PCWorldの December 2021 の目次

If you’re looking to build a powerhouse PC, one of the first things you need to do is pick your poison: AMD or Intel? Both companies are making some absolutely fantastic CPUs and adjacent platforms, so there’s really no wrong decision here. But to hell with that fence-sitting BS: It’s still a decision you have to make. So you might as well make the right one, right? Intel’s spanking-new 12th-gen Alder Lake CPU series is busting benchmarks, but there are still plenty of reasons to stick with AMD’s Ryzen 5000 architecture from last year — or to wait it out and see what comes next. Let’s break it down, shall we? THE CONTENDERS Assuming that you’re basing your decision on a budget for a PC build, and that you’re phenomenally lucky and…

Nvidia’s GeForce Now is a cloud streaming service that targets the current weak spot in the market: hardware availability and pricing. Essentially, you pay a subscription fee for the ability to use Nvidia’s Superpod computers to stream games from your library in lieu of having a physical GPU in your PC at home. The company recently announced an RTX 3080 tier, which claims lower latency and ray tracing–enabled performance. We will discuss how it works, potential drawbacks, and price. The technology is very exciting, but can it replace a real GPU during the great shortage? Let’s find out! HOW DOES IT WORK? By utilizing Superpod computers with 1,000 GPUs in each (if you opt for the top RTX 3080 tier), Nvidia leverages cloud streaming to allow you to access your…

Good news, Chrome and Edge users—you no longer need to download PDFs in order to make basic edits. Adobe has officially rolled out new features to its Chrome extension, giving you the ability to skip the standalone application for common tasks. Filling out forms, signing a PDF electronically, and adding comments or other notations are available to everyone. For more advanced features like converting from PDF to Microsoft Word, merging PDFs, and rotating or reordering pages, you’ll need a subscription to Adobe Acrobat Pro DC. (Note: Creative Cloud subscribers with access to the standard edition of Acrobat DC seem to lack these features currently. On our Windows 10 machine with Acrobat DC installed, we could only perform these types of edits and annotations in a dedicated program, even after uninstalling and…

The Fitbit Luxe has the look you’d expect from its name. Encased in stainless steel, available in black, gold, and silver, and backed with a line of fashionable accessory bands, it blends readily with stylish outfits. Its slender, thinner profile is also discreet on your wrist—of Fitbit’s lineup, it’s the smallest and least obtrusive model. But a refined appearance is mostly what you get in this posh (and more expensive) take on Fitbit’s cheaper Inspire 2 tracker. You’re looking at a bump up in glamour rather than feature set, which doesn’t benefit fitness enthusiasts. A couple of key hardware upgrades even compromise performance compared to the Inspire 2. GOOD LOOKS, CONSTRAINED PREMIUM FEATURES You’ll notice one of the Fitbit Luxe’s main upgrades at first glance—the 0.76-inch color AMOLED display, which…

The LG Gram 17’s purpose is obvious: to deliver lightweight productivity chops in a 17-inch laptop that’s lighter than some 13-inch laptops. It performs that task exceptionally well. LG’s notebook also has a stunning display, and while it won’t break any performance records, its 11th-generation Tiger Lake CPU runs multiple applications and office-bound tasks with ease. The LG Gram 17 also offers Thunderbolt 4 functionality and a better than all-day battery life, further adding to its versatility as a portable productivity workhorse. Combined, these features make it a standout in the category. SPECIFICATIONS The LG Gram 17 comes with a 1TB SSD and an Intel Core i7 CPU for $1,650 in black, or in silver for $1,775. But if you want to scale down you can find 14-, 15-, and…

Many enthusiasts consider OLED the best display quality. You’ll find OLED in LG TVs, Apple’s new iPhones, and a long list of smartphones and tablets from Samsung. If you want to enjoy OLED on a PC, however, your options are limited. A small handful of laptops, like the Dell XPS 13 and Samsung Galaxy Book, offer an OLED display. A few OLED monitors exist, but most are massive screens designed for use in a living room, not on a desk. Why is this true? And will it change anytime soon? OLED DESKTOP MONITORS DON’T EXIST BECAUSE (ALMOST) NO ONE CAN MAKE THEM Desktop monitors are popular among PC enthusiasts but, compared to other markets for displays, they’re a small market with small margins. As a result, companies that produce OLED…

