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Tech and trends that will affect you today and beyond. A Colorado man says he has no regrets after unloading eight rounds into his dysfunctional Dell desktop, though he faces a fine for doing so. “I just had it,” Lucas Hinch, 38, told The Smoking Gun (go.pcworld.com/gun) (via Ars Technica, go.pcworld.com/technica). Apparently the PC had thrown up one too many blue screens of death in recent months, so Hinch took it into an alley, loaded up a 9mm Hi-Point pistol that he’d purchased on Craiglist, and let the bullets fly. “It was glorious,” Hinch told the Los Angeles Times (go.pcworld.com/times). “Angels sung on high.” Hinch admitted that the murder was “premeditated, oh, definitely,” and that he’d made sure there was nothing behind the desktop, and nothing from which the rounds…

MICROSOFT MAY HAVE formally announced the various versions of Windows 10, tailored for consumers, business, and mobile. But buried in the fine print is an important detail: One of the key features, Cortana, won’t be immediately available everywhere Windows 10 is sold. Microsoft outlined the six major versions of Windows 10 in a blog post (go.pcworld.com/win10intro). They’ll include Windows 10 Pro, Windows 10 Home, and Windows 10 Mobile, plus the enterprise versions: Windows 10 Enterprise, Windows 10 Mobile Enterprise, and Windows 10 Education. Under Windows 10 Home, the very first “new innovation” that Microsoft corporate vice president Tony Prophet listed was the Cortana digital assistant, along with the Edge browser and universal apps. Windows 10 Pro will also incorporate Cortana, as will Windows 10 Mobile, where the digital assistant first…

VIRTUAL REALITY IS starting to feel really real, for real. Sure, we’re still months out from the proposed HTC Vive launch and even further out from Oculus’s early 2016 consumer-ready Rift. But now we have recommended PC specs! Oculus announced recommended specs for attaining “the full Rift experience,” and they’re surprisingly reasonable considering the horsepower VR requires—much more reasonable than the dual-GTX 980 rigs some people have been building in anticipation. According to Oculus, “The goal is for all Rift games and applications to deliver a great experience on this configuration. Ultimately, we believe this will be fundamental to VR’s success, as developers can optimize and tune their game for a known specification, consistently achieving presence and simplifying development.” OCULUS RIFT RECOMMENDED PC SPECS • Nvidia GTX 970 / AMD…

WALMART IS A DOMINANT force among big box stores, but online the company is still playing catch-up with Amazon. Hoping to improve its position, Walmart will test an Amazon Prime-like service this summer, according to Reuters (go.pcworld.com/wmreuters). Under the invite-only pilot program, customers pay $50 per year for the right to receive unlimited “free” delivery on select items in three days or less. Walmart’s program is far cheaper than the $99 per year that Amazon Prime members pay, but you also get a slower delivery speed—Amazon offers two-day shipping. Walmart was originally slated to offer the new delivery program, code-named ‘Tahoe,’ before the holidays, The Information (go.pcworld.com/info) reports. Technical issues apparently held the company back. The impact on you at home: It’s not clear when Walmart might lift the invite…

THE SURFACE 3’S (go.pcworld.com/surface3) selling points can be summed up neatly: This is Microsoft’s basic Office machine, a cheaper alternative to the Surface Pro 3. Thanks to the new Surface’s Intel Atom chip and real Windows 8.1 (with an upgrade path to Windows 10), it offers decent battery life, with a processor sufficient to handle 1080p YouTube videos, Netflix streams, or basic games without batting an eye. As with any junior member of a product line, there are compromises. The biggest are its price (it’s not quite as inexpensive as it should be, for what you get) and the ergonomics, which make it less of a laptop replacement than the Surface Pro 3 clearly can be. The Surface 3 is available in two different models: a $499 model with 64GB…

Watch the video at go.pcworld.com/awvid ALIENWARE’S GRAPHICS AMPLIFIER has been described as the Holy Grail of mobile gaming. I think that’s going too far. The Holy Grail of laptop gaming would be the ability to upgrade your laptop graphics like a desktop, using off-the-shelf parts. Instead, the Amplifier (go.pcworld.com/alienwareamplifier) is the next best thing: a way to “upgrade” graphics on a gaming laptop, but using an external cabinet holding a standard graphics card and connected by cable. That really makes the Amplifier more of the Ark of the Covenant of mobile gaming: a whole lot of gaming awesomeness, but without the Nazis melting at the end. What it is and how you use it In essence the $300 Amplifier is an external graphics box, connected by a proprietary six-foot PCIe…

