Table of contents for May-14 in PCWorld

Best Build ever? The keynote address that kicked off Microsoft’s Build 2014 developers conference may have lasted a punishing three hours, but the event was packed with product reveals aimed at consumers. The latest Windows 8 update (see page 14) is addressing many of that OS’s annoying foibles, and the long-term Windows roadmap looks even cooler. Microsoft also delivered important Windows Phone and app news. Here are the seven announcements we found most exciting. 1. Windows makes nice With the new Windows 8.1 Update, mouse-and-keyboard PC users can finally migrate to Microsoft’s current OS with confidence that they won’t plunge into a chasm of darkness and confusion. Nontouch PCs now boot straight to the desktop. A familiar taskbar appears on the modern Start screen. Live tiles on the Start screen…

IT’S NOT TOO far-fetched to believe that a billion people have viewed the “Bliss” image. After all, it defines the desktop view of Windows XP—the seminal operating system from 2001 that Microsoft is at last retiring. But you’d barely notice the real-world scene, located on a small Sonoma byway, if you stepped out of your car and gazed at it today. Driving anywhere in California’s wine country can be treacherous. Roads curve back and forth—well, drunkenly. Bicyclists are everywhere, and the next bend could hide an entrance to one of Napa’s or Sonoma’s finest wineries, a tour group jaywalking across the road, or even a couple exploring the area on horseback. In 1998, photographer Charles “Chuck” O’Rear was driving from Napa through Sonoma County on his way to Marin County.…

CONTENT FILTERS FREQUENTLY control what you see on the Web. Your school or office might block time-sucking sites. A music or movie service may limit its streams to certain countries. An ISP or a government might impose other filters. Travelers often find that they can’t access their digital content from their current location. You have ways to bypass such restrictions, but be warned: Network administrators don’t want you to circumvent their blockades. Use the following tools at your own risk. Change your apparent location with a VPN When you connect to a virtual private network (go.pcworld.com/usevpn), your computer creates a secure, encrypted tunnel to that network over the Internet. All of your network traffic transmits over the VPN, which alters how other entities “see” you online: If you’re in the…

I WAS A LITTLE HARD on Toshiba’s original Kirabook. Okay, I was a lot hard on it (go.pcworld.com/kirabook). In my view, the company’s engineers committed a few critical design mistakes that severely undermined the Ultrabook’s claim to luxury status. I’m happy to report that Toshiba has made amends—mostly. The second-generation Kirabook is better, more powerful, and less expensive. But it remains a few features short of being a masterpiece. Like the original, this Kirabook (go.pcworld.com/toshibakirabook) is an absolutely beautiful computer, housed in an elegant magnesium-alloy chassis. Its Retina-like, 13.3-inch, 2560-by-1440-pixel touchscreen display—boasting a pixel density of 221 pixels per inch—remains its primary attraction. The HDMI port on the old Kirabook was limited to delivering a maximum resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels to an external display. The new Kirabook has…

WITH ITS TWO optional accessories, the 10.8-inch Dell Venue 11 Pro tablet (go.pcworld.com/venue11pro) can transform into a small laptop or a diminutive all-in-one PC. Its two-day battery life with the optional keyboard dock is amazing. But I wish it had more memory and storage. Running on an Intel Atom Z3770 processor (Bay Trail class), it posted WorldBench 9 test scores that were only modestly higher than those of Asus’s Z3740-powered Transformer Book T100. Even so, with the Venue 11 Pro I felt like I wasn’t waiting as long for things to happen. I just had to see if it could run The Sims 3, my guilty pleasure. Most Atom tablets launch the game, but their frame rates are frustratingly slow, and background calculations bog down the gameplay even more. To…

WHEN APPLE ANNOUNCED that iWork would be bundled with new iOS devices and Macs, it seemed to slam the door on Microsoft’s Office ambitions for the iPad. How could Microsoft compete with free apps? The answer: Outdo iWork in form and function. Office for iPad (go.pcworld.com/officeipad) consists of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. (OneNote for the iPad was released in 2011.) Users can download each app, for free, from iTunes on an iPad running iOS 7.0 or above. And each app is free for viewing documents created elsewhere. To create or edit documents, however, you must subscribe to Office 365, either the Home Premium tier ($10 per month), the upcoming Personal option ($7 per month), or one of several business plans. Each Office 365 subscription includes at least one tablet subscription,…

CLOUD STORAGE SERVICES SUCH AS DROPBOX, GOOGLE DRIVE, AND SUGARSYNC ARE CONVENIENT, EFFICIENTƬAND NOTORIOUSLY INSECURE. Files are rarely encrypted, data transfer is typically not protected, and companies are usually able to access your files (even if they state that they won’t, they could be legally compelled to do so). Documents such as business plans or other sensitive files (say, a copy of your birth certificate) should be protected. You can use a special, extra-secure provider such as Wuala, Tresorit, or McAfee Personal Locker, or you can encrypt files yourself before uploading them to larger storage services, such as Dropbox. WUALA PRICE: 5GB free; plans start at 20GB for $4 a month PLATFORMS: Windows, Linux, iOS, Android Wuala (www.wuala.com) is a secure cloud storage service offered by storage company LaCie. This…

