PCWorldDecember 2018的目錄

After more than an hour of tiring Bixby announcements, cursory Galaxy Home details, and long-winded IOT speeches during the opening keynote to its developers conference, Samsung finally showed us what we were all waiting for: its new folding phone. Except it wasn’t really a phone at all. Samsung’s big innovation is the Infinity Flex display, and we still don’t know much about what Samsung is going to do with it. Senior vice president Justin Denison waxed poetic about an advanced composite polymer and reduced thickness that paves the way for rollable displays, foldable phones, and thinner handsets. Except he didn’t actually show us any of that. The brief glimpse we got of the phone revealed a super thick handset with giant bezels and an obvious hinge. Presumably we were looking…

AMD’s Ryzen 2 consumer CPU isn’t coming until 2019, but we saw hints of what to expect in “Rome,” the 64-core server CPU AMD unveiled in early November. It’s based on a new 7nm Zen 2 core that’s likely to find its way into Ryzen 2 next year. Let’s take a closer look. Each Rome CPU will feature 64 cores with symmetrical multi-threading for 128 threads per socket. The CPU itself is “revolutionary,” AMD said, and is built around eight separate 7nm “chiplets” with eight cores each. The chipsets contain no memory controller or PCIe, but are instead tied to a central IO chip built on 14nm. The IO chip has 8 channels of DDR4 plus support for PCIe 4.0. The company connects each chiplet to the IO chip via…

In 2016 I defended the HTC Vive’s hefty $800 price tag. Sure, it was $200 more than the Oculus Rift, but it was also the only virtual reality headset (at the time) to nail room-scale and hand-tracking. Then earlier this year I defended the Vive Pro’s $1,100 price. Sure, it’s outrageous and ostentatious and nobody should pay for it, but the Vive Pro is also the best VR headset on the market today, bar none. But recently HTC announced its stand-alone Vive Focus headset is coming stateside with a list price of $599, and well, that’s pure hubris with slick stand-alone rival Oculus Quest ready to debut at $399 early next year. BUSINESS TIME After HTC’s announcement, I had the chance to put in some hands-on time with the Vive Focus at…

Our review of Microsoft’s Surface Pro 6 focuses even more than usual on the differences between this new generation and its predecessor, the Surface Pro (2017), because they seem nearly identical—at least on the, er, surface. Visually, you’d be hard-pressed to differentiate the Surface Pro 6, the Surface Pro (2017), or the Surface Pro 4, all iterations on Microsoft’s iconic 12.3-inch two-in-one PC. This time around, the major changes are inside: A bump up in the processor to an 8th-generation Core chip, some weird adjustments in pricing, and a new color—black—separate the new from the old. There’s actually a downgrade of sorts in the GPU compared to the Surface Pro (2017), which is a bit of a disappointment. The Performance section of our review shows the clearest differences among the…

The Gigabyte RTX 2070 Windforce is a member of a small and exclusive club: A GeForce RTX graphics card that actually sells for Nvidia’s MSRP! Yes, Gigabyte’s GPU costs $500 at Amazon, a full $100 less than Nvidia’s own RTX 2070 Founders Edition. The card skips out on fancy touches to achieve its price point; You won’t find fancy metal shrouds or factory overclocking here. But the Gigabyte RTX 2070 Windforce does offer performance roughly on a par with pricier RTX 2070 options, plus with a triple-fan cooler that’s more effective than the cooling in Nvidia’s Founders Edition, all delivered at a cost that actually makes the graphics card a compelling option versus the last-gen GTX 1080. Applying an overclock to get more performance couldn’t be quicker or easier, either.…

If you have a thousand dollars to spend, there’s no shortage of premium Android phones to choose from. The Galaxy Note 9, Pixel 3 XL, Mate 20 Pro, and LG V40 ThinQ all cost upwards of $1,000, and Samsung, Google, Huawei, and LG would be more than happy to take your money. If you opted to purchase any of them, you’d be getting one of the best phones money can buy. They all have top-of-the-line specs, gorgeous designs (for the most part), and innovative features and cameras. We can debate whether any phone is worth four figures, but anyone who buys one of the thousand-dollar Android phones on the market will undoubtedly be getting a valuable piece of technology. Of course, none of these Android phones would have been brave enough…

Working with PDFs has become as common as working with Word docs, but to get the full editing capabilities in Adobe Acrobat you must shell out $449 for the desktop Pro 2017 version, or almost $180 per year for a Pro DC subscription. While there are plenty of alternative PDF editors, the simplest solution might be a tool you already use: Microsoft Word 2016. While previous versions of Word let you save a document as a PDF, Word 2016 allows you to open an Adobe formatted file, modify it, and then re-save it back to the PDF format without using Acrobat. Microsoft calls this new feature PDF Reflow, and here we’ll show how it works with a file containing text and an image. IMPORT, EXPORT, AND EDIT PDFS IN WORD…

Google Chrome 71, due in December, will block what it calls “abusive” ads—ones that employ deceptive elements to trick users into clicking on them, Google said recently. In fact, the new browser will remove all ads from sites that feature these types of ads, the company said in a blog post. Google defines an abusive ad as one that includes a deceptive behavior—for example, an ad that includes a deceptive “close” or “X” button within it. In a legitimate ad, clicking such a button would close the ad. A deceptive ad makes the element part of the ad itself, so that clicking it actually launches the ad. That’s the sort of behavior that will trigger Google’s ire. Site operators found to harbor such ads will have 30 days to check…

If there’s one thing about Android that Google desperately wants to fix, it’s updates. Unless you’re buying a Pixel or an Android One phone, you’re never really sure whether you’re going to get updates as they’re available or, really, at all. It’s a question whether you’re buying a thousand-dollar Galaxy Note 9 or something much cheaper: What’s going to happen to my phone in 6, 12, or 24 months? Now Google is trying to make sure everyone has the same answer to that question. According to a report in The Verge, Google’s latest Android partner contract finally includes language that mandates security updates for a minimum of two years, lest the OEM in question lose future phone approval. That all sounds well and good on paper, but it’s not like…

BlizzCon 2018 is the end of an era. In October, Blizzard announced that cofounder and longtime president Mike Morhaime would be stepping down, replaced with J. Allen Brack. So, BlizzCon’s Opening Ceremony kicked off with Morhaime saying goodbye, and you know what? I’ll miss him. He was a great presenter, not in the overly slick way I’m accustomed to seeing at these sorts of shows, but with a quiet-spoken passion for the company he’d helped guide for 20-plus years. Blizzard lives on, though, and while 2019 won’t be the most exciting year, there’s still quite a bit in store—including the long-awaited Warcraft III remaster. That news and more below. 1. HEROES OF THE STORM Heroes of the Storm kicked off BlizzCon 2018. An odd choice. Okay, technically we started with…

Apple says the MacBook Air is “the most beloved notebook ever,” and it’s not wrong. The huge success of the original Air had ripple effects throughout the industry, but it has languished in recent years. For the last three years or so, Apple had kept up with neither technological nor design advances in its most important laptop. Now, the MacBook Air has finally been brought up to modern Mac laptop standards, skipping forward three generations of Intel processors, adding a Retina display and Thunderbolt 3 ports, and giving us three color options, among other things. But it feels a bit like Apple threw out the baby with the bathwater, jettisoning some features of the MacBook Air that make it so well-loved. In fact, it would be more accurate to call…

It starts with a small roadside bar, and a man yelling into his phone. “Get me out of here, Dex.” The man is P-Power, celebrity tattoo artist. Poor old P-Power’s been called down to Colombia to correct a neck tattoo on local cartel boss Rico Delgado. “He kills people, for fun!” says P-Power. “What if he doesn’t like my work?” Lucky for P-Power that’s not a concern. I lure the poor artist out back, choke him out, steal his clothes, and toss him in a dumpster. Dressed as P-Power I head to the mansion, wait patiently for the cartel’s men to frisk me—I don’t need weapons. I take a selfie with Delgado’s wife, follow her into his office, and pick up the tattoo gun. “Hold still, Rico. I’d hate to…

We already know Google collects a ton of data on us, and a lot of it comes from search. Google offers plenty of ways to limit the amount of data you have lying around, but they’re not all that easy to find. But now, Google is making it easier to both see and delete your search activity. Previously, you could visit your Google Account in Settings on Android phones or on the web on iOS, tap Manage Your Data & Personalization and then My Activity to see your search results. Then you needed to tap the three-dot menu and select Delete to get rid of something. Finding your search history on desktops was just as cumbersome. Google is simplifying that process in a big way. Instead of hitting up your account,…

