Tabla de contenidos para March 2021 en APC

“We all look forward to seeing a new energy and enthusiasm from the company.” It feels like we’ve been talking about Intel a lot, lately. And there’s no denying it. But what’s a PC mag editor to do when the last year or two has seen one of the biggest names in PC undergo such a dramatic swing? As enthusiasts, you too are likely as intruiged as I am to see what will happen over the next couple of years. And right now the picture is a whole lot rosier, ever since the recent appointment of Pat Gelsinger as the company’s new CEO. Pat’s an engineer, and that’s exactly what the company needs at the helm to move forward. In the fight against AMD over the last year Intel hasn’t…

Just in case you’ve ever wondered how much your shiny new Apple Mac Mini featuring the M1 SoC consumes in a burn-in test scenario, Apple has disclosed its own official data, and it’s impressive. Apple finally published its official M1-based Mac Mini power consumption numbers showing that the unit consumes approximately just a third of its Intel-based predecessor’s power. When Apple announced the transition to its own system-on-chips, it explained the move with performance, features, and power efficiency its SoCs can deliver without giving away any numbers. Then the company demonstrated some impressive performance figures for its M1-based MacBook Pro machines when it launched them but omitted any direct power-related details. The beefed-up 2020 Mac Mini M1 consumes 39W under high load, whereas the beefed-up 2018 Mac Mini with a…

Windows 10’s next feature update might arrive later than the first upgrade of the year normally would, at least according to the latest leak. Windows 10 21H1 could pitch up in June, according to a Chromium code commit from a Microsoft software engineer, which read: “The Windows Release coming out this June 2021 has a new API that can disable KTM exploits.” This must refer to the 21H1 update, rather than the second update for 2021, as June is (just) in the first half of the year, whereas the following update turns up in H2 (obviously); and indeed usually later in H2 (September, October or November), as well.…

We’ve torn down the mini iPhone and the two medium iPhones, but we saved the biggest for last: the iPhone 12 Pro Max. Time to give this full-bodied phone the full teardown treatment. MAJOR TECH SPECS • A14 Bionic SoC with fourth-generation Neural Engine • 6.7 inch (2778x284 pixels) Super Retina XDR OLED display with P3 wide colour gamut and True Tone • 12MP triple camera with wide angle f/1.6 (OIS), ultra-wide angle f/2.4, and telephoto f/2.2 (OIS) cameras, with a LiDAR module • 6GB RAM, 128GB storage (256 and 512GB configs available) • 5G (sub-6GHz and mmWave), plus 4x4 MIMO LTE, 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6, ultra-wide band (UWB), NFC, and Bluetooth 5.0 • MagSafe 15W wireless charging • P68 rating, water resistant to a maximum depth of 6 meters for…

HP’s new AIO, the EliteOne 800 G5, is all business. Costing $1,700 (for our review SKU specifically), this is a professional machine, well-suited to a home office environment. The brushed silver finish is unobtrusive, and the 23.8-inch monitor has a pleasingly small bezel. Being an AIO system, it has a small footprint, with just a weighted metal rectangle as its base, upon which the rotating monitor arm and the screen itself are mounted. It has to be said that the EliteOne is remarkably easy to set up. It’s truly a plug-and-play affair, with the entire assembly slotting together without any tools required, and only a single three-pin kettle cable needed to power it all up. Included in the box is a wireless Bluetooth “Business Slim” mouse and keyboard combo from…

Even though SATA is secondary to NVMe in terms of performance these days, SATA is here to stay for some time yet. Samsung SSDs of both types are almost always on buyers’ shortlists. It’s been three years since the release of the 860 Evo and Pro, and with the continual advances in NAND and process tech, Samsung is taking the opportunity to refresh its line up and in doing so, has the opportunity to redefine the SATA SSD market once more. The 1TB Samsung 870 Evo we have in for review is a standard form factor 2.5in SATA 6GB/s SSD. It makes use of Samsung’s 128 layer TLC V-NAND which is combined with 1GB of LPDDR4 memory. Samsung is using its MKX Metis controller, likely with some under the hood…

We’re big fans of Firefox, but it isn’t the only option, and the Chromium-based Brave browser has over its five-year lifespan attracted a considerable following. Brave is licenced under the permissive Mozilla Public License. Brave Software is open source and there are versions for Windows, Mac and Linux. Installation is as simple as any other browser, and for Linux it’s just a matter of adding a repo, or, if you want to embrace the future, fetching it from the Snap Store. On first run there’s a brief welcome tour, which offers to import settings and bookmarks from other browsers, explains how to disable its ad-blocker feature (in case sites don’t behave), gives you a choice of default search engines (use DuckDuckGo!) and asks you to enable Brave Rewards. Turning on…

It feels like an old and tired mantra at this point, but it’s fair to say that 2020 was an awful and very challenging year. It’s shown us just how dependent we are on that humble transistor. Life has changed, for better or worse, and the world we once knew likely won’t exist in the same way it did when this pandemic ends. If the science comes true, and as population sizes swell, diseases like this will likely become far more commonplace. And with it there’ll no doubt be an even greater shift in how we work, how we enjoy our spare time, and how we connect with our loved ones. We’re seeing this change happen already: More of us now than ever work from home, and the majority are…

Today, CPU speeds are measured in gigahertz. Our RAM size is measured in gigabytes. Our machines are thousands of times faster than when home computing started. It’s easy to look at how far computing has progressed and be smug. But is it possible that we think we’ve progressed further than we really have? Try watching old episodes of The Computer Chronicles or The Computer Programme (BBC, all on Youtube now) and it can be very surprising to see what they could do with technology of the past – computers that were thousands of times slower than what we have now, or just entirely different. From analogue and mechanical computing, to early inter-planetary digital photography; from early multimedia, to an internet before the internet – history is full of technological sophistication,…

Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton started the project after seeing an alarming drop in coding proficiency with university applicants. With an extremely cheap machine, it was the foundation’s intention to get children coding again, the way 8-bit microcomputers started bedroom coding in the 80s. The default Raspberry Pi OS comes loaded with programming languages, environments, and interpreters, though there has always been a focus on Python – perhaps the best modern equivalent of BASIC. GPIO pins are displayed, making the machines perfect for hardware hacking.…

Creating a local account, as opposed to a synced Microsoft account tied to an email address, used to be the default way of accessing an operating system. Microsoft is trying to change all that with Windows 10, however, and is pushing the Microsoft account hard, to the extent of removing the option to create a local account during installation. This makes sense, as the account you made during setup is the PC’s admin account, and so needs to be secure. The option is still there though, albeit buried. Open “Settings >= Accounts >= Family & other users,” and choose “Add someone else to this PC.” Click “I don’t have this person’s sign-in information” in the window that pops up, then “Add a user without a Microsoft account” in the next…

1 KEEP VISIBLE You can drag and drop items from the Control Centre into the menu bar, so that they’re always visible. 3 CLICK CONTROL As this is not a touchscreen, you need to click this icon in the menu bar to open Control Centre. 3 POWER OF NINE By default, the Control Centre contains a group of nine features; these can’t be removed but you can add more. 4 PREFERENCES The old Dock panel in System Prefs has been updated, with new features for modifying Control Centre.…

01 ADD A PRE-MADE SMART STACK Tap and hold a blank area of the Home screen, tap the ‘+’ button that appears in the top-left corner, then scroll down and tap Smart Stack. Swipe between the three available sizes and choose one, then tap Add Widget. 02 REORDER THE WIDGETS If you want to edit a Smart Stack, tap and hold it until a contextual menu appears, then tap Edit Stack. You can use the handles on the right-hand side to rearrange widgets to your liking. When you are done, tap the cross. 03 ADD A WIDGET TO A STACK To add another widget to a Smart Stack, open the widgets menu from step 1, then drag and drop a new widget over an existing stack. All widgets must be…

