PCWorld的September 2018目录

The Note 9 doesn’t come in black. That was the second biggest surprise Samsung had for me during my Note 9 briefing in early August. The first was the price: $1,000 for the 128GB base model and an eye-popping $1,250 for the 512GB version. That’s $100 more than the top-of-the-line iPhone X (which only has 256GB of storage), for those keeping score. So Samsung’s Note 9 brings another first for the Android world: sticker shock. Otherwise, Samsung’s newest phablet is pretty much exactly what I expected it to be, what with an endless stream of leaks and rumors spilling nearly every bean there was to be spilled. I already knew about the processor, the new S Pen, the storage increase, and the AI camera. The Note 9 is basically a…

It looks like the fearsome GPU inside Nvidia’s Titan V will never make it to gamers after all. Poor Volta. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang revealed at Siggraph 2018 in mid-August the Quadro RTX 8000, 6000, and 5000 graphics processors, powered by an all-new and long-rumored “Turing” graphics architecture. Friends, Turing looks ferocious—and it’s brimming with portent about Nvidia’s next-gen GeForce graphics cards. The Quadro RTX GPUs are overflowing with CUDA cores, AI-boosting tensor cores, and an all-new technology dubbed “RT cores” designed to make Nvidia’s new graphics architecture up to 25x more efficient at cutting-edge real-time ray-tracing operation. “Turing is Nvidia’s most important innovation in computer graphics in more than a decade,” Huang said. “The arrival of real-time ray tracing is the Holy Grail of our industry.” We don’t normally cover data…

Stop, AMD. You had us at 32-core, 64-thread Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX consumer CPU. You didn’t have to make it better by saying this weapon of thread destruction could be ours for $1,799 (available on Newegg or Amazon) —just $76 more than what Intel wanted us to pony up for its 10-core Core i7-6950X two years ago. In Millennialese: That. Is. Just. Insane. But before you invest too much thought or cash into the concept of a 32-core CPU sitting in your PC at home, there’s a lot of caveats you need to know. Simply put: This CPU may be too much power for most of us. WHAT IS RYZEN THREADRIPPER 2990WX? If you’re wondering just how AMD went from an 8-core Ryzen 7 1800X to a 16-core Ryzen Threadripper 1950X to…

NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) is no longer a nice-to-have storage technology. If you’re shopping for a new PC, it’s a feature you should actively seek out. Moreover, if your PC is of fairly recent vintage, you should upgrade to NVMe. Here’s why. NVMe is a communications standard/protocol developed specially for SSDs by a consortium of vendors including Intel, Samsung, SanDisk, Dell, and Seagate. It operates across the PCIe bus (hence the Express in the name), which allows the drives to act more like the fast memory that they are, rather than the hard disks they imitate. Bottom line: NVMe is fast. Really fast. Like never-have-to-wait-again-for-your-computer fast. NVME: IT’S THE STORAGE, STUPID Not to belittle the efforts of CPU and GPU vendors over the last decade, but the reason the latest…

Epic Games’ Fortnite is eating the world, and now the battle royale game (and occasional golf simulator) is finally coming to Android. Samsung Galaxy devices held exclusive access to the Fortnite beta for now, but Epic has started rolling out invites to owners of other phones as well. Can your phone even play Fortnite for Android, though? The game requires some serious graphical horsepower despite its cartoonish looks. If you’re an Android user and want to gain access to Fortnite, we have you covered here. Following our instructions, we also have a full list of phones that can play Fortnite on Android. HOW TO PLAY FORTNITE ON ANDROID To celebrate the launch of the Galaxy Note 9, Samsung Galaxy owners can play the Fortnite beta right now. Anyone who has…

The wait is over, friends. After a week of rampant rumors and outright teasing by Nvidia itself, CEO Jensen Huang proudly revealed the long-awaited GeForce RTX 2080 and GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, powered by the company’s radical next-gen Turing GPU, at an event ahead of Gamescom in Cologne, Germany. These graphics cards look like beasts, infused with dedicated tensor and RT cores to accelerate real-time ray tracing, the Holy Grail of gaming graphics, and enough visual firepower to feed 4K G-Sync HDR displays, the Holy Grail of gaming monitors. They’re equipped with a cutting-edge VirtualLink VR connection, too, and a speedier SLI connection called NVLink. The $999 GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition blows past the GTX 1080 Ti, and the $699 GeForce RTX 2080 far outpaces the previous-gen flagship…

The bad news: Two of the most-hyped games this fall aren’t coming to PC. Not yet anyway, and maybe not ever: Red Dead Redemption 2 and Insomniac’s Spider-Man. But now for the good news: A staggering number of excellent games are coming to PC this holiday season. Like seriously, too many for any one person to play. We’ve rounded up 15 of the PC games we’re most looking forward to this fall. While a few of the usual heavy hitters make the list (Forza), we’ve also tried to pick out a few surprises, or games you might not have heard of, like The Occupation. Because hey, you definitely know Shadow of the Tomb Raider is coming out this fall, but have you heard the good word about Outer Wilds? Read on…

