Innehållsförteckning för July 2019 från PCWorld

With the debut of AMD’s 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X, Intel’s slim lead in gaming CPUs could disappear. Announced recently by AMD CEO Lisa Su at her keynote at E3, the company also claims that its new stack of 7nm-based Ryzen 3000 chips are competitive with Intel’s higher-clocked CPUs in games, and dominant in multi-tasking chores. The big news, of course, was the long-awaited, much-whispered Ryzen 9 3950X. During her keynote, Su said the CPU, which will be available in September, features a boost clock of 4.7GHz with a base clock of 3.5GHz. The chip will sell for $749. Besides a massive cache of 72MB, not much else was said about the Ryzen 9 3950X. But its arrival means that AMD has fully fleshed out its lineup that will take on…

The National Security Agency is warning users that a recent vulnerability affecting Windows 7 and Windows XP systems is potentially “wormable,” meaning that it could be exploited and weaponized by malware. Microsoft issued an alert in mid-May about a Remote Code Execution vulnerability, known as CVE-2019-0708, that can affect Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2008. Since then, the vulnerability has been nicknamed “BlueKeep.” Microsoft issued a BlueKeep patch for Windows 7, and another BlueKeep patch for Windows XP. Microsoft strongly urges users to patch affected systems. That’s because code designed to exploit the vulnerability could spread pre-authentication and without any user interaction. These are prime breeding conditions for a worm similar to the spread of WannaCry, Microsoft warned. WannaCry took down millions…

Apple’s WWDC keynote was jam-packed with an array of new features, apps, and tweaks designed to make our Apple device prettier and more powerful than ever before. Come September, Apple devices new and old will have an assortment of new tricks to try in iOS 13, iPadOS, and watchOS 6, and to hear Craig Federighi and company deliver the news, they’ll be nothing less than ground-breaking, earth-shattering, and straight-up revolutionary. But while the new updates may indeed be as dramatic and delightful for iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches as Apple says they are, they’re not exactly new. At least not for anyone other than Apple users anyway. Most of the marquee features Apple announced have already been done before, and as the crowd whooped and hollered at every obvious applause…

The Lenovo ThinkPad X390 gets some things right. It’s thin and light—especially for a business laptop—and plenty powerful, while maintaining the hefty keyboard for which ThinkPads are known. Before long, though, the ThinkPad X390’s trade-offs become clear. The matte display’s washed-out tones are tiresome on the eyes, and the keyboard and touchpad—both signature features on most ThinkPads—feel too stiff. While the ThinkPad X390 performs well in benchmarks, fiddling with the power settings causes speed to suffer. Given the price, we expected fewer drawbacks. SPECS AND FEATURES The ThinkPad X390’s price can vary greatly by configuration. It’s possible to spend as little as $899 on this laptop, for which you’ll get a good dollop of RAM (8GB) and a competent Intel Core i5-8265U processor; however, the low-resolution 1366x768 display and meager…

Seagate ran some pretty impressive performance numbers by me before I had an actual chance to test the company’s new FireCuda 510 NVMe SSD. I’m happy to report that the drive lived up to the hype and then some—except for one test that has us scratching our heads. FEATURES AND SPECS The FireCuda 510 is a 2280 (22 mm wide, 80 mm long) M.2 NVMe SSD that can make full use of the x4 PCIe generation 3 (8Gbps). The next generation of 16Gbs PCIe 4.0 products were announced at Computex, which may alter the equation a bit for early adopters and other bleeding-edge NVMe SSD purchasers. Look for an article on that soon. The FireCuda 510 uses 64-layer 3D TLC (Triple-Level Cell/3-bit) NAND and ships in $230 1TB and $400…

Come July, AMD gets to hoist the trophy in the race to the next-generation PCIe 4.0 interface for desktop PCs. By combining its upcoming Ryzen 3000 CPUs, Radeon RX 5700 graphics, X570 chipset, and a new spate of PCIe 4.0 SSDs, consumers will be able to build or buy the first PCIe 4.0-based PC. PCIe 4.0 sounds exciting—it’s the first big change to the interface since 2010. But as always, the questions of who can get it (and who can’t), and who really needs it, are more nuanced than you’d think. Keep reading to get the all the details. WHAT IS PCIE 4.0? PCIe 4.0 is the next iteration of the PCIe interface. It’s used for connecting add-in cards and M.2 drives, as well as interconnecting various chips inside a…

Microsoft may have positioned its easy-peasy Windows Sandbox within the Windows 10 May 2019 Update as a safe zone for testing untrusted applications, but it’s much more than that. Windows Sandbox, and sandboxing PC apps in general, give you a solution for trying a “utility” that may be malware, or a website that you’re not sure about. You could leave those potentially dangerous elements alone, but with Sandbox, you can be a little more adventurous. Windows Sandbox creates a secure “Windows within Windows” virtual machine environment entirely from scratch, and walls it off from your “real” PC. You can open a browser and surf securely, download apps, even visit websites that you probably shouldn’t. Sandbox also includes a unique convenience: it lets you copy files in and out of the virtual…

