Table of contents for November 2019 in APC

Choosing which products to review in APC isn’t always straightforward. Sometimes it’s dictated by the seasons – there are quiet times, and there are months when every company seems to have something new. Then you get the really crazy periods when a flood of products are unleashed because there’s a new version of the underlying technology that is used by several manufacturers. We see this in motherboards, for example, when a new chipset comes out, along come dozens of new boards. That’s when we do group tests instead of stand-alone reviews. This is a good month for reviews. I was particularly excited to get the new Asus ZenBook Duo in. I first saw this innovative dual-screen laptop at Computex earlier this year and I, along with the rest of the…

COULD BE USED IN TOURNAMENTS. The company announced a beta version of Kaspersky Anti-Cheat, a tool specifically made for eSports organisations to ensure fair play. Its cloud-based solution is installed in players’ systems, then “game process information is collected, sent to the Kaspersky Anti-Cheat cloud and analysed for suspicious events.” A referee then receives reports in real time through a web interface, leaving the ref and organisation to decide what actions to take.…

The primary building block of modern computers is the silicon microchip, made from 300mm silicon wafers, cut from a large silicon crystal cylinder. The monolithic crystals are grown from a seed crystal dipped into a molten vat of nearly pure silicon. That “nearly” is important. Small impurities in the wafers can lead to errors or non-functional parts. It’s not just impurities, though; the crystalline structure of the wafer also varies slightly. Chips from the centre of a wafer tend to be “better” than those near the edge, so they may require less voltage to hit the same clock speed, or may run at higher clock speeds at the same voltage. Each silicon wafer contains potentially hundreds of chips, but not every chip from a wafer behaves the same. After the…

If the internet has proven anything, it’s that a sizable portion of games enthusiasts simply must have their voices heard. So it’s no surprise that the new Epic Games Store is the target of increasingly visible online ire: the store doesn’t have forums or any other social functionality. All the fury directed at the games store, cannot be contained within the games store. Twitter, reddit and Steam are awash in it, though. Hell, the Epic Games Store didn’t even have a search function when it launched. While the anti-Epic grievance brigade may seem outsized and, frankly, childish to the outsider at this early stage it would be impossