PCWorld的April 2024目录

HP said in January that it hoped and dreamed to make printing a subscription. Now the company has done just that, with the All-In Plan that allows HP customers a limited number of printed pages per month for a monthly fee, with a two-year commitment and potential overage charges, too. “The HP All-In Plan is an all-inclusive printing subscription that delivers the ultimate in convenience—and provides the dedicated support you need to keep your printer running like new,” HP claims. But you’d better believe in the value of printing regular documents, because signing up locks you into a two-year contract after 30 days. When HP chief executive Enrique Lorres said in January that the company aspired to making printing a subscription, he wasn’t kidding. “Our view is that we need to make…

Scientists from China are currently working on an optical disc the size of a DVD that could store up to 200 terabytes of data, as reported by IEEE Spectrum. This is made possible by storing data in three dimensions instead of just two. The scientists have developed a way to store the data on 100 layers of the disc. Even more could be possible in the future. The procedure has already been investigated in the past. However, a major obstacle to earlier research was that the optics used to read and write the data were limited to the size of the wavelengths of light they utilized. In the new method, the data is recorded in dots just 54 nanometers wide—which corresponds to around a tenth of the wavelength of visible…

With AI services like Microsoft Copilot and Google Bard claiming to be able to easily summarize PDF documents at the drop of a hat, it’s a little surprising that Adobe itself hasn’t already supplied AI tools. But now it has. Adobe on Tuesday announced AI Assistant, a free beta conversational engine inside Adobe Reader and Acrobat. Instead of just summarizing the document, the tool will allow users to ask questions of it, clarifying details. Acrobat Standard, Pro, and Teams customers and Acrobat Pro trial users can use the AI Assistant beta today, with features coming to Reader over the coming days and weeks, Adobe said in a statement. Features include a true AI assistant, along with summarization features and citations. Naturally, the new AI Assistant tool can help find information…

You could let Windows protect your PC—it does already shield against online threats. But independent antivirus software like Avast One is better at catching viruses and malware, and wins on user friendliness, too. Avast actually has two lines of paid products, both powered by the same antivirus engine. They have similarly clean interfaces, too. But the Avast One line focuses on identity and privacy concerns, making it arguably the better choice for most people. Life is largely conducted online these days, and staying safe is more than just thwarting malware and exploits. Phishing schemes and personal information leaked in data breaches can weaken your security, too. Avast One lets you stay on top of these issues, which are currently unavoidable in modern life, and does so with polish. WHAT DOES…

On paper, BenQ’s IdeaCam S1 Pro certainly appears very far out of reach of most consumers hoping to pick up an inexpensive 4K webcam. But BenQ’s three-in-one webcam offers a ton under the hood, even if some of the core features slightly underdeliver on their promises. BenQ’s IdeaCam S1 Pro reminds me of the CA Essential Webcam, which can flip forward and point down to better capture a demonstration, such as frosting a cake or soldering a PCB. It lacks CA’s large telescoping arm, however. What it does add is a separate 15× “zoom,” or macroscopic lens, which may feel a bit gimmicky. The one aspect I was surprised by, however, was the sophistication of the optional BenQ EnSpire software utility. It’s worth downloading. Typically, I say a 4K webcam should…

As someone who works at a computer more or less all day every day and has chronic back problems, a standing desk is an important part of my office setup. I’ve been using one for over ten years, and back then it was something of a luxury. But lately I’ve been seeing motorized standing desks, not dissimilar in design to the one I bought all those years ago, popping up for shockingly low prices. Are these super-cheap desks worth your money? I’ve used three different desks in the last decade of working from home and writing about technology—maybe four, depending on how you count all the various parts and components. And I reviewed another model for one of my previous employers, all from different suppliers, so I feel like I…

Every device you use is under attack. And malware isn’t just a prank that slows down your PC anymore—it’s big business. Modern malware is the domain of organized crime, from ransomware that holds your files hostage to keyloggers and Trojans designed to capture your online banking credentials and steal your money. The best way to deal with malware is to stop it from taking root in the first place—but the second-best thing you can do is remove it once you’ve found it. Here’s what you can do to get your PC back under your control, whether you’re running Windows 10 or 11. HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU HAVE MALWARE? Removing malware is in some ways the easy part. Knowing you have malware is often the harder part. Most malware tries…

