Inhaltsverzeichnis für April 2022 in APC

Welcome to an especially exciting issue of APC! There’s several different doses of excitement all in this single issue, starting with all our new bits. We don’t like to play too much with the magic formula that is APC, but we’ve been working on some tweaks to the ingredients, and a few small changes make for a big overall improvement. Beginning in this issue are some regular new sections that we hope you enjoy, and freshen up your APC experience a bit. Let’s open this box of chocolates, eh? Futures (page 24) is our all-new looking ahead and coming soonish tech page. The topics we cover will be relevant to your life at some point, and perhaps soon – for better or worse – so this is the place to…

Microsoft’s PowerToys just improved several of its best features in an update to version 0.56.1. The app now supports up to 128 FancyZones, up from its previous limit of 40. Shaking a mouse can now activate the Find my mouse utility in PowerToys as well. In addition to improving existing features, the most recent version of PowerToys fixes quite a few bugs. The FancyZones feature is a window management utility that allows you to snap windows into different layouts. Some similar options are built into Windows 11, but FancyZones is more powerful when it comes to window management. With support for up to 128 FancyZones, you may need one of the best computer monitors to take full advantage of the feature.…

On February 1st, 2022, the ATX12V v3.0 spec became final, bringing considerable changes to power supplies. From now on, any PSU with more than 450W should include one of the new 12+4 pin connectors for Add-In Cards (like GPUs), and have various changes that allow it to deliver up to 200 percent of its max-rated capacity for short periods! The new ATX spec also ensures that there won’t be any shutdowns and other compatibility issues with the upcoming generations of power-hungry GPUs. From now on, the PSU will be able to set the power limit of the graphics card, meaning that you should invest in the proper PSU for your GPU or else you won’t get to utilise it fully.…

Microsoft and Amazon are adding more than 1,000 new Android apps to the Amazon Appstore Preview in the Microsoft Store, including Kindle, Audible and the game Subway Surfers. Notably, it’s still a preview, so there’s still work to be done here. Those who want to try it out should update the Microsoft Store by clicking “Get updates” in Microsoft Store > Library. You can then see which apps are on offer and use them in Windows, including as part of the Snap layouts that were introduced in Windows 11. The Android App preview has different system requirements than Windows 11. You’ll need at least 8GB of RAM, an SSD and a supported CPU: an 8th Gen Intel Core i3 or above, an AMD Ryzen 3000 CPU or above or Qualcomm…

TwelveSouth StayGo MultiPort Hub $199 | twelvesouth.com Rarely does one strike gold with the exact perfect combination of ports in a hub one requires, but this editor recently did, so the love is being shared here. We’ve not reviewed anything from TwelveSouth before, and the quality is pleasing. The aluminium case dissipates heat and comes in either a white or black coating. The portery is: 4K HDMI, USB-A x3, Ethernet, USB-C, SD and micro SD. That’s me sorted. It replaced the (admittedly old) Belkin lump that’s thrice the size. It comes with a 1m cable, or if you’re the type to actually leave the house there’s a tidy short version of the cable to save a few units of space in your carry-all. It tucks into a cavity in the…

The SN570 performs about as we expected. It can’t be expected to match more expensive PCIe 4.0 drives but it does surprisingly well when compared to WD’s ownBlack SN750 which includes a DRAM buffer. $160 | www.westerndigital.com When it comes to SSDs, it’s often the fastest and most expensive PCIe 4.0 drives that attract the headlines. But PCIe 3.0 M.2 systems and slots are still prevalent and there’s a viable market for a low cost, high performance PCIe 3.0 SSDs. The WD SN570 is a drive aimed at this market. It’s got specs to match the performance of flagship drives from just a couple of years back. Cheap NVMe drives now cost hardly any more than SATA drives. The 1TB SN570 we have in for reviews costs $160, not much…

$375 | www.dlink.com.au We love the idea of mesh systems. Instead of worrying about range extenders and having different network names, you attach to one Wi-Fi network and stay on it. When the first Google Wi-Fi kit appeared five years ago it did exactly this and transformed the industry. The problem is that there have been very few improvements since. We hoped for a huge speed jump when Wi-Fi 6 appeared but it didn’t happen. Mesh systems have come to mean mediocre performance that doesn’t tail off as badly at distance as regular Wi-Fi routers. So, we had high hopes for D-Link’s new EaglePro AI Wi-Fi 6 M15 mesh. With a name like that it’s got to succeed, right? By the time we had all three supposedly working, the nodes…

$1,099 | www.msi.com It wasn’t that long ago we were covering the first 4K 144Hz gaming monitors, but MSI’s already on to round two with a new 27-inch high-res flagship announced at the 2022 CES. There aren’t a heap of new technologies under the hood of the Optix MAG281URF, but there’s only so much more you can do when you already offer sub 1ms (GTG) response rates, 144Hz refresh rates and UltraHD resolution. At 27-inches the Optix MAG281URF is a generous size for a desktop PC display, but part of what made high res-high refresh rate screens from last year feel exciting was that they were large enough to use as a replacement TV as well as a console and a living room PC display. You can obviously still do…

$260 | www.corsair.com Corsair’s K70 series has seen a generous handful of iterations, all targeted at serious gamers with a generous reserve of cash to spare. This latest model, the K70 RGB Pro, feels like a culmination of the strengths found in earlier versions, while also adding a few neat features that arguably have a fairly limited use case, but will prove useful to competitive gamers. Let’s get those niche features out of the way quickly: the RGB Pro has a “tournament switch” nestled next to its USB-C port (yes, the cord is detachable). With the flick of this switch, all macros and flashing RGB shenanigans are immediately toggled off, rendering your keyboard lights static rather than undulating. That won’t be useful to the vast majority of users, but esports…

Windows 10 or 11 | Free | www.snipca.com/40817 The last time we looked at PowerToys it had just added a tool called Find My Mouse, which helps you locate your cursor by circling it in a white spotlight. The program now has an even better option called Mouse Pointer Crosshairs, which lets you press Ctrl-Alt-P to frame your cursor at the centre of crosshairs, so you can spot it instantly. To switch on the feature, click ‘Mouse utilities’ in PowerToys Settings and select Enable Mouse Pointer Crosshairs (see screenshot). Click ‘Appearance & behaviour’ to customise the colour, size and opacity of the crosshairs. Another new ‘Mouse utilities’ tool helpfully highlights your mouse clicks in yellow (for left clicks) and blue (for right clicks) to show you exactly what your cursor…

MAC STORE & OTHER MAC APPS | $5.99 per month (unlimited devices) | 1password.com Even after 15 years, 1Password’s defences have never been breached. While there’s a lot about 1Password’s eighth iteration that’s new, including an entirely restructured codebase that builds all of its extant apps on top of a central security core, its proven track record with regards to security is the most important thing about it – the key reason to pick it up, and everything you need to take away from our review of it. But there’s more to love. Thankfully, 1Password’s slick interface has not been thrown out as part of the overhaul, though the easy-to-grasp app has been offered a clean visual refresh. It also gets some ‘life improvements’ – a highlight of which is…

Keyboards matter. To many they’re something of an afterthought, to be considered long after you’ve decided upon the screen, processor or quantity of memory on a prospective purchase’s spec sheet. Yet keyboards have a huge impact on the way you work. A bad one can slow you down, wreck the feel of your laptop or even do you harm over years of prolonged use. That’s why, although you’ll find perfectly decent keyboards for less than $40, some people will pay $300 or more for a great one. How do the different keyboard technologies differ? Which are the ones worth paying the premium prices for? We delve under the keycaps to find out. The keyboard fundamentals Generally speaking, desktop keyboards follow the same basic design. There’s a deck or backplate at…

The PC has been under attack – both literally and metaphorically – for years. Malware threats, environmental threats, even the threat of obsolescence have all been quietly dealt with over the decades. Still, forewarned is forearmed, as the old saying goes. And there’s undoubtedly no shortage of dangers lurking in the shadows for the PC in 2022. In this feature, we’ve canvassed the opinions of security experts and the APC team to highlight ten dangers to the PC in the year ahead. Some are a little tongue-in-cheek, but all are things that you need to be wary of as we flip the calendar over into 2022. 01 Ransomware Of all the malware threats out there, ransomware is still the one that most consumers and business owners should be worried about,…

Flash drives, multimedia cards, and good old optical discs are also susceptible to data loss. The data recovery tools we cover in the main portion of this feature claim to work with flash media as well as regular hard drives. Optical discs are a different matter. Errors can be caused by physical damage as well as discs that have been subject to program or user error, for example, disc sessions on writable or re-writable discs not having been closed properly. This kind of recovery requires specialist tools, and two stand out from the crowd. The first is Recovery Toolbox for CD Free (https:// recoverytoolbox.com/cd.html), which works across CD, DVD, and Blu-ray. After installation, insert your corrupted disc and launch the program. You’ll be prompted to select the optical drive to…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN To mix landscape properties, and create convincing composites YOU’LL NEED Adobe Photoshop 2022, macOS 10.14 or later The recent release of Photoshop 2022 has provided subscribers with useful new (and upgraded) tools to speed up their image-editing workflow. The Object selection tool already did a good job of selecting complicated subjects when you dragged a rectangular marquee around them. The enhanced version of that tool lets you select multiple objects in a few clicks, enabling you to produce creative composites in seconds instead of minutes. New Neural Filters, such as Landscape Mixer, uses Adobe Sensei machine learning (ML) to augment your location with more interesting features (such as turning an arid desert into a lush green vista). You can even change the…

