PCWorldの March 2018 の目次

It crushes my soul to say this, but if you need a new gaming PC, don’t build your own. Buy a prebuilt computer instead. That’s not permanent advice. I’m a die-hard DIYer. Few things in life are more satisfying than seeing your handmade rig POST the first time you boot it up. The deck is stacked against home-brew PC builders in today’s market, though, as hardware shortages and the cryptocurrency boom have sent the cost of crucial components sky-high. Current graphics card prices are ludicrous unless you’re targeting entry-level GPUs, with most models selling for at least twice their suggested price. The Radeon RX 570 is supposed to start at $170, for example, but the cheapest I can find on Newegg right now costs $509, and the vast majority go for closer…

Intel chief executive Brian Krzanich told investors recently that the firm plans to release silicon with built-in mitigations to the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities later this year, a statement that raises more questions than it answers. For Intel, it really has been a Tale of Two Cities scenario: Intel reported the best quarter in its history, as fourth-quarter 2017 revenue grew 4 percent year-over-year to $17.1 billion. But Intel has also been the face of Spectre and Meltdown, two critical vulnerabilities built into basically every processor it ships into the PC and server markets. Why this matters: Intel has been busy working with PC makers and OS vendors like Microsoft to release microcode that includes so-called mitigations, microcode updates that patch the vulnerabilities. But even that hasn’t gone so well:…

Microsoft’s iconic Surface Pro tablet turned five in February. The original product led the way for other productivity Windows tablets and detachable computers, but on its fifth anniversary, Microsoft may be losing momentum. On Twitter, the Microsoft Surface team celebrated its “revolution,” which began when it discarded the limited Windows RT and brought full Windows 8 to the tablet market. “Five years ago today, a revolution was born when Surface turned Pro,” the Surface account tweeted. “And it was just the start.” SURFACE SALES FALTER That strong start has slowed, though. According to research firm IDC, unit sales of detachable Surface devices are down nearly 19 percent from a year ago. (Full disclosure: PCWorld and IDC are owned by the same parent company, China Oceanwide.) IDC’s report, which analyzes the state…

Finding a good free backup solution is easier than you’d think. A host of companies would love to give you free online backup or free backup software—and perhaps surprisingly, nearly all of them are quite competent. Of course these companies aren’t really in it for the satisfaction of knowing your data is safe. Their free versions usually only provide enough storage for essential data, or are lacking some advance features that pros would employ. They hope you’ll love the program or service so much, or find it so useful that you’ll eventually fork over some cash for additional storage or those advance features. But wait, you say: I have free online storage through Apple’s iCloud or Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive. Then there are services like Dropbox, with 5GB for…

It was a triumphant moment when I finally bought a sword in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Here I was, Henry the blacksmith’s son, one of the few survivors of the attack that burned my home village of Skalitz to the ground, a man with little money and even fewer prospects, assistant to a C-tier lord in the Holy Roman Empire—and I could finally afford my first sword. Not even a proper longsword, mind you, but something called a “hunting sword.” Still, I strapped it to my side with all the pride befitting a peasant who ever-so-slightly increased his social status in class-centric Medieval Europe. I bring it up because it’s indicative how different Kingdom Come: Deliverance ($60 on Steam) feels from other RPGs. There, you’re usually the chosen one, destined to…

It’s easy to become obsessed with the next big update to Android and what we want Google to add, but what about all the great things Android has gained since it debuted nearly a decade ago on the venerable T-Mobile G1? You might be surprised by what we used to go without. So it’s time to step back and appreciate what we have. Here are five amazing Android features we take for granted. 1. DOZE MODE Just a few years ago, you were bound to wake up to a nasty surprise if you forgot to plug in your Android smartphone before going to bed. Even when sitting idle, apps would continue waking up your phone whenever they wanted, draining your battery in the process. And you were really in trouble…

Even a generous 24-inch monitor can feel cramped when you’ve got multiple windows open on your desktop (and who doesn’t?). It’s much worse if you’re confined to a laptop screen. Fortunately, it’s simple enough to add a second monitor to your PC setup and spread out. Any modern desktop or laptop PC has the graphics capability to run dual displays. All that’s required is a second monitor. You can get a very nice second screen for around $100, such as HP’s 21.5-inch, 1920x1080 Pavilion IPS monitor for $99 on Amazon or Acer’s 21.5-inch, 1920x1080 G226HQL for $90 on Amazon. Both feature fairly thin bezels, an important feature if you want to minimize the interruption between your two screens. Today’s monitors typically come with some combination of VGA, DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort…

