Tabla de contenidos para August 2022 en APC

In this issue of APC you’ll find a very useful guide to making Windows 11 a bit better. For anyone that’s recently upgraded, we understand some aspects of the new OS came as a rude shock. There’s much to be loved about Windows 10 (and 7 – it’s still good!), and with our guide it’s easy (and a bit of fun) to tweak away and get 11 just-right. Everyone loves a great read, and I hope you enjoy our AMD history feature. It’s an incredible story and it’s an ongoing and fascinating tale that’s still unfolding. We’ve all been witness to AMD’s Ryzen miracle, and how it not only brought supreme multi-core performance to the PC – but also how that chip shook up the industry and forced Intel to…

While current Google employee Blake Lemoine may describe himself as a priest, an ex-convict and an AI researcher, he did not become world renowned overnight by being the butt of a ‘three people walk into a bar’ joke. No, his plight is actually no laughing matter – depending on who you ask. In July, Mr Lemoine was put on administrative leave from his position at Alphabet after expressing to a number of Google executives that its Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) had achieved sentience. This alone was not exactly grounds for a forced leave of absence, however Lemoine was so convinced that LaMDA was self-aware that he published his interactions with it in a public Medium blog post that broke the confidentiality rules of his employment contract with Google.…

“I’m reminded of the comment made by the CEO of Apple, Tim Cook, in an interview nearly a decade ago: “When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI.”” As I crash into my 58th year on this planet, I am becoming more aware of the physical frailties of getting old. I am not getting old, of course. 60 is the new 40, according to my friends. They are too kind. But we should be aware that the old viewpoint that OAPs don’t use technology is going to come to a crashing halt soon. Those of us marching towards retirement are quite technology aware, and the old excuses don’t wash. The unfortunate reality is that a lot of mainstream IT products are…

1 CORSAIR DARK CORE RGB PRO SE Corsair’s wireless mouse can also charge itself using a mouse mat, in this case, the Corsair MM1000. But it gets extra points because it’s also Qi-compatible, meaning that if you don’t want to buy a special mouse mat, you can just buy a cheap wireless charger or use the one you probably already own. The Dark Core RGB Pro SE looks great, has a brilliant 18,000dpi sensor and Bluetooth connectivity, making it the ultimate feature-packed mouse. $140, www.corsair.com 2 LOGITECH G502 LIGHTSPEED WIRELESS This is the ultimate wireless mouse flex – a mouse that charges itself while you’re using it. You need the Logitech G Powerplay Wireless Charging Mat ($149), but you’ll never have to worry about a dead mouse again. The G502…

REVIEWS THE HOTTEST GEAR LABS TESTEDTABLET $999 | www.lenovo.com Lenovo has some of the best Android tablets available today. The Tab P12 Pro is a good one, but it falls short of greatness, as an awkward middle child between the company’s premium and mid-range efforts. If you close your eyes and picture your average tablet, the image that pops up probably would look pretty similar to what the Lenovo Tab P12 Pro actually looks like. Compared to some other tablets currently on the market, this Lenovo has a fairly wide screen. Its dimensions are 285.6 x 184.5 x 5.6mm (yes, it’s really thin) and it weighs 565g. There’s a fingerprint scanner and volume rocker, and also a USB-C port – but no 3.5mm headphone jack, which we’d have liked to…

$752 | asus.com/au It’s been a few years since we tested out one of Asus’s ZenScreen Go portable monitors, and while the 15.6-inch screen size, Full HD display resolution and 7800mAh battery life haven’t changed between generations, there’s actually quite a few technological improvements behind the scenes. The most significant is the addition of universal wireless display technology. While it might seem like you’ve been able to cast for aeons, all the different technologies can be expensive and it’s a lot of work to configure all of them in the one device. We’ve seen plenty of projectors and portable displays opt for just iOS and MacOS or Android and Windows, whereas here you can use and easily swap between whatever device is on hand. We tested the wireless connection using…

$69 | nzxt.com At first glance, the mouse is in keeping with the design of the Function keyboard (opposite page). Finished in a matte material, it could pass in a more conventional office setting. Though an ambidextrous design, it still favours right-handed users, as there are two programmable side buttons on the left side for right-handed users’ thumbs. One thing to mention here is that the mouse has quite a low profile and there isn’t much room to rest your thumb on the side of the mouse without hitting these buttons. It’s unlikely that you’ll accidentally actuate them, but for comfort purposes, it’s not ideal. "It’s in the performance where the Lift is really elevated to a higher plane. " On the other hand, the mouse is generally a comfortable…

