anniversary Edition, and more—was something a bit more fundamental: the development of 1-watt display panels, which will have a profound impact on battery life. Intel said it is working with Innolux and Sharp to develop what it calls its Low Power Display Technology, which optimizes the display technology, including the backlight and panel circuitry, to halve power from a typical power consumption of about two watts down to a single watt. They’ll be optimized for Intel’s U- and Y-series processors for ultrabooks and ultra-low-power devices. In the real world, that could extend battery life by as much as four to eight hours, according to Josh Newman, the general manager of mobile innovation segments…

Does your laptop’s performance have you down? Don’t simply accept it as a way of life. It’s quite possible that by upgrading your laptop’s RAM you can give your portable PC a boost. (For another great upgrade, see our article on how to add an SSD to your laptop.) Does your particular laptop support a RAM upgrade? That depends. Laptop designs vary, including which components are accessible and upgradable. Because not every laptop is built the same, there’s no way to say with complete certainty what you can or can’t upgrade. What we can say, however, is that most budget laptops tend to be far more serviceable than ultra-thin, premium models. Microsoft’s Surface devices, for example, are sealed shut, while Apple favors proprietary parts, with everything soldered to the motherboard.…

Intel’s demonstration of a massive, 28-core PC chip capped off a busy Computex keynote on June 5 in Taipei, complete with a special record-breaking Anniversary Edition 8086K processor, the formal announcements of the Whiskey Lake and Amber Lake processor families, one-watt panels designed to drastically improve laptop battery life, and more. “More” included a look at mobile PCs from Asus and Lenovo with not one but two screens, of which PCWorld was allowed an exclusive sneak peek. It’s all great news for a PC industry that’s worked hard to climb back from declining sales. “The PC industry has been improving, which is great, and a large part of that is due to the innovation we’ve been driving with our PC partners,” said Gregory Bryant, senior vice president and general manager…

SSDs are about to get a whole lot bigger and a whole lot cheaper. Intel and Micron recently announced the delivery of the industry’s first Quad-Level Cell NAND dies, which will offer a third more space than previous technology. QLC technology stores four bits per cell on a NAND cell, which is a significant increase over today’s common TLC (Triple-Level Cell) NAND. Why this matters: As users hunger for ever more storage capacity, SSD makers have labored to add additional layers to meet those demands. QLC will give the title of densest flash to Micron and Intel with a single die capable of holding 1 terabit of information, the companies said. MORE STORAGE SSD capacity has grown gradually. The first SSDs used Single-Level Cell and stored a single bit per…

Facebook’s plan to connect neighborhoods and businesses wirelessly, known as Terragraph, will begin field trials in 2019 using 60GHz technology from Qualcomm, the two companies said recently. Facebook began talking about Terragraph in 2016, part of a bid to replace fiber broadband with 60GHz millimeter-wave wireless. The technology wouldn’t replace Wi-Fi, but was designed to offer a replacement for fiber or cable to homes and businesses, forgoing the need to rip up streets and sidewalks. Now we have a date: 2019, the first time the technology will be tested, according to Jesse Burke, a staff marketing manager at Qualcomm. Actual deployment will come later, he said. Terragraph is expected to begin field trials using a technology called 802.11ay, the successor to 802.11ad that debuted around 2016 or so. Though 802.11ay…

If ever there was a company meant to produce a virtual private network (VPN) service as a natural outgrowth of its business it’s Pornhub. That’s why it surprised no one, but possibly intrigued everyone, when the famous site introduced VPNhub in late May. VPNhub is focused on mobile first with apps for Android and iOS that are the gateway to the free and premium services. Everyone can use VPNhub’s ad-supported service on mobile, but you’ll need a premium subscription to use the service on Mac and Windows. For that reason, we can say at the outset that VPNhub is not an ideal choice if you’re striving for anonymity. The very fact that you have to pay with a credit card via your primary Google or Apple account makes your identity knowable.…

NZXT’s highly regarded H700i and H400i cases shook up the status quo when they debuted in late 2017 by blending the crisp, unpretentious look of the company’s popular S340 and S340 Elite with an integrated Smart Device that taps the company’s CAM software to manage your PC’s lighting and fans. Now it’s the mainstream’s turn. On Tuesday, NZXT has expanded the H-series with the launch of the $70 NZXT H500 and $100 NZXT H500i, two new cases that deliver the same clean design as their luxurious predecessors, but at a price more people can afford. With an integrated fan and lighting controller, two customizable RGB LED strips, a tempered glass panel, and cable management tools galore, the NZXT H500i offers a slew of premium features for a case that costs less than $100.…

Your gateway to the internet may be the portal that foreign hackers are using to snatch your data. The FBI recently issued a security notice warning that all home and small office routers be rebooted after Cisco’s Talos group discovered sophisticated Russian-linked “VPNFilter” malware infecting at least 500,000 networking devices. Here’s what you need to know about VPNFilter and the FBI’s guidance to reboot your router—which might not even safeguard against the malware completely. WHAT’S THE THREAT? Since all your internet and local network traffic flows through your router, it can be pretty severe. “VPNFilter is able to render small office and home office routers inoperable,” the FBI warns. “The malware can potentially also collect information passing through the router.” Routers are especially ripe targets for hackers because they usually connect directly…

In Microsoft Word, templates are predesigned documents that you or someone else (such as Microsoft) creates to use as a pattern for a project. The template could be for a business card, brochure, resume, presentation—the list goes on. Regardless of the purpose, templates provide the design consistency that any organization (or individual) needs to look professional. (You can also find templates for Excel, PowerPoint, and other applications, but this article focuses on Microsoft Word.) The template contains a specific layout, style, design, and, sometimes, fields and text that are common to every use of that template. Some templates are so complete (such as business cards), you only have to change the individual’s name, phone number, and email address. Others, such as business reports or brochures, could require that everything is…

The gamers hoping, wishing, and praying for a new generation of GeForce cards to arrive at Computex got some bad news from the company’s CEO during a press briefing at the trade show: The hardware won’t show up for a “long time.” When reporters asked when the new GeForce GPUs would launch, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang responded, “It’s a long time from now.” Huang had just finished announcing Nvidia’s Jetson Xavier, which Huang said is the first computer designed specifically for robotics. Powered by six processors—including a Volta Tensor core GPU, eight ARM64 cores, and deep learning accelerators and image processors—Xavier is the kind of computer that could be used to build a robot to hand you a wrench in the lab, like Tony Stark’s Jarvis. Most of Nvidia’s press…

HP’s Mindframe headset will feature active cooling to keep your ears from sweating through gaming sessions. Repeat: This new HP headphone has active cooling. For your ears. The Mindframe is just the most innovative of a host of gaming accessories HP announced in late May. The company also introduced its Sequencer keyboard with optical mechanical switches, and the Reactor mouse with an aluminum cable designed to stay flat. The Reactor mouse will cost $79, while the Sequencer keyboard will set you back $179. Both should be available in June. HP says the Mindframe features thermoelectric coolers (TEC) integrated into the ear cups. TECs work by using an electrical charge to create a Peltier effect, which can radiate or absorb heat. TECs have been used for many years to cool computers…

HP’s Spectre x360 15 changes everything. Specifically, the version that wields Intel’s Kaby Lake G CPU, fortified with Radeon RX Vega discrete graphics, upends the stereotype that 360-degree convertible laptops can’t deliver top performance. And we’ve proven it by comparing the Spectre x360 15 with Kaby Lake G against its twin running Kaby Lake R, as well as some high-end clamshell designs. The Kaby Lake G version is as fast or faster than all comers. The Spectre x360 15’s journey has been a long one. When we reviewed the first generation in 2016, it was basically designed to be a giant ultrabook with a big screen, rather than a pricey powerhouse. Not to throw shade, but we’ve seen other vendors stuff much hotter CPUs and much hotter GPUs into 15-inch convertibles,…

The free and open source suite LibreOffice is loved by many for its excellent compatibility with Microsoft Office formats including the newer DOCX, PPT, and PPTX files. LibreOffice 6, its first major update in a couple years, continues that tradition but redesigns the UI and adds productivity improvements to its “big three” programs—Writer, Calc, and Impress. HANDS ON LibreOffice 6 sports a static menu, but its still-experimental ribbon-style interface, called Notebook bar, has been upgraded to include two options. The first, Grouped Bar Full, displays three tiers of buttons in Writer, Calc, and Impress. The other, Tabbed Compact, is a streamlined variant of the Tabbed Notebookbar. Other features, including the special characters dialog and the Help system, have also been modernized to be more attractive and intuitive. LibreOffice 6 4.5…

In April, Google launched its first major Gmail redesign since 2013, and in a sense it was an acknowledgment of all the ways Google had fallen behind. With 1.4 billion users logging into Gmail at least once per month, the service has become resistant to change. This in turn has been a boon to the email software business, allowing third-party apps like Mailbox, Spark, Astro, and Newton to invent new features on a more regular basis. Several of Gmail’s most notable new features come straight from these apps, and from the broader software world in general. And while some have previously appeared in Google’s more forward-thinking Inbox app, others are new to Gmail entirely. But as Gmail gets with the times, it’s also introducing some new ideas that haven’t yet occurred…

The Google Android Messages app is one of the finest ways to send and receive text messages. It’s even ready for the future with RCS standard support and ample features. You might not even realize all the neat things you can do with Android Messages, so here are the five best. 1. ADD A MESSAGE SUBJECT A standard text message doesn’t have a lot of features, but there are some little-known tweaks you can make in Messages. Instead of just tapping Send, long-press it. That brings up two things in the compose field: You can add a title to your message by tapping in the new field and entering text. This makes the message behave like an MMS, but it should load normally on the recipient’s phone as there’s no photo…