The best free media player is getting even better. After three years of development, VLC 3.0 “Ventari” is rolling out to all platforms, and it’s packed full of goodies such as Chromecast support. The new version is available from Videolan.org’s dedicated page for VLC 3.0 and is rolling out to your device’s respective app store. The latest version of VLC contains a lot of great additions, as well as a tweaked UI. Chromecast discovery tops the list. It’s only available on Windows desktop and Android right now, but Videolan says the feature’s coming to VLC’s iOS and the Windows Store apps in the future. VideoLAN designed VLC’s Chromecast support as a workaround for any media formats Chromecast can’t natively support. VLC can re-encode video on the fly to make it work with…

After years of reporting loss after loss, AMD marked a second straight profitable quarter, standing upon the shoulders of its successful Ryzen CPUs and Vega chips. Company executives also said they plan to implement mitigations for the Spectre vulnerabilities in the upcoming Zen 2 architecture, and warned of memory shortages. The Wall Street analysts on the call were focused on what impact this would all have on AMD’s future earnings, and by extension, its stock price. But as always, it was possible to distill a few drops of information that could affect users directly. Here they are. 1. SPECTRE MITIGATIONS WILL BE BUILT INTO ZEN 2 If you’ve been following the ongoing Spectre and Meltdown saga, you know that Intel has been the vendor most affected by the two chip…

There’s been a rumor recently, thin even so far as these rumors usually go, but so enormous in potential impact it seems to have captured people’s attention anyway: According to Polygon, Microsoft has reportedly talked about acquiring Valve, the independent company behind the Steam gaming platform. Or there’s been “a whisper about Valve,” as Polygon puts it. It seems ludicrous to me—after all, we’re talking about Valve, the company that hated Windows 8 so much it tried to convert developers (and players) to a custom Steam-centric Linux build. But let’s assume this hypothetical scenario is more serious than it seems. Anything’s possible, I guess. And then, once we’ve considered the possibility, let’s talk about why it would be disastrous for PC gaming. CERTIFICATION? WHAT’S THAT? Actually, in the name of…

The Samsung 860 EVO has convinced us: It is now safe to equate TLC (Triple-Level-Cell) SSDs with top-notch SATA performance. TLC-NAND SSDs used to be more about affordability, but the 860 EVO is the third TLC-NAND drive we’ve tested that doesn’t bog down on long sustained transfers. (The other drives are the identical-except-for-the-label WD Blue 3D and Sandisk Ultra 3D.) We even quadrupled our normal 20GB copies, and the 860 EVO easily maintained the pace. In fact, despite being quite a bit cheaper, the 860 EVO’s performance compares more than favorably with that of its 860 Pro cousin. DESIGN AND FEATURES Though the 860 EVO is available in the 2.5-inch form factor, we tested the M.2 2280 (22mm across, 80mm long) version in the 1TB capacity. Both are SATA 6Gbps and…

Microsoft’s Surface Precision Mouse is a practical PC accessory for Surface owners, especially right-handed ones. Over a week of use, I found the cordless, six-button mouse comfortable and precise. I wasn’t truly happy with it, however, until I downloaded Microsoft’s hard-to-find Mouse and Keyboard Center app, which includes a cool but gimmicky ability to straddle multiple PCs. Priced at $100 (sometimes discounted on Amazon), the Surface Precision Mouse is Microsoft’s flagship PC peripheral. As such, it’s the direct competitor to the Logitech MX Master 2S mouse ($100 or discounted on Amazon), which offers similar features, including its own ability to leap from PC to PC. A LARGE, COMFORTABLE MOUSE Measuring a rather large 4.8 x 3.1 x 1.7 inches, the Surface Precision Mouse is best used by those who prefer…

Computers don’t have to be big to be powerful. While opting for a small form-factor PC once required sacrificing system speed, recent technological advances have shrunk even potent PC hardware into pint-sized packages. Case in point: The 6-core, 12-thread mini-ITX gaming PC we’re building in the wake of AMD’s recent Ryzen CPU price reductions. This football-sized rig is tiny enough to tuck underneath your arm and ferocious enough to spit out fast frame rates during an all-night LAN party session. Graphics card and memory shortages mean it’s a horrible time to build a gaming PC (see page 7), but a specialized rig like this simply can’t be found at most big box retailers. Portable yet powerful PCs yearn for a personal touch. The hardware needs to do everything you need…