If you’re on a Top Ramen diet, the last thing you’re probably jazzed for is AMD’s new $750 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X or its $450 Radeon 5700 XT graphics card. But AMD buried some good news for budget gamers among its massive CPU, GPU, and motherboard PCIe 4.0 announcement blitz at E3 2019: A pair of affordable new Ryzen 3000-series APUs. AMD’s APUs blend the company’s Ryzen processing cores with Radeon Vega graphics on a single ready-to-game chip. The Ryzen 3 3200G will feature a quad-core chip running with a 4GHz boost and 3.6GHz base speeds. For graphics, it will feature Radeon Vega 8 GPU cores running at 1,250MHz. The new APU will come with a Wraith Stealth cooler. Compared to the previous Ryzen 3 2200G, the newer Ryzen 3200G will run…

You are now finally able to get Nvidia’s remastered Quake II RTX version for free. And if you’re wondering just how fast the game runs, we just found out in the oldest-school way possible. First, to catch you up, Nvidia has taken iD’s classic 1997-vintage shooter Quake II and lovingly updated it with a fully path-traced renderer. While you might dismiss that as “just another game with hybrid ray-tracing” support, this is much more than that. At this juncture of ray-tracing hardware performance, most games use ray tracing sparingly and combine it with traditional raster techniques. Nvidia’s Quake II RTX remaster, however, renders everything by physically tracing light rays to create the scene. Such an undertaking with a modern game’s complexity isn’t possible, but 1997’s Quake II puts it within reach.…

CES is where the technology industry goes to dream. Computex, in Taipei, Taiwan, is where things get real ahead of the crucial back-to-school and holiday seasons. At this year’s show, some of the PC’s most ambitious dreams are finally becoming tangible. This was a Computex to remember. AMD flexed its hard-earned 7nm muscle, beating both Intel and Nvidia to the punch with cutting-edge Ryzen and Radeon chips. But those giants pushed back hard, rolling out new laptop initiatives—and Intel’s long-delayed 10nm processors. Chipmakers weren’t the only companies strutting their stuff. Computer makers showed off all sorts of wild new gear, from wood-clad laptops to funky multi-screen notebooks to a radical new vision for desktops that move beyond the boring-old ATX form factor. And did we mention PCIe 4.0 is a…

The OnePlus 7 Pro is everything a OnePlus phone isn’t supposed to be. It has a better screen than the Galaxy S10+. It has a nicer design than the iPhone XR. And its front camera puts the Pixel 3 XL’s notch to utter shame. You might notice that those three phones all cost upwards of a thousand dollars, a stark contrast to the $669 7 Pro. But beyond the tremendous value, it’s the first OnePlus phone I’ve used that truly feels like a flagship and not just a premium alternative. The previous OnePlus models all had attractive price tags while still packing top-of-the-line specs, but they never quite measured up to the phones they were challenging. The 6 and 6T were the phones to buy instead of a flagship. With…

Portable battery packs have become a common accessory for smartphone owners to carry and use on a regular basis. Power stations, like the Honda 290 made by Jackery, however, are starting to get more attention. The Honda 290 is big, measuring 9.0 x 7.8 x 5.2 inches and weighing 6.6 pounds, but it packs a ton of power. There’s a small display where you can view the current charge level, along with input and output amounts. There’s a 12V charging port, two USB ports, and a standard AC port. There’s also a single input port, used for charging the power station itself. Each section of ports has a power button next to it, with a small light that lets you know if that section is currently turned on. For example,…

Windows 10 licenses are expensive—almost painfully so. Shelling out $139 for Windows 10 Home or $200 for Windows 10 Pro feels rough when Linux is free and Windows 7 still hasn’t been completely put down. That amount of cash can easily be a third of a budget PC build. But with less developer support for Linux and the end-of-life deadline rapidly approaching for Windows 7, Windows 10 is an inescapable necessity for most of us. What’s not a given is paying full retail. Yes, it’s possible to snag a discount on Windows 10. The amount you’ll save depends on how much hassle you can tolerate—as well as your circumstances. If you’re lucky, you could technically get Windows 10 for free. (Legitimately for free, because installing Windows 10 without ever…