Q: I’M TRYING TO LEARN more about safe computing, and I have heard of the dangers of having one’s IP address revealed. How does this happen? What could I do to protect against this?—Melanie A: ALL INTERNET COMMUNICATIONS require Internet Protocol addresses. If a website you visited couldn’t see your IP address, it couldn’t send you pages, images, files, and so on. To learn how easily a site can see your IP address, visit What Is My IP Address (whatismyipaddress.com), or just type what’s my ip address in a Google search. Your IP address is easier to get than your telephone number. If you use a router, sites see only your router’s IP address, not your PC’s. The situation is not as scary as it sounds, however. Assuming that…

WITH THE FREE spring update for Windows 8.1, Microsoft is issuing more than tweaks and bug fixes. It’s issuing a message: “We’re listening. PC users, we want you back.” The Windows 8.1 Update (go.pcworld.com/win81update) is not perfect, but it atones for Windows 8’s most egregious sins, transforming the operating system into a desirable one even for devoted keyboard and mouse users. You have little reason not to migrate to Windows 8 if you’re hunting for a new PC now. Windows 8 encountered a fierce backlash largely because it pushed too hard. The changes were drastic—the Start menu was gone, you needed to use arcane commands to summon menus, live tiles were everywhere—and Microsoft all but rubbed your face in those changes. No more. Windows 8.1 began dialing back the finger-friendly…

THE PROCESS OF buying Bitcoins, the digital currency, has gone from taking four days to about four minutes, thanks to a Bitcoin ATM made by Las Vegas–based Robocoin. Cary Peters, president of Coinage, the operator of this machine, shows how the first Bitcoin ATM works. Using the ATM, you can buy Bitcoins by depositing cash or sell them from your digital wallet and then withdraw cash. The price of Bitcoin at the ATM in this video is based on the Bitstamp exchange (www.bitstamp.net). To comply with money laundering regulations, users must scan a government-issued ID. Still, the process should make Bitcoin purchases and withdrawals a lot easier. Robocoin has shipped about 25 Bitcoin ATMs around the globe. “We want to make sure that the users of our Robocoin ATM understand…

IF YOU WANT to work incognito at the coffee shop or blend discreetly into the boardroom, Acer’s squarish, matte-black TravelMate Pro (go.pcworld.com/acertravelmate) is the laptop to use. It doesn’t flip, fold, detach, or do any other fancy tricks. But the TravelMate Pro is light, rugged, secure, and fast. The TMP645-MG-9419 version of the TravelMate Pro that Acer sent us came outfitted with an Intel Core i7-4500u processor, 8GB of DDR3/1600 memory, a discrete AMD Radeon HD 8750M graphics processor, and a 256GB Toshiba solid-state drive. The laptop’s quick and smooth performance earned the Acer a score of 68 in our Notebook WorldBench 9 test suite. (Note that PCWorld’s WorldBench scale has changed, and the new reference point is a much faster laptop than was used to produce WorldBench 8 and…

THE NEW LENOVO ThinkPad X1 Carbon (go.pcworld.com/lenovox1) is thinner and lighter than the original (go.pworld.com/x1carbon), which was introduced in 2012 and updated with a touchscreen (go.pcworld.com/x1touch) in early 2013. Yet it has a higher-resolution display, more I/O ports, an improved docking-station option, and an entirely new “adaptive function key” row. Drawbacks include a somewhat altered keyboard layout and half-baked voice-and gesture-control features. The evaluation unit that we tested came configured with an Intel Core i5-4300U processor, 4GB of low-power DDR3/1600 memory, and a rather skimpy 180GB SSD. Its delightful 14-inch IPS touchscreen boasts a resolution of 2560 by 1440 pixels and a pixel density of 210 pixels per inch, which is just shy of the 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro with Retina display’s 2560-by-1800-pixel resolution and 220-ppi pixel density. The X1…

AMAZON¡¦S NEW SETƪTOP box, the Fire TV (go.pcworld.com/firetv), is the company¡¦s way of planting a flag in your living room. Media streaming is a crowded market¡Xyou have the Apple TV and Roku competing against the Chromecast and Plair, not to mention game consoles, networked DVRs, and smart TVs. But Amazon has packed the Fire TV with enough horsepower and features to put it in the lead. The Fire TV doesn’t come with an HDMI cable, but once you grab one of those, you hook the box to your TV, plug it into AC power, and follow the on-screen prompts. It connected to my Wi-Fi network without a hitch; it also has an ethernet port. Its optical-audio port is a nice bonus that lets you route the audio through a non-HDMI…