Even at its list price of $70 per year, a personal subscription to Microsoft 365—or Office 365, as it used to be called—is one of the better deals in tech. That subscription gets you full access to Microsoft’s Office suite along with 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage. I’ve been a mostly satisfied subscriber for years, partly for the Office software, though mainly to access my photos, documents, and personal music library from any device. But part of that satisfaction comes from never paying full price in the first place. Instead, I’ve made a point of buying Office 365 discount codes on eBay, using them to renew my subscription in one-year increments. These codes are often found on sale for as little as $45, and they have been readily available every…

Users of Google’s Chrome OS have been waiting years—and years, and years, Adobe—for the industry-standard Photoshop image editing tool to become available to them. Today that wait is finally over. Sort of. Adobe announced that subscribers to its Creative Cloud service now have access to a web-based version of Photoshop, which offers a limited selection of tools for editing images and projects stored on Creative Cloud servers. The system is available to subscribers today in an open beta, with the vector-based Illustrator also available in closed beta testing. The web-based version of Photoshop handles most of the basics of image editing, but power users might find it a bit limited, both in terms of its available tools and its compatibility with long-memorized keyboard commands. (Trying to activate the Free Transform…

Our pick for the best Kindle just got an overhaul. The Kindle Paperwhite now sports a larger screen, faster hardware, longer battery life, and the addition of an amber tone for the front light as new standout features, and that’s just the headliners. (Fans of the USB-C connector can rest easy at last.) But the new Paperwhite also costs more, especially if you want the version with more storage. To make it easier to decide if you want to upgrade (or which version you want if you see the 2018 edition on sale), we’ve highlighted the key differences for you, along with putting the full specifications for each side by side. KEY DIFFERENCES Size The 2021 model of the Paperwhite is larger than the 2018 version. It’s about a quarter inch (7mm) taller…

Stardock Software’s Start11 utility is now shipping as a 1.0 release, and if you hate the reductionist new design of the Windows 11 Start menu and taskbar, you’ll want to check it out. Start11, among other handy tricks, lets you move the taskbar around your desktop and configure the Start menu to emulate Windows 10’s look and feel. Start11, priced at $4.99 as a standalone utility, doesn’t offer everything: It can’t create any dynamic Windows 10 Live Tiles, for example, and your ability to move and resize the Windows 11’s taskbar icons is still somewhat limited. But if you’d like a more gentle transition between Windows 10 and Windows 11, Start11 certainly helps. Start11 is the latest iteration of the StartX utilities from Stardock, which shipped similar Start8 and Start10 utilities…

There are two things Avast’s paid security suites have been known for besides solid protection: good design and high prices. That’s changing a little bit, and for the better, with Avast One, the company’s new top-tier product. Avast still offers Premier as a step down, but Avast One is a suite well worth considering if you’re interested in solid antivirus plus some extra features and multi-device coverage. It has a new design, three pricing tiers, and a lot more features included without extra cost, and the pricing is much better than last we looked. For this review we’re looking at Avast One Individual. Avast One includes an entirely new desktop app. Gone are the blue and purple tones, as well as the orange splotch logo. In place of all that,…

Google’s Drive and Dropbox are two of the most popular options for cloud storage and backup. Which makes sense, because the two platforms compete with each other intensely. Which one is right for you? That’s a complex question, and it comes down to several factors: your budget, your total backup needs, and which platforms you want to use them on. Unsurprisingly, Google Drive works best if you’re heavily invested in Google’s other systems: Android, Chrome OS, and the Google Workspace suite of web apps. It’s also a better value in general. Dropbox is a better choice if you’re more concerned with speed and performance, and you’re willing to pay for it. PRICING At the consumer level, both companies offer at least one approximately comparable plan for cloud storage. In the table below…

Windows 11 brings Auto HDR, first introduced on the Xbox Series X|S consoles, to the PC. The feature promises to make older titles look just as bright and vibrant as newer HDR-compatible releases without a major hit to performance. That’s sure to have PC gamers eyeing an upgrade to Windows 11. Is it worth making the leap? We’ve dug deep into Windows 11’s Auto HDR to find the answer. Here’s everything you need to know: the hardware you need to how to set it up, image quality comparisons with the feature on and off, and comparisons of how Windows 11’s Auto HDR compares to the version offered on the Xbox. Let’s dig in. HOW TO USE AUTO HDR Auto HDR is a standard feature of Windows 11 and is available when…

