Table of contents for January 2022 in PCWorld

It’s not as if we needed to be told that the chip shortage is causing increased prices for electronics and computer hardware, but thank Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan for spelling it out. In a tweet forecasting the direction of his company’s self-branded line of stylish gaming laptops, the executive stated flat-out that increased component prices would drive the price of the Razer Blade series up significantly. Just had a long meeting to review our gaming laptops line for next year—looks like there are significant increases in component costs etc and we’ll be seeing price increases for next gen gaming laptops across the board (including the @Razer Blade) next year. —Min-Liang Tan (@minliangtan), November 30, 2021 The tweet was spotted by VideoCardz, which notes that since Razer laptops are far from cheap…

Adobe’s creative tools are typically the standards for their respective industries. But unless you’ve been using them for years, or you invest in some professional instruction, they can be frustratingly hard to use. The latest in the company’s never-ending parade of apps is titled Creative Cloud Express. If the nondescript title isn’t helping, imagine it as baby’s first publishing tool. It’s based on the previous Adobe Spark program. At its heart, Express is a layout editor with a few image editing tools thrown in for good measure. The tool is leaning heavily on a collection of premade templates and art assets that can be slotted into place, then rearranged and tweaked to suit the needs of whatever the user is interested in at the moment. Primarily it’s designed for online…

Qualcomm processors for PCs enhanced by the company’s Nuvia design team will sample in 2022 for devices shipping in 2023, Qualcomm executives said Tuesday. The company also boldly pledged to offer Adreno graphics that could compete with desktop PCs. At the company’s 2021 investor day in New York, Dr. James Thompson, chief technology officer at Qualcomm, offered an overview of the company’s technology roadmap in several areas. A key focus, naturally, will be how and when Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors will integrate the Nuvia design team, an Arm CPU developer that Qualcomm acquired in January. Processor development takes time, however, and that integration won’t happen immediately. “They’re pretty far along at this point,” Thompson said, presumably talking about the first Snapdragon processors featuring Nuvia technology. “We’ll be sampling a product nine…

We’re well into the Norton 360 era now where the company’s storied antivirus services combine with identity theft protection from LifeLock. Despite the changes behind the scenes, the front-facing product hasn’t changed that much. The basic Norton security interface has looked pretty much the same since 2015 save for some cosmetic touch-ups to keep it looking modern. Under the hood, however, Norton has kept working on its malware detection technology to deal with new security threats. We’ll take a look at Norton 360’s protection capabilities soon, but first let’s talk about our review choice from among Norton’s portfolio. By my reckoning, the best option in terms of value and capabilities in the current lineup is Norton 360 Deluxe. Norton offers two other premium suites above that with extra LifeLock features,…

Chances are you’re considering a virtual private network (VPN) service for its ability to safeguard your identity, location, and activities online. That’s an important task, so you want to consider your VPN options carefully. For instance, a VPN should keep your internet usage private and secure but not sacrifice too much speed. If anonymity is a concern, you need to know a VPN’s data collection policies. It also behooves you to know the number of servers and country locations a VPN offers, and what, if any, useful extras are part of the service. Our in-depth VPN reviews cover all these issues and more, to help you choose the best VPN service for your needs. Whether your primary concern is anonymity, streaming your favorite shows from another country, speeds, or price,…

Android apps are now available on Windows 11 as well as on Chrome OS. Microsoft and Google use them to expand and enhance the experience of their respective touchscreen devices. The hope is that Android apps, which are designed primarily (and often entirely) for touch input, can patch up the holes of each operating system’s mouse-oriented interface and app selection. Which operating system offers the best Android app support? And does either achieve its goal of enhancing the touchscreen experience? APP SELECTION Windows 11 and Chrome OS both support Android apps but make them available in very different ways. Windows 11 leans on the Amazon Appstore, while Google supports its own Google Play store. Google Play is essentially the default Android app store. It comes installed on a majority of Android…

If graphics performance matters to you, you should never settle for your GPU’s out-of-the-box state. The real power comes from the tweaks and “extra” features you enable on your GPU. You just need to know where to look. We’ll point you to six must-use features for wringing more from your Nvidia GeForce graphics card. If you crave better performance or more eye candy, one or more of these tweaks is for you. (To learn more about today’s graphics hardware, see our roundup of the best GPUs for PC gaming.) RAY TRACING Nvidia GPUs are tailor made for ray tracing in many modern games, bringing lighting effects to the next level. If you want realistic light rendering in your supported title, you’ll have the option to activate ray tracing in the…

