PCWorldNovember 2018的目錄

Intel unveiled its 9th-generation Core desktop chips in early October with the notable omission of a key feature: Hyper-Threading, at least on all but the most exclusive Core i9-9900K for mainstream PCs. Hyper-Threading has also been reserved for a new iteration of Intel’s X-series processors, which includes up to 18 cores and 36 threads. In a livestream from its Fall Launch Event in New York, the company announced just a single Core i9 chip, the $488 Core i9-9900K. Later, the company privately revealed two others in the Core i7 and Core i5 families. Intel also announced a new series of X-class chips for gamers, ranging from 8 cores and 16 threads through 18 cores and 36 threads. Prices will range from $589 to $1,979. What this means for you: It’s…

The four-figure handsets just keep coming. While the Pixel 3 technically starts at $799, if you want the larger Pixel 3 XL (see page 15) with 128GB of storage, it’s going to set you back $999, $50 more than last year’s Pixel 2 XL with the same storage. That makes the Pixel the third phone so far to top a thousand bucks, following last year’s iPhone X and the Galaxy Note 9. And there will surely be more to come. But for now, let’s see how the three most expensive phones on the planet stack up. DIMENSIONS The Pixel 3 XL has a bigger screen than the Pixel 2 XL, but with a new design that trims the bezels, it’s practically identical in size to the model it succeeds: iPhone XS…

Alienware’s beefy gaming laptops have never been known to be thin, but that’s about to change. The new Alienware m15 introduced in early October is a whopping 17 percent thinner and 30 percent smaller than the current 15-inch Alienware laptop. Pricing of the new Alienware m15 wasn’t immediately available, but it’s likely to be in the same range as its thicker relative’s going rate. Much will depend on what’s inside when it goes on sale October 25. What this means for you: Gaming laptops are the last bastion of hulking, fire-breathing, theoretically portable PCs. But thin is in, even with gamers, and new generations of CPU and GPU have made slimmer performance laptops possible. Alienware’s m15 is just the latest to get the Biggest Loser makeover, while maintaining a decent…

The hulking Asus ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080 shows how Nvidia’s graphics card partners can still stand out from the crowd in an era when Nvidia’s making it harder than ever to shine. Last generation, all customized GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards plateaued at virtually the same level of performance. Custom cards were notably better than Nvidia’s own GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition, though, because Founders Edition cards were restrained by reference clock speeds and a subpar single-fan, blower-style cooler. This generation, it’s looking like power limits will impose a new ceiling on GeForce RTX 2080 performance—but now, Nvidia’s vastly improved RTX Founders Edition cards pack a dual-fan cooler, a gorgeous design, and an 80MHz out-of-the-box overclock. Nvidia’s competing against its own partners something fierce. The ROG Strix RTX 2080…

There’s one area where PC gamers get consistently overlooked: haptics. Haptic feedback (or rumble, in the vernacular) has been a mainstay of console gaming for almost two decades now, and for good reason. Smart usage can both increase immersion and provide invaluable feedback to players, e.g. letting you feel the moment digital tires lose traction on slick asphalt, or warning that an enemy’s shooting at you. There have been a few experiments, like SteelSeries’s Rival 500—a mouse with built-in haptics. But it’s hard to make a mouse with rumble because it’s bound to affect your aim, and keyboards are too large and heavy to effectively produce the effect. That leaves us with headsets. Razer’s the latest company to explore this space, this week revealing the new flagship Nari Ultimate. Get…

Anew chip demands a new motherboard chipset, and on October 8, Intel and its partners revealed a wide array of Z390 motherboards to accompany the new 9th-gen Core processors. Z390 builds atop the foundation set by existing Z370 boards. Its capabilities come as no surprise, as Intel published documentation detailing the high-end chipset all the way back in May. Nevertheless, Z390’s arrival gives Intel a new flagship motherboard lineup and should finally bring the bizarre, drawn-out saga of Intel 300-series motherboards to a cohesive close. Last year, Intel’s 8th-gen “Coffee Lake” processors launched in October 2017 with only enthusiast-class Z370 motherboards in tow. In April, Intel finally released the full lineup of 300-series motherboards, but surprisingly, the cheaper H370, B360, and H310 chipsets included premium features that Z370 lacked. They integrated…

