Innehållsförteckning för October 2019 från PCWorld

The next two Windows 10 updates, code-named “19H2” and “20H1,” reflect Microsoft’s recent decision to split the major Windows 10 feature releases into two: a full-fledged update, with new features, and a secondary patch update. We’ve already had the major “19H1” update, known officially as the May 2019 Update, so we’re now looking forward to the minor 19H2 patch and then the major 20H1 feature release. Here’s what we know so far about both of them. As of July 2019, the upcoming 19H2 feature will focus on “quality enhancements,” while the “20H1” feature will return to more substantive improvements. If the latter hews to Microsoft’s usual schedule, it’ll drop in March or April of 2020. Interim beta builds will provide further hints about what’s coming, and we’ll continue to cover them.…

Lenovo’s C340 and S340 Chromebooks are built for consumers who want a little more style or substance in their browser-based laptop. Of course, Lenovo’s been selling rather dowdy, education-oriented Chromebooks for years. The company’s first foray into retail has clearly graduated and is ready to break out of that mold, offering some better materials and features, plus some eye-opening color. LENOVO CHROMEBOOK C340-11 PRICING AND FEATURES First up is the budget-minded Lenovo C340-11. This model has the same 11-inch display size and compact form factor of most Chromebooks. Its processor remains basic: up to an Intel Celeron N4000. However, an aluminum lid shaves off weight and adds a bit of premium feel (the bottom is still plastic), and the Sand Pink color option is a refreshing break from silver, black,…

Steam’s library overhaul has taken longer than I think anyone would’ve guessed, which is about par for the course with Valve. It’s almost done though. As of September 17, you can enter the open beta for the new library interface. And I think you’re going to want to, because it’s fantastic. Recently, Valve gave us a live demo, a deep dive into the myriad changes to expect. The short version though? If you’ve accrued a vast Steam library in the last decade-plus, this update is going to be your salvation. COMING HOME The heart of the update is the Library Home page. Clicking on the Library tab now brings you to a landing page with a familiar tiled layout, and sections at the top for What’s New, Recent Games, and…

I can sum up my first experience in 5G like this: 1.21 gigabits. That’s the first speed I hit when I started walking around Providence, Rhode Island, on a Wednesday with the Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ 5G. That wasn’t the top speed I hit either. Later in the day, I touched 1.48Gbps and 1.63Gbps. Nor did it represent an average speed, which was closer to 450Mbps. But my first impression of real-world 5G Ultra Wideband—made possible during a Verizon press event, but using already-deployed 5G infrastructure nodes—kind of blew me away. Here are some real-world stats to help you wrap your brain around the promise of gig-plus download speeds: • I downloaded The Hateful Eight (2 hours, 47 minutes) from Netflix in 10 seconds. • The first episode of…

If you’re looking for an alternative to unleashing your kids on an iPad when you need a few precious moments to yourself, the Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition makes for an attentive and surprisingly engaging companion. Loaded up with parental controls aplenty and packed to the gills with games and “skills,” the Alexa-powered Echo Kids Edition keeps children entertained while spurring their imaginations, all with you in control. The $70 Echo Dot Kids Edition is, for all intents and purposes, the same device as the 3rd-generation Echo Dot, but it comes with a one-year subscription to FreeTime, an Amazon service that boasts parental controls, thousands of Audible books, hundreds of Alexa games and kid-friendly skills, and ad-free tunes on Amazon Music. The FreeTime bundle is a $36 value ($60 for…

While our guide to the best graphics cards can help you identify which hardware works best within your budget, simply knowing that you want to buy, say, a Radeon RX 5700 is only the start of the process. You’ll find endless models available for every graphics card, ranging from humble “reference” cards designed by AMD or Nvidia themselves, to highly customized options packing bespoke cooling solutions and extra features by “add-in board” partners like EVGA, Sapphire, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, and more. So should you buy a reference card or a custom graphics card when you’re on the hunt for a new GPU? The short answer is most—but not all—people should buy a customized model. For the longer answer, as well as a look at the niche cases where you might be…

If you’re a fan of Windows 10’s Snap feature, you’ve been waiting and hoping for Windows to allow you to design your own custom Snap layouts. Now you can! One of the first Windows 10 PowerToys apps, FancyZones, does just that—and it looks incredible. If you don’t know what Snap does, head to a PC and open any window there. Press the Windows key and one of the directional arrows. If you hit Windows + Left Arrow key, for example, Snap snaps a window as a column attached to the left side of the screen. If you drag it toward any corner, the window will snap to that corner, allowing you to create a 4-window tiled effect. But if those windows are a little smaller than what you want? Or…