Maybe you’re the type of person who laboriously organizes your Windows’ desktop icons, sorting them and adding them to specific folders. If you’re not, Stardock’s Fences 4 utility may be worth a look. On the surface, Fences—from the same developer, Stardock, that authored the recent Start11 app, which fixes Windows 11’s worst Start menu and taskbar sins—doesn’t offer anything truly novel. It simply organizes your desktop automatically. Windows’ Win+D shortcut allows you to “peek” at your desktop, and a related Win+Space shortcut within Fences 4 allows you to peek at your Fences. But like Start11, Fences essentially improves upon what Windows already does. So what does Fences do? On startup, the $9.99 Fences 4 utility automatically groups any icons on your desktop into a shaded region of your desktop, called…

With large-scale security breaches more or less a permanent fixture of tech news, security practices among standard web users seem to be improving. But it’s not happening very quickly, at least if NordPass’s yearly report on the most common passwords is to be believed. According to the data gathered, hundreds of millions of people still use passwords that can be cracked more or less instantly, with “123456” taking the number one spot yet again. Over a hundred million accounts were found to be using it for the barest minimum of nonsecurity. Other popular passwords include “qwerty” (22 million accounts), “111111” (13 million accounts), and the ever-creative “password” (just shy of 21 million accounts). Less obvious inclusions like “superman,” “baseball,” and “q1w2e3r4t5” are used by only a million accounts each, but Nord…

Microsoft has been working diligently to make Edge a more viable alternative to the likes of Firefox and Chrome, going so far as to completely rewrite it based on Chromium code. The company is also looking to differentiate its official browser by loading it with helpful tools for online shoppers—a strategy that could prove lucrative as well. While most of these choices have been met with approval, the latest one is getting some scorn: a new built-in tool for the Zip financing service. Zip is one of a crop of new buy now, pay later services that break small- and medium-size purchases into more manageable chunks, eschewing conventional interest payments for low flat fees ($1 per payment, $4 maximum). It competes with the likes of Klarna, Splitit, and various other…

The Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 occupies an unusual spot in the company’s laptop lineup. While Dell tends to reserve the Inspiron line for its cheapest and clunkiest consumer-grade computers, the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 borrows a handful of elements from higher-end laptops, including a metal lid, a fingerprint reader, surprisingly great speakers, and a sharp touchscreen that flips around into tablet mode. However, further inspection reveals where the compromises lie. The display is on the dim side, the chassis is part plastic, the trackpad has a chintzy click mechanism, and the laptop is heavier than high-end computers with similar specs. But if you can snag the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 for less than its $1,049 list price, those trade-offs may be worthwhile. TECH SPECS Our particular Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 review unit…

Photoshop is an absolute staple of modern graphic design, an industry standard for over 30 years. It’s also insanely expensive and no longer available as a stand-alone program. You’ll pay Adobe a minimum of $120 every year to use it as a part of a Creative Cloud subscription. That’s a lot of dough to drop, especially if you’re only using it for the occasional photo edit. There are low-cost alternatives to Photoshop, like Adobe’s own Photoshop Elements or Affinity Photo. But if you’re looking to get the job done without spending a dime, you have a few surprising options. For even more no-cost alternatives to popular software, be sure to check out our roundup of the best free software for your PC. A WEB-BASED PHOTOSHOP CLONE: PHOTOPEA Photopea is a web-based editor,…

Solid-state drives are universally faster than old-school hard-disk drives, but not all SSDs are the same. They come in different shapes and sizes, have different maximum speeds, and command different prices. We explain each type of drive in deep detail in “What type of SSD should you buy?” and also highlight specific recommendations in our round-up of the best SSDs, but that information can be harder to apply when you’re trying to buy a laptop or prebuilt PC. It’s often more important to understand what kind of SSD you’re getting so you can decide if it suits your purposes. To make that simple, we’ve created this quick breakdown for you. Key differences are outlined below, with a full chart at the end for easy side-by-side comparisons. It’s fast reading, so you…

Most of us have some rather sensitive files on our PCs. Whether it’s our tax returns, financial records, password lists (seriously, just use a password manager already), or just files you don’t want anyone to see under any circumstances, we all have our reasons for wanting a bit more security. This means that it’s time to get into encryption, which is where a drive, file, or folder is encoded (encrypted) so as to make it unreadable to anyone except the person with the right key to decrypt it. The upside is that anyone attempting to access it without the password will fail, and the downside is that if you lose the encryption key (usually a password), whatever you had encrypted will be gone forever, unless there’s a way to recover…

