PCWorldMarch 2026的目錄

Windows 11 has officially surpassed the 1 billion user mark. This was confirmed by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during an earnings call for investors. The company’s latest operating system apparently reached this milestone toward the end of 2025. According to Nadella, Windows 11 recorded a 45 percent increase over the previous year, which is likely correlated with the end of support for Windows 10. The end-of-support deadline was originally planned for October 2025, but thanks to extended security updates, users can remain secure with Windows 10 until at least October 2026. WINDOWS 11 AND 10, COMPARED What’s notable about this milestone is that Windows 11 reached 1 billion users faster than Windows 10 did. While Windows 10 took approximately 4 years and 8 months to hit this number, Windows 11…

Well, it had to happen eventually—ChatGPT is now showing ads. “Our goal is for ads to support broader access to more powerful ChatGPT features while maintaining the trust people place in ChatGPT for important and personal tasks,” the company said. Only the Free and Go tiers of ChatGPT will see ads, OpenAI said. Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise, and Education tiers will not have ads. Ads will not influence the answers ChatGPT provides, and conversations won’t be disclosed to advertisers. When ads do appear, OpenAI says they’ll be clearly labeled as sponsored and visually separated from organic answers. Still, it’s a bum deal for users who don’t want to see ads, or who rely on ad-blocking software to avoid them. The only way out is upgrading to a paid ChatGPT tier (ChatGPT Plus…

Microsoft has quietly added reminders to Copilot. Well, at least Copilot seems to think so. I don’t. Windows Latest reports that you can now ask Copilot to set a reminder for a specific task, and the reminder should fire on your Android or iOS phone, letting you know what’s going on. Reminders, of course, are nothing new—what is new is simply the ability to add one right from your PC, much like Cortana could do way back in Windows 10. Cortana even featured geolocation for a short time, so if you happened to be in the neighborhood of your grocery store, it could remind you to pick up milk or bread. Copilot is not as sophisticated. But there is a feature within it that does allow you to set a…

Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 platform, Panther Lake, and its champion, the Core Ultra X9 388H microprocessor, offer something unique: powerful, gaming-class 3D performance with battery life that’s almost unheard of in the laptop space. Intel positioned the Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake) as a chip with the computational power of its Arrow Lake platform and the low power consumption of the Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake). The chip maker also predicted that Panther Lake’s gaming performance is roughly equivalent to a laptop with an Nvidia GeForce 4050 laptop chip inside it. As I’ll show you, those are relatively fair claims. Instead of just a battery of tests, we’ll try to pull out the “story” of Panther Lake, demonstrating its strengths and weaknesses as we go. Let’s just…

Intel’s integrated graphics hardware is seriously impressive now. Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3—also known as Panther Lake—is a huge leap and a comeback moment for Intel (see page 23). Indeed, Intel’s Arc iGPU paired with the Core Ultra X9 388H is nearly as good as a dedicated Nvidia GPU (see page 28)! But that’s not the full story…and I have the benchmarks to prove it. Most Panther Lake CPUs don’t include the most impressive Intel Arc iGPUs. Instead, they come with only “Intel Graphics.” This slower Intel option performs more like the traditional onboard graphics you’d expect from an Intel CPU. Meanwhile, previous-generation PCs running Core Ultra Series 2 hardware might have faster iGPUs. In short, not all Panther Lake CPUs have benchmark-busting integrated graphics. Let’s rein in the hype.…

Don’t let the high prices and infrastructure requirements of some top-shelf smart home devices intimidate you. You can get all the convenience and security benefits of living in a smart home without spending a lot, wrestling with complicated installs, or learning entirely new skills. As the smart home market has matured, the prices of smart home components have plummeted as manufacturers recovered their R&D costs—thanks early adopters! Meanwhile, a raft of new competitors has forced many premium brands to further shrink their profit margins to stay in the game. When you’re shopping for products you’ll install in your home, however, you don’t want to shop by price alone—there’s a chasm between inexpensive and cheap. Saving a few bucks here and there isn’t worth dealing with the frustration—and even the security…

Officially, Peacock doesn’t offer a free trial, so the only way to watch its exclusive content is to subscribe up front. Unofficially, though, there’s a workaround: Peacock is currently included for free with an Instacart+ subscription, and Instacart+ does offer a free trial–with no credit card required. By signing up for the latter, you can also check out Peacock at no extra charge. Here are the details: GETTING FREE PEACOCK THROUGH INSTACART+ Instacart is primarily a grocery delivery service. You order items from one of Instacart’s partner stores, then a gig worker shops for them on your behalf and delivers them to your home. Instacart+ is a premium tier that includes free delivery on eligible orders, lower service fees, and faster delivery from eligible stores. It normally costs $10 per…