It’s been 21 years since my parents bought me the first computer that was just mine, one I didn’t have to share with anyone. It was an eMachines desktop with a Pentium 4, a whopping 64GB of memory, and a 40GB hard drive. It ran Windows ME (Millennium Edition!) out of the box. And from the moment I turned it on right up until now, I’ve been searching for software tools to make my computer more efficient and easier to use. In two decades and change I’ve installed, tweaked, and uninstalled far more small programs than I can remember, to solve little annoyances or to smooth over the rough spots in the Windows interface. Windows itself has gotten a lot better over the years, and many of the little tools…

PC users are all in a tizzy about the shiny new Windows 11 that recently dropped. But don’t forget that Microsoft is still supporting and updating the long-in-the-tooth Windows 10 until at least 2025. As if to prove its point, Microsoft released an update to Windows 10 in November. What’s new? Not a whole lot, now that Microsoft’s technical and marketing powers are focused on the future. Windows Hello for business users will be updated to support passwordless deployments for faster multi-machine setup. The Windows Subsystem for Linux and Azure IoT Edge for Linux systems are getting GPU compute support, which has been in the works for a while. And Wi-Fi connections will now be compatible with the new WPA3 H2E standard. Those are some welcome changes for very specific users,…

The infamous “Valve time” strikes yet again. Valve has delayed the launch of the Steam Deck, a handheld portable PC gaming system similar to the Nintendo Switch, until February 2022. Unfortunately, that means it won’t be available to purchase in time for the 2021 holiday season. Valve says it’s unable to deliver due to the global supply chain issues. “We’re sorry about this—we did our best to work around the global supply chain issues, but due to material shortages, components aren’t reaching our manufacturing facilities in time for us to meet our initial launch dates,” Valve says. If you’re worried about losing your pre-existing reservation, don’t sweat it. Valve claims that existing reservation holders will keep their place in line. As for the time frame of those reservation dates, that…

Everyone likes redemption stories, and Intel’s 12th-gen Core i9-12900K is a comeback story for the ages. The once mighty and complacent champ was defeated years ago, forced through one humiliating loss after another at the hands of AMD’s resurgent Ryzen processors, until finally somehow finding a way back to fighting form and claiming victory once again. Fade to black and cue the credits. Life (and technology) never has that Hollywood ending, but Intel’s Core i9-12900K gets pretty damned close. After years of being pummeled by AMD processors, the 12900K’s performance makes it the far better CPU for most people than its bitter rival, the Ryzen 9 5950X. No, it’s not a knock-out victory by any means, but considering where it excels and the features it packs, Intel’s 12th-gen Alder Lake…

This is our first look at an NVMe SSD from Corsair. In fact, it’s our first look at any sort of Corsair SSD in over seven years. And apparently we’ve been missing out, because the Corsair MP600 Pro XT is an absolute barn-burner. This PCIe 4.0 SSD hangs with and sometimes bests the fastest drives we’ve ever tested, for a considerably lower price than its fellow hot-rod rivals. And if you want to get fancy, there’s even a version designed to plug into the liquid-cooling setup of exotic PCs, for a minimal markup. We can’t find much to complain about. This is a fantastic high-performance SSD. PRICING AND SPECS The Corsair MP600 Pro XT is available in two flavors: one with a large (removable) heatsink, and a Hydro version with…

If 2020 was a banner year for PC hardware, expectations came crashing back down to earth in 2021. The reason? Chip shortages and the supply chain crunch. Simply getting your hands on new hardware proved to be frustratingly difficult for most of the year, and even when you could find something to buy, it often sold for a staggering mark-up. But that doesn’t mean PC vendors took their foot off the gas. We tested some truly impressive hardware in 2021, including blazing-fast next-gen SSDs and notebooks that run laps around yesteryear’s models. Are you into streaming video? Hardware that helps you look and sound as impressive as possible took major strides forward in 2021. And this year we’re expanding our list of top picks to include the best software available,…

The fact that you and everyone you know will receive spam and scam emails (and texts) for as long as they live should be added to the famous Ben Franklin quote, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Spam is constant and ever present, and you likely have a few hundred messages sitting in your spam folder as you read this. The very fact that we even need to have a spam folder tells us there’s a problem. However, you are a savvy inbox navigator and a seasoned connoisseur of Nigerian missives. The problem is, someone in your family is decidedly not. Maybe it’s your mother or father, an uncle, or even a step-relative. Here’s some advice to keep them safe. ALWAYS KNOW…