A big part of my job is doing research online. That means from time to time the autocomplete function in my browser’s address bar gets filled with mistyped URLs and sites I visited once but never will again. If you’ve ever spent a boring night surfing around the web chances are your browser’s autosuggest function tosses up similar unwanted ghosts. Erasing all autosuggested URLs from your browser is easy, but it would slow you down even more than a few bad suggestions. Deleting just the unwanted URLs, however, really streamlines the browsing experience. Here’s how to dump the annoying addresses while keeping all the good stuff in Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera. Over the Christmas holidays every year, I spend a lot of time researching the various online Santa trackers…

Core i7, the boss wants to talk to you. The good news: you got a promotion and a bump from six cores up to eight cores in Intel’s 9th-generation CPU lineup (see page 7). Woo-hoo! The bad news: Turn in your Hyper-Threading, because the cool feature that gave you virtualized CPU cores and about 30 percent more performance is gone. Yup. If you’re freaked out about the Core i7 losing a premier performance-boosting feature that it’s offered since, well, there was a Core i7, you may well be right to be concerned. But you may not be, too, depending on how you use your computer. Intel first introduced Hyper-Threading on consumer CPUs with the Northwood-based Pentium 4 in 2002. It works by splitting a single physical core into two logical…

Three years after Google released its first Pixel-branded Android tablet, it’s back with another one. This time it’s called the Pixel Slate, but it doesn’t run Android 9 Pie. It runs Chrome OS. You wouldn’t know it looking at it. Lying on a table, the Pixel Slate looks just like the Pixel C or any other 4:3 Android tablet, with uniform black bezels all around, four pogo pins, and a USB-C port in the corner. It’s only upon closer inspection that you realize just how different the Pixel Slate really is. It starts with the color. Google is offering only one option on the Pixel Slate and it’s a good one: midnight blue. It’s very dark but not quite black, and has a shimmery quality to it that reflects light…

The HP Spectre Folio is a sensual experience. By wrapping an incredibly thin laptop in a full-grain leather shell, HP has made a PC whose look, feel, and smell will evoke classic, covetable objects like a bomber jacket, a handbag, or a leather football or baseball. You’ll find yourself responding to the Spectre Folio in the same way—and then fighting it, as if it were wrong to react like that to a PC, even if it’s also one of the first super-efficient Amber Lake laptops we’ve seen. I had the same struggle during my sneak peek at the Spectre Folio ahead of its announcement the morning of October 1 in New York City. I couldn’t take my hands off it, and it felt great on my lap, too. Yet it felt…

The hulking Asus ROG Strix GeForce RTX 2080 shows how Nvidia’s graphics card partners can still stand out from the crowd in an era when Nvidia’s making it harder than ever to shine. You know who has an easy job today? Dell’s XPS 15 designer. That’s because the popular 15.6-inch laptop gets the upgrade it deserves with Intel’s 8th-gen 6-core Core i7 chip. Dell also tucked in a GPU upgrade to make what is ultimately the fastest XPS 15 we’ve seen yet. FEATURES AND SPECS The Dell XPS 15 comes in many flavors, but the specifications of our 9570 review unit are as follows: CPU: 8th-gen Intel Core i7-8750H CPU GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Max-Q RAM: 16GB DDR4/2,666MHz Display: 15.6-inch 1920x1080 IPS non-touch screen with anti-reflective coating Storage:…

Okay, the Vantrue N1 Pro by its lonesome is only an $80 dash cam. A very nice dash cam. But as we recommend GPS for legal and travel log reasons, I’m going to talk about it as if the $22 optional GPS mount were part of the deal. If you’re smart, it will be. That brings us to $102. Either way, this tiny unit is our new favorite low-cost dash cam. Great basics, compact installation, a real battery, and excellent video captures will do that for you. DESIGN AND FEATURES The N1 Pro is even smaller than Garmin’s 45/55/65W series dash cams. The display is a relatively tiny 1.5 inches, but it’s color and it’s sharp. I’m pretty sensitive about readability, and I have no issues with it. Okay, you…

If you bought a Samsung Galaxy Note 9, you already know how great the screen, processor, and camera are. Now let’s go a little deeper, and find all the cool features and settings you might have missed. Here are nine hidden Galaxy Note 9 tips, tricks, and features to help you get the most out of your new thousand-dollar phone: 1. WRITE WITH WHITE INK AGAIN You probably noticed that Samsung’s new S pen comes in two new colors to match and complement the new shades of the Galaxy Note 9: purple and yellow. But the new colors are about more than just aesthetics. They also affect how they write. Depending on which phone you bought, your S Pen will write in either yellow or purple. But you can change…