Despite the constant push for user-friendly and intuitive graphical applications over the past decade, command-line utilities remain popular for performing a vast number of tasks. Whether its cloning your disk, transferring files across the network, communicating with peers, or even accessing social media, you can do it all from the relative comfort of the Linux shell. Partitioning the hard disk, however, is one area where many users still prefer the point-and-click convenience of graphical tools. This is mostly because of lack of familiarity and not because the tools are lacking in abilities. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Linux users had to contend with only command-line tools to perform partitioning. In fact, fdisk is still the default, and it’s the only partitioning tool on some Linux distributions such as…

Give a person a camera, and they’ll find a way to point it at other people. Most of the single-board computers that are popular at the moment have camera attachments, or can use a webcam through a USB port. MotionEyeOS is an operating system that does nothing but operate cameras, and it can be installed on a great many of these boards – we’re using a Raspberry Pi Zero W, but Banana Pi, NanoPi, ODROID, and Pine boards are all compatible. MotionEyeOS is a lightweight way to run motionEye, the web interface that gathers together the feeds from connected cameras and displays them, running motion-detection routines and triggering recordings or stills when motion is detected. It can take feeds from connected cameras or network cameras, and multiple boards can work…

Of course, you can upload stills and videos to the cloud. Alongside options to save them to the FTP and Samba shares on the board’s microSD card, there are entries on the dropdown menu under “File Storage for Google Drive, Google Photos, and Dropbox.” This opens it up for use with IFTT, perhaps triggering a phone alert when a new image is uploaded to the Google Drive folder, or extending the built-in email system. This is also a useful security measure, as a burglar who discovers your system may try to swipe the microSD cards to cover their tracks – they can’t do the same to Google Drive.…

Subnautica: Below Zero listed for PS5, Xbox Series X, and more Subnautica: Below Zero might well be coming to current and next-gen consoles alike. Last month an ESRB rating for Subnautica: Below Zero appeared online (as first reported by Gematsu). What’s noteworthy about the ratings page is that Subnautica is listed for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S, despite having only been previously announced for PC and Nintendo Switch. Sonic has lost his voice The voice of Sonic the Hedgehog, Roger Craig Smith, has finished up his ten year role leading one of gaming’s most recognisable mascots. The actor hinted as much on Twitter in February, before Sega itself weighed in with the official news. “For over 10 years, Roger Craig Smith has been an…

Free | PC, Mac, Linux robustgames.itch.io/loco-motive Loco Motive tells a measured, comedic murder mystery, brought to life with colourful characters, witty dialogue and puzzles that hit the sweet spot when it comes to difficulty. The game takes place on a luxury steam train owned by the wealthy Lady Unterwald, who has come aboard to make a speech to her assembled family and employees. Naturally, she pegs it before said speech has even begun, and it’s left to her personal lawyer Arthur Ackerman to solve her grisly murder, by retrieving the will he so carelessly loses at the start of the game. As Arthur, you’ll chat to the suspects, solve puzzles, and generally enjoy a thrilling adventure. It’s a complete story, but in miniature, requiring only around half an hour of…

Intel’s new DG1-based Iris Xe graphics card is only compatible with Intel motherboards and CPUs. The news comes days after Intel revealed the first Xe graphics cards produced by board partners and due to be sold in retail PCs. According to Legit Reviews, specific UEFI BIOS support is required to run the new graphics cards. An Intel statement explained that, “the Iris Xe discrete add-in card will be paired with 9th gen (Coffee Lake-S) and 10th gen (Comet Lake-S) Intel Core desktop processors and Intel B460, H410, B365, and H310C chipsetbased motherboards and sold as part of pre-built systems. These motherboards require a special BIOS that supports Intel Iris Xe, so the cards won’t be compatible with other systems.”…