As Adobe Acrobat alternatives go, Nitro Pro sits near the top of the heap. It’s used by tens of millions of consumers and over 650,000 businesses—including more than half of the Fortune 500—according to the company’s chief product officer, Jeff Kreutz. With version 12, Nitro isn’t relaxing its efforts to help people and organizations improve their digitized workflows. The features that make Nitro Pro beloved by individuals and businesses alike are all still here. You get a complete set of content editing tools; review and markup features for efficient collaboration; form fill and signing capability; and multiple security options for sensitive documents including permissions, password protection, and data redaction. All of these must-have features are intuitively organized in a Microsoft Office–style ribbon interface that groups them into task-based tabs. Creating…

Samsung passed up a golden opportunity with the Galaxy Note 9. Just days before the Note 9 shipped, Google officially launched Android 9 Pie, bringing a brand-new way to navigate, smarter notifications, and indoor mapping with Wi-Fi RTT. The world’s most dominant mobile platform reinvented itself to stay ahead of the ever-changing smartphone landscape. But you wouldn’t know it by looking at the Note 9. Samsung launched its new $1,000 phone with Android Oreo 8.1, an OS that’s technically newer but nearly indistinguishable from the one that’s running on the Galaxy S9. And instead of making a statement to the Android community that it will not only make the best hardware but pair it with the best software, Samsung continued to treat Android as a necessary burden standing in the…

Some of the most popular phones on the market run heavy custom UIs with more features than any sane person needs (we’re looking at you Samsung and LG). The OnePlus 6 doesn’t overload you with things you’ll never use, but there are still subtle and useful features hidden inside this phone. Here are 10 important setting items you should check out on the OnePlus 6. 1. SCREEN-OFF GESTURES You don’t even have to turn on the OnePlus 6 to get things done. After setting up the screen-off gesture system, you can swipe to activate features instantly. You’ll find this under Settings > Gestures > Screen Off Gestures. There’s a straightforward Double Tap To Wake option that you should enable. You can also control music (after flipping the switch) by drawing a…

While motherboard companies continue to outdo themselves releasing data on Intel’s upcoming 9000-series processors, HP has accidentally disclosed details regarding another of Intel’s upcoming chips: its “Whiskey Lake” notebook processors. As disclosed by Anandtech, the Whiskey Lake-U processors aren’t that different from the existing Kaby Lake-R chips that they’ll replace. In fact, the base clock speeds for the three chips outed by HP are essentially identical with the existing Kaby Lake-R chips. What Intel has done, however, is offer significantly higher turbo speeds as a way of differentiating the two families. It’s worth noting that “differentiation” continues to be an issue, as far as product numbers go. The three new Whiskey Lake-U chips—the 2.1GHz Core i3-8145U, the 1.6GHz Core i5-8265U, and the 1.8GHz Core i7-8565U—use similar product numbers to the…

Microsoft’s 10-inch, $399 Surface Go tablet is a departure from the company’s Surface tradition, which put forth expensive, ambitious designs to break trail for the rest of the PC industry. Now, the Surface Go’s decidedly mainstream price should appeal to businesspeople on the go as well as consumers considering an Apple iPad or Android tablet. Caveats like its operating system—Windows 10 in S Mode—and its low-end processor may give you pause. And the optional but cramped Type Cover somewhat offsets the Surface Go’s convenience. But our Surface Go review will walk you through the Surface Go hardware, the Type Cover, and the new Mobile Mouse—then tell you how it all works in practice, both as a pure tablet and as a productivity device. Finally, we’ll talk about the Surface Go’s…

Acer’s Nitro 5 gaming laptop says you can have a modest budget of $800 or less and get a decent amount of horsepower for playing AAA games. While most of the Nitro 5’s parts are midrange at best, it takes things up a notch with its new Coffee Lake CPU, offering solid mobile gaming performance in an affordable, if somewhat hefty package. Gamers who insist on maxing out their graphics will have to settle for middling frame rates on the Acer Nitro 5, and battery life is on the short side. But even with those caveats, the Nitro 5 is a good value. SPECIFICATIONS AND PRICE We tested the $750 version of the Acer Nitro 5 (Model AN515-53-52FA), which comes with an Intel Core i5-8300H processor and 8GB of RAM,…

Power users love to talk about how powerful and awesome Excel is, what with its Pivot Tables, nested formulas, and Boolean logic. But many of us barely know how to find the Autosum feature, let alone use Excel’s functions to create powerful formulas. If you’re part of the Excel 99 percent, here are 16 handy Excel functions that will get you well on your way to spreadsheet mastery. 1. =SUM() The first function anyone should know tells Excel to carry out basic arithmetic. Let’s say you wanted the numbers in cell A2 and cell B2 to be added together in cell C2. All you’d do is enter =SUM(A2:B2) into C2, then hit Enter. In an instant you’d see the sum of the two cells appear. You can use this function,…

When you own an Amazon Kindle, the cost of supporting a voracious reading habit can get very steep, very quickly. A quick glance at Amazon’s list of the Best Books of the Month shows that a decent read can set you back between $13 and $15 for a Kindle edition book. Sure, Amazon offers deals on great e-books, but waiting for a deal could take forever. Many titles can be had for two bucks or less, but it takes work to find the gems among the dross. What you need are some solid options for finding free, absorbing content to devour on your Kindle. We’re more than happy to point you in the right direction. (And if you need a new e-reader, find one among our reviews of the best…