How can I type kaomoji on my PC? And what are kaomoji, anyway? Fortunately, the answers to both questions are simple, and easily accessible within Windows 10’s May 2019 Update. The familiar emoji keyboard within Windows has been expanded to include both kaomoji and symbols, and adding them to Facebook, Twitter, and other social media apps is extremely easy. What’s a kaomoji? A kaomoji is simply a more complex emoticon, the predecessor to the emoji. You’re probably familiar with the smiley :) or winky ;) which consist of familiar punctuation symbols combined to form an expression. That’s an emoticon. Emoji are simply pictorial representations of emoticons, so that a winky symbol is represented as a 😉. A kaomoji, meanwhile, is to an emoticon like a finished painting is to a rough sketch:…

Six years after the infamously terrible reveal of the Xbox One, Microsoft has somewhat redeemed itself. At Microsoft’s E3 2019 press conference, Phil Spencer detailed the plans for its upcoming next-gen Xbox console, “Project Scarlett,” a traditional high-end box that will live alongside Microsoft’s “Project xCloud” streaming service. Project xCloud is due later this year, while you’ll need to wait until holiday 2020 for Scarlett, as expected. Let’s break it down. If you’re curious about the games revealed at Microsoft’s showcase, we split those out into a separate article, complete with trailers for all the major announcements. PROJECT SCARLETT NEXT-GEN XBOX “We believe a console should be for one thing: Gaming.” That was Phil Spencer as he started discussing the next-generation Xbox, a pointed change of direction for the company…

Nearly a week before E3, Google, of all companies, kicked off festivities. On June 6, Google detailed its Stadia streaming service, or at least gave us more details after a relatively info-light reveal at March’s Game Developers Conference. It’s a bit complicated, though. Stadia Pro is the system everyone expected, a sort-of Netflix-for-games at $10 a month, with the top-tier technical package—4K, 60 frames per second streaming, and more—streamed seamlessly to any compatible device be it a laptop, desktop, Pixel 3 phone, or Chromecast. Google will curate a selection of games for Stadia Pro, similar to Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass. And there were some great games Google mentioned in its presentation, including Destiny 2’s new Shadowkeep expansion—now with cross-platform save capabilities—and the long-awaited announcement of a Baldur’s Gate III. Ubisoft…

The MSI GS65 Stealth Thin 9SD has a tradition to uphold. Its predecessor, MSI’s GS65 Stealth Thin 8RE, was the laptop that changed our perception of just how much real gaming performance you could pack into a thin-and-light gaming laptop. With the next generation, we find essentially the same winning laptop design, stuffed with the latest toys from Intel and Nvidia. We’re not exaggerating about the original GS65 Stealth Thin 8RE’s wow factor, either. It was just a hair over 4 pounds, in the same weight class as a MacBook Pro 15 or ThinkPad X1 Extreme, yet it packed way more firepower. The newest incarnation of the MSI GS65 Stealth Thin 9SD ups the ante with Intel’s newest 6-core 9th gen Core i7-9750H, along with Nvidia’s gift to those who…

The Raspberry Pi mini computer just keeps getting better. It’s been three years since we reviewed a major upgrade to the Raspberry Pi line, and it was worth the wait. If you’ve been wondering if the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ is a worthwhile upgrade let me answer that with an emphatic yes. Once again, we’re seeing a noticeable jump in performance compared to the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B that we looked at in early 2016. Some of the downsides of the Raspberry Pi still exist with the Pi 3 B+. Nevertheless, if you’re looking to tinker with hardware, start programming, or just create an everyday PC for very basic needs, the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ is an excellent choice. Hardware hacking is a major focus of the Raspberry Pi, but…

As premium smartphones regularly blast through the thousand-dollar threshold, there’s a new battle beginning among midrange handsets. In May, Google unveiled the Pixel 3a, which sacrificed speed for stellar photography at an affordable price. Now Samsung is doing the same with its surprise U.S. launch of the Galaxy A50. Let’s take a look at how these phones stack up: SIZE AND DISPLAY If you’re looking for a small phone, the Galaxy A50 isn’t it. Where the Pixel 3a comes in two sizes, the A50 has a single 6.4-inch model, which is just as big as the Galaxy S10+. The A50 uses Samsung’s Infinity-U display, which includes a notch to contain the front camera and the speaker and rounded corners, while the Pixel 3a has a more traditional forehead for the…

With Intel’s 10th-generation Ice Lake CPU finally here, you may be wondering whether to wait for laptops to come out with the new CPU, rather than buy an existing model with an 8th-gen CPU (Note: Intel’s 8th generation offers a full range of mobile CPUs, while the 9th generation offers only high-end ‘H’ mobile parts). We’ll walk you through the reasons why you’d want to wait for a 10th-gen laptop, and five reasons why you don’t have to. FIVE REASONS YOU SHOULD WAIT FOR INTEL’S 10TH-GEN ICE LAKE CPU IN YOUR NEXT LAPTOP We know, you want shiny new things. And you know what? The shiny new things in laptops are Intel’s new 10th-gen chips. Here are five reasons why it would be worth it to wait. 1. THE 10TH GENERATION…