Table of contents for March 2022 in APC

Meta (previously known as Facebook) is building a new AI supercomputer, called the AI Research SuperCluster, at a currently undisclosed location. According to Meta, it’ll be the world’s fastest supercomputer to date when complete, with a performance metric of over 220 Linpack petaflops. RSC is operational right now but is still being built out. Specs for this new supercomputer are quite impressive, as the RSC currently features 760 of Nvidia’s cutting-edge DGX A100 AI compute units and includes eight Nvidia A100 GPUs in each unit. This makes for a total of 6,080 GPUs for the entire supercomputer. But, once complete, RSC will pack a whopping 16,000 GPUs with an additional 1,240 DGX nodes to its name. The second installation phase will be completed sometime in July.…

Microsoft recently countered a record-breaking 3.47Tbps DDoS attack on its Azure servers in Asia according to a blog post by the company. That, it says, is the largest mitigated attack in history. According to Azure Networking product manager Alethea Toh, the attack occurred sometime in November, targeting an Azure customer in Asia. He believes this was the largest attack to ever be reported in history. The attack originated from roughly 10,000 sources across the world, using a combination of multiple attack methods for UDP reflection on port 80 including, SSDP, CLDAP, DNS, and NTP. The attack lasted around 15 minutes. In December Microsoft also had to deal with another attack that was nearly as large at 3.25Tbps, but lasted far longer.…

With fab expansions on tap across the entire semiconductor industry, Intel is laying out its own plans for significantly increasing their production capacity by announcing their intention to build a new $28 billion fab complex in Ohio. With the paperwork already inked and construction set to begin in late 2022, Intel will be building two new leading-edge fabs in their new Ohio location to support future chip needs. Intel’s announcement follows ongoing concerns about chip fab capacity and national security, as like other chip fabs, Intel is looking to expand their capacity in future years amidst the current chip crunch. All the while, the United States government has become increasingly mindful about how much chip production takes place in geopolitically tricky Taiwan, placing additional pressure on firms to build additional…

Welcome, Fairphone, to the world of wireless earbuds. Fairphone smartphones consistently rank tippy-top for repairability, so will its True Wireless Stereo Earbuds manage the same trick? Major tech specs • In-ear detection and touch control • Active noise cancellation with transparency mode • Bluetooth 5.3, A2DP, HFP, AVRCP (Airoha AB 1562 Bluetooth audio SoC) • 10 mm / 32 Ohm drivers • IPX4 splash resistance • 10×9.8×5.6 mm, 0.1 Wh battery Key findings We kick off disassembly with the most removable, and cleanable, bit: the flexible tips – much like you find on competing models, including AirPods Pro. With three different size options, you’ve got a good chance of finding a set that fits properly. Next, hoping to keep it nondestructive, we aim for a likely seam and get slicing…

$3,099 | rog.asus.com Give it up for the new Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Alan Walker Special Edition. It’s a new version of the second iteration of what was already a great laptop. The original Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 was something of a genre buster when it arrived last year with its compact 14-inch proportions, awesome AMD CPU, and great gaming performance. This second-generation Special Edition model carries over that basic proposition but adds an unusual twist, namely collaboration with the DJ and musician Alan Walker. As we write, Walker currently has the 19th most popular video on Youtube with no fewer than 3.2 billion views, not to mention over 10 billion channel views. Not bad. Anyway, Walker has collaborated with Asus to produce a version of the G14 that fuses…

$869 | www.teamgroupinc.com External SSDs aren’t a new product category, but the combination of faster USB connections and denser NAND is leading to a new crop of ultra-fast portable drives. The Teamgroup M200 is one such drive. It aims to deliver pocket-sized portability, up to 8TB of storage, and performance that makes a mechanical HDD snail like in comparison. Though as you’d expect, the best external SSDs carry a hefty price premium. The design of the M200 is reminiscent of a rifle magazine. It’s made with a combination of metal and plastic and it’s well built. It should be durable enough to slide in and out of bags or briefcases for a long time. Team says the drive is built to survive a two-meter drop and it’s got a five-year…

$1,599 | hp.com HP’s pro line of “Z” monitors is bigger than ever before. The HP Z43 clocks in at a hefty 43 inches, but its size isn’t the only way it differs from other HP Z screens. It’s also more purely productivity oriented than some of the other members of the Z family, thanks to lower colour fidelity. At the core of the Z43 is a 42.5-inch IPS panel with full 4K resolution and 60Hz refresh. We’ve seen plenty of superficially similar 43-inch class 4K monitors before. But they’ve tended to have the feel of a cheap TV rebadged as a monitor, maybe with DisplayPort added for more PC-centric connectivity. With that in mind, it’s not surprising to find most of those displays run VA panels, which is what…