Unless you’ve dug deep into the settings menu for the Google Home, you might not know about the smart speaker’s most powerful feature. It’s called Routines, and it allows you to execute multiple actions with a single voice command. For example, you can have Google Assistant announce the weather, a personalized traffic report, and news updates while you get ready for work, or have it dim your smart light bulbs and play some relaxing music a few minutes before bedtime. These routines even work with the Google Assistant app on iOS and Android—no smart speaker required. You can also schedule Routines to run at specific times without voice commands, effectively turning a Google Home speaker into a high-tech alarm clock that can wake you up with music, information, and smart…

We’re already seeing hints of the next version of Windows 10, due in the spring of 2019 and known by the code name “19H1.” Some are cosmetic, like the new Acrylic look and feel to the Windows sign-in page. Others are more substantive, like the new Search Indexer. But wait, you ask: Isn’t Windows 10’s October 2018 Update still in limbo? Yes: The October 2018 Update, delayed due to the potential for data loss, hasn’t been pushed to anyone but Windows Insiders. Currently there is no further news to share about its release, a spokesman said. Microsoft’s Windows teams move on parallel tracks. What’s known as the “Fast Ring” usually helps test the next version of the OS. As that version moves into its final testing phases before release, a…

Javier Soltero, who briefly led the development of Microsoft’s Cortana digital assistant, plans to leave the company, Soltero confirmed on November 6. Soltero confirmed his decision via Twitter after ZDNet reported the story earlier in the day. Microsoft representatives had not previously responded to requests for comment, but confirmed his departure after Soltero’s Twitter message. “I’ve made the decision to leave Microsoft,” Soltero wrote. “The past 4 years have been an incredible experience. I’m humbled to have been a part of building something that 100M+ users depend on every day and grateful to have worked with some amazing people. “I am deeply optimistic that Microsoft will continue to grow by building great products for people around the world,” Soltero added. “I’m grateful to have learned so much about what it really…

After spending nearly a week with the Pixel 3 XL, my three first impressions of Google’s newest handset haven’t changed: It’s the fastest Android phone I’ve ever used. The cameras are awesome. The notch is an eyesore. Thankfully, the first two qualities make up for the third. Mostly. If the Pixel 3 XL didn’t have such an ostentatious notch, it would still be an ugly phone, but after a couple days I wouldn’t have cared anymore. Six days later, the notch is still the first thing my eyes go to every time I unlock my phone. It would be one thing if there was some next-generation camera or sensor that demanded such a large notch. But as it stands, there appears to be a lot of unnecessary space around the…

After spending an intensive few days with Samsung’s Galaxy Book 2, we can see that it follows in the footsteps of the first-generation Galaxy Book that shipped last year by aiming to be a good value. It’s still a traditional Windows 2-in-1 tablet built around Samsung’s terrific AMOLED displays and rich sound, with LTE capability, a pen and keyboard, sold for a reasonable $999. But the Galaxy Book 2 has also made some fundamental changes. Lured by Qualcomm’s promises of all-day battery life, Samsung switched from the Intel Core i5 chip it used in the first-generation Galaxy Book to Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 850 in the Galaxy Book 2. Our preliminary tests show that performance suffers as a result. On the other hand, battery life improves enormously—up to an industry-leading 17 hours.…

Before you join the Wi-Fi hotspot at your local cafe, you might want to make sure it won’t follow your footsteps—literally—after you leave. Ostensibly “free” Wi-Fi hotspots are in hundreds of thousands of businesses and public spaces across the United States. They’re in shopping malls. In airports. In chain restaurants. In local cafes. As a result, it’s easier than ever to get online. If your notebook or phone lacks a reliable data connection, you can still connect to a hotspot. But this convenience often comes at a price: your personal data and privacy. When you use “free” Wi-Fi, there’s a good chance it’s managed by a third-party provider—which gets you online in exchange for your valuable sign-on data. The sign-on information that hotspots require will vary, but often includes…

How can I stop Windows 10 updates? Whether it’s preventing Windows 10 from kicking off a critical update during a presentation, or deferring Microsoft’s Windows 10 feature update because of worries about data loss, it’s a question we’ve all asked. You shouldn’t block all Windows 10 updates. But you can manage them. Windows 10 feature updates and security updates provide a valuable service: they not only patch Windows, its apps, and components, but also provide new features and capabilities twice a year. Windows Update can also automatically provide updated drivers for hardware connected to your PC, such as a USB-attached printer. As we write this, however, Microsoft is wrestling with the fallout from the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, which apparently deleted user data in an undisclosed number of cases…