Since you already have age installed on your machine, it makes good sense to learn how to use it to encrypt other sensitive data to keep it from prying eyes. The first step is to generate a public key and write its output to a text file: When you use age-keygen, it creates a key pair, but only the Public key is displayed on the screen, while the Secret Key is safely stored in the specified text file. You can now use the public key to encrypt files, which can then only be decrypted by using the paired secret key. Let’s say you have a text file that you use to write down passwords, to-do lists, or other sensitive data. You can create an encrypted file, which will have the…

We’ve made the case previously that the power supply unit or PSU is the most important component in a PC, for without it, you’re not going to get very far. But you could easily claim the same for the motherboard. When IBM designed the PC 5150 in 1981, the motherboard was essentially a docking station, where every new feature existed on plug-in expansion cards. Today’s motherboards integrate such a vast array of features that for many users there’s hardly a need for anything else. Nevertheless, it’s the varying degrees of integration that provides so many different boards to choose from. So, how do you choose? That’s what we’re looking at this month. Applications This will likely raise a few eyebrows, but I reckon there are only four broad application areas…

$89.95 | PC, XBS/X/1, PS4/5, Switch | dyinglightgame.com Dying Light 2 is a huge and exhilarating playground for crunchy, kinetic, two-footed combat and satisfying first-person parkour. It doesn’t start out like that – there’s a few long hours before the game really opens up and gets fun, and there’s a lot of not-so-great storytelling along the way. But it’s worth it. Welcome to the European city of Villedor, a sprawling mess of decaying and crumbling buildings with scores of zombies shambling through the streets and pockets of survivors camped out in barricaded safe zones. As Aiden, a travelling do-gooder (called a pilgrim), I’ve arrived in search of my long-lost sister, Mia, following several convenient flashbacks that show we were the victims of medical experiments as children before being separated. After…

Free | PC, Linux | bit.ly/3Arhxbf The mission here calls for shooting, and intimidation, rather than very careful sneaking around, as you infiltrate a megacorp to take it down. Over several randomly assembled floors, you have to gather eight keycards, and also make it to the top floor, while contending with a bunch of pesky, patrolling robots. Ammunition is strictly limited, but you can find enough to make do by raiding filing cabinets and plundering the robot corpses. Keycards, meanwhile, can be found on the human staff, who need to be chased down and intimidated with the action button. They’re given titles like Chief Cowardice Officer and Chief Harassment Officer. Desperation Column is a cyberpunk game that embraces the ‘punk’ bit more authentically than most other videogames in the genre.…

Free | Browser | bit.ly/3u6ww9z Be a witch, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. Then how come I’m spending every moment frantically brewing potions for demanding customers? Crazy Cauldron gives you the keys to the hottest potion shop in the realm, but keeping up with demand is an increasingly stressful process. As they appear at your window, with little speech bubbles telling you what they want, you have to gather ingredients, then plonk the right ones in your bubbling cauldron. You’re trying to match your potion’s hue with that in the bubble above each customer’s head. If successful, they’ll disappear in a flurry of points. Sound easy enough? Well, sure, for your basic colours, or to make a lighter shade of black, by adding something white. But suddenly three…

WHAT HAPPENS ON iCLOUD DOESN’T NECESSARILY STAY ON ICLOUD Apple will decrypt your iCloud backups, with a warrant. Apple has made a big deal about maintaining genuine encryption on iPhones for years now. This means that it won’t unlock an iPhone, even for law enforcement agencies with a warrant. It will however still pass on any iCloud data it has associated with your account. Some of this information, including text messages and emails, is stored without encryption, but Apple will also provide the keys for almost all of the information on a backup for requests made with the appropriate legal clearances. A spokesperson for private US enforcement contractor, PenLink, described Apple iCloud data as “phenomenal”, in a recent Forbes investigation. NFT PICTURE FRAMES AND DESK HOLOGRAMS Now you can finally…

ASHAMPOO BURNING STUDIO 2022 The classic tool to safely burn CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays Ashampoo Burning Studio 2022 is a powerful disc burning software for CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs. The software quickly burns files, audio and video to all recordable disc types but also specialised media such as BDXL or M-Disc. The built-in disc ripping auto-detects track names and easily turns audio files into custom audio discs complete with individually designed covers and inlays. Playlists can be auto-generated during ripping for easy playback in the desired song order. The program can also finalise discs to make them playable on older retail players or car radios. Built-in disc spanning automatically spreads data across multiple volumes if it can’t fit on a single disc. This makes it easy to burn entire…