How to build, maintain, and fix your tech gear. THE WORLD of Linux is ready to welcome you, with a shower of free open-source software you can use on any PC: hundreds of active Linux distributions, and dozens of different desktop environments you could run on them. It’s a far cry from the one-size-fits-all, this-is-just-what-comes-with-your-PC vision of Windows. Everything from software installation to hardware drivers works differently on Linux, though, which can be daunting. Take heart—you don’t even need to install Linux on your PC to get started. Here’s everything you need to know. Choose and download a Linux distro The first step is choosing the Linux distribution you’ll want to use. Unlike Windows, there’s no single version of Linux. Linux distributions take the Linux kernel and combine it with…

HASSLE-FREE PC PCS CAN BE confusing, even scary at times, but the truth is they shouldn't be. That's especially true when it comes to simple hardware upgrades, repairs, or software fixes. Sure, you could pay the overpriced techies at Geek Squad to fix your Windows system for you, but why bother? Tech support is often hiding a dirty secret: You could easily do most of this stuff on your own and save yourself some serious money in the process. To get you started, here are three fixes you should almost never pay someone else to do. Swapping or adding RAM Do you know how to swap out an old-school video game cartridge or load a DVD player? Great, then you've got the basic skills required to swap out RAM.…

YOUR STAR TREK-STYLE universal communicator is ready for download. Well, it’s not exactly universal, but Microsoft’s Skype Translator Preview (go.pcworld.com/skypetranslator-pre) is a step into the future. The company announced that the beta app is now available to all Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 Technical Preview users, no sign-up or wait list needed. If you want to have a translated, spoken conversation with someone who speaks Italian, Mandarin, or Spanish, just download the free app from the Windows Store. Microsoft says Skype Translator works with almost any Skype client, meaning only you need to be the one with the Translator app enabled. bortaS bIr jablu’DI’ reH QaQqu’ nay’ - Revenge is a dish best served cold. (old Klingon proverb) Where no one has gone before The app can also translate instant…

FOR WINDOWS PHONE users, Microsoft’s release of Build 10080 for Windows 10 phones is the big one, adding the Office apps, the Xbox app, the new Windows Store, and more. As expected, Microsoft said the current build is being pushed to those users who have subscribed to the Fast ring of Windows 10 updates, including those who own a Lumia Icon and even the HTC One M8—the first time a Windows 10 preview has been made available to those who owned phones not sold by Microsoft. In short, there’s a boatload of new additions since Microsoft last released Build 10051 in April: the new Office apps, the new Store app, along with the Xbox app now appearing on Windows Phones. As in Windows 10 Build 10074 for PCs, there are…

Make smart purchases, stay safe online. MICROSOFT EXECUTIVES said recently that the company will not offer Windows 10 for free to those without legitimate licenses to Microsoft’s software, as the company had previously seemed to say. Attractive offers Terry Myerson, executive vice president of operating systems for Microsoft, wrote recently that the company will provide “very attractive” offers to those who wish to upgrade from what he called a Windows operating system in a “non-genuine state” to Windows 10. But, he said, it will not be free. “While our free offer to upgrade to Windows 10 will not apply to non-genuine Windows devices, and as we’ve always done, we will continue to offer Windows 10 to customers running devices in a non-genuine state,” Myerson wrote (go.pcworld.com/myerson). “In addition, in partnership…

AMAZON’S ECHO connected speaker (go.pcworld.com/azecho) is an unusual product for the online retail giant, if only because it hasn’t included a way to buy stuff. That’s changing with the latest update for Echo, which lets users bark out orders to restock anything they’ve previously bought through Amazon Prime. All that’s required is the device’s wake-up word (“Alexa” by default) followed by “re-order [item name].” Echo then finds the item and asks for confirmation to buy it, either with a “yes” or a voice code. Shopping isn’t restricted to past purchases. If Echo doesn’t find the item in the user’s order history, but can recommend something similar, it’ll tell users the name and price before giving them the option to buy it. If it doesn’t find anything, it’ll add the item…