Windows | FREE | www.cybertronsoft.com Like CCleaner, but without that program’s oft-reported problems, Privacy Eraser frees up space on your hard drive and protects your privacy by deleting details of your Windows and web activities. At first, we were slightly sceptical of its generic name and its interface’s similarity to dubious IObit products. We also assumed that many features would be restricted to the Pro version, which costs US$19.95 a year. Happily, our fears were unfounded and Privacy Eraser Free lacks only three options from the paid-for version: automatic updates, technical support and secure overwriting of deleted data. The program is very easy to use: simply click the big Scan button on the home screen to detect junk files on your PC and discover how much space you can recover…

Make a note of the date, 22nd February 2022. That was the day AMD’s market capitalisation – essentially, its overall value as a company – surpassed Intel’s for the first time. It was nothing less than a spectacular reversal in fortunes for a company that had been on the very brink just a few years earlier. Forget wondering whether AMD can even survive, it is now an entirely legitimate question to ask whether AMD can overturn Intel’s dominance of the PC. Truly, AMD has become the pretender to Intel’s throne. Of course, stock prices don’t tell you everything about a company’s real-world proportions. Intel still has a 75 percent market share for PC processors and generates massively more revenue and profit than AMD. But the notion of AMD as the…

It’s well known that AMD struggled in the mid-2010s. But just how bad did the cash crisis get? As the 2000s came to a close, AMD’s business was turning sour. Profits of US$360 million in 2010 and US$491 million in 2011 flipped into a monumental loss of US$1.18 billion in 2012. In 2013, the bleeding subsided somewhat with a loss of US$83 million, only for the losses to balloon once again to US$403 million in 2014, US$660 million in 2015, and US$497 million in 2016. That’s a total of US$2.8 billion leaving the building over the course of six years. As for how close AMD came to folding, its cash balance of US$1.9 billion at the end of 2011 had shrunk to just US$716 million by mid-2016. Clearly, that could…

We all use servers daily. Whether we’re syncing files, streaming music or working in web apps, we rely on remote processing and centralised data storage. Indeed, much of the time we’re working with data that never touches our local machines. But a server that’s owned and operated by someone else isn’t always the best option. Suppliers build their infrastructure to service the needs of their business – so unless your needs just happen to coincide with their most efficient way of making money, the services you use won’t be perfectly tailored to your requirements. There is an alternative: run your own server at home. The idea may seem outdated – the Windows Home Server platform came and went many years ago. But it’s as practical as ever to repurpose an…

Pibrella is an awesome little board. We first came across it in 2014 while delivering a training course and since then we’ve used it with hundreds of learners. This $25 board may be eight years old, but it’s still a great way to get to grips with electronics on the Raspberry Pi. In this tutorial we’ll learn a little about this board, and create a reaction game to prove who’s the fastest of them all! Because Pibrella was designed for the original 26-pin GPIO Raspberry Pi it has to connect to the first 26 GPIO pins of any Pi. The first 26 pins are from the micro SD card. With the Raspberry Pi powered off, connect Pibrella so that it fits directly on top of the Pi. No part of…

Although the Macintosh II is rarely mentioned in retro computing circles, it introduced monumental changes, bringing colour graphics, a shift towards a 32-bit architecture, and multi-monitor support. For the retro enthusiast, the Macintosh II line has a sizeable library of excellent applications and multimedia, industry-leading desktop publishing software, as well as cult favourites in gaming and “edutainment”. Development When the original Macintosh launched in 1984, despite its elegant styling and interface, the computing world was disappointed to find few opportunities for hardware expansion, and graphics only in black and white. In 1985, engineers Michael Dhuey and Brian Berkeley began work on a sequel, without the permission or knowledge of Steve Jobs, who led the Macintosh division at the time. Against Jobs’ wishes, this new machine would feature colour graphics, and…

Building your own PC in 2022 can be intimidating, but at least it’s easy to identify the parts involved. Not so for the Antikythera mechanism: scientists have been trying to recreate and understand the world’s first analogue computer for the best part of 120 years. But since this curious device is over two millennia old, in bits and has two-thirds of the pieces missing, it’s no wonder it’s puzzled them for so long. The Antikythera mechanism could have come straight out of an Indiana Jones film. Discovered in 1900 by Captain Dimitrios Kontos and his crew of divers near the tiny island of Antikythera, its main surprise is its sophistication. There is simply nothing else like it from the ancient world. Among the astounded researchers is Professor Tony Freeth, of…