Pat’s back and it couldn’t be better news for Intel. And what’s good for Intel is usually good for the PC. The ‘Pat’ in question? That’ll be Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s freshly minted CEO and an engineer through and through. If anyone can fix Intel’s problem, it’s Gelsinger, right? The financial markets seemed to think so, with Intel’s share price immediately jumping seven percent on the news. For journalists of a certain age, of course, Gelsinger is best known as the beaming, relentlessly upbeat face of the Intel Developer Forum, the now-defunct engineering focussed trade fair otherwise known as IDF and a throwback to an age where Intel was the unambiguous world leader in chip technology. Gelsinger’s last tenure at Intel lasted fully 30 years ended in 2009, at which point…

A few months ago, BenQ impressed us with its funky-looking Mobiuz gaming monitor that offered decent performance and features at an incredible price. The EW3280U is from BenQ’s ‘Entertainment’ range and comes at a price that’s double its rivals. So, what are the differences and are they worth the money? Our first impressions were generally positive. The colourful design accents of the Mobiuz have been replaced with sober-yet-classy, metallic-brown styling. There’s a thin bezel but it’s extended by a 5mm black deadzone around the top and sides of the display meaning it doesn’t lend itself to the tiling of multiple monitors. Nonetheless, the 32-inch screen still provides plenty of real estate. Beneath the screen is an integrated speaker bar that has a built-in subwoofer and supports 2.1 audio with ‘treVolo’…

Notability is one of our favourite note-taking apps for iPad. It enables you to combine handwriting, illustrations, images, typed text, audio recordings, and external files such as MP3s in a single document; it enables you to import PDFs or scan printed documents and annotate or highlight them; and it has good support for a wide range of cloud-based services. It’s particularly good with the Apple Pencil on compatible iPads but it also works well on iPhone, and there’s a desktop version for easy syncing between mobile and desktop. The biggest change in version 10 is the arrival of the new Notability Shop, which enables you to purchase additional features, stickers, and themes. One of those features is handwriting conversion, which was formerly part of the app but now exists as…

Plex transcoding I recently opened up my Plex server running on a QNAP TS-251+ to a few friends to discover that transcoding does one of two things: If I enable hardware transcoding, the video frequently looks blocky and pixilated, but I can stream to multiple clients with no problems. But if I disable it, only one person can watch a transcoded stream without overwhelming the server. What can I do to improve the quality over hardware transcoding? PHIL WEST APC responds: The problem here is your QNAP’s Celeron J1900 processor. Although it supports hardware transcoding through QuickSync, the processor’s onboard GPU is based on the old Ivy Bridge generation of Intel HD graphics. These are known for the poor quality of their transcodes, so the only way around this…

Windows activation is a kind of super fun thing that, if it goes wrong, shows you really unhelpful messages and gets you to phone Microsoft support. However, if you didn’t have a licence key to type in during installation, and this is a reinstallation onto a system that’s been activated and tied to a Microsoft account before, there is one thing you can do. On the “Settings >= Update & Security >= Activation” page, click “Troubleshoot.” You must be logged into your Microsoft account for this to work, and it needs to be the same one that was previously activated. The troubleshooter thinks for a while, then gives you a list of the Windows activations registered to your account. Click the one you want to use, and the “I’ve recently…

01 MENU BAR The menu bar in Big Sur still works the way it always has, with icons representing features such as battery power and Wi-Fi. Click on any icon and you’ll see a pull-down menu with additional settings for that particular feature. 02 CONTROL CENTRE There is one new icon in the menu bar, though, which looks like a little set of switches. Click on this icon and you’ll see the new iOS-style Control Centre, which contains a much larger group of controls and features. 03 CHANGING SETTINGS You can click on any of these features to see more detailed settings. Clicking on Display will show options, such as Dark Mode and Night Shift, and there will also be an option to open System Preferences for that feature too.…