Chromebooks may be impressively versatile, but a good Chromebook hack helps it break out of its browser-based confines and try new talents on for size. Top of the list, of course, is the ability to install a full Linux desktop operating system via the Crouton project. But there’s a lot you can tweak or add to multiply a Chromebook’s powers. Some of these features require you to install Linux—a really easy task if you follow our Crouton tutorial—but many do not. Here are five Chromebook hacks that will improve your user experience and make these laptops even more powerful. 1. STEAM STREAMING Just as everyone knows you can put Linux on a Chromebook, it’s probably common knowledge that you can install Valve’s Steam to play games. The problem is only a…

Microsoft appears to be gearing up for the next big Windows 10 update, after releasing Windows 10 Insider Build 17083. Codenamed “Redstone 4,” the next release is expected in the spring. Microsoft has made several tweaks to the operating system with this build, including a revamp of font management and how a user’s history is treated within the Timeline feature. Conspicuously absent is the Sets feature, an intriguing tabbed UI that essentially replaces separate windows with a browser-like interface. Microsoft had warned previously that Sets would take months to deploy—a final release is expected at the end of 2018, or even later—so the removal of Sets was planned. “If you have been testing Sets, you will no longer see it—however, Sets will return soon in a post-RS4 [Redstone 4] flight!”…

Beginning in February, Microsoft started offering a new feature for young students called Immersive Reader dictation within Office 365 apps for Windows and the Mac. As a parent of two elementary school students, though, I’m concerned that this feature—>which brings smartphone-style voice dictation to traditional desktop apps—will be an unwelcome crutch. It’s not just on Windows, either. Microsoft is pushing dictation onto Word for Mac, iPhone, Outlook Desktop, OneNote iPad, and OneNote Mac. Even though I write about technology for a living, I’m sort of feeling my way through applying it toward parenting. Is a smart speaker an annoyance or a learning aid? Do I need to place hardwired parental controls on my kids’ screen time, or can I just check up on them? And when do I need to…

Let’s just lay our cards down at once. AMD’s Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G APUs are everything budget gamers have been praying for: surprisingly decent gaming performance at a shockingly low price. In years past, such a statement would be met by skepticism and dismissive “whatever” animated GIFs. But AMD actually over-delivered on its Ryzen CPUs last year, so talks of combining those same Zen cores with the latest and greatest Radeon Vega graphics cores has cash-strapped gamers in a tizzy of excitement. And it turns out the excitement is warranted. Compared to a similarly equipped Intel-based system running a Core i3, the lower-end Ryzen 3 2200G is 142 percent faster in 3DMark Fire Strike, 154 percent faster in 3DMark Time Spy, and 203 percent faster in Rainbow…

The 8bitdo SN30 Pro is the last of a long line of gaming peripherals released by this busy company in 2017. Like the N30 Pro before it, it’s a controller designed for die-hard retro fans like myself who emulate on the PC. This time 8bitdo is taking its design cues from the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES for short, one of my favorite consoles of all time. After only months of use it has already become a staple in my gaming arsenal, but it falls just short of being the perfect controller. WHO SHOULD BUY THE SN30 PRO The SN30 Pro is a Bluetooth-based wireless controller that connects to your PC, Mac, Android phone, Nintendo Switch and more, and works with everything from classic games to current ones. The controller…

If your phone runs Android, and you’re interested in buying a smartwatch, your journey begins with answering a single fundamental question: Samsung Gear or Android Wear? Sure, there are other smartwatch platforms that work with Android phones, but Gear (perhaps best represented by the Gear S3) and Android Wear (represented by watches too numerous to mention) have the most mature ecosystems and refined hardware. Google’s Android Wear platform has strong third-party app support, and if you opt for a Wear watch, you can choose from a wide variety of models in all shapes, sizes and styles. Samsung, meanwhile, has gone its own way with its Gear smartwatch lineup. These watches run Samsung software and adhere strictly to the Samsung ecosystem, but they also offer some benefits that Wear watches do…

Is your computer’s CPU too hot? If your PC starts spontaneously shutting down, locking up, or acting sluggish during intense tasks, overheating could be the issue. Keeping tabs on your CPU temperatures is crucial when you’re overclocking your PC’s processor, too—you don’t want to accidentally push the performance pedal too far to the metal. Bizarrely, Windows doesn’t offer any way to check your computer’s CPU temperature. You could dive into your system’s BIOS to find the information, but that’s a lot of hassle to find a simple sensor reading. Fortunately, several free programs exist that make it easy to see your processor’s temperature. HOW TO CHECK YOUR CPU TEMPERATURE The fastest, easiest way to check your CPU temperature is with the aptly named Core Temp. Be mindful during installation though!…