As a result of the United States government’s export restrictions on semiconductor sales to Russia due to its war against Ukraine, both Intel and AMD have suspended chip sales to Russia. In addition, reports have also emerged that TSMC’s decision to participate in the sanctions will thwart Russia’s supply of homegrown chips. The new US export restrictions are akin to the sanctions levelled at Huawei, but they apply to an entire country – a first. Russia has prepared for years to deal with potential sanctions, especially in the wake of the international sanctions in 2014 after its actions in Crimea, by both promoting its own indigenous semiconductor production and also stockpiling chips for just such an occurrence. The new export restrictions are primarily aimed at chips for military purposes or…

Microsoft has a new sidebar in the works for its Edge browser. The sidebar will allow you to search the internet from a web app without having to navigate to another page. A sidebar is already available in Edge, though it is a bit more difficult to access. If you highlight text within a web app (or on any webpage), you’ll see the option to search in the sidebar for whatever you have selected. You can also highlight text and press ctrl-shift-e to search in the sidebar. The option that’s in testing will let you click an icon in the title bar to open the sidebar within Edge. This is a bit more obvious for those that are unfamiliar with the feature. It also draws attention to the title bar,…

A collaborative team of researchers with the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), the TU Dresden, and NaMLab has demonstrated significantly enhanced electron mobility in nanowires when these are put under tensile strain. An important metric for transistor performance, the increased electron mobility is expected to provide significant performance, thermal and power efficiency improvements that could unlock even faster transistors for use in future chips. Their nanowire design could even unlock a 50 percent improvement in electron mobility, furthering the advantages of their design. Crucially, the research works on well-known materials in the semiconductor space: the research focused on gallium arsenide nanowire structures, a compound that’s already widely used in industrial manufacturing, and known to have a high intrinsic electron mobility. The research, published on Nature, takes advantage of a unique property of…

ALIENWARE CONCEPT NYX A powerhouse PC purpose-built for cloud-based gaming, Dell’s newest concept product is the Nyx. Dell claims it can enable high-end gaming sessions on any screen in your home by acting as a central server from which up to four games can be streamed at once. ASUS ZENBOOK 17 FOLD Foldable phones are so last year – 2022 is the year of the foldable laptop. The Zenbook 17 Fold can be configured for either a 17.3-inch or 12.5-inch display and comes with a slick, detachable keyboard. No, we don’t know how expensive it’s going to be, nor how breakable. TP-LINK ARCHER AXE200 OMNI ‘Mecha-powered WiFi’ is the future, apparently. TP-Link’s latest is a tri-band router with four antennas that use tiny motors to rotate and angle themselves towards…

$699 | www.msi.com It’s hard to believe that the RTX 30-series launched back in September of 2020. It’s even harder to believe that it’s taken all of one-and-a-half years before we finally get to see a ‘mainstream’ RTX 30 card. It’s mainstream in name only though while it remains priced at $699. However, there are signs that the GPU market is stabilising. Supply chain issues are easing and mining demand continues to soften. It’s looking likely that that $699 price will trend downwards in the future. Yes. You read that right! The RTX 3050 Ti includes the 276mm² GA106 GPU, the same as that found in the RTX 3060, however it’s a cut down version as you’d expect. It packs in 2,560 Shader units along with 20 RT cores and…

$549 | www.tp-link.com/au It’s router season and, just before we went to press, another model from TP-Link turned up. It’s the more-sober sibling of the gaming-designated GX90 that we saw a few months back and supposedly sacrifices a few bells and whistles for a lower price tag. So, is it any good? As premium routers go, it’s not the prettiest. While we wouldn’t expect it to rival the pulsating RGB flourishes of Asus’ ROG Rapture rival (page 40), we hoped for more than the sharp-lined, cheap plastic chassis that TP-Link has used. The premium packaging promised more and the antennae scratched easily when we un-embalmed them from the tight plastic wrapping. Nonetheless, set-up was easy via TP-Link’s Tether app. We were also pleased to see a 2.5Gbps port at the…

The 165Hz refresh rate and 1ms (MRPT) response time ensure that fast moving objects are rendered silky smooth whether you’re in a fast-and-frantic firefight or speeding round a virtual race track. $799 | www.benq.com We’ve seen a few BenQ Mobiuz monitors and they’ve generally impressed us, while falling short in a few areas. The EX3210R offers a curved, 32-inch screen with a UHD 2,560 x 1,440 resolution, a 165Hz refresh rate and offers supporting specs that mean it shouldn’t have any weak points. Our interest was piqued. The EX3210R also sports Mobiuz’s familiar, funky, orange design flourishes on the stand (a Limited Edition, Dying Light 2-themed variant is also available, and is pictured above) plus its large, brown speaker grille on the front. The latter isn’t decorative either, it masks…