Intel continued its climb up the clock-speed ladder by launching the Core i9-14900KS, a “special edition” desktop chip that offers the very fastest clock speed of any current PC processor, at 6.2GHz. As expected, though, you’ll pay for it, at a price of $689. But don’t expect this chip to easily outclass the competition, either. Intel acknowledged that in certain games, AMD’s recent Ryzen 7000X-series chips outperform it. Last year, Intel announced the Core i9-13900KS, a 6.0GHz chip that superseded the fastest “normal” chip in Intel’s desktop lineup, the 5.8GHz Core i9-13900K. The current Core i9-14900K tops out at 6.0GHz. (All of these speeds represent the top speed under Intel’s Thermal Velocity Boost.) You can see the progression. Otherwise, the fastest iteration of the 14th-gen Raptor Lake Refresh generation is…

Microsoft appears to have pushed the ability to upload documents, screenshots, and images to Windows 11’s Copilot AI assistant, allowing you to ask it to make sense of documents stored on your PC. Being able to “query” a document is a subtly powerful capability you may have never taken advantage of. And it’s way, way faster than running it on your own PC. Unfortunately, this new capability may suffer from the same problem that other LLMs might struggle with: a lack of persistence. “Querying” a document means asking Copilot questions about it. “What’s it mean?” “Sum it up for me in 30 words.” “What next steps should I take?” Ideally, Copilot should be able to take an involved, complex document like a contract and allow the average user (you and…

We’re now in “the age of the AI PC,” according to Microsoft. In 2024, so-called AI PCs are popping up everywhere, thanks to new chips from Intel, AMD, and (soon) Qualcomm. Don’t believe the hype: AI PCs aren’t what the marketing might lead you to believe they are, and the most powerful ones you can buy today aren’t what you might think. Let’s cut through the marketing hype and talk about what these AI laptops actually are—and what you can actually do with them today. WHAT IS AN AI PC, EXACTLY? The AI PC marketing craze is all thanks to the appearance of neural processing units (NPUs) in modern laptops. The latest Core Ultra chips from Intel, recent Ryzen hardware from AMD, and Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon X Elite have built-in hardware designed…

Lexar’s SL600 is a worthy contender for your 20Gbps USB storage bucks. It doesn’t blow away the competition in either price or performance, but it matches them—and does so with style. FEATURES The Lexar SL600 is a 20Gbps USB 3.2×2 (Superspeed 20Gbps) external SSD shaped like an oblong rectangle that measures around 2.2 inches wide × 0.42 inches thick × 4.38 inches at its longest point and that weighs in at 2.3 ounces. It’s a charcoal gray color, and it is equipped with a very large handle on the end. Of course, I’m talking very large handle in terms of a small external SSD. It could only accommodate a small child’s digits in reality, not to mention there being no need for a handle on something this small. But you might…

Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon may be one of the best business laptops you can get your hands on. This isn’t your average laptop. It’s a high-end product that combines the latest Intel hardware with a lot of extra touches that make it just nice to use. It incorporates carbon fiber to make it more lightweight and durable. Of course, it also costs more than a typical thin and light machine, and the CPU performance isn’t the fastest under heavy pressure. This latest version features a 14th-generation Intel Core Ultra 7 processor, bringing the ThinkPad X1 Carbon into the Meteor Lake era. It also has some keyboard tweaks that will make it less odd to use if you’re new to ThinkPads. But it’s still got the classic design touches you might…

In the 1990s, a colleague took me to “Snake Alley,” Taipei’s red-light district, for a night of drinking with “entertainers” and some of their very muscled, serious friends. A good time was had by all, fortunately. Still, I was young, dumb, and very lucky that I didn’t end up in any trouble. Some parts of the internet are like that, too. If you think you’ll be potentially surfing in a risky internet neighborhood—a knockoff shopping site, a little-known streaming service, or somewhere you’re just not entirely sure is legit—and you have a spare laptop lying around, you can always repurpose it to become what I call a “Paranoid PC”: a laptop hardened for additional privacy and security. In my case, I was able to do it for “free.” But it…