$399 | www.gigabyte.com The Radeon RX 6500 XT is a card that we desperately hoped would restore some sanity to the GPU market. Extremely inflated prices caused by supply shortages, pandemic disruptions and mining demand has killed any possibility of a current generation GPU purchase for vast swathes of gamers. The 6500 XT is promoted as being a 1080p capable card at an affordable price, but AMD’s quest for a budget hero has resulted in a card that’s stripped to the bone. So much so that it struggles to compete against cards that are several years old. The RX 6500 XT is an RDNA2 based card based on the 6nm Navi 24 GPU with 1024 shaders. Its 107W TDP is worth a mention, but it still requires external power. The…

MAC STORE & OTHER MAC APPS | iOS OR iPADOS 14 OR LATER | $12.99 | shiftscreen.app Apple likes to tout the iPad as being capable of replacing a computer but in some areas it falls short. One example is using external monitors. Although you can physically connect to a second screen with a cable or wirelessly using AirPlay, iPadOS and iOS limit you to simply mirroring what’s on the device’s screen. And even worse, you’ll often get mismatched aspect ratios, resulting in wasted empty space on the external screen. Shiftscreen is an attempt to get around this limitation until Apple decides to fix the issue, which may never happen. It’s an inexpensive app that lets you create virtual desktops hosting their own custom apps for various tasks. It can’t…

At times like these, it’s tempting to reach for the ‘nuclear’ option and reinstall Windows from scratch, but sometimes you can get away by ‘upgrading’ your Windows installation by installing a fresh version over the top of your current build without wiping data, settings, or applications. This ‘repair’ installation requires you to create Windows installation media – you can download the tool for burning a DVD or writing to a spare, unused 8GB flash drive from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ software-download/windows11 or www. microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 depending on your version of Windows. Alternatively, Windows 11 users can download the ISO file directly, then double-click it to mount the file as a virtual DVD in File Explorer. From here, open the drive and double-click setup.exe, then follow the prompts to start the installation process including downloading…

CES kicked us off in early January for another year of cool tech and as usual there was plenty of announcements and interesting products on show. Here are some of the highlights that piqued my interest. AMD AMD was the first cab off the rank and boy did it deliver. First up was the announcement of its new Ryzen 6000 series mobile processors, which finally ditch the ageing Vega graphics architecture for RDNA2 as is found in the latest graphics cards and consoles. As a result, AMD is claiming an easy 2x increase in IGP performance with games and 1.3x performance for CPU tasks, thanks to 5GHz boost clocks on Zen3+ cores. A new S-class of mobile discrete GPU (dGPU) was announced. These RX6000S mobile chips will go into thin…

We made some big changes to the mid-range builds last time, so this month, it’s minor tweaks. Inevitably, any reasonably priced GPU sells out, so both our builds have been revised. The AMD rig gets a Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3070 8 GB Gaming OC board that maintains the performance for slightly more cash. That’s just the way it goes right now. Anyway, Intel’s new Alder Lake 12th-Gen chips are in the builds, specifically the i5-12600K, which is a pretty sweet CPU. It comes with 10 cores combined with Intel’s new hybrid architecture. This is split into two types of cores; performance cores (six) and efficient cores (four). Foreground tasks are allocated to the performance cores while background tasks are set to the efficient cores in Intel’s biggest architectural shift in…

Over the past decade, the way we listen to music has fundamentally changed. No longer tied to physical forms, such as vinyl discs, cassettes, or CDs, downloading and streaming services have taken music collections away from our shelves and placed them on our desktops. The rise of digital audio is largely responsible for this change. Products such as the original Sony Walkman and the Apple iPod delivered music on the go, but these were eventually superseded by the smartphone, which can now deliver many thousands of music tracks all day, every day, from your rucksack or pocket, making music more accessible than ever. The same can be said for music production. Whereas once you needed a band or an orchestra of musicians playing instruments, studio time, and expensive recording equipment,…

01 Choose your data Before you create a pivot table, you need a table to work from. For this tutorial, we’re going to use a simple table that records sales of different gardening tools from a wholesaler. The table holds basic info about each sale. 02 Create the first pivot The easiest way to create a pivot table is to click the Pivot button in the tool bar. This will put the pivot table on a separate tab, so to keep it on the same tab, choose Organise > Create Pivot Table > On Current Sheet. 03 Sort your data You’ll see an empty table appear on the sheet and, in the right-hand sidebar, Pivot Options. To start with, choose one field. We’ve chosen Units. Check that box and the…