Just when Intel seemed to be on the cusp of success, the company reported supply issues that will limit the number of available PC chips that PC makers will be able to buy. Moreover, Intel said it’s prioritizing the higher-margin data center chips with what it can manufacture, leaving supplies of upcoming chips like the Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake) apparently constrained. Intel also said that its next-generation processor, Nova Lake, would arrive at the end of 2026. “So it’s just literally hand to mouth what we can get out of the fab and what we can get the customers, is how we’re managing it,” David Zinsner, Intel’s chief financial officer, said during a call with analysts reporting Intel’s Q4 earnings for 2025. A transcript was recorded by Investing.com. “Obviously, we’re…

Some might think the hard disk drive (HDD), which is rarely found in consumer computing devices these days, is obsolete. In truth, it’s nowhere near kaput. Why? Hard drives provide capacity SSDs can only dream of, at least at anything close to an affordable price. With the data created each year now measured in zettabytes (trillions of gigabytes), we obviously need all the room we can get. To meet that demand, WD (newly divested of solid state expert Sandisk) plans to squeeze every last drop out of the spinning platter technology using a variety of techniques, including these: • SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording), aka overlapping data tracks. This can slow write performance in some circumstances, but increases capacity. • eAMR (Energy-Assisted Magnetic Recording), or applying more energy to the write…

You can now change your Gmail address! In other words, if you’ve been sending emails from abc@gmail.com, you can now continue to use your existing email account but with a different address—like xyz@gmail.com—without any problems. This is a great option if you have an embarrassing email address but can’t abandon it. On this support page (fave.co/460Chrw), Google explains: Your Google Account email is the address you use to sign into Google services and to identify your account to you and others. If you choose, you can change your Google Account email that ends in gmail.com to a new address that ends in gmail.com. HOW TO CHANGE YOUR GMAIL ADDRESS Log into your Gmail account on your PC (use this link for convenience), click on your profile picture in the top…

Samsung’s 16-inch Galaxy Book6 is the first Panther Lake (see page 28) powered PC I’ve had the pleasure of using outside of a demonstration. Combining an Intel Core Ultra Series 3 CPU with discrete Nvidia graphics hardware, the Galaxy Book6 Ultra is an impressive premium machine. Samsung gave Galaxy Books a redesign for 2026, and this PC has a more modern feel to match its updated internals. Samsung hasn’t announced pricing or availability for the U.S. yet, but this machine is a premium laptop that shows just how promising Intel’s Panther Lake hardware is. It’s a laptop with discrete Nvidia graphics that gets over 24 hours of battery life and delivers solid multithreaded performance. That would’ve been impossible just a year ago. SAMSUNG REDESIGNED ITS GALAXY BOOKS FOR 2026 I’ve reviewed…

Intel’s Panther Lake, produced with the company’s long-heralded and frequently delayed 18A fabrication process, is finally beginning to tiptoe into the world. And the Asus ExpertBook Ultra is one of the first production laptops we’ve had the chance to try (Mark Hachman also recently reviewed an Asus Zenbook Duo with the top-tier Intel Core Ultra X9 388H). While the ExpertBook has a less powerful version of Panther Lake than what’s in the Zenbook Duo (see page 47), I concur with Mark’s conclusion. You’re going to want this. SPECS AND FEATURES AS TESTED The Asus ExpertBook Ultra I received has Intel’s Core Ultra X7 358H inside. This is a high-end version of Panther Lake. It provides 16 cores in total and has Intel Arc B390 graphics, just like the Intel Core…

Unless you live under a rock, you’ve probably seen that Google Search has been showing “AI Overviews” at the top of its search results. These AI-generated summaries have been around for months now, and their aim is to quickly give you a one-stop answer to whatever it is you’re searching for. This is the same kind of AI-generated conversational response you might get from an AI chatbot like ChatGPT—and just as with ChatGPT, the answers in AI Overviews aren’t always kosher. Google doesn’t make it easy to disable AI Overviews in its search results, but you do have a few options if you want to avoid the AI summaries. Method #1: Add the -ai parameter to the end of every search query. For example, if I’m searching for “best carbon steel…

I have acquaintances who talk excitedly about cashback sites for shopping—and I get the appeal. Why not get money back if you’re already going to be buying those things anyway? But I’m the one who replies, “Have you looked into what they do with your data?” (I am very fun to chat with at parties.) Here’s the thing: Cashback sites can be useful, so long as you’re smart about how you use them. What websites know about you can make life harder in the wrong circumstances. WHAT IS A CASHBACK SITE? Cashback websites work like this: You install an extension on your browser (or an app on your phone), then start shopping. As you visit online stores, notifications will appear when an offer is available—either a percentage (often capped at…

Google is planning to replace ChromeOS—the operating system that currently powers Chromebooks—with a new one called Aluminium OS. It promises to combine the strengths of ChromeOS and Android into a single, cross-platform operating system…and though it’s far from an official release, we caught an early glimpse of it thanks to a leak. 9to5Google was able to see official images of Aluminium OS in a Google bug report. These show the first real pictures of the OS’s interface and other elements, such as the status bar. The images were taken on an HP Elite Dragonfly 13.5-inch Chromebook with a split screen. Google reacted quickly and removed the images from the report, but not before the editor shared a video with the public. HERE’S WHAT ALUMINIUM OS LOOKS LIKE Unsurprisingly, Aluminium OS…

Google recently brought a major change to Chrome users: a mainstream agentic AI that will “autobrowse” the web for you, performing tasks that you assign it. Chrome’s also getting a sidebar—and yes, equipped with Gemini AI. Autobrowsing capabilities arrived in late January for Chrome users who subscribe to either Google AI Pro ($19.99 per month) or Google AI Ultra ($249.99 per month), while the Chrome sidebar rolled out for all Chrome users. The move came a day after Google announced the Google AI Plus plan for $7.99 per month, which will not have access to the autobrowse features. Essentially, Google sees the autobrowsing as the evolution of its autofill capabilities, which aren’t unique to Chrome. Autofill stores details like your credit card and applies them when necessary, such as to…

I’ve reviewed lots of laptops powered by Intel CPUs over the last year, and I’ve had gripes. The Core Ultra Series 2 generation was a branding mess with its mix of Lunar Lake, Arrow Lake, and Meteor Lake architectures. But at CES 2026, Intel turned a corner. Intel Core Ultra Series 3—code-named Panther Lake—looks like it’s actually a coherent platform to go toe-to-toe with AMD and Qualcomm. Intel seems to have its swagger back, too. Intel had TSMC manufacture its Lunar Lake CPUs last generation, but Intel is now back to manufacturing its own CPUs again. This year, Intel struck a huge deal with Nvidia, and the U.S. government became a large shareholder in its operations. Despite recent struggles, the big chipmaker shouldn’t be written off yet. BATTERY LIFE AND PERFORMANCE IN…

Copilot should be ahead of the competition—it comes pinned to the taskbar on every Windows PC. But I keep bouncing off it, and I’m not alone. AI-positive Windows users are largely going out of their way to download competing AI tools, just as people skipped on Internet Explorer decades ago. As for Windows users who don’t like AI? They just resent seeing Copilot everywhere. If Copilot is like Internet Explorer, then ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude are like Firefox and Chrome. If you want the best experience, you skip what’s bundled with Windows and opt for something else. Personally, I didn’t start appreciating AI tools until I looked beyond Copilot. It’s no surprise that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is reportedly taking over Copilot development. Here are several ways Copilot is the…

There’s a lot of personalization that you can do with Windows if you dare to take the time. One fun thing you can do is change the boring yellow folder icons to a personalized image that better fits in with your interests. Your folders will act the same way as they always have, they’ll just look cooler. WHAT TO DO: • Search for an image with a transparent background such as a .png file. It could be anything you want. Save the file to your desktop. Here I’m using Captain America’s shield as an example. Download the image to your desktop. • Visit the FreeConvert website and convert your .png file to an .ico file. Download it and save it to a location on your PC that you’ll remember. • Now…

This rare BeBox still works! This dual-CPU PC from 1995 was so cool, Microsoft had to kill it off. If you’re interested in classic computing, there’s no better expert to talk to than Huxley Dunsay of “Retro Roadshow.” He brought a perfect example of an oddball ’90s machine to the PCWorld studio: the BeBox. This design didn’t revolutionize the industry, but its dual-CPU setup and custom OS had a lot of brandnew features we now take for granted.  …