The PCI-SIG Developers Conference 2022 is over, and the standards committee behind the ubiquitous PCIe interface announced that the PCIe 7.0 specification is targeted for release to its members in 2025 with a data rate up to 128GT/s. That equates to 512GB/s of bi-directional throughput via a 16-lane (x16) connection, before encoding overhead. As a reminder, the PCI-SIG is the consortium behind the PCIe interface, an open industry standard comprised of over 900 member companies. As we saw with the jump to PCIe 4.0 and 5.0, the length of PCIe traces will again shorten due to the faster signalling rates. As a result, motherboards will need more retimers and thicker PCBs comprised of higher-quality materials than we saw with prior generations of the interface, and PCIe 7.0 support will result…

Apple announced its Apple Silicon M2 processors earlier in June, saying that the new second-gen chips offer up to 18 percent more performance in unspecified multi-threaded CPU-focused tasks, while the revamped 10-core GPU offers up to 35 percent more performance in unspecified graphics workloads. Apple also bumped maximum memory capacity up to 25GB of LPDDR5, and the next-gen 16-core neural engine is 43 percent faster than its predecessor and can process up to 15.8 trillion operations per second. The new M2 chips come fabbed on a second-generation 5nm process, and have 20 billion transistors. The first M2 processors will debut in the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro, which APC will be reviewing soon. The M2 processors come with up to eight CPU cores, the same as their predecessors, with…

The ups and downs of the crypto market have been well documented. Though Bitcoin is the crypto that all the others follow, I will focus on Ethereum as it’s closely linked to the GPU market. From its high of over AU$2,900 in the last week of May to a low of under $1,300 on the 19th of June, Eth took an absolute hammering. In fact, Eth is down over 75 percent from its all time high of more than $6,600 in November of 2021. It means that miners are desperate to dump their used GPUs. Sites like eBay have been flooded with bulk GPU sales. It’s my opinion that GPU mining is unlikely to make a large-scale return. And the reason? Application Specific Integrated Circuits, or ASICs. Unlike graphics cards,…

LASTPASS | LastPass Free $free, LastPass Premium US$36/year, LastPass Families US$48/year | www.lastpass.com BITWARDEN | Bitwarden Free $free, Bitwarden Premium US$10/year, Bitwarden Families US$40/year | www.bitwarden.com While the world’s leading technology companies are finally vowing to put an end to passwords by using a smartphone-based PIN, fingerprint, or face unlock, passwords remain essential for now. Google Chrome and Windows Credential Manager will perform the basics of remembering your passwords and suggesting secure logins, but that quickly becomes a problem if you frequently switch platforms or software. If you use more than one device, as most people do, then a password manager is the answer, as it works across platforms and syncs between devices. The result is that you never have to remember a password again, other than the one you…

$2,099 | au.msi.com If you’re not an architect or an in-demand graphic designer, then justifying the latest Surface Studio from Microsoft might be a stretch, but all all-in-ones don’t have to break the bank. These sleek, clutter-free computers can be really affordable and make a lot of sense for a whole range of workflows. Take the Modern AM242P from MSI for example. This unit is exclusively sold at JB Hi-Fi for either $1,899 or $2,099 depending on whether you chose an 11th Gen Intel i5 or i7 model. Both these units come with a 23.8-inch Full HD IPS display, a 2TB HDD and 16GB of RAM, but the entry model gets a 256GB SSD while the latter gets a slightly bigger speedy internal SSD at 512GB. While this unit is…

$1,699 | www.benq.com Back in issue 505 we reviewed BenQ’s impressive EX3210R curved, 31.5-inch, UHD gaming monitor that generally succeeded at being all things to everyone. Now, here’s the flat, similar-sized EX3210U, which costs almost double. What gives? Firstly, the half-inch wider IPS screen ups the 2K resolution to a full, 4K, 3,840 x 2,160. There’s also a built-in noise-cancelling microphone, which generally functions well, but is slightly muddier than most, modern laptops. The small, responsive remote returns to make accessing the numerous settings and picture quality tweaks relatively simple… which is just as well… In terms of performance, our PC displayed a crisp and clear Windows Desktop although colours were rather washed out and smaller fonts could exhibit coloured fringing. The latter was often exacerbated when the display options…