With ever-expanding disk capacities and fast dropping prices, you would think that checking disk space usage was an activity of a bygone era. While this might be true for casual home users who run a tight ship, if you’re running an install-and-forget rolling-release distribution such as Arch, Gentoo or the like, you must keep an eye on disk space usage lest you find yourself out of storage room. Linux distributions boast a number of graphical and text utilities that help you keep an eye on disk space. For regular users of the command line, df and du are among the most popular tools, but they produce a vast amount of mostly incomprehensible data. If you want your disk space usage presented in a stylist bar chart then Vizex is just…

01 Select an SD card size Multibooting your Raspberry Pi doesn’t have to rely on BerryBoot or any other downloadable tool. With PINN, you can manage it all in your browser. You’ll find the PINN tool at https://pinn.mjh.nz, where you’re immediately prompted to select your storage device and capacity. You can choose an SD card, USB storage or a mix of both; note that 100MB is reserved for the PINN software. 02 Choose your Pi model With the correct media and capacity selected, choose the Raspberry Pi board you’ll be using. Every option is available here, covering A boards, B boards, Zeros and Compute Modules, so choose the correct model with care. There are differences between standard and plus (+) models, so be sure to make the right choice here.…

NEW AUSTRALIA UPDATE KICKS OFF A BIG YEAR FOR MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR DLSS support is also coming. Microsoft Flight Simulator has received a handful of impressive world updates since its 2021 launch. These apply more detailed, handcrafted models to the otherwise procedurally generated map data, so that when you fly over Rome, for instance, you’ll actually see famous landmarks rather than what the game thinks is there based on the data it has. In February, Australia got the world update treatment, and the list of landmarks it adds is truly impressive. Alongside the obvious additions, like a properly fleshed out rendition of Sydney, the Opera House, and the Harbour Bridge, more regional locations are also fleshed out. These include smaller points of interest including the Great Barrier Reef, Mount Wellington,…

$TBA | PC, PS4/5, XB1, Switch, Stadia No surprise if you’ve never heard of the original, there’s been over two decades between its release and this sequel. The fundamentals of the two are more or less the same. Not just in its controls and design but in the throwback vibe of its aesthetics too. While it’s no longer in 8-bit, these slick hand drawn looking sprites capture those same bold colours to convey an idolised ’90s feel good world where the sun is always shining and we’re all here to have a good time. Matches are straightforward, each round you’re served a Frisbee with points attached to it which are awarded to the first player to either hit their opponent’s back wall or make them fail to catch it. Specials…

ASHAMPOO WINOPTIMIZER 2022 Clean and accelerate Windows PCs. Over time, Windows tends to slow down and become cluttered due to leftover files and Registry entries. Ashampoo WinOptimizer 2022 is a customisable Windows cleaner and accelerator. Privacy protection is another focus of the program, with the ability to significantly limit telemetry and data collection by Microsoft. Don’t just accept the Windows defaults! Ashampoo WinOptimizer 2022 includes a total of 23 modules to boost and customise Windows systems. The program also analyses your OS and hardware, wipes or encrypts data and helps with file recovery. Download link: www.apcmag.com/exclusives IMAGE FORMER Batch-edit and convert images with ease. With Image Former you can get your pictures in top shape in no time at all: select any number of pictures, define actions and start conversion.…

Elon Musk’s Starlink service is rolling out a Premium Tier that can provide up to 500Mbps, twice the bandwidth that can currently be achieved with the standard service. The new tier will charge $3,500 for all of the required hardware, alongside a $700 deposit fee and an expected Australian price of around $500 for a monthly subscription service. SpaceX is targeting businesses in remote regions that are currently being forced to pay significantly higher rates for poor service. Starlink is promising a better experience for business. Starlink Premium users can expect download speeds between 150Mbps and 500Mbps and latency as low as 20ms in most locations.…

Collectors of rare PC hardware have just missed out on the chance to own a little piece of history: a prototype Intel GPU claiming to be the only working Larabee board in the world. It sold on eBay France for a mere €4,650 (AU$7,375). Larrabee was Intel’s 2008-vintage attempt to make a GPU, or rather a GPGPU, separately from the project that led to Iris Pro. Rather than following in the footsteps of Nvidia and ATi, Larrabee used the X86 instruction set with special extensions, and the GPU functioned more like a hybrid of a CPU and GPU. The Larrabee technology passed to Intel’s supercomputing division, which eventually built an accelerator card for high-performance computing released as Knights Corner, and the Xeon Phi co-processors, in 2012.…