I’ve long been a fan of both Bitwarden for password security and email aliases for privacy, but I recently discovered a slick solution that combines the benefits of both. The process involves connecting Bitwarden’s username generator with DuckDuckGo’s masked email service. While it’s a bit tricky to set up, it ultimately gives you an easy way to create unique emails and passwords on any app or website you visit, all in one place. Best of all, it’s free with no usage limitations. RANDOM PASSWORDS + UNIQUE EMAILS Let’s back up a little bit. Bitwarden is a free password manager. When you sign up for an app or website, it can generate random passwords every time so you don’t end up using the same (or similar) passwords everywhere. Having unique passwords for each site…

Microsoft is unexpectedly killing off its support for Android apps within Windows 11, although you’ll have a year to play games on your Windows tablet until support officially expires. But if you haven’t already installed support for Android apps, you’re out of luck. Microsoft isn’t saying exactly why it’s ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android, though it gave notice as part of an official Microsoft developer document that Windows Central noticed. That means the existing Android app store on Windows, published by Amazon, will cease working. “Microsoft is ending support for the Windows Subsystem for Android (WSA),” Microsoft wrote. “As a result, the Amazon Appstore on Windows and all applications and games dependent on WSA will no longer be supported beginning March 5, 2025. Until then, technical support will…

All good things must come to an end, in the words of dads and starship captains everywhere. And Nvidia’s GeForce Now game streaming service is no exception. No, the system isn’t shutting down—in fact it’s been going from strength to strength lately, adding both in-demand new titles like Nightingale and older Activision-Blizzard titles like Diablo IV and Overwatch. What’s ending is GeForce Now’s run as one of the only services that doesn’t saddle its least spendy users with intrusive advertising every chance it gets. Starting soon, users on the free tier of GeForce Now will begin seeing video advertisements in the queue as they wait for an open slot on an Nvidia remote server. The ads will be capped at two minutes, and as The Verge notes, it seems like…

The Alienware m16 R2 isn’t exactly the type of PC I’d expect from Alienware. This 16-inch laptop delivers solid gaming performance, but it’s also focused on being compact and offering long battery life. It doesn’t even offer the highest-end GPUs as an upgrade option. It actually caps out at an RTX 4070, and you’ll have to get another laptop if you want an RTX 4080 or RTX 4090. The trademark glowing alien head logos are still here, but Alienware told me its target audience for this laptop was gamers who want a PC for more than just gaming—one that can go to school or to the office as well. Alienware delivered, but there’s just one thing I wish was different. Read on to learn more. SPECS The Alienware m16 R2 is…

If you’re not sure what you want to back up or where it is on your device, or you just want to avoid the pressure of trying to figure it all out, Backblaze is the online “backup” (see below for an explanation of the quotes) service you want. It offers unlimited storage, and copies everything to the cloud automatically. If your data needs exceed the limits of other cloud backup services, Backblaze might prove to be a very good deal. Check out our best online backup roundup to compare offerings. FEATURES The Backblaze online storage service provides a local client that copies data from your PC to the cloud. By far its most appealing aspects are its ease of setup and unlimited storage. By default, Backblaze copies new and changed files…

After three years, it’s finally time to upgrade to Windows 11. With Windows 11, Microsoft shifted into productivity mode, and to this day Windows 11 still feels like the operating system for work, while Windows 10 still feels lively and fun. But Windows 11 not only is where entertaining new features are landing, but also includes new AI capabilities that may improve your lives. It’s time to embrace the change. Last year, I was split: I wrote five reasons to switch to Windows 11, and five more to remain on Windows 10. In my initial review of Windows 11 I called it “unnecessary,” and I know that many of you will still agree with me. But I’m less reluctant now, and I think we’re approaching a tipping point for most people. I’m…

A while I back, I wrote a column for TechHive on ways to rent or buy DVDs without Netflix’s now-dead DVD service. So it’s only fitting to now write the opposite story, about how to declutter the optical media you no longer want. First, we’ll go over some ways to digitize any DVDs or CDs you want to save, using freely available software. We’ll also cover how to sell discs in bulk for a modest profit. WHY DIGITIZE? In an age of streaming abundance, you might not think digitizing physical media is worthwhile. Let me offer a few counterpoints: • Not all physical media is available on streaming services (or available on the ones you currently pay for). With a digital copy, you can access that content on all your devices…