If your Kindle has ads or “Special Offers” showing onscreen, it’s because you made a deal. You chose to save money on your Kindle’s purchase price by accepting the “With Special Offers” discount. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now you’re sick of the ads. The good news: You can back out of this deal. The bad news: It’s going to cost you. WHY DOES MY KINDLE HAVE SPECIAL OFFERS? You might not have given this much thought when you bought your Kindle, but Amazon offers a lower price for the E-reader if you accept Special Offers. As Amazon explains, “If your Fire tablet or Kindle e-reader includes Special Offers, you’ll receive Sponsored Screensavers and special offers, including personalized advertising, from Amazon directly on your device.”…

Let’s just get this out of the way: The Pixel 3 XL is not a pretty phone. It’s got a canyon for a notch, a valley for a chin, and thick bezels around its screen. Put it in a Pepsi challenge with any 2018 phone—and even some 2017 models—and nearly everyone will pick the other handset based on looks alone. The smaller Pixel 3 may look slightly less homely, with a smaller Pixel 2 XL aesthetic, but you can pretty much throw a rock and hit a better-looking Android phone. But while it might not be much to look at, the Pixel 3 XL is a joy to hold, with an incredible matte-glass back that feels like metal to the touch and won’t pick up nearly as many fingerprints as…

With Microsoft’s Surface Laptop, Microsoft used Windows 10 S as a tool to help enable the Laptop’s outstanding battery life. Now the Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 is here, complete with a higher-performing, 8th-generation Intel Core chip. But there’s one thing missing: Windows 10 S. Performance is the name of the game this time around, and Microsoft’s claiming that the Surface Laptop is up to 85 percent faster, in part because of the new 8th-generation Core processors powering it. Battery life is also impressive, at a rated 14.5 hours. Naturally, that’s a feature that we’re eager to test. Functionally, the Surface Laptop 2 appears to be exactly the same as its predecessor, in both dimensions and weight. As with the Surface Pro 6, Microsoft has separated business and consumer customers, but…

Microsoft’s Windows 10 October 2018 Update, officially released October 2, doesn’t offer the standout, marquee features you might have come to expect from earlier releases. But as our review demonstrates, a few new features highlight a longer list of under-the-hood, day-to-day improvements. Our review is based on the final Windows 10 Insider Builds, which led up to the official October 2018 Update. Microsoft doesn’t appear to have added anything with the announcement, but we’ll check and update this story to reflect any last-minute changes. (For now, though, the launch is officially on hold—an undetermined number of users have suffered data loss from upgrading right away, so Microsoft has put the update on hold until it solves the problem. We didn’t experience any issues with Insider Builds, but as always, back…

There are a few VPN services that offer their own antivirus, one is Avira Phantom VPN Pro, which we looked at previously; Finland-based F-Secure is another. The company’s Freedome VPN is a premium service that offers 22 country locations around the world and extra freebies like tracker and malicious-site blocking. Freedome on Windows offers a large, expansive interface that makes it easy for new users to navigate. The primary dashboard features a big button in the center that says either “ON” or “OFF.” To the left of that is the amount of bandwidth you’ve used, and to the right there’s a count of the harmful sites and trackers Freedome has blocked. Below that is a rectangle showing your current country location target. Click it and a list comes up showing…

In 2017 I went up to Seattle for PAX as usual, and while I was up there I heard about the Living Computer Museum, an institution in southern Seattle founded by Paul Allen to preserve PC history. I took a day off from the show to wander down there, got a behind-the-scenes tour of the museum, and then…never got around to writing about it. Fall’s busy video game release season buried me, and while I eventually transcribed a full hour of audio and wrote the story, it seemed weird to run it six or eight months after the fact—so it just sat on my hard drive. Paul Allen passed away October 15, though, and as a result it seems like a great time to celebrate one of his lesser-known ventures.…

Excel has over 475 formulas in its Functions Library, from simple mathematics to very complex statistical, logical, and engineering tasks such as IF statements (one of our perennial favorite stories); AND, OR, NOT functions; and COUNT, AVERAGE, and MIN/MAX. The basic functions covered below are the top 12 most popular formulas in Excel. To help you learn, we’ve also provided a spreadsheet with all the formula examples we cover here. It can be downloaded here. 1. TODAY/NOW There are 24 Date And Time functions listed on the drop-down menu under Formulas > Date & Time: 11 Date formats, 10 Time formats, and as many user-defined custom formats as you can create. The TODAY function reveals the current month, day, and year; while the NOW function reveals the current month, day,…