Apple’s iOS and iPadOS apps are great, but they aren’t always the best choice for everyone. That’s why the App Store is filled with alternatives: Carrot Weather (and until Apple bought it, Dark Sky) as alternatives to Apple’s own Weather; Fantastical instead of Calendar; Firefox instead of Safari, and so on. But while Apple was happy to let you install your chosen alternatives, it kept its own apps as the default – so if you clicked a link, it’d open in Safari; if you clicked an ‘email us’ button, it’d launch Mail . That’s changed in iOS 14 and iPadOS 14. Simple, not Siri It’s only changed a little bit, though. For now, you can only change the defaults for two kinds of app: your web browser and your email…

While fdisk can’t be used to resize existing partitions, you can modify partitions with the parted utility. The process isn’t without risk however, so make sure you have a complete backup of all your data, and more importantly, very good reason to mess about with nonempty partitions. A read-through of the manual can’t hurt, either. To begin, you’ll have to start parted much the same way as fdisk. Before anything else, change the default unit for describing the start, end and size of partitions to MiB by pressing ‘u’ and then typing MiB when prompted to specify the unit. Depending on your disk and partition size, you can also opt for GiB as the unit. Before you can expand, or shrink a partition, it must first be removed from the…

The Amstrad CPC was a darling of Europe and Australia, and a key player in the 8-bit gaming world. A product of Lord Alan Sugar, this machine was designed to take the fight to the mighty Commodore 64 and British rivals such as the BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum. With a production run lasting into the mid-’90s, there is an enormous amount of software for any retro gamers seeking undiscovered gems. However, the machine was never launched in the US, meaning emulation is the only real option for Americans wanting some Amstrad action. So, come along as we explore the history of this overlooked machine, and provide instructions for emulating the Amstrad CPC in the easiest ways possible. A brief history When it came to the original CPC464, Sugar made…

Free | PC | rbdinteractive.itch.io This is a PS1-styled horror game that features choreographed 3D cutscenes, a well-produced soundtrack, and a blocky, warped world dripping with rural atmosphere. All very impressive circa 1995, and really rather impressive again in 2020, when such nostalgia is usually inconsistent, or puddle-deep. You play as an archaeologist dispatched to the Faroe Islands to survey a building site. The owner of the farmhouse you’re staying at quickly fills you in on a local legend: of the huldufólk, or hidden folk, who are said to dwell on the islands, and who, he warns, are best left alone. Before long, you arrive at the building site. You take a few spooky pictures, and then you head for an ominous cave. Before you know it the game is…

$29 | PC, PS4, XB1, Switch, Stadia | elhijogame.com In El Hijo, the collectibles are orphaned children. The protagonist, a six-year-old unnamed boy, walks up to them and expands their world a little bit; maybe he teaches them to juggle, or how to fold a paper aeroplane. Those formerly despondent kids sparkle with joy, as a pop-up box informs the player that, thus far, they’ve ‘inspired’ one out of the four children in the level. Broadly speaking, El Hijo is a stealth game. The boy explores 29 levels following a simple, wordless narrative about reconnecting with his mother after the family farm is razed by bandits. That journey will take you through stately monasteries, arid desert wastelands, and saloon shootouts. There is danger around every corner, and calamity can only…

Free | PC, Mac, Linux | powerhoof.itch.io This bizarre adventure game plays out like a half-remembered episode of He-Man, if it had been recreated by the folks behind Rick and Morty. You’re the heroic Prince Xandar – a gullible beefcake – but also his crotchety wizard pal Maldrek, on whom he rides through space on a sort of intergalactic piggyback. It’s a very 1980s sci-fi story: luridly colourful, visually arresting, and deeply, deeply silly. After crashlanding on a planet, you have to get to the bottom of some disappearances, using the magical powers at Xandar and Maldrek’s disposal. You’ll get a few fun responses as you try these actions out in the world, and they’re used in a handful of involving puzzles before you reach the ridiculous conclusion. The magic…

