PCWorldの July 2021 の目次

One of the most important trade shows in the PC universe, Computex, unfortunately occurred during the wee hours of the Memorial Day holiday in the United States at the end of May. Fortunately, we kept tabs on the announcements from AMD, Intel, Nvidia and more that you need to know about, and we’ve summed them up below. If we had to pick an overall “winner,” well, AMD stole the show. A number of CPU, GPU, and even architectural announcements made for a jam-packed Computex presentation. But our email and internal chat channels were busy chewing over what Intel and Nvidia had to offer, too. In no particular order, here’s what we consider to be the most important stories that came out of Computex. AMD’S FIDELITYFX SUPER RESOLUTION FidelityFX Super Resolution…

Qualcomm’s lower-end Snapdragon 7c chips carved out a space for Chromebooks and other value devices that aimed for long battery life and consistent connectivity. Now Qualcomm is announcing an upgraded Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 chip aimed at powering the low-end $350 Chromebooks and PCs that flood Amazon’s “most popular” list. Comparing 2019’s Snapdragon 7c and the new Snapdragon 7c Gen 2, the main difference is in clock speed: The Snapdragon 7c used a Kryo 468 CPU running at up to 2.4 GHz, while the new chip uses an identical Kryo 468, yet running 6 percent faster at 2.55GHz. It appears that every other feature on the two different chips remains identical. The latest chip also uses the same X15 4G LTE modem as the 7c Gen 1. What else has changed…

Finally, Microsoft has a way to avoid wading through the Microsoft Store app or hunting down an app download link from the web: Winget, also known as the Windows Package Manager, has finally been released. Package managers aren’t new to the Windows world. Chocolatey, for example, has been available as a package manager for years. (Package managers have also been a staple of Linux for years, and one of the operating system’s greatest features.) Version 1.0 of Windows Package Manager is a command-line application that simply tells Windows to seek out a particular app and install it—no muss, no fuss. It will soon ship as an automatic update via the Microsoft Store for all devices running Windows 10, version 1809 and later, Microsoft recently said. Colloquially, the Windows Package Manager is…

An on-the-go gaming rig with ray-tracing chops that won’t break your budget or your back, the Acer Predator Triton 300 SE serves up an enticing mix of value and performance. With a list price of $1,400 but currently on sale at Best Buy for just $1,300, the Predator Triton 300 SE arrives with Intel’s cutting-edge Tiger Lake H35 “ultraportable gaming” CPU, along with GeForce RTX 3060 graphics and a slim 3.8-pound design. The Triton’s understated silver chassis gives the laptop a corporate look, but if you crack open the lid, you’ll find a 14-inch, 144Hz Full HD display, three-zone RGB keyboard backlighting, and one-touch overclocking. Thunderbolt 4 and solid battery life make a good thing even better. CONFIGURATION The Acer Predator Triton 300 SE is one of the first laptops…

Whether you’re streaming games to Twitch, YouTube, or another streaming platform, your audience needs to hear you clearly over the gameplay. (The same holds true if you’re holding live chat sessions or talking with your viewers as you work on a project.) And unfortunately, microphones built into laptops, webcams, and even headsets just don’t sound as good as a full-size mic sitting close to your mouth. The good news is, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to upgrade. While professional streamers use pro-level audio equipment for the best possible sound, USB microphones are much cheaper. They’re also much easier to use without sacrificing quality. Plug a USB microphone into your computer, and you can be off and running immediately. Our picks for the best USB microphones focus…

We’ve become used to thinking of Chromebooks as simple productivity machines: a web interface for classwork, online productivity apps, and not much else. But there are many ways to game on a Chromebook, too. You have three options to play games on most modern Chromebooks: as a web app, in an Android app, or remotely via one of the prior two ways. Gaming on a Chromebook can mean playing the same games you’d play on a PC, but given all the options you could argue that the diversity of games is richer on a Chromebook than on a PC. As we’ll explain, though, many of the gaming opportunities a Chromebook offers depend on accessing a game on a remote server. The quality of such gaming experiences will depend on the…

Let’s face it: Not everyone wants to futz with Linux. But within Windows, playing around with Linux is becoming easier and easier—so much so that you can get up and running with little more than a single command. In seconds, you can download and run powerful Linux apps, and even pin them right to your Windows desktop. Instead of installing Linux within a partition or virtual machine, Windows uses the Windows Subsystem for Linux, added way back in 2016 as part of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. The recent Microsoft Build conference covered more on this topic as Microsoft encouraged developers to run Windows alongside WSL for development and even general use. It’s not exactly the same as running Linux in a virtual machine, but it’s getting closer and closer.…

Google’s next step in Google Workspace is…a Google workspace: Smart Canvas, an all-in-one digital document that’s designed for collaboration. “For over a decade, we’ve been pushing documents away from just being pieces of paper, and toward collaborative, linked content inspired by the web,” said Javier Soltero, vice president and general manager of Google Workspace, during a presentation at Google’s Google I/O developer conference in late June. Soltero didn’t call out Smart Canvas as a separate app, competing with existing Workspace apps like Docs or Sheets. Instead, he positioned Smart Canvas as more of a conceptual experience, guiding the evolution of working within the Google Workspace apps over time. Some users began comparing Smart Canvas to Notion, a subscription service for the Mac OS platform that uses the same sort of…

Garmin recently announced that it has upgraded one of PCWorld’s favorite lines of dash cams with phone and cloud connectivity. The new dash cams, which are available via garmin.com, include the 1080p Dash Cam Mini 2, the 1080p Dash Cam 47, the 1440p Dash Cam 57, and the 1440p, wide-field-of-view 67W. All except the appropriately named key-fob-size Mini 2 feature GPS and a two-inch color display. The Mini 2 is priced at $130, and the top-end 67W at $260. Due to the newfound connectivity, there’s now a parking mode (wake on disturbances to capture video), plus a live view on your phone courtesy of the Garmin Drive app. The app may also be used to offload and view captures, as well as configure settings. Videos are uploaded for safekeeping to Garmin’s…

Whoa, folks—don’t head for the parking lot because this ball game ain’t over yet. Sure, you’ve been watching Intel’s older 10th-gen H-class CPUs get blasted off the mound all afternoon by Team Ryzen, but the coach just gave the signal and Intel’s new rookie star is warming up in the bullpen: the 11th-gen “Tiger Lake H” processors for gaming and creative laptops. Unlike the once great but should-have-retired-two-seasons-ago 10th-gen Comet Lake chips, Tiger Lake H features truly new cores and is built on Intel’s most advanced 10nm “Super Fin” technology. You can read more about Tiger Lake H’s processor lineup here, and dig into all the new 11th-gen laptops announced so far, but rather than yakety yak, let’s find out just how fast the new 11th-gen chip is. HOW (AND WHAT)…

Even in an era of progressively lighter notebooks, larger thin-and-light laptop options like the 15-inch Samsung Galaxy Book Pro 360 are relatively rare. Sure, you might buy it because it simply won’t break your back. But a stunning multimedia experience and shocking all-day battery life demand additional praise. Samsung’s Galaxy Book Pro 360 lends credence to Intel’s Evo program, from which this laptop graduated. Thin-and-light laptop keyboards can be iffy, though, and this laptop suffers accordingly. Samsung also loads up the Book Pro 360 with apps for just about everything. Nevertheless, we’ve awarded this laptop our Editor’s Choice award. Read on for why. BASIC FEATURES Samsung offers the Galaxy Book Pro 360 in either a 13.3-inch or a 15.6-inch configuration. Prices start at $1,199 (the minimal 13-inch spec: Core i7/8GB…

Say hello to Radeon’s long-awaited answer to Nvidia’s DLSS technology. AMD finally took the wraps off its FidelityFX Super Resolution feature during its Computex 2021 keynote. The company promised up to twice your GPU’s native performance when you need extra gaming firepower (like when you activate ray tracing, for example) and the ability to make most recent graphics cards even faster in supported games—even if you’re running a GeForce GPU. And AMD just released it to the public. The feature’s open nature makes it a huge deal to all PC gamers—not just Radeon owners—during a time when nobody can buy graphics cards at sane prices. Free extra performance when you’re struggling to make do with an older GPU will certainly prove welcome indeed. It also drives home AMD’s ongoing commitment to…

Find yourself suddenly needing to be more productive in the midst of chaos? Good news! Windows 10 comes loaded with all sorts of tools designed to help you Get Things Done, along with deeper tweaks to optimize the operating system for productivity. Each new major upgrade—like the Windows 10 May 2021 Update, the most recent one—adds more. Now for the bad news: All those excellent productivity-boosting Windows tools and tweaks aren’t immediately obvious, with many of the most useful settings buried deep inside a maze of options menus. We can help. Taking five or ten minutes to tinker with Windows 10 can supercharge your setup, regardless of whether you’re trying to keep working while stuck at home temporarily or setting up something more permanent. Let’s dig in. GET RID OF…