It appears that Intel could enter the Bitcoin-mining hardware business, but not with its new upcoming GPUs. The ISSCC conference is a yearly gathering of the best and brightest minds in the chip industry. This year, Intel has a presentation scheduled in the ‘Highlighted Chip Releases’ category to outline a new “Bonanza Mine” processor, a chip described as an “ultra-low-voltage energy-efficient Bitcoin mining ASIC.” That means Intel could soon compete with the likes of Bitmain in the market for specialised ASICs for Bitcoin mining. Intel also commented on the new chip, saying “Intel has done design work around SHA 256 optimised ASICs for several years beginning with pathfinding work done in Intel Labs. We will share more details in the future.” The presentation comes on the heels of comments from…

Music production no longer involves just a guitar and a microphone. These days it is often carried out on a PC with the aid of a digital audio workstation (DAW). This allows the user to mix, tune, stitch and compile recordings together to produce a final, polished piece of music, whether that’s music, sound effects, or game sounds. Like all programs, there are many variants of DAWs available, each with their own pros and cons. Here, we list our top five favourites. 5 ACOUSTICA MIXCRAFT 9 Mixcraft 9 Recording Studio US$99, Mixcraft 9 Pro Studio US $199 | www.acoustica.com Apple fans rave about how easy Garage Band is to use – it’s a fun application that can be used in both a casual and professional way. But what about Windows…

$2,999 | au.msi.com MSI is no stranger to 17-inch devices and the GS76 Stealth is certainly a looker, with some pretty hefty specs under the hood. Compared with the MSI GE76 Raider, this is a more slick and premium-feeling device. Finished in full-core black metal, it’s one of the best designs we have seen from MSI. It’s pretty subtle for such a large device and that gives it an illusion of being smaller than it actually is. At a glance, and with the RGB keyboard turned off, you’d struggle to know that this was a gaming-focused laptop – it seems like a more mature step up from its GE76 Raider sibling. The screen fits the chassis nicely too, with the same thickness of bezel around the sides and the top,…

$519 | www.lacie.com Compared to some of its predecessors like the 2019 edition (LaCie Portable SSD 2TB), it is more compact although we’re not sure about the thought process that convinced the designers to choose the parallelogram as the inspiration. It’s worth – at this stage – mentioning the French origins of LaCie or La Compagnie and how aesthetics was at the core of its mission. Before its acquisition by Seagate in 2014, the company had carved itself a lucrative niche amongst like-minded designers (and creative professionals) looking for creatively-inspired peripherals that could perform, regardless of the price. Trendsetters like Neil Poulton or Philip Stark collaborated with LaCie to design some iconic products. So the adage, beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, holds truer than ever in this…

$349 | www.intel.com Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs represent a return to form for Intel. The K series CPUs, while offering class leading multi-threaded, lightly threaded and gaming performance, aren’t really mainstream options though. But that’s changed now that affordable 12th Gen CPUs are here. Intel is now set to dominate the low to mid-range CPU market. We loved the 11th Gen i5-11400 and the i5-12400 we’re reviewing here is even better. The i5-12400 is a 6C/12T design. It omits E cores leaving the higher performing Golden Cove P cores only. This means it might not be a multi-threaded monster compared to CPUs with a higher core count, but the strengths of the P cores remain, meaning it should excel at gaming tasks, where IPC is more important. The…

WINDOWS APPS FL STUDIO 20 | FL Studio Fruity Edition $139, FL Studio Producer Edition $289, FL Studio Signature Bundle $449, FL Studio All Plugins Edition $664 | www.image-line.com PRO TOOLS | Pro Tools one-year subscription US$399, Pro | www.avid.com With creativity-based software, many of the most popular and market-leading programs have several alternatives that carry out the same tasks, whether that’s graphic design, photo-editing, or music production. There may be lots of reasons to pick one over the other, including price, features, or accessibility but familiarity with the program, suite, or company you are currently using may be a powerful reason to stick with what you know. While alternatives may offer a similar or superior product, that decision often comes down to what you feel most comfortable using. This applies…

Linux | www.endlessos.com Endless OS is a unique learning-oriented distro that helps users stay productive with their computers even when they’re not online. Version 4.0 introduces a plethora of changes, both in the background and on the desktop. For starters, the developers have dropped building every single package on their own, and instead borrow a majority of them from Debian. There are still about 120 packages they build themselves, since they need to customise them for their purpose, but the change in approach has helped cut down the development time significantly. Furthermore, Endless OS 4 is the first long-term support (LTS) release of the distro, which the developers plan to support for a number of years even after Endless OS 5 is released. Having an LTS release will complement the…

Benjamin Franklin famously said that an ounce of preparation is worth a pound of care, but when it comes to troubleshooting Windows problems there’s only so much you can set up in advance. Even with the best backup regimen in the world, you can’t always inoculate yourself against a Windows error, crash, or complete meltdown. Don’t worry though, because armed with a few tips and techniques, you’ll be well-equipped to deal with the worst that Windows can throw at you. We’ll start with the most catastrophic circumstances – a Windows installation that refuses to boot successfully to the desktop. You’ll learn how to combine Windows’ own troubleshooting tools with a powerful (and free!) third-party rescue disc to maximise your chances of fixing the problem. And if you can’t get Windows…

Go to www.tweaking.com and download the free version of Windows Repair Tool. WRT runs best in Safe mode – the quickest way to get there is to press Win-R, type msconfig then hit Enter, then switch to the Boot tab, tick ‘Safe boot’, and select Network. Click OK followed by Restart, and Windows will reboot into Safe mode (you’ll need to log in with your full password, not a PIN number or other form of ID). Once logged in, launch the Windows Repair Tool. After the program has performed its start-up check, click ‘I Agree’ to go to the main screen. Work your way through various health checks, a power reset, plus scans of your Windows package files, system reparse points, and environment variables (you can ignore issues with reparse…

PC CASE GEAR REAPER 6600 XT $2,099 – tinyurl.com/APC504PCC Offering a decent amount of performance for what these days is considered a more value-oriented system, this build keeps the budget in check while giving a quite well-rounded system. The CPU is the weaker of the processor pairing; now two generations old it’ll hold up well enough in games thanks to its six cores, but being long in the tooth, to prevent it becoming the bottle neck in the latest games you’d be best off loading up the graphics card with 1440p resolutions and higher quality effects to keep the GPU working hard, reducing CPU demand. The memory kit is over specced and thus a little wasted in this system, as this CPU and motherboard combo will only support 2666MHz. It…

01 Browser This is the place to find samples, beats, instruments, and your imports. 02 Channel rack The channel rack holds all of your chosen instruments and is where you can make loops and sequences. 03 Piano roll Use the piano roll to create unique sequences. You can also connect your MIDI controller to this to play an endless array of instruments. 04 Playlist window This is where you piece together all the elements of the song to create a finished track. It works in a similar way to the piano roll. 05 Mixer All audio in FL Studio passes through the mixer, this is where you can alter the quality and levels of the audio signal.…

IT WILL TAKE 30 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to assign tasks in Reminders YOU’LL NEED iOS 13 or later Recent iOS updates have meant some great improvements to Reminders. The app has gained lots of new features, including the ability to collaborate with others on tasks. You can invite others to share lists you create and then, once they have accepted, you can assign reminders to them. You can also assign reminders to yourself. When reminders are assigned to you, Reminders creates a Smart List called Assigned to You so you can see them all in one place. Custom Smart Lists are new in iOS 15 and they make it easy to keep track of reminders. They allow you to organise reminders based on parameters you specify such as…

Power up your PC or laptop and within seconds, you can be running all sorts of apps – everything from online dating to printed circuit board layout design. The CPUs inside your favourite computing devices are ‘general purpose’ in that they can turn their hand to almost any application. They’re the SUVs of the computing world. By comparison, microcontrollers units (MCUs) are single-minded. They appear in applications where they usually have just one job to do – and do it incredibly well. If CPUs are the SUVs, then microcontroller units are the nimble trail bikes that go almost anywhere. This month, we look at how MCUs work, what they can do and why they’re heaps of fun. One-stop shop AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper 3990X is a remarkable chip – a huge…

$74.95 | PC, PS4/5 | Steam If you skipped the PlayStation release, or haven’t touched the series at all, this is the God of War to play. All you need to know going in is that Kratos was Athena’s best murder man until he was betrayed and decided to kill all of the gods (including his daddy, Zeus). This soft reboot picks up years later. In that time, Kratos left a now-godless Greece and wandered into the Norse lands, where he gained a wife (who has just passed away at the start of the game), a son named Atreus, and a glorious beard. God of War has its restraint. It’s a small story in a world of gigantic characters. Kratos and Atreus aren’t out to save the world – they…