$95 | www.deepcool.com Deepcool is on a bit of a roll. The company has expanded well beyond its traditional cooling and case product lines into power supplies and peripherals, including the KB500 mechanical keyboard that we have in for review. The KB500 is a tenkey-less design. It’s quite minimalist in appearance and it feels heavy and well built. Even the flip out legs feel solid and sturdy. There’s no twist or flex and it feels very stable to type with. It has a fixed braided USB cable coming out the rear though there’s no routing option. The KB500 incorporates Outemu Red linear switches, which are a cheaper equivalent to Cherry Red switches. They’re a good choice for a user looking for the benefits of a linear style Cherry Red switch…

Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 |Free | www.snipca.com/40818 It’s important to create regular backups of important files and folders, but copying them to other drives and partitions can be a time-consuming and resource-hungry process, especially with large items, such as videos. FastCopy can copy large amounts of data much faster than Windows’ File Explorer and this new version adds several useful features – as well as fixing reported bugs. Some of these are quite technical, including the ability to perform tasks in Command Prompt, but all users will welcome the new options to ‘Always use Low IO’ (see screenshot), which stops FastCopy slowing your system by hogging resources, and to delete files before copying when syncing, so you don’t end up with multiple versions. Other improvements boost the program’s…

DARIEN GRAHAM-SMITH REVEALS HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF THEM. One of the major complaints from seasoned users about Windows 11 is that it veers towards simplicity rather than customisability. That’s true, but there are several ways to bend it to your liking if you’re willing to dig beneath the surface. Here, we take you on a journey. We start with the potentially painful install process, including how to bypass the TPM and processor restrictions, before providing some quick advice on customising the taskbar and Start menu. Then it’s time to fight Microsoft’s preferences, whether it’s uninstalling Teams or regaining control over the browser. Not everyone wants to use Edge for everything, after all. Before you dismiss Widgets as a gimmick, it’s well worth taking some time to customise the…

There’s a sudden realisation that comes when you misplace a vital file or accidentally delete it – never mind the shock of discovering an entire partition or drive has gone missing. Speaking from personal experience, data loss is an ordeal, whether it’s a single file or the entire contents of a drive. Anyone who’s had to reconstruct a hard drive file-by-file because they were too zealous with fdisk will know the importance of backups. The quickest way to resolve data loss is using your backups, which is where we’ll begin this guide to the tools, techniques, and tips you need to maximise your chances of recovering lost files. What if your files aren’t backed up or are too old? Armed with the right tools and know-how, it’s possible to reconstruct…

Most forms target your data rather than locking you out of your PC. Typically, you’ll need to use a rescue disc or boot into Safe mode with networking to remove the underlying infection before you can look at recovering your files. If the files have just been encrypted, you should be able to restore them from a recent backup. If your files are stored in OneDrive and you have a Microsoft 365 subscription, you should receive a warning that files have been changed or deleted and given the chance to roll back to earlier,pre-infection versions. If the feature doesn’t appear automatically, click the OneDrive settings button and choose Options, then select ‘Restore your OneDrive’. After verifying your identity, you’ll be able to quickly roll back a set amount of time…

YOU’LL NEED FL Studio 20 www.image-line. com Creating music is something a bit out of the ordinary for us here at APC, although it certainly ties in with many aspects of the computing world. Particularly over the past couple of decades, digital production has become an integral part of making music. Without computers, it’s fair to say that music would certainly have evolved at a much slower rate. Sure, the digital age has brought us some dreadful music – yes, we still have nightmares about the Crazy Frog theme tune – but computers have also made it easier than ever to produce a track of your own. No longer do you need to learn Debussy’s ‘Clair de Lune’ on the piano with your eyes closed. Armed with a powerful PC,…

Modify selections to perfection Once you’ve converted a selection into a layer mask, a black-and-white thumbnail appears next to the layer in the Layers panel. White pixels make the corresponding layer’s pixels look solid. Black areas create transparent pixels on the image layer. You can apply white brush strokes to the mask to restore missing bits of your subject. Black strokes will hide unwanted parts of the image layer. Layer masks are non-destructive so you can show or hide specific layer content at any time by applying a few more white or black brush strokes.…

Add-on boards for the Raspberry Pi, known as HATs, expand the usefulness of the single board computer. The Pi has a single 40-pin GPIO header, but with pHAT Stack from Pmoroni we can add three HATs, or five pHATs to a single Pi. In this project we’re using two older HATs from Pimoroni. The Skywriter HAT is a gesture sensor that reacts to flicks, taps and touch using a sensor which can detect your fingers in the air. We’ll use Skywriter as an input to control the 64 NeoPixels housed inside of Unicorn HAT. The LEDs will change colour at the flick of our hand. Best of all, there is no wiring to worry about. PHAT Stack connects to the Raspberry Pi GPIO via a ribbon cable. We can then…