Watch the video at go.pcworld.com/lgg4vid IF YOU PLAN to rock the LG G4 (go.pcworld.com/lgg4), please be prepared to account for your decisions. Samsung phones thoroughly dominate the Android space, so you have to share a veritable LG origin story whenever explaining an LG phone to non-nerd looky-loos. People are often suspicious of the rare and exotic. And that’s a shame because the G4, LG’s latest flagship phone, is a remarkable handset in many ways. The G4 has the best manual camera package in the smartphone space. Its display looks great. You can swap out the G4’s battery when juice runs low. You can upgrade storage with a microSD card. And LG doesn’t muck up the basic Lollipop experience with excessive bloatware and customization. The G4 isn’t perfect. And if you’re…

IT’S FUNNY TO THINK of Kerbal Space Program (kerbalspaceprogram.com) as a “new” game. Thanks to the magic of Steam Early Access, I’ve been playing the game on and off for about two years now (as have many of you, I’m sure). But the game recently left Early Access for the fertile plains of an official 1.0 release, not only providing a reason for lapsed players to jump into the game but signaling the all-clear as far as official reviews go. So here it is, my official review: Kerbal Space Program is more than just an outstanding space sim. It’s the embodiment of everything that’s noteworthy and valuable about PC gaming. Get with the program If you’ve never played Kerbal Space Program (KSP), it’s sort of like the most advanced space-themed…

Give the Big Three browsers the boot When it comes to web browsing, most Windows users are concerned with only three choices: Firefox, Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer. You’ll occasionally run into someone running Opera, too. But those aren’t the only options—far from it! There’s a wide world of alternative browsers out there, all fighting for your attention with unique features and specializations in gaming, privacy, media consumption, and more. There’s even something to appeal to old-school Internet users. If you’re looking to shake up your web-surfing experience, here’s a look at 10 great browsers not named Firefox, Chrome, or Internet Explorer. 1 Coowon UNDERPINNINGS: Chromium FOCUS: Gaming Coowon (coowon.com) is designed to be a browser for gamers. Not just any type of games, mind you, but the vast array…

MANY OF US fell in love with Excel as we delved into its deep and sophisticated formula features. Because there are multiple ways to get results, you can decide which method works best for you. For example, there are several ways to enter formulas and calculate numbers in Excel. Five ways to enter formulas 1. Manually enter Excel formulas: Long Lists: =SUM(B4:B13) Short Lists: =SUM(B4,B5,B6,B7); =SUM(B4+B5+B6+B7). Or, place your cursor in the first empty cell at the bottom of your list (or any cell, really) and press the plus sign, then click B4; press the plus sign again and click B5; and so on to the end; then press Enter. Excel adds/totals this list you just “pointed to:” =+B4+B5+B6+B7. 2. Click the Insert Function button Use the Insert Function button…

ON MAY 12, Microsoft outlined the Windows 10 versions you’ll know, love, and buy when the new operating system launches this summer. But the company withheld key details, such as how it will eventually make money on it. As with Windows 7, 8, and now 10, Windows 10 will be sold in two versions for consumers: Windows 10 Pro, and Windows 10 Home. The Windows Phone brand, as Microsoft has indicated previously, is going away: It will be renamed Windows 10 Mobile, and will ship on phones and small tablets. Businesses and enterprises will also receive their own versions: Windows 10 Enterprise, Windows 10 Mobile Enterprise and Windows 10 Education. And yes, Windows 10 will be a free upgrade—at least for consumers: “As we announced earlier this year, for the…

SURE, YOU’LL HAVE to sell both your kidneys to buy it, but at least now you can finally have 128GB of cutting-edge RAM in your PC. Corsair is now selling two 128GB DDR4 RAM kits while Kingston touted that its upcoming big-ass set will hit speeds of 3000MHz. Why this matters: The move from DDR3 to DDR4 last year (in high-end machines) promised lower voltage, higher-frequencies, and higher capacities—eventually. While the average consumer certainly doesn’t need 128GB of RAM to run Microsoft Word or play a video game, some power users do indeed need seemingly crazy amounts of RAM. Also, can you say 100GB DDR4 RAM drive with 28GB left for system RAM? Corsair’s two kits fall into its premiere Dominator lineup. The “cheaper” of the two uses eight 16GB…