$21.50 | PC, Mac | wolfstridegame.com Wolfstride from Ota Imon is a self-described RPG for grown-ups that wallows a bit too frequently in immature humour. It never fully builds on its narrative promise, but the setting and cast make it a spin on an often stagnant genre. With its dramatic opening, you’d be forgiven for thinking Wolfstride was faster paced than it is. The curtain first rises on a mech battle where your loveable but doofy pilot Knife Leopard faces off with team leader Shade against a hardened criminal type in a rigged robot fight That’s as much action as you’ll see for a long while. Shade and friends settle into a routine of exploring Rain City and desperately throwing themselves at any opportunity to earn money. You have 63…

Free | Nrowser dreyan.itch.io/jingoku Where WarioWare is characterised by its anarchic pixel art and gleefully childish sense of humour, Jingoku is more understated, minimalist, and dare I say classier, its assortment of timed microgames including plenty of silly scenarios – but no nose-picking. Instead, you’re Flappy Bird-ing a paper aeroplane, you’re playing tug-of-war, and hurling a pesky hat onto a hat rack. But while Nintendo’s classic series offers a mixture of tough and easy games, I was only ever able to scrape together a few successes in Jingoku. It might be that the time limit is stricter, or it might have something to do with this game’s less responsive control systems, which are not explained before you’re thrown in at the deep end. With scant few seconds on the clock,…

“Championing technology doesn’t mean we’re unrelenting yes-men and -women, however, and APC aims to be as objective as possible in all our coverage.” 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.…

Intel’s latest Core i9-12900HK processor may just have won the mobile x86 vs. Arm performance war, but it comes at a cost. The mobile 14-core Alder Lake chip has bested Apple’s M1 Max in multiple workloads, including a 30 percent win in a multi-threaded test, but the former is far more power-hungry than the latter. We’ve already seen what the M1 Max can do in the latest 16-inch MacBook Pro, and the Core i9-12900HK, which powers MSI’s latest GE76 Raider gaming laptop, isn’t a slacker, either. Both processors leverage different architectures, with the Arm-based M1 Max residing exclusively inside Apple’s closed ecosystem, so an apples-to-apples comparison isn’t always straightforward. However, some benchmarks do work on both types of hardware, including Geekbench 5, HandBrake, and Cinebench R23, so we charted out…

Kobo Libra 2 Read into the value. $279.99 | au.kobobooks.com Kobo already has some excellent ereaders in its hardware catalogue, but in the Libra 2, the Japanese-Canadian company has a trailblazer. Its launch price is just $10 more than the Libra H2O it’s replacing but the value for money here is excellent. There’s 32GB of internal storage for starters (a first for a Kobo ereader), Bluetooth support for audiobooks (another first for Kobo), a USB-C charging port (yet another Kobo first) and a bigger battery. Its screen is the latest E Ink Carta display, and hence more responsive, and it retains the winning asymmetric design for single-hand use, with OverDrive, Pocket and Dropbox support. Need we say more? NANOLEAF LINES Line it up and light it up $349.99 | nanoleaf.me/en-AU…

$279 | www.razer.com Razer’s new Pro Type Ultra is the latest in the company’s more productivity focused gear lineup, which includes the original Pro Type, the Razer Pro Click and Pro Click Mini and even the Razer Book 13. To that end, it sheds most gamer-centric design trappings, like per-key RGB, while keeping enough to emphasise Razer’s history with mechanical keyboards. Even using this keyboard at home instead of at an office, I really like this less edgy design aesthetic. The finish on the Pro Type Ultra is gorgeous; the aluminium plate combined with the white ABS keycaps, which are prone to shine as they age but tend to have nicer looking legends than PBT, makes it one of the best-looking mechanical keyboards I have reviewed. When I first started…

$389 | dell.com In theory, the new Dell S2722DGM is pretty much the perfect affordable gaming monitor. It’s fast, cheap, has plenty of pixels, decent panel spec, and doesn’t bother with frills and features that add little to the gaming experience. It’s built around a 1440p 27-inch VA panel with decent specifications. VA tech tends to be cheaper than IPS and with that come pros and cons. The most obvious advantage is static contrast. Dell rates this monitor at 3,000:1, which is almost three times better than any IPS monitor. However, despite the strong contrast, this is a straight-up SDR display with no HDR support. We’re fine with that, given most so-called HDR PC monitors are nothing of the sort. Brightness is pegged at 350nits, which is fine for an…

