Table of contents for Jun-14 in PCWorld

MOST MODERN PROGRAMS can run just fine on PCs that are several years old. And thanks to the rise of cloud services, older PCs are even less of a drag on productivity these days. Extending the useful life of your computer doesn’t have to involve expensive upgrades. Keeping your system physically clean, following some basic preventive measures, and exercising common sense can add years of life to your machine. Keep your PC sparkling Virtually every computer becomes laden with dust, dirt, hairballs, and other junk given enough time. The grime can suffocate the hardware inside your PC, generating heat and putting stress on the components—which in turn can reduce performance and even contribute to a component’s premature death. Clean your computer thoroughly every 6 to 12 months. For pointers, see…

YOU SAY AN SSD with a 6Gb/s SATA 3.0 interface just isn’t fast enough? Speed freak. I kid: Faster is always better when it comes to storage, and until loads are instantaneous, you will never hear “It’s fast enough” escape my lips. That’s why I poached the Plextor M6e SSD (go.pcworld.com/plextorm6e) to kick around on my home PC—after it set records in PCWorld Labs testing, that is. The M6e isn’t a traditional hardwired NAND-on-a-card PCIe solid-state drive that requires a driver, and it isn’t a SATA SSD mounted on a PCIe card, like the Apricorn Velocity Solo X2 (go.pcworld.com/solox2) we reviewed a while back. It’s a 3-inch-long M.2 SSD mounted on a PCIe 2.0 x2 adapter card. M.2 is an NGFF (Next Generation Form Factor) socket that supports storage via…

THE LATEST EDITION of Corel’s 25-year-old vector editor, CorelDraw X7 (go.pcworld.com/coreldrawx7), sports a flatter look that feels at home on current Windows machines, and the application is more customizable and more connected than ever before. Corel sells it as a $500 one-time purchase or as a $25 monthly subscription. With graphics suites, tool overload can easily frustrate you. CorelDraw addresses the problem through prepackaged workspaces: Apply a workspace, and the toolbar layout instantly morphs to suit your needs. The program has a new Default workspace, but also offers a Classic one if you’re used to older versions. If you’re new to vector graphics, try the Lite workspace, which scales down the toolbars. And if you’re migrating from CorelDraw’s archnemesis, this program’s Adobe Illustrator workspace eases the transition. The prepackaged layouts…

THE JUST.RELEASED WINDOWS 8.1 Update brings all kinds of new features designed for traditional-PC users. One thing it doesn’t offer is the restored Start menu—that’s due in a later update expected in the coming months. But Windows 8.1 already has a Start menu of sorts, buried beneath a right-click on the Start button in the lower-left corner. Commonly known as the power-user menu, this menu is a popular option for quickly shutting down a PC since accessing it is much simpler than going through the Settings charm. There’s more to the power-user menu than just turning off your computer, however. Here are three features from the power-user menu that every Windows 8.1 user should know about. 1. Deleting programs At the top of the menu is an item called…

THE PERSONAL COMPUTER has endured for more than 30 years. It’s a mature technology. But smartphone digital assistants—the new breed of data butlers designed to make our lives simpler—have yet to climb out of their cribs. The perfect digital assistant would anticipate our every need, retrieving answers from search engines, connecting us with our social networks, and tapping into maps and calendars to guide our travel and appointments. So far, no single digital assistant has figured out how to connect all the dots effectively and intuitively. The three big names in the field are Microsoft’s Cortana, Apple’s Siri, and Google Now. We expect these services to evolve from helpful librarians to full-fledged personal concierges. All of them do an admirable job of responding to queries, but they don’t yet anticipate…

BOOT UP A NEW COMPUTER for the first time, and it may sputter and struggle, burdened with all the junk that vendors dump onto their new machines. Bloatware, also known as crapware, is more than annoying—it actively consumes your computer’s resources. Cleaning it off is worth some time and effort. PC profit margins are low, and preinstalling trial programs and other junk gives computer makers a bit of extra money—and, to be fair, lowers your PC’s purchase price. But many types of preinstalled software are just plain bad. You’ll often find antivirus utilities that attempt to scare you into paying by claiming that your PC is at risk, advertising-filled games you don’t want to play, and demos that give you only an hour before becoming useless. Not every program on…

THE LINKSYS WRT1900AC (go.pcworld.com/wrt1900ac) looks like an overstuffed version of the company’s classic WRT54G from 2002—but this new model can really motor. Powered by a 1.2GHz, dual-core Marvel Armada system-on-a-chip, 128MB of flash memory, and 256MB of DDR3 RAM, the WRT1900AC is the first consumer router I’ve seen to come with a cooling fan (it spins up only when needed and is very quiet). Slots on the WRT1900AC’s four feet allow you to hang the device on the wall—an option that’s gone missing on too many modern routers. Much of this router’s 2.5-pound weight can be attributed to the massive heat sinks mounted to its internal components. The WRT 1900AC was 4 to 30 percent faster than the Asus RT-AC68U, depending on the location. The WRT1900AC was be 4 to…