THE WORD IS OUT: Your SSD won’t retain your data forever (go.pcworld.com/unplugged) when you unplug it. Yup, you’ll never be able to go on vacation again without toting your SSD along. It’s incapable of surviving for two weeks without you, poor thing. I kid, of course. Not archival, but not pathetic The truth is, yes, under disastrously unfortunate environmental conditions (we’re talking biblical), your SSD could lose data retention just a few days after it’s pulled from your PC. It could also lose it immediately if you pulverized it with a sledgehammer or threw it in a vat of sulfuric acid—almost-as-likely scenarios. To the point: I’ve re-tasked SSDs after a couple of years of sitting on the shelf, and annoyingly—I still had to secure-erase them to get rid of the…

TESTED IN PCWORLD LABS In this section, hardware & software go through rigorous testing. THEY’RE HERE: Intel’s 750 series SSDs (go.pcworld.com/intel750SSD)—scintillatingly fast NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory express) storage for the masses. At least, the enthusiast subset of the masses—the infrastructure to support this advanced storage technology is found only in high-end PCs. But the 750’s are fast, and that’s with a capital F in certain benchmarks. Welcome to the cutting edge of storage The 750 series SSDs are so cutting edge, the first people to enjoy this speed will have very special PCs, indeed. Do you have some paper and a pencil? Are you sitting down? Here’s what it’s gonna take. The 750 series ships in two form factors: a half-height, half-length PCIe expansion card that uses a x4 PCIe slot,…

Watch the video at go.pcworld.com/origineon15xvid IT’S TIME TO GO Glengarry Glen Ross on dual-core processors in gaming laptops. As in, hey dual-core processor, I’ve got some bad news for you from downtown: Mitch and Murray said you’re fired because gaming laptops should go to closers. And yes, dual-core, you can’t close the deal on high-end gaming laptops anymore. That’s why we have Origin PC’s EON15-X (go.pcworld.com/EON15-X) here. It’s a closer. What makes it a closer? The desktop-grade Core i7-4790K CPU powering it. Yes, that’s none other than Intel’s Devil’s Canyon CPU. While most mobile gaming quad cores struggle to crack the 3GHz barrier, the Core i7-4790K in the EON15-X cruises along at 4GHz and will Turbo up to 4.4GHz. I don’t want to totally bum out those still driving dual-core…

SOMETIMES WINNING CAN BE the worst outcome. With Aperture now effectively retired by Apple, and its successor Photos for OS X not up to the task of replacing it, the market for pro and enthusiast photo software is now led by Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. For the latest version, it would be easy for Adobe to add a few marketing-friendly features and coast into the future on its growing train of subscription revenue. Fortunately for existing and incoming Lightroom customers, that doesn’t seem to be the plan. The new Lightroom CC (go.pcworld.com/lrcc) does add some new features, such as built-in HDR and panorama merge tools, facial recognition, a filter brush, and an improved slideshow builder. But more interesting is its performance: Lightroom CC takes advantage of your computer’s graphics hardware to…

DROPBOX HAS HAD its share of security woes over the years. While the cloud storage provider has done much to beef up its defenses (go.pcworld.com/beef), there’s still plenty you can do on your own to improve the safety of your files. Here are a few ways to get started. Use two-step verification Thanks to increasingly ambitious hackers and users’ tendency to rely on comically weak passwords, one-factor authentication has become something of a joke. (Bonus tip: Get the last laugh by using a password manager on your computer or as a mobile app.) In light of this, most major services, including Dropbox, have implemented two-step verification. This system requires you to enter both your password and a security code sent to your mobile phone, and it’s the easiest way to…

ANSWER LINE STOQN TOCHEV ASKED about securely erasing sensitive files without destroying everything on his hard drive. I’ll discuss SSDs, as well. When you delete a file conventionally, it goes into the Recycle Bin, where it can be easily restored. When you empty the Recycle Bin, Windows makes the space where the file once resided available for other files. But the data from the file remains until another file writes over it. Things have changed since I last covered this topic in 2013. SSDs have become more popular, and they work differently. Also, as Windows 8 has gotten older and more mature, I felt I should discuss a tool built into that operating system. Finally, I've replaced one free tool I used to recommend with another, easier offering. You…