$399 | www.razer.com The Razer Leviathan V2 brings a much needed refresh with one of the best computer audio experiences you’re going to find right now, and it’s not even really close. And while not exactly cheap, the Leviathan V2 offers an incredible soundscape at a reasonable price point, easily making it one of the best computer speakers you can buy right now. It’s not without its faults though, and the loss of 3.5mm and optical input pretty much consigns the Leviathan V2 to your PC for good, though it does have Bluetooth connectivity as well so you still have some flexibility. The THX Spatial Audio is a welcome feature; this goes beyond basic stereo to create a much more surround sound-like experience. The bass response from both the subwoofer…

SOFTWARE APPS FOR ALL YOUR PLATFORMS macOS 10.14 or later | US$77 | rogueamoeba.com Audio Hijack is a clever app that can intercept and record any audio playing on your Mac, be it from a connected microphone, a Skype call, a video playing in Safari or anywhere else. A simple use for it would be to record a conference call but you could also record a multi-mic podcast, or digitise and clean up your vinyl collection. It records directly to a file and doesn’t have any editing tools though the developer makes Fission, which does, and the two can be bought together at a discount. You start with a Session, and numerous templates are provided for common tasks. Your Grid contains Blocks which represent inputs, outputs and processors but it’s…

Publishing a personal website was once a costly and complicated business. Not any longer. User-friendly platforms such as WordPress and Wix let you publish online for free, and you might not even need to pay for web hosting. They give you everything you need to design and populate your site, maintain it and interact with visitors. It’s estimated that nearly half a billion websites are built on WordPress, while upwards of 200 million people use Wix. But which one should you choose? It’s not a case of one being better than the other. They’re fundamentally different products, approaching the task from different directions. More apt would be to look at the various jobs that a personal website publisher would need to undertake, to see how each handles them in turn.…

NAS upgrade query I’m looking at buying or building a NAS. In the past, I set up and used WD Reds in a five-disk Synology (DS1518+), configured in a Synology RAID setup. I was happy, but that was six years ago, and the technology has changed a lot. It would be great if you could do a custom NAS build or a comparison shootout between prebuilt units – actually, both would be ideal. I need a solution that provides scalability, reliability, and easy usability, especially for unskilled users. This would be for personal data storage and backup and not for an enterprise application, however, I would still desire good throughput speeds. Would spinning disks still be the way to go? SATA SSDs? Or is it possible to make an ultra-small…

IT WILL TAKE 5 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to capture images and videos of your Mac’s screen YOU’LL NEED macOS 12 or later Every now and then, you’ll probably need to take a screenshot or video recording of your Mac’s screen. Rather than take a blurry photo using your iPhone, you can use the built-in tools in macOS to get a crisp, clean capture instead. You might know that pressing command-up-3 will grab a screenshot of your entire Mac screen. But there are more options, and much more power baked into macOS that enable you to save what you want with minimal fuss. For instance, you can draw a selection box on your screen, then move it around to the perfect position before firing the shutter. You can save…

The creation of the cavity magnetron in February 1940 couldn’t prevent the fall of France in June and Australian scientist Mark Oliphant, leading the team in England developing the magnetron, sent his family home to Australia. Yet throughout 1941, Japan and the U.S. remained at loggerheads over oil and the Japanese invasion of China. On December 7, Japanese forces attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbour and the following day, Australia joined a coalition of nations, including the U.S. and U.K., in declaring war on Japan. War was set to transform Australian science and technology. "Australia was not only a recognised leader in valve technology, we were also pioneering new research in radio-direction and ranging or ‘radar.’" More made in Australia Fears that Australia could be cut off from…

$47.95 | PC | focus-entmt.com Hardspace: Shipbreaker has come a long way since entering Early Access, but the core shipbreaking has been consistently satisfying since day one. Here’s the deal: every morning you begin a shift, picking a new ship to crack or continuing one from the day prior. Each ship is built like, well, a ship – airlocks, engines, reactors, and crew compartments layered inside a structural frame and layers of hull panelling to protect them from the elements. Your first ships are simple enough. Everything can be sorted into three piles – the processor for stuff your employer Lynx wants recycled (usually hull panels), a barge for stuff it wants reused (computers, engines, furniture), and a furnace for scraps it wants rid of. Each piece properly scrapped adds…