$449 | www.dahuasecurity.com Dahua is a big-in-China manufacturer that makes many things and is particularly renowned for its surveillance cameras. Now it’s launching a gaming monitor into Australia, so we were keen to see whether it could make a dent or offer a great, new, value proposition. We were suspicious of the latter claim as the primary benefit is listed as, “Light and cost-effective plastic housing” but we kept an open mind. The LM32-E200C comes in three pieces, which are assembled with a screwdriver. The wide, V-shaped base attaches easily enough but connecting the panel to the stand uses an unusually intricate design. This initially concerned us about its weight-bearing capabilities, but it held fast in our testing. It all amounts to a well-planted screen although only tilt adjustment is…

MAC STORE & OTHER MAC APPS | macOS 10.15 OR LATER | $119 | adobe.com Thanks to our ever-present iPhone and its superb camera, we’re likely to record more video clips than ever before, leading to the problem of organising and sharing our favourite footage. As a simplified version of Adobe’s Premiere Pro, Premier Elements 2022 is an entry-level non-linear editor (NLE) that’s designed to help video makers trim, fix and share their video footage as eye-catching clips and sequences that will generate those endorphin inducing ‘likes’ on sites such as Twitter and Instagram. Premier Elements 2022 is an entry-level non-linear editor (NLE) that’s designed to help video makers trim, fix and share their video footage as eye-catching clips and sequences that will generate those endorphin inducing ‘likes’ on sites…

PC modding frequently leads the way in our computing hobby. It sits among the giants that make this community so great and continues to push through advancements and product tweaks into the industry itself. Vertical GPU mounts? Modders did that first. ITX liquid-cooled cases? Modders did it. Liquid-cooling in general? Modders did it (with household plumbing parts, would you believe?). But there’s more to it than that. It’s an intricate art form, a way of showing off your personality and building something unique to you. The hardware might be obsolete in a few years from now, but ask any of those modders what build they’re most proud of, and it’ll bring back a flood of memories from yesteryear, now outdated by the superior chips of today. For the extreme enthusiast,…

Lazesoft Recovery Suite is our go-to tool when it comes to taking on stubborn boot problems. Not only does it offer a wider range of repair tools, but there are also tools for recovering data from crashed (but readable) drives as well as the option of taking a fail-safe image of your entire corrupted Windows installation. This ensures that you won’t lose any files, even if you end up with no other choice but to hit the nuclear option. In an ideal world, you’ll have a Lazesoft recovery disc or USB flash drive ready to go but if not, you’ll need access to a working PC. Browse www.lazesoft.com on that and click Download, choosing the free Home Edition download. Once that has downloaded, install the program and click on the…

Step one is to be patient: if you have lots of programs running, then Windows can get in a temporary jam while it attempts to juggle resources. After a short period, things free themselves, at which point, you can save your file and continue. But sometimes, the freeze doesn’t end. If Windows hasn’t already invited you to either close or restart the program, then try clicking its red close button once or twice. Again, be patient, but if nothing happens, try pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del and wait for the screen to blank before selecting Task Manager from the list of options. When Task Manager appears, click More Details, if it’s visible. Any non-responsive program should be highlighted – from here, you can attempt to close it by selecting the process and clicking…

Last month, we gave the Intel budget build a slight upgrade from Core i3-10100 to Core i3-10105 with Intel’s UHD Graphics 630. This month, we’re going a step further by ditching the 10105 for the Core i5-10400. It’s a six-core chip, so a 50 percent uptick in the core count for just $60 is a nobrainer. We’re not sure how much longer 10th-Gen chips such as the 10400 will be available. So, if you fancy some cheap Intel six-core action, don’t hesitate – the 10400 may not stay this affordable for long, and it could disappear altogether this year. To recap from last issue, there were three parts that found their way into both the Intel and AMD budget systems. Due to a stock change last month, we had to…

PCIe 4.0 glitch I’ve been building PCs since the first 386 I put together, so I’m no stranger to PC problems. I recently bought a new computer from CyberPowerPC rather than build my own, thanks to the video card situation. I had three Seagate external drives connected to my old computer – two 3.5-inch drives with their own PSUs, and a USB-powered Backup Plus Portable. I connected all three to the USB ports directly on my MSI MPG X570 Gaming Plus motherboard. I had no problems with the two larger drives, but the portable drive kept disconnecting every few minutes. In Event Viewer, the System logs were filled with errors for that drive. I didn’t think the drive could go bad just plugging it into a new computer, so I…