You’ll need this Almost any PC Windows or Linux Emulator comes pre-loaded with a BIOS.VICE: https://vice-emu. sourceforge.io/ Specifications CPU: MOS Technology 6502 @ 1.108MHz (PAL), 1.02MHz (NTSC) RAM: 5KB (expandable up to 32KB) Graphics: VIC 176x184, 8 or 16 colours Sound: 3x square and 1x noise channel, mono Storage: Cassette, 5.25-inch floppy, and ROM cartridge OS: Commodore Kernal/BASIC 2.0 Released: June 1980 Production: 1980-1985 Worldwide sales: 2.5 million. This month, we cover a Commodore titan that was a huge success in the 1980s, though it was eventually overshadowed by the more successful Commodore 64. Launched in 1980, three years after Commodore’s first personal computer, the PET, the VIC-20 was a sales phenomenon, becoming the first computer to sell over a million units. Aimed at the general consumer, rather than enthusiasts,…

$44.95 | PC, XBS/X/1, PS4/5, Switch | bit.ly/34IW9Tr OlliOlli World isn’t like other skaters. It’s not shredding lines down some asphalt concourse, pissing off security guards and scaring passing shoppers as it slams a 50-50 into the kerb. Roll7’s series of sidescrolling skaters has instead travelled to the far-off shores of Radlandia, a skater’s paradise where the rails are always polished and aspiring shredders compete for the chance to become the next Skate Wizard. OlliOlli World is weirder and wilder than those who Olli’d before it – and it’s all the better for it.The third game in the series follows the template laid out by OlliOlli 1 and 2. You’re tasked with skating a line down a sidescrolling course, using A to push and the left stick to launch into…

$35.95 | PC, XB1 | bit.ly/367Ff10 This one puts the grin in grind. DrinkBox’s dungeon-crawler isn’t ashamed of its XP farming demands, and won’t let you quickly mainline its story without them. But neither is it harshly traditional, withholding challenges until you’ve eaten your greens, with occasional stat boosts to demonstrate the nutritional benefits. Rather, it asks, what if the grind wasn’t a means to an end or an imposition, but satisfyingly playful in itself? Saving the world feels secondary here to simply enjoying the process. Yes, there’s a story, as protagonist Nobody sets out to gather five crystal fragments that will stop a cataclysmic spread of malignant fungus. But it comes with an ironic nod to genre cliches, and nobody but Nobody is expected to take it seriously. Nobody…

“Championing technology doesn’t mean we’re unrelenting yes-men and -women, however, and APC aims to be as objective as possible in all our coverage.” APC is Australia’s oldest consumer technology magazine – having been consistently in print for forty years, since our first issue way back in May 1980 – and we take that heritage and responsibility very seriously. While our focus is obviously on the personal computer the very definition of the PC has changed and shifted markedly since the early 1980s. As such, we touch on many other areas of tech, too, from smartphones and apps to peripherals, accessories, and beyond. We have two goals: to find the best modern tech and to help you make the most of it. We’re also an open church in terms of platforms.…

Chiplets play a huge role in gaming processors today as a big part in AMD’s rise to the top with its Ryzen CPUs. There’s more to come, too. Intel is going hard on chiplet (or tiled) tech with its coming generations of CPUs and GPUs, and we’re only seeing the start of it today. One step toward that interconnected future is a consortium to promote an open die-to-die interconnect standard called Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe), announced today by tech’s heavy hitters. According to Intel, this unified standard for interoperable chiplets will drive down costs and deliver 20x better I/O performance at 1/20th of the power. The consortium consists of Intel, ASE, AMD, ARM, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung, and TMSC. Intel had originally developed the UCIe standard and donated…

Nvidia has confirmed the termination of its bid to acquire Arm from SoftBank Group in the face of insurmountable regulatory hurdles. In late January there were whispers that Nvidia was quietly preparing to back out of the deal, but the company has now made its stance official. In lieu of an acquisition, SoftBank will now take Arm public via an IPO, which will take place within the next year or so. The UK-based firm is also undergoing a shake-up at executive level, with CEO Simon Segars to be replaced by Rene Haas (former VP of Arm IP), a move that is effective immediately. Arm operates upstream of Nvidia and its rivals, licensing out chip architecture to hundreds of different customers, including the likes of Intel, Samsung, Apple, Huawei and Qualcomm…