Watch the video at go.pcworld.com/rokuvid PRICED AT $50, the Roku Streaming Stick (go.pcworld.com/rokustick) aims directly for the sweet spot between Roku’s line of set-top boxes (the top model being the $100 Roku 3) and Google’s $35 Chromecast dongle. And it mostly nails the best parts of each, packing the familiar, user-friendly Roku experience into a small Wi-Fi–enabled stick that you can hide behind your TV. After plugging the Streaming Stick into an available HDMI port on your HDTV, you need to connect it to a power source, either by hooking the included USB cable to a powered USB port on your TV or by plugging the included adapter into the wall. Then you change your TV’s input to that HDMI port, and you use the included remote to navigate setup.…

Q: I HAVE A ton of music and documents stored on an HP laptop that’s no longer even close to starting up. I have a new laptop now, and it runs great, but I would love to get my old computer functioning just long enough for me to grab my files off of it.--Freeflowing89 A: THE EASIEST, FASTEST, and cheapest way to recover files from a dead computer doesn’t require any access to the PC. You simply restore the files from your most recent backup. I’m guessing, however, that you don’t have a recent backup; people who keep up-to-date backups (go.pcworld.com/simplebackup) don’t ask me this sort of question. So let’s look at other, less desirable fixes. First, try booting the computer in Safe Mode. In Windows 7 and earlier…

Watch the video at go.pcworld.com/genvideo BOUTIQUE CUSTOM PC MAKER Origin has upped its game with its new Variable Mounting technology for its Genesis (go.pcworld.com/genesisvariable) full-tower computers. When you order your machine, you can have the builders orient the Asus Maximum VI Extreme ATX motherboard in one of four ways. There’s the good ol’ conventional mount, of course. But if you prefer liquid cooling, inverting the motherboard allows you to showcase the water blocks on the CPU and the video cards. If you want air cooling, rotating the motherboard 90 degrees orients the graphics cards vertically so that the warm air from their fans can waft out of the top of the system’s case. Lastly, Origin’s 90-degree inverted scheme positions the motherboard so that the case’s transparent side panel occupies the…

WHEN IT COMES to creating and editing PDF files, Nuance’s new Power PDF Standard (go.pcworld.com/powerpdf) delivers 95 percent of the features of Adobe Acrobat at only a third of the cost ($90). Even so, the interface, though easy to use, needs work, and Power PDF’s OCR can’t match Acrobat’s when dealing with complex documents. A stamp feature lets you mark documents as read, processed, canceled, paid, and so on. Power PDF handles just about every aspect of PDF creation and editing that you could ask for, including layering, 3D, sound and file attachments, and security. The latter may be read-only, password, or certificate protection. The app handles signatures well, and you can even draw your own on screen if you have a suitably fluid input device (a mouse, if you’re…

Although Google has done lots of things to improve Google Drive over the years, more recently the search giant has outsourced the job to third-party developers. With add-ons for Docs and Sheets (go.pcworld.com/addons), you can extend the usefulness of Google’s online productivity suite beyond what was previously possible. We’ve identified ten outstanding add-ons that offer convenient ways to translate text, merge documents, open a calculator, and more. 1 Google Translate If you already use Google Translate frequently, the Google Translate add-on (go.pcworld.com/traslateao) can save you a lot of time. Instead of having to open Google Translate in a new browser window, you can highlight text and translate it while inside the document. This add-on’s main limitation is that it currently supports only five languages—English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. We…

YOUR OLD PHONES and tablets don’t have to become e-waste—they can easily work as helpful sidekicks for your computer. Here are some of the best ways to reuse your outdated tech. Designate your tablet as a second monitor An old tablet can serve as a dedicated PC monitor. You can use even a 7-inch model to keep an eye on instant messages, email, or social networks. If you’re working with photos, video, or music, the tablet display can accommodate your toolbars. A tablet is also an easy second screen to pack up and take on the road. Check out Air Display, a $10 app for iOS (go.pcworld.com/airdisios) and Android (go.pcworld.com/airdisand) that connects to your computer over Wi-Fi. (A $5 Android app called iDisplay also supports USB connections, but I had…

Watch the video at go.pcworld.com/leetvid » If you have to ask how much, you probably can’t afford Steiger Dynamics’ LEET Home Theater PC (go.pcworld.com/leet). This gorgeous, whisper-quiet system can do it all: provide the ultimate gaming experience, play high-def movies on your big-screen TV, and act as a media server for your entire digital library. All that power commands a price to match—the LEET costs more than $7000—but perfection doesn’t come cheap.…