With a flax-based PCB and a motherboard mounted behind the screen rather than in the usual place under the keyboard, Dell’s Concept Luna laptop definitely shakes things up. But the funky interior design isn’t even the boldest advancement. Dell created Luna to push a sustainable PC vision, and even wilder, you can send parts of it back to Dell when you upgrade for reuse in other, cheaper laptops. Yes, Dell is thrusting used hardware and responsible recycling into the spotlight. On the face of it, Concept Luna looks like a swing-for-the-fences attempt to build a laptop with half the carbon footprint of a conventional laptop. The aluminum body would be made in a plant powered by hydroelectric power, while the motherboard would be made with a flax fiber held together…

The Windows Store has been terrible for years, mocking Microsoft’s attempts at a more mobile-style integrated platform on Windows 10. The company seems to have learned at least a couple of lessons from its failures. The Windows 11 version (now rebranded Microsoft Store) is a notable improvement when it comes to design, though still “somewhat lifeless” due to a lack of overall content, according to PCWorld’s Mark Hachman. Microsoft apparently likes the new version so much that it’s bringing Windows 11’s revamped Store app to users still on Windows 10, starting now. Windows 10 users are seeing the shiny new Microsoft Store experience pop up after a background update to the operating system. Bleeping Computer (fave.co/31ZnPCa) noticed the upgrade going out late last week. The most obvious change is a…

Microsoft touts its 10.5-inch Surface Go 3 tablet as its most mobile Surface. While that’s definitely true, what else does the new Surface Go 3 have to offer? A small processor bump, Windows 11, and—well, that’s about it. The Surface Go 3 is essentially the same device as the Surface Go 2. We don’t consider Windows 11 to be necessarily worth the upgrade, which robs the Surface Go 3 of its appeal. As for the processor upgrade—yes, there’s now a 10th-gen Core i3 option, but it doesn’t really move the needle performance-wise. BASIC FEATURES AND CONFIGURATIONS Microsoft’s Surface Go 3 is available in three configurations, ranging from $399.99 on up to $629.99, which is the price of our review unit. We wouldn’t recommend the $399.99 base model (with a Pentium…

The HP Victus 16 joins a small but growing crop of gaming notebooks whose solid, comfortable keyboards are complimented by a clean, minimalist design aesthetic. These elements make them suitable for work as well as play. Combine that with the relatively inexpensive $1,200 price tag and you get a recipe for an intriguing midrange gaming notebook that won’t hit your wallet too hard. Yes, HP tossed the RGB bling out the window. That said, we weren’t overly impressed by the audio, and the included GeForce RTX 3050Ti GPU certainly falls on the low end of the GeForce RTX 30-series spectrum. Still, the Victus 16 delivers substantial value overall for a mainstream gaming PC. BASIC FEATURES HP’s Victus essentially replaces HP’s Pavilion Gaming brand. The “V” logo is extracted from the…

If there’s one section of Windows 10’s Settings app that could be considered “fun” it would have to be the Personalization section. This is where you get to make your PC yours by setting the background image, choosing a color scheme, and getting the lock screen to behave just the way you like it. Let’s take a look at Settings > Personalization as part of our Windows 10 settings superguide. 1. BACKGROUND Ever since Windows 95 we’ve been using our desktop’s wallpaper to express a little bit of ourselves in this digital world. These days it’s a lot easier since we don’t have to worry about creating bitmap images, and can instead turn to commonly used .jpeg and .png formats. Not a whole lot has changed for backgrounds since the…

PC brands love to tout expensive, high-end laptops, but history has shown most people buy a budget laptop. And why not? A $500 laptop can be a capable machine that will serve you well for years. There’s just one problem: The brands are on to you. They’ve flooded the market with hundreds of slightly tweaked configurations designed to maximum profit. Choosing the right budget laptop is pretty difficult if you don’t know what to look for. It can get especially tricky with sale models, as you’ll often find retailers trying to offload less desirable older or poorly configured models among all the deals. Our guide can help you buy a budget laptop without getting screwed on its specifications. If you’re looking for more concrete buying recommendations across a mix of…

It’s time for us all to be less lazy about snoozing. I’m talking, of course, about the Snooze feature built into Gmail, Outlook, and other modern email apps. By clicking Snooze on an email, you can hide it from your inbox until a later date and time. While the concept of email snoozing has been around for about a decade now, and has been part of Gmail since 2018, you’d be forgiven for underutilizing it or even being unaware of its existence. It’s all too easy to think of Snooze as a stalling tactic for emails you’d rather not answer, when it really works best as a kind of reminder that lives in your inbox. Once you think of snoozing that way, the possibilities open up. SNOOZE BASICS On the…