The Nothing company now has something for the tech market, in-ear headphones dubbed the ear (1) – yes, that lack of capitalisation is intentional. The partly see-through design gives a glimpse of the headphones’ inner workings, but we’re sure there are further treasures to be discovered with a teardown. Major tech specs • Active noise cancellation (ANC). • 5 hours of listening time with the earbuds, and 34 total hours (ANC off) if recharged with a full case, according to Nothing. • Three high-definition mics and Clear Voice Technology. • IPX4 splash and sweat resistance. • Customisable equalisers, gestures, and Find My Earbud function with the ear (1) app. • Bluetooth 5. • A single earbud weighs 4.7g; the case with both buds is 66.8g. Key findings The Nothing ear…

SPLICE Splice Sounds + US$10/pm (100 monthly credits), Splice Creator US$20/pm (200 monthly credits), Splice Creator + US$30/pm (500 monthly credits) | www.splice.com SOUNDS Sounds Essential US$10/pm (150 credits), Sounds Pro US$20/pm (500 monthly credits), Sounds Ultimate US$30/pm (1,000 monthly credits) | www.sounds.com So, you’ve decided to take the plunge and get into music production? Whether you’re going down the professional route or just wanting to have a bit of fun, the likelihood is that you’ll be using a digital workstation to piece together your music. Unless you’re physically creating and recording your own music, you’ll probably need to add external sounds, drumbeats, or sound effects to your production. Created by other artists, these are known as samples. Sampling is a term that describes taking a portion of an existing…

$3,199 | online.acer.com.au This isn’t actually the 12th generation Intel version of the Helios 300 announced at CES at the start of the year, but it’ll still be the current model for the first half of 2022. That’s because the 2021 Predator Helios 300 from Acer is sporting either an Intel Core i7-11800H or a i9-11900H CPU, which isn’t too far off being superseded by the i7-12800H and i9-12900H processors. If you can wait it’s probably worth doing so, since Intel’s 12th gen processors are 14-core rather than 8-core on previous generations. The new chips on the processor aren’t all performance cores, so don’t think you’re going to get a 75 percent performance bump. Intel seems to have been inspired by Apple’s M1 processor design since it added six efficiency…

$769 | rog.asus.com/au It took us less than five seconds to like the GT-AX6000 – finally an RGB router! The elongated form factor on its own is a breath of fresh air although the spaceship style chassis with its four, monster antennae doesn’t let us forget that it’s still a router at heart. The WAN port supports 2.5Gb internet connections and there’s an additional 2.5Gb port that can be used for prioritised services (like gaming) or high-bandwidth devices (like a NAS box). You can also use link aggregation in different ways: you can combine the 2.5Gb WAN with one of the four Gigabit LAN connectors to create a 3.5Gb internet connection – good luck finding an ISP that will support this in Australia, though. You can also combine two Gigabit…

$2,999 | samsung.com/au It’s not very often we can say we were entranced by a gaming monitor, but there’s perhaps no other way to describe the Odyssey Neo G9. We covered the 49-inch CRG90 from Samsung back in 2020, so we’re pretty familiar with just how dramatic ultrawide curved displays can be, but this updated monitor has a way more extreme 1000R curvature that fills your peripheral vision in a way that no other desktop display ever has. Combine this with improved ultra-wide Quad-HD resolution, brighter miniLED backlighting and faster pro-grade refresh rates and you have just about every technology you could want in a gaming display. At 49-inches this monitor has a diagonal that’s more commonly seen on TVs than it is on desktop monitors, but the screen is…

$499 | www.corsair.com When you first lift the Corsair iCUE 5000T out of its large box, the first thing that strikes you is how imposing, heavy and well-built it is. You’ll need a large desk to accommodate it. The 5000T is a case that puts a heavy emphasis on RGB lighting. The case itself features 160 addressable LEDs that are arranged in six strips, made up of two along each side of the top, bottom and front of the case. You get an additional 16 per fan, meaning the 5000T comes with no less than 208 individually addressable LEDs! All of the LEDs are connected to the included iCUE Commander Core XT controller. It can control the RGB lighting and speeds of up to six fans. The 5000T isn’t all…

WINDOWS APPS | Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 | Free | www.snipca.com/40820 The best free alternative to Microsoft Office has released a major new version. LibreOffice 7.3 further improves the suite’s compatibility with Office file formats such as DOCX (Word) and XLSX (Excel), which means that imported files will open more quickly and suffer fewer formatting errors. Similarly, Word and Excel will be able to open documents and spreadsheets saved in LibreOffice’s ODT and ODF formats with less hassle. LibreOffice’s word processor, Writer, now lets you attach hyperlinks to shapes, so that they open web pages when clicked, and improvements have been made to its Track Changes feature. For example, text you’ve moved in a document is now highlighted in green, and crossed out in its original position, to…