Since 2010, Google Apps for Enterprise has offered third-party app integration. In March, Google rolled out a similar add-ons store (go.pcworld.com/driveaddons) for the rest of us. The premise of Google Drive’s new offering is that thirdparty services can create add-ons that bring extra functionality to Google’s Web-based word processing (Docs) and spreadsheet (Sheets) apps. Microsoft launched its own Apps for Office program in 2013, and some third parties, such as Avery, have provided Office desktop integration via Microsoft’s add-in program for some time. For Google Docs users, the add-on system promises to introduce useful functions such as easy bibliography formatting, label creation, and integration with services such as UberConference and HelloFax. For Docs users, add-ons promise to introduce useful functions. Adding on If you’re already using Google Drive’s Docs and…

WINDOWS XP, MICROSOFT’ seventh major operating system and arguably the company’s most successful and beloved ever, has met its demise at its creators’ hands. It was 12 years and seven months old. For now, Windows XP will persist on literally millions of PCs, including those of customers who have either ignored, or were never aware of, Microsoft’s decision to pull the plug. Although the software may physically remain on PCs worldwide, Microsoft has stopped supporting it, leaving Windows XP vulnerable to any unpatched security holes that may arise going forward (go.pcworld.com/xpthreat). Windows XP’s funeral, a private ceremony held deep within Microsoft, was quiet. Microsoft urged customers to donate to Windows 8 in lieu of sending flowers. Office 2003 also passed away, to less fanfare. Windows XP gave way to three…

ALTHOUGH WINDOWS 8 drives most consumer PCs sold today, Windows 7 is by no means dead and gone. PC purists pining for the halcyon days of Microsoft’s previous operating system have several ways to acquire a machine running that OS. It just takes a little digging. Buy a prebuilt PC If you want a new, preassembled Windows 7 PC, turn to the Internet. Best Buy’s website, for example, offers about 100 new Windows 7 desktops and all-in-ones. Amazon and Newegg each have hundreds. Individual PC builders also sell Windows 7 computers. The phasing-out of consumer Windows 7 PCs means they’re often priced somewhat higher than comparable Windows 8 machines, though. And you have to act fast: The end-of-sales date for computers with Windows 7 Home Basic, Home Premium, or Ultimate…

WINDOWS TABLETS ARE disappointingly uniform: Nearly all use the same processor, have the same resolution, and contain the same amount of memory and storage. So I was happy to see the Toshiba Encore 8 (go.pcworld.com/toshibaencore8), which stands out thanks to its Micro HDMI port and 8-megapixel rear camera. This 8-inch tablet is also chunkier than its competition, however. The Encore 8 runs on an Intel Bay Trail Atom Z3740 processor, and it carries 2GB of low-power DDR3/1067 memory. The model I reviewed shipped with 64GB of solid-state storage, a feature that adds $50 to the price. (Toshiba’s $300 base Encore 8 has 32GB of storage.) Our benchmark results illustrate the sameness of Bay Trail tablets: In the performance tests we ran, the Encore 8 fell in between the Asus Transformer…

THE HP Z Display Z27i (go.pcworld.com/zdisplayz27i) is a 27-inch professional desktop monitor with 2560 by 1440 native resolution. It offers a high-quality IPS screen, LED backlighting, and an antiglare feature that many people find desirable. The Z Display Z27i also offers far greater ergonomic flexibility than most monitors. You can adjust its height and tilt, and rotate it into portrait orientation. Other welcome features include four downstream USB 3.0 ports and plenty of connection options such as VGA, DVI-D, and HDMI. Although the Z Display Z27i supports DisplayPort, it doesn’t supply the DisplayPort-out connection that the spec’s multistreaming feature requires in order to daisy-chain monitors. Welcome features include four downstream USB 3.0 ports and connection options such as VGA, DVI-D, and HDMI. A generous 178-degree range of acceptable viewing…

WHETHER YOU’RE UNBOXING a new PC or freshly installing Windows on older hardware, your job isn’t done when you boot up your desktop for the first time. Performing just a handful of tasks can help ensure that your PC stays lean, mean, fully compatible with your peripherals, and all-around pleasant to use for the foreseeable future. On DIY machines: Unplug and update drivers Feel free to skip this section if you’re using a prebuilt, boxed PC rather than a rig you’ve cobbled together yourself. Upon first boot, Windows 8.1 will contact the Windows Update site (unless otherwise configured) and install the drivers it finds for whatever components it recognizes in a system. This automatic procedure can be helpful for obscure components with drivers that don’t see frequent updates, such as…

MODERN BROWSERS are chock-full of powerful hidden features, but one of the most overlooked is incognito or private mode. Some people call it “porn mode,” but there are all kinds of reasons to use this mode that don’t involve websites with three Xs in the title. Incognito mode can help keep your browsing private from other users, but it can’t keep your activities secret from your ISP or from online snoops. (For that, you need a VPN.) All incognito mode does is erase your browsing and search histories, as well as dump any tracking cookies you pick up, during your session. If you’re unsure how to turn on private mode, you can find instructions for Chrome (go.pcworld.com/chromeincog), Firefox (go.pcworld.com/ffprivate), and Internet Explorer (go.pcworld.com/ieprivate). You might want to cover your…