Intel said that it plans to ship two high-end desktop processors next month: both its monstrous Core i9-9900KS processor and its upcoming Cascade Lake-X gaming processor will go on sale. In a presentation from the IFA show in Berlin, Ryan Shrout, chief performance strategist at Intel, said that Intel is aware of the competition, specifically AMD and Qualcomm, and was “adjusting” to deliver market-leading products. AMD has already delivered a cost-competitive Ryzen processor, and there’s reason to believe a next-gen Threadripper is coming soon. As Intel did at Computex, the chipmaker announced future products in hopes of taking some wind out of its competitor’s sales. Intel had already announced the Core i9-9900KS at Computex, a 4GHz, 8-core/16-thread chip that boosts to 5GHz—and, more importantly, across all cores simultaneously. That gave Shrout…

Acer rolled into the annual IFA tradeshow in Berlin with plenty in store for PC gaming enthusiasts, showing off a hulking $14,000 multi-monitor gaming cockpit, a laptop with a blazingly fast 300Hz display, an affordable new gaming notebook, and more. Believe it or not, the $14,000 Predator Thronos Air is actually $6,000 cheaper than the original Predator Thronos gaming chair revealed last year. The monitor arm that holds up to three displays isn’t motorized anymore, but the Thronos picked up massage capabilities, so that’s a net win in my book. It’s still a gigantic steel beast of a cockpit, complete with Acer-blue LED lights, a foot rest, and a camera mount above the middle monitor for any budding Twitch stars. Look for it in the fourth quarter, but be warned:…

Nvidia wants everyone to know that those nifty graphics features AMD and Intel have been touting are cute, but watch this. At Gamescom in mid-August, Nvidia dropped the Gamescom Game Ready driver, a massive update that: • Increases frame rates by as much as 23 percent in some games • Decreases the mouse click–to–reaction latency in games • Adds integer scaling • Allows you to personalize image sharpening The bread and butter of the driver are performance improvements for Apex Legends, Battlefield V, Forza Horizon, Strange Brigade and World War Z. Performance improvements vary by game, resolution and GPU, but the buffs seem fairly decent, with most of the improvements in the doubledigit range. UP TO 33 PERCENT LOWER LATENCY Nvidia’s Ultra-low latency response time mode can slice up to 33…

In the field of low-end gaming laptops, Acer’s latest Nitro 5 (model AN517-51-56YW) is about as budget as they come. But for $880, you don’t need more than what the Acer Nitro 5 offers to play Fortnite and Apex Legends at 1080p and 60 frames per second with maximum settings. You can cross the same frame rate and resolution hurdles in lots of other modern games with a few minor graphical tweaks. Those who turn up their noses at sub-144Hz displays should stay away, of course, and the Nitro 5’s speakers are a major weak point no matter what kind of player you are. But for folks with calibrated expectations, the Nitro 5 is a big low-budget gaming laptop that hits the right marks. SPECS AND FEATURES Unlike a lot…

Few of us ever get a chance to start over from scratch, but last night World of Warcraft players got exactly that with the launch of WoW Classic. Blizzard Entertainment’s “newest” game is essentially the popular massive multiplayer online roleplaying game exactly as it played in 2004, right down to molasses-paced quest text, a dearth of quest markers, and enemies so tough that you feel compelled to group up with other players to beat them. Together, features like these made World of Warcraft’s earliest incarnation more social than its current form, and almost 15 years ago they helped lay the foundation for some of the most enduring friendships of my life. Yet it’s important to remember that Classic isn’t a hard reset—a reboot that gives us a truly new game…

When you first start using Android 10, it won’t look all that different from version 9. In fact, the biggest change you’re going to encounter is that it doesn’t have a tasty dessert moniker attached to it. But even without any radical new features, Android “Don’t Call It Q” charts a whole new path for the OS, with new ways to navigate, customize, and secure your phone. So if you can’t find anything new, you’re just looking in the wrong places. Here are all the best new features in Android 10 and how to start using them. DARK THEME Possibly the most highly anticipated new feature in Android 10 is a simple one: dark mode. Called Dark theme, it flips many of the elements in stock Google apps from blinding…