APC Responds: It’s likely that Windows keeps moving your desktop icons because you have its ‘Auto arrange’ feature turned on, and it’s sorting them by name, size, type or last modified. To disable this, right-click a blank area of your desktop, select View and untick ‘Auto arrange icons’. Alternatively, select ‘Sort by’ and choose your preferred method of arranging icons. An even better option is to use a tiny free tool called DesktopOK (www.snipca.com/40825), which was recently updated to add support for Windows 11. Download and extract the program from its ZIP file, then run it (it doesn’t require installation) and click the Save button (see screenshot) to preserve your current layout of desktop icons. DesktopOK will save details of your screen resolution, and the time and date the layout…

The annual Australian PC Awards gives us a wonderful opportunity to consider the year just passed, and spotlight the things that were very much better than the others. It’s always fun for us to do this here at APC, and we hope you’re inspired to do an upgrade or two as we run through the finalists, highly commended, and winners. These awards cover products released in Australia through 2021, and were judged by the editorial team here at APC, along with our friends at sister Future publications TechRadar, PC Gamer, TechLife Australia and PC PowerPlay. Narrowing down the finalists took a long time, and the many pros and cons were carefully considered. In this year in particular, value played a larger than usual role in determining the winners. Where we…

Sometimes it can manifest in an individual file not saving correctly or corrupting when opened by its parent application. First, check to see if the program itself offers repair tools. For example, if you have a corrupt Word, Excel, or PowerPoint file, then in the latest version of Office, click Browse to open the main file selection dialog. Locate the file in question, then click the down arrow next to the Open button and you’ll reveal an ‘Open and Repair…’ option that may enable you to recover some or all the document. If it’s unable to help, check your data recovery tool. While free tools are limited, paid-for apps, such as EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard Free (www.easeus.com/ datarecoverywizard/free-data-recovery-software. htm) are capable of recovering specific types of file, and you may…

Data recovery specialists offer additional, if expensive, services to help you get critical files back should you need them. Some data recovery tools allow you to make use of remote assistance specialists to help guide you through the process of data recovery. The second, most expensive form of data recovery is getting data off physically damaged drives. If your drive isn’t being detected or making clicking or grinding noises, it’s likely this is down to the heads crashing or motor failure. Recovery from these drives is only possible using specialist labs known as cleanrooms, where the drive can be physically opened and the platters upon which your data is stored can be connected to equipment from which your data can be recovered. One of the longest-established companies is Ontrack (www.…

There are a myriad ways to store passwords to different online accounts. Some users prefer the simplicity and convenience of browser extensions that do this job. There are also those that use a text file as a repository and others still who prefer to use a desktop password manager. There are obvious disadvantages to using the former two solutions. Thankfully, there are a vast number of password managers that you can use on the Linux desktop. The relatively new utility pa is inspired by another command-line password manager named pash (https://github.com/ dylanaraps/pash), but while the latter uses GPG to encrypt the passwords to keep them safe, pa, or password ass instead utilises age (https://github.com/ FiloSottile/age) to secure your passwords. While pa can be used to merely store passwords, it also…

Free | PC | bit.ly/LilysWell This is one of those cryptic horror games that only reveals its secrets after much repetition, and where nothing is what it seems. You play as a nine year old raised in the woods by her father, who disappears just as she hears a voice calling desperately for help. The voice is emanating from the well, and Lily’s determined to get to the bottom of it. Unfortunately, there’s no ladder, and no handy massive coil of rope, so she’ll have to cobble one together out of common items such as bedsheets, clothes, and lengths of vine. While it resembles a modern, fourth-wall-breaking horror story, in practice this feels more like an early ’90s adventure game. It isn’t just the VGA pixel art, no, it’s the…

Free | PC | playlostark.com A Korean hybrid of ARPG and MMO, Lost Ark embodies the best and the worst traits of both genres. Ambitious to a fault, it offers a vast and spectacular fantasy adventure elevated by a stunning combat system and an astonishing sense of scale, although its grand plans are hindered by hackneyed storytelling and a repetitive quest structure. Right from the off, Lost Ark’s mantra is ‘why fight one enemy when you can fight 20?’ and it gives you the combat skills to facilitate this. You start the game at level ten, with five abilities already unlocked. The game is structured heavily around these meaty combat skills, to the point that you’ll mostly use your standard attack for mopping up stragglers when the fight’s already been…

Contrast the wireframes of Elite with the lifelike realism of 2020’s Flight Simulator and you might wonder if the old world of computing is worth a second glance. But that’s not to say we can’t reflect on the past and reminisce on some of the things that have been and gone. In fact, there are plenty of things we – and developers in particular – can learn from the nascent days of computing. Here are 12 things worth celebrating, and remembering, including thoughts from people who helped to make it all happen. 01 So many models to choose from The dawn of the home computer in the late 1970s felt rather adventurous. Companies new and old looked to introduce millions of people to their magical machines and, in doing so,…