APC REPORTS ON THE UNUSUAL SIDE OF TECH NEWSCHIP CHAT The actor known mostly for his role as the spawn of Dr. Evil and the writer of the Robot Chicken series, was set to release the trailer for a new TV show based on one of the Bored Ape Yacht Club characters he bought, when the premium NFT was ‘kidnapped’ in a phishing scam. Seth now faced plummeting NFT values along with a bomb underneath a new TV show. The actual ownership of the Bored Ape copyright and NFT would be transferred with the sale of the token, but it’s an untested legal theory that could’ve created royalty issues, so Green purchased the Ape back for 165 Ether (about US$300K at the time) from a third party that bought the…

All is not well in crypto land. Bitcoin is the lowest it’s been in two years, and at the time of writing continues to drop. The CEO of Coinbase has warned of a crypto winter and laid off 1,100 staff. The latest news is that the days of profitably mining Ethereum with GPUs could be behind us now as well, depending on where you live and how much you pay for electricity. Cryptoslate has highlighted the fact that the falling Ethereum price, combined with increasing energy prices, has made it unprofitable to mine the cryptocurrency for the first time since 2020. Basically, you simply won’t make money at the current price of Ethereum given the price of electricity. To prove the point, they use an overclocked Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090…

In January 2022, a company called Savvy Gaming Group purchased ESL – the most recognised brand in global esports – for US$1 billion. In June 2022, Savvy purchased an 8.1 percent stake in Embracer Group, a purchase that was also valued at around the $1 billion mark. Embracer is the rapidly growing Scandinavian holding company that owns publishers like THQ Nordic and Gearbox Software. It recently purchased western IP from Square Enix including Tomb Raider and Deus Ex. Savvy Gaming Group is based in Saudi Arabia and is funded by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, which in 2022 has also purchased a 5.01 percent stake in Nintendo. It has also purchased minor stakes in Nexon – a Japanese publisher responsible for MapleStory – and Capcom. The Saudi Crown Prince…

When AMD started working on the Zen 4 architecture, switching to a DDR5-exclusive memory controller probably seemed like a sensible choice. Now, after the supply chain disruptions of the past two years, requiring DDR5 memory for socket AM5 could prove a serious liability. Just like Intel was the first to support DDR3 and DDR4 memory, Intel started supporting DDR5 and LPDDR5 with Alder Lake in late 2021. In theory, the transition to DDR5 should be underway by the fall, with improving supply and decreasing prices. Unfortunately, things haven’t gone quite according to plan. Unlike DDR4 and earlier variants, DDR5 makes a big change by moving the voltage regulation and power management integrated circuits (PMICs) onto the DIMM modules. This helps DDR5 reach higher speeds but also increases the cost by…

1 GOPRO HERO10 BLACK BONES Fort the GoPro enthusiast that takes to the sky. $749.95 | gopro.com/en/au Weighing in at just 54 grams, GoPro’s latest Hero 10 Black Bones is about a third the weight of the regular, already very light, Hero 10 Black. Now GoPro wasn’t just padding its flagship camera with lead weights, so there’s a fair bit that’s been ditched in this bare Bones edition. The most notable omission is the battery, since the camera can now be powered by your custom drone via leads, but there’s also a heap of audio and features that have been jettisoned. The camera does keep its lens, 5K image sensor, GP2 Processor and HyperSmooth 4.0 tech, however. Making it a pretty impressive FPV drone camera. 2…

Asus’ Intel-based premium Ultraportable gets a decent processor rejig, but is it worth the additional cost? $4,499 | rog.asus.com/au The last couple of Zephyrus Ultraportable gaming laptops we’ve seen from Asus have been built around AMD CPUs, so it’s interesting to see that the 2022 ROG Zephyrus M16 has an Intel processor kicking things off. There’s a major difference in Intel’s 12th gen, H-series CPUs since they have 14 cores, rather than the eight cores you see on the 11th generation H-series processors. The array is split into eight efficiency cores and six high performance cores, which might seem like an exchange that’d give you similar results, but for many general work tasks it actually dramatically improves the overall performance and helps reduce the device’s battery drain under less intensive…

$648 | www.fujitsu.com/global It’s been a while since we’ve tested a Fujitsu monitor, so we were pleased when the pluckily named Display P2410 TS Cam turned up. Designated for SOHO and small enterprise, it offers some evolutions of familiar features plus a few new bells and whistles to make employees more productive and more comfortable. So, will organisations be buying it by the crate? Setting up the 24-inch monitor is simple thanks to the should-be-mandated-by-law, three-step, tool-less design, which sees the stand snap effortlessly into the screen and the base connect via a single screw. The latter has a small, round footprint to both reduce desktop real-estate requirements and facilitate multi-monitor tiling. Inserting the (potentially many cables) is relatively simple thanks to 90-degree rotation plus generous 15cm height adjustment, 345-degree…