IT WILL TAKE 45 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to use pivot tables in Numbers YOU’LL NEED Numbers 11.2 or later While Numbers surpasses Microsoft’s Excel in some areas, it is lacking in others. Excel, ahem, excels at slicing and dicing data and allowing you to build scenarios. While Numbers doesn’t… until now that is. The most recent version of Numbers on Mac, iOS and iPadOS supports pivot tables. And in case you don’t spend your days knee-deep in spreadsheets, pivot tables are tables that allow you to ‘pivot’ data from another table. So, if for example, you have a table that records widgets sales, you might have columns for the type of widget, date sold, price they sold for, quantity and sales office responsible. Each row would be one…

01 Create a new list Before you can assign tasks, you need to create a shared list from which to assign them. In Reminders, tap Add List. Choose iCloud. Give the list a name, and, if you like, choose a colour for it and icon to represent it. 02 Share the list Tap the list in the main Reminders screen. Tap the ‘…’ at the top right. Choose Share List. Select a method by which to share the list. Add the people you want to share with as recipients, and a message. Tap Send. 03 Assign a task Once you’re sharing a list, tap it, then tap New Reminder. Give the reminder a name. Add details such as a date, flag or location. Tap the head and shoulders and choose…

Booting an operating system on the Raspberry Pi is straightforward, but the tools used for the process have changed over the years. Since the release of the Raspberry Pi 4 and the Pi’s slightly different architecture, new utilities have been developed, both for single installations and for multibooting. Meanwhile, the price of SD cards has plummeted. While the basic tools – Raspberry Pi Imager, Etcher and so on – are suitable for single booting, BerryBoot is particularly useful for multibooting, as is NOOBS. There is also a web-based solution that automates single and multiboot installations via your browser, called PINN. Everything explained here assumes you’re using a Raspberry Pi with a keyboard, mouse and monitor attached, with an accessible network connection. The Raspberry Pi has a decent selection of operating…

This month we feature a cult computer that could have dominated the early 1980s but fell short of fame due to bad management decisions. Instead, machines such as Sinclair’s ZX80 and ZX81 and the Commodore VIC-20 became the standard-bearers for a new era of home computing. Nevertheless, the TI-99/4A had a sizeable following, offering retro computing fans a combination of features not found elsewhere and some interesting arcade action. Development & release Before the TI-99/4A came 1979’s TI-99/4. When 8-bit microcomputers were just becoming mainstream, Texas Instruments (TI) had the ambition of releasing a 16-bit home computer, based on its own TMS9900 CPU. As the first 16-bit home computer, this machine had the potential to dominate the home computing scene, with a 3MHz CPU, 16KB of RAM, 15 colours, 32…

$64.95 | PC | Steam Expeditions: Rome is a historical RPG with elements of strategy that sees you conquering much of the classical world while navigating high-level Roman politics on the home front. Fiddly RPG traits like levelling, trade and inventory management are simplified, which you may be grateful for in a game that still manages to clock in at 70-plus hours. You’ll spend much of the game running around with six companions. There’s enough banter between these ragtag Romans to build up some fondness for them, but unfortunately their sidequests – like most sidequests in the game – struggle to squeeze in around the main story, like jam barely clinging to the edges of an overstuffed sandwich. In fairness, there’s little time for getting cosy with companions when you’ve…

Free | Browser benjames171.itch.io Pathfinder’s central mechanic is one I’ve not seen too often: it’s a puzzler in which you guide glowing balls of light around, to activate switches. As a little green person, you have to leap around, push crates and fiddle about with mirrors, all to get the balls to go where you want them to. The order is the most important thing. It had me restarting each stage a number of times. You need to shift that crate to the teleporter, but before you activate that ball, so the crate doesn’t block its programmed path. Stages are manageable enough that I was able to sustain the puzzle in my head, chewing it over while my hands mechanically tested my theories. It’s a Goldilocks puzzler for someone who…

RELEASE 2010 DEVELOPER Yotsubane PUBLISHER Degica LINK degicagames.com Back in 2011, the global shmup community was awash with murmurings about a new creation within Japan’s ‘doujin’ hobbyist game development scene. Its name was Crimzon Clover, and after a complete build first appeared at a Japanese fan convention in the closing days of 2010, a swirl of rumours suggested that it was very special indeed. Fortunately, it turned out that the speculation was spot on. Crimzon Clover takes the form of a typically frenetic bullet hell shmup – or shoot-’em-up, to use the more traditional term – and it does it very well indeed. Like many of the best shmups, it blends a hyperactive, overwhelming pace with tremendous scoring depth, and is challenging, rewarding and wildly exciting in equal measure. If…