Google may not be ready to hold an in-person developer conference quite yet, but Google I/O was full of new developments across Google’s products and services. One line of products was missing: hardware. If you were hoping for details on new Pixels, Chromecasts, Stadia consoles, or Nest smart home gear, you’ll have to wait. But Google did offer new details on the long-awaited Android 12; show off enhancements to its core Search, Photos, and Shopping experiences; and remind us over and over that, yes, it really cares about privacy. There was even a “one more thing” moment in Project Starline. Below is what you need to know about Google I/O 2021. ANDROID 12 One of the more hotly anticipated announcements of Google I/O 2021 was Android 12, the next iteration…

Believe it or not, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is still alive and kicking—but not for long. If you’re one of the people who relies on Internet Explorer (hi, Dad!), Microsoft has some bad news: It will officially end support for the Internet Explorer desktop application on June 15, 2022. Before that, however, Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office 365) will end support for IE on August 17 of this year. The replacement? Microsoft Edge, which already has an “Internet Explorer mode” built right in. Microsoft said in 2019 that it planned to add an IE Mode within Edge, and the virtualized browser lives on as a configurable mode within Microsoft Edge. That’s important, because the modern Edge browser is simply more secure than Internet Explorer ever was. And you can’t say Microsoft…

The ThinkPad X12 Detachable Gen 1 is Lenovo’s answer to the very good Microsoft Surface Pro 7+. Both are tablets with detachable keyboards and a business bent. While the Surface Pro 7+ has high-end cachet, the ThinkPad X12, on the other hand, is more about value. BASIC FEATURES Of the seven different configuration options of the ThinkPad X12 Detachable Gen 1 on Lenovo’s website, our review unit (the 20UW0012US, $2,229 on Lenovo.com) seems to be popular, going in and out of stock as we wrote this review. The tablet has sold out on Amazon as well. Lenovo offers other basic configurations of the X12 Detachable that start with 8GB of RAM, but we’d consider that setup a bit skimpy if other options are available. It’s very much worth noting that…

Viofo’s A139 3CH three-channel, three-camera dash cam system is a first in our experience. We’ve tested three-channel products before, but the interior camera has always been integrated into the same body as the front camera. Viofo’s is separate, as is the rear camera. The upside to this discrete interior camera approach is versatility in locating each camera. The downside, though easily surmountable, is that you have more cables to hide. DESIGN AND FEATURES The A139’s three cameras are also notable for their high resolution. The 140-degree FOV front camera is 1440p, while the 170-degree cabin (interior) and rear cameras are both 1080p. All manage 30 fps while recording simultaneously, which means there’s a fair amount of processing power under the hood. High-quality Sony STARVIS IMX335 sensors are used by all…

In the beginning, all we had was the command line. Then as Windows matured, the need to access that throwback interface waned. That doesn’t mean the Command Prompt is completely useless. In fact, recent versions of Windows have introduced new commands. And while Windows 10’s graphical interface is generally straightforward to use, several features are still faster to execute through that last tie to MS-DOS. The same goes for accessing a few pieces of useful information, too. We’ve listed our top Command Prompt commands below, but don’t take this list as the complete lineup of useful commands. If you like to kick it old-school, there are still plenty worth your time. For most people, though, these six will add efficiency to your regular routine without requiring excessive time in a command…

HDR, or High Dynamic Range, delivers a dramatic upgrade in brightness, color, and contrast compared to SDR, or Standard Dynamic Range. HDR content looks more brilliant, and more detailed, than SDR. You’ll notice an unmistakable difference when viewing a movie, TV show, or gaming that’s mastered for HDR. Windows 10 offers HDR support, but you must enable it in Windows’ settings to get the most out of an HDR-compatible display. Here’s how to turn it on. HOW TO ENABLE HDR IN WINDOWS 10 Windows 10 supports HDR by default and has for several years. Microsoft plans to release an Auto HDR update that, once available, will automatically detect an HDR display and adjust Windows accordingly. For now, however, you must turn it on manually. • Open the Windows 10 Start Menu.…