Dutch inquiry finds hacker just guessed Trump’s simple Twitter password It doesn’t take a genius to guess maga2020! An inquiry by Dutch prosecutors into the hacking of Trump’s Twitter account on October 16th 2020 uncovered that Victor Gevers simply guessed the former president’s top secret password: maga2020! While hacking is a criminal offence in the Netherlands, Grevers’ public disclosure of the hack means he was able to avoid prosecution under an ’ethical hacker’ clause, a loophole that promotes better security protocols in a similar way to bug bounties. Despite the inquiry, both Washington and Twitter denied that Trump’s Twitter account was ever compromised. Trump also, ironically, claimed in a public address on October 20th that “Nobody gets hacked. To get hacked you need somebody with an IQ of 197 and…

APC is Australia’s oldest consumer technology magazine – having been consistently in print for forty years, since our first issue way back in May 1980 – and we take that heritage and responsibility very seriously. While our focus is obviously on the personal computer the very definition of the PC has changed and shifted markedly since the early 1980s. As such, we touch on many other areas of tech, too, from smartphones and apps to peripherals, accessories, and beyond. We have two goals: to find the best modern tech and to help you make the most of it. We’re also an open church in terms of platforms. We know most people aren’t wed to a single brand’s products and use a variety of devices. And, like you, APC’s journalists want…

Recently, Nvidia brought some confusion to those shopping for the best gaming monitors when it quietly changed the G-Sync Ultimate requirements listed on its website. In January, Nvidia changed the description, saying that G-Sync Ultimate monitors have “the top Nvidia G-Sync processors to deliver the very best gaming experience, including lifelike HDR.” But what exactly does “lifelike HDR” mean? An Nvidia representative since confirmed that G-Sync Ultimate monitors require: • Refresh rates greater than or equal to 144 Hz • Variable LCD overdrive • Optimised latency for gaming • Factory-calibrated accurate SDR (sRGB) and HDR colour (P3) gamut support • Best-in-class HDR support • Best-in-class image quality…

Another Intel lifer is returning to the fold following the announcement of Pat Gelsinger’s appointment as CEO. Glenn Hinton, lead architecture of the Intel Nehalem architecture, is stepping out of retirement to return to the company for an “exciting high-performance CPU project.” Hinton announced his return on LinkedIn, citing Pat Gelsinger’s return as Intel CEO in February as the final push to return to Intel after three years in retirement and having been considering the new role since November. Oh, and the promise of an upcoming CPU project from the chip company that appeals to Hinton’s sensibilities. “If it wasn’t a fun project I wouldn’t have come back,” Hinton goes on to reply to a comment. As lead architect for the Nehalem CPUs during a 35-year stint at Intel, Hinton…

Gigabyte once kept its Aorus branding for its most elite gaming devices, but that hasn’t been the case for a couple of years and the Aero 17 HDR YC is a clear example of this. This $5,999 non-Aorus machine is as top of the line as they come, featuring a Nvidia RTX 3080 Max-Q GPU and a 10th Gen Core i9 CPU from Intel. We were pretty surprised to see an RTX 3080 in a laptop, not just because it’s the first 30 series I’ve had my hands on, but also because of the sheer incomprehensibility of being able to fit a generally 1.5kg desktop GPU in a 2.5kg laptop. Of course the Aero 17 HDR YC doesn’t have a full desktop graphics card in it, since the Max-Q 3080…

Here’s a premium gaming screen that packs in every important new and high-end technology. Its versatility extends beyond gaming, thanks to the crisp 3840 x 1600 resolution – with the relatively rare in an ultrawide 1600 vertical res making all the difference to small text readability, and the amount of area you have to work (and play!) with. It’s similar in spec to the Acer Predator X38 we reviewed back in APC 484 (September 2020), which is also selling for around the same price, and, if it’s not using the same panel, it sure is extremely close in its performance. The screen is able to run at very high brightness, and for most of the testing I did over a two month period I didn’t need to raise it higher…