$159 | nzxt.com If compact peripherals appeal to you then this MiniTKL form should be right up your street. A standard TKL board is usually compact, but Nzxt’s MiniTKL format fits those same features into an even smaller shell. It essentially gets rid of the empty spacing around the TKL board and compresses all the keys together. It’s not quite as small as some 60 percent boards, but is noticeably different from regular TKL keyboards. "It’s a well-made keyboard, but there are better alternatives on the market." There are no sharp unusual shapes or gamer-inspired designs here, but that’s not a bad thing. Although this keyboard reaches out to the gaming market, it could easily fit into an office-based or productivity environment. The minimal design could be viewed as boring…

$229 | www.jbl.com.au The 610 is a headset with just enough gaming styling without being ridiculous. The headband and cans are generously padded, arms extend with a solid and satisfying ratchet sound, attachment cables are all nicely braided, and the pivot point that allow the cans to fold flat so they sit nicely if they’re hanging around your neck feels robust and unlikely to be rage-broken. The power switch is on the right can, while the boom mic, individual volume/mic controls plus USB-C and 3.5mm ports are crammed over on the left. It’s a good looking and functional headset. And, thankfully, super comfortable on the noggin as well. The headset connects via a 2.4G wireless USB dongle for your PC, PS4 and Ps5 and 3.5mm jack for anything else. Running…

The global economy is looking very shaky, and probably will be for some time to come. In a time of steep inflation, with household budgets taking a hammering, finding bang for your buck is more important than ever. During the pandemic, many of you would have come to realise that a smartphone or tablet just can’t perform the kinds of tasks that a PC can. Even a laptop might not be up to the task. Is the screen too small? Is it noisy? Is the keyboard uncomfortable to use? Laptops and desktops, while fundamentally similar, are really rather different devices. The humble PC is here to stay. With that in mind, we’ve gathered a range of PC systems that offer real value for money. Whether you need a system for…

So, who is the woman behind AMD’s revival? Born in 1969, Su came to the US from Taiwan aged just three. As a young girl, her statistician father and accountant mother schooled her in the way of numbers. By 10 years old, her engineering instincts had her rebuilding remote control cars and it seemed her destiny to enroll, as she did, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the fall of 1986 to study electrical engineering. From the very start, those student days set the tone for her future role at AMD. In her freshman year, she spent time as a research assistant helping with the manufacture of test silicon wafers for grad students. Part of her doctorate research at MIT involved some of the earliest work on silicon-on-insulator…

Any Windows PC will do. Windows 10 release 20H1 (or later) to use the Windows Terminal; otherwise, tips should all work in the old Command Prompt console. Once upon a time, Microsoft’s operating system, MS-DOS, was solely based on the Command Prompt. It remained a fundamental part of early versions of Windows but, these days, you have to dig deep to find it. Not only has it been supplanted by the more user-friendly Windows desktop, it’s not even the only command-line shell available. In addition to adding support for Linux, Microsoft has also unveiled PowerShell. Despite this, however, the Command Prompt remains a valuable tool in anyone’s armoury. For the purposes of this tutorial, we’re going to focus on using the Command Prompt in Windows itself to examine your system,…

A popular quote, often attributed to Albert Einstein, goes, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” Teddy Roosevelt was just as much a fan of reading, and is quoted to have said, “Now and then I am asked as to ‘what books a statesman should read,’ and my answer is, poetry and novels – including short stories under the head of novels.” With many seminal works now available in the public domain, and ebooks being churned out with incredible frequency, for all this reading to be done, one needs the right tools for the job. In addition to Epy, which is an incredibly robust ebook reader that support a multitude of popular…

Understanding PC performance can seem a bit like peering into a black box – you’ve got a gut feel for your PC’s speed, but you can’t quite see what’s really going on. That’s where the science of benchmarking comes in – it allows you to measure in a repeatable way where your device performance is up to. Benchmarks aren’t perfect, but having designed and used them in 20 years of lab work, I’m looking this month at how benchmarks work and how to get the most out of them. "No matter which benchmarks you use, the first step to improving your PC’s performance is always to know what it’s doing right now, what you call your ‘ground truth’ or ‘baseline’ performance." How do benchmarks work? Essentially, a benchmark measures the…