Scanning photos into digital copies isn’t just for old photo albums. These days, you’ll often have to decide whether to buy an expensive digital version of school photos, not to mention weddings. But why spend extra money when you have a photo scanner in your pocket? Google PhotoScan is an app both for Android and iOS, and works by using your phone’s camera to take several photos of a print photograph, using intelligence to stitch them together and mark the edges of the photograph. The photo stitching also works to eliminate glare from your phone’s flash, though a well-lit photo using natural light delivers the best results. To be fair, a native digital image will present the clearest, sharpest results. And if you have a dedicated scanner, or a multifunction…

The Dell OptiPlex 7070 Ultra answers a prayer. This long, slender mini-PC slides into the back of a monitor stand, creating the first all-in-one that’s modular and upgradable. Officially, it’s designed for corporate desk jockeys needing to de-clutter their open-office workspaces. Anyone who’s had to junk an entire all-in-one PC because one component has died, however, understands why we’re so excited about this design. Due to ship on September 24, the OptiPlex 7070 Ultra will have what Dell calls an “average price” of $749. Remember, it’s modular, so the cost will depend on what you buy with it. The primary decision is which base to get with the mini-PC—it has to mount to something. The compatible choices are a fixed-height and height-adjustable stand, plus an offset VESA mount that…

Larger laptops are typically big, weighty machines, pushing into the territory of mobile workstations. Dynabook, however, is announcing the Tecra X50, a “thin and light” 15.6-inch notebook that delivers big-screen convenience without the weight. Dynabook, which carries on the legacy of Toshiba’s PC division, already offers X-series laptops in 12-, 13-, and 14-inch models. But Dynabook’s ToughBody magnesium alloy chassis weighs in at just 3.13 pounds, far less than, say, the 15-inch Microsoft Surface Book 2 (4.2 pounds) or the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 2 (3.75 pounds). To be fair, both of the latter machines aspire to powerful mobile computing platforms, if not outright workstations. The Dynabook X50’s aspirations are more modest: Rather than lead the way into Intel’s 10th-gen Core generation, the X50 uses an 8th-gen Whiskey Lake chip…

The Galaxy Note 10+ will be too expensive for some people. It’ll be too big for others. Some will balk at its lack of a headphone jack and a few might really want a dual selfie cam. For those people, there’s the Galaxy S10+, which is an excellent alternative that checks off all of the above boxes without sacrificing too much of what the Note 10+ brings. But if the four drawbacks I noted earlier aren’t an issue, the Galaxy Note 10+ should quickly become your favorite phone of all time. No matter what handset you’re upgrading from, the Note 10+ will be an improvement, likely a significant one. It’s not just the speed (though it’s basically the fastest phone ever made) or the display (which is pretty much flawless).…

It’s that time of year again: the time when Acronis releases the annual update of its venerable True Image backup program. It’s called True Image 2020 (we tested the Standard version, $49.99 from Acronis), and, yes, I know it’s not 2020 yet, as the moniker implies, but what’s a few months among old friends? True Image is a trusted warhorse. This year’s improvements are of course welcome for subscription users, and go quite a ways toward making the program easier to use. However, if you own a recent perpetual license version they’re not a must-have. NEW STUFF Acronis sent out an email claiming over 100 enhancements to True Image 2020. I’m sure there are, but the vast majority are what I’d describe as tweaks and fixes. The only major “adds”…

If your brain broke when Intel announced its 10th-gen Comet Lake laptop CPUs, which will sell alongside its 10th-gen Ice Lake chips, we understand. Among the two different manufacturing processes (one advanced and one very refined) as well as very different graphics cores, core counts, and power levels, it’s confusing enough to make you want to switch to a Windows on ARM laptop (just kidding, we’re not that frustrated). Even Intel itself admits there “might be some confusion” between its different 10th-gen CPUs. INTEL’S 10TH-GEN LAPTOP CPU LINEUP Fortunately for you, we’ve combed through all of Intel’s newest 10th-gen laptop CPUs to try to find the strengths and weaknesses of the 19 different parts. Although we haven’t personally touched each different model integrated into a laptop, we’re comfortable with our performance…

I remember when Adobe made the switch. In 2013, not long after I purchased Adobe Creative Suite CS6, Adobe terminated the desktop versions of its software and launched Creative Cloud, offering subscription-based access only to its suite of products. It’s easy to understand why some users have been unhappy with Adobe’s subscription model. A large corporation has the budget to shoulder monthly fees, but small businesses and home users may balk, especially for programs used only occasionally. I love Adobe products, and I’ve used them since Photoshop version 2.5. I’ve also purchased Freehand and PageMaker, and the Macromedia products. They’re the best, hands-down. But a subset of users have largely left their beloved Adobe software behind for a variety of clones, shareware, and open-source products. I actually use them all—Adobe…