Photoshop Elements has always been considered a cutdown version of the full version of Adobe Photoshop. For many years, this was a fair description (especially when Elements lacked key tools such as layer masks.) However, with the release of Elements 2021, the app is less of a cut-down version – it’s more of a streamlined one. The various Guided Edit modes give you easy access to the key tools required to help fix particular picture problems. Thanks to features such as Adobe Sensei AI it also enables you to give your shots a creative makeover without having years of experience with the full version of Photoshop. Elements also boasts unique tools of its own, such as the impressive new Moving Photos effect (which we’ll look at in due course). Perfect…

The world is full of people shouting and clamouring for the latest thing. So it’s always reassuring to discover places where things still move slowly. Nowhere is this more true than Trisquel, the freedom (as in speechdom) -loving, Ubuntu-based distro endorsed by the Free Software Foundation. Trisquel used to push out one release a year (based on the corresponding Ubuntu LTS release), but it’s been over 18 months since the previous release. And that one took over three years to come into fruition. This new release is based on Ubuntu 18.04, the second-to-last LTS release, which is supported until 2023. Trisquel replaces Ubuntu’s kernel with Linux-libre, which has had all the proprietary firmware blobs (and any drivers that reference them) removed. Further up the stack, things have been purified, too.…

Amiga Workbench had two ways of navigating between desktops. The first was with keyboard shortcuts, where you could drop back to the main workbench and launch more apps. But it was the second method that is truly uncanny. Amigas could “screen drag” by holding down the Amiga button while clicking and dragging the mouse. Whatever screen was on display would be pulled down to reveal whatever desktop or app was behind it. A button called a “depth gadget” could put desktops or apps ahead or behind each other. This looks cool now, but was absolute witchcraft in the 80s, and looks amazing when multi-tasking with full-screen video. And, due to a hardware quirk, the Amiga didn’t care what resolution each app used, and could switch between them at will –…

01 DOWNLOAD Visit https://bit.ly/MPCjanHAB and download the image. It’s about 500MB, but compressed. You’ll need to decompress it with xz -d openhab-core18-pi.img.xz if you’re going to write it out manually with dd in the next step, but the official Raspberry Pi Imager program can do this for you. 02 WRITE THE IMAGE TO SD CARD At least a 4GB card will be required, and possibly more if you go all out with extensions. On a Debian-based distro (including Ubuntu) you can download the Pi Imager from https://downloads. raspberrypi.org/imager and install it with dpkg -i or graphically with Gdebi. Use this to write out the image file. 03 OOT YOUR PI Connect a monitor, keyboard, and network cable (optional) to your Pi, insert the freshly minted card, and fire it up.…

$4,149 | tinyurl.com/APC491PLE PLE Raven Aiming at top performance figures without breaking the bank, this system strikes a good balance. The CPU by itself isn’t the best deal around for gamers, but it’s really as high as you need to look in AMD’s product stack. Dropped into a lovely motherboard and cooled with a triple fan AIO solution, you’ll struggle to find a situation where the CPU is the bottleneck. The RX 6900 XT GPU trades blows with the RTX 3090 and 3080 and costs far less than the former. Perfect for non-ray traced gaming at high resolutions and frame rates. Memory is a touch slower than ideal, but ok. The 500GB 980 Pro SSD is an odd choice. For basically the same price, a 1TB 970 EVO drive would’ve…

There are many reasons why you may want to reinstall Windows on your PC. The most common is hardware change – a fresh installation will often run better than one that was previously installed on a different PC, so if you’re swapping out motherboards and CPUs, it’s worth doing it to squeeze the maximum performance out of your new hardware. Then there are reasons of maintenance: Perhaps something has gone wrong deep inside the operating system, a botched driver installation or damage from some malicious software affecting how your PC runs. Maybe Windows is just unbearably slow, and you don’t know why. All of these are good reasons to reinstall Windows, and it’s a quick and easy process these days. And while a complete reinstall is your nuclear option, wiping…

The menu bar at the top of the Mac screen has been a fixture of the macOS for decades. The handy bar provides a convenient set of tools in the top-right corner of the screen, allowing you to quickly access and control key features on your Mac, such as Wi-Fi settings, Bluetooth and sound. But, over the years, that little corner of the menu bar has become rather cluttered, so Big Sur’s introduction of the new Control Centre – borrowed, of course, from the iPhone and iPad – represents one of the biggest changes to the Mac’s interface in years. By default, there’s a fixed set of nine specific features that will always be visible in Control Centre. This means that you can now tidy up the menu bar by…

Apple has brought a long-overdue revamp to its mobile devices in the form of iOS 14. For the first time, you no longer have to put up with overflowing apps and countless sheets to flick through just to find the app you want – everything can be stored in the App Library instead. And if you fancy having the latest weather and news stories greet you when you unlock your phone, you can thanks to the introduction of widgets. But you do not have to stop with plain old widgets – Apple has added more depth in the form of Smart Stacks. These work a bit like widget folders, with each Smart Stack containing multiple widgets that you can scroll through until you find the one you need. Even better,…

01 FIND THE ALTERNATIVE The App Store is packed with alternatives to Apple’s default email and web browsing apps, so the first step is to choose the one you want. The App Store provides some good round-ups of apps so that’s a good place to start. 02 CHANGE YOUR EMAIL APP Once you’ve set up the email app and connected it to your email account(s), the next step is to go into the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. Scroll down until you see the name of the new email app and tap on it. 03 CHANGE THE DEFAULT In the app’s Settings page, you should now see an option that says Default Mail App. If you haven’t already changed it, it’ll be set to Mail. Tap on this…

1. THREE LINES Click here to get to all the options for the operating system. Without the menu open, the camera feeds completely fill the interface. 2. CAMERA MENU Drop this menu down to find options to add a camera, select an existing one, or use the trashcan button to delete one of the cameras. 3. ID NUMBER This is the ID of your motionEyeOS installation. Look out for it on the local network, as it will designate your Samba share. 4. CAMERA SETTINGS The most important menu. Change the camera’s resolution and frame rate here, and flip the video over if the camera’s been installed upside down. 5. OTHER SETTINGS There are so many, we could be here all week. The key to a successful installation is correct configuration…

$29 | PC, PS4, XB1, 3DS, Mac | omori-game.com The RPGmaker scene has dwindled over the years, making Omori feel like the ghost of a bygone era. But even though seeing the game’s blocky visuals is like a blast from the past, this psychological RPG has all the makings of being a modern cult classic. Omori follows the childhood antics of a group of kids during the summer break. The game is split into two realms: the dream world, where the group is searching for their missing friend, and the real world, where their regular lives play out. Led by a stone-faced boy called Omori, the group has light-hearted adventures, but there’s an undercurrent of childhood trauma yet to be confronted. When these horror elements reveal their distorted heads it’s…

$95 | PC, PS4/5, XBS/X | callofduty.com Despite welcome adjustments to Create-a-Class and a fun (if brief) campaign, Call of Duty has been a lot better before. In fact, a better Call of Duty game released last year – the free-to-play battle royale madness of Call of Duty: Warzone. Warzone’s longevity makes Cold War a harder sell. There is no longer a single de facto CoD. As of December, Activision has unified progression across Warzone and Cold War with shared ranks, weapons, battle passes, and cosmetics. A rank gained in one will automatically carry into the other. Both games have prominent main menu buttons that launch into the other, seamlessly bringing your party along as well. By merging into a strange FPS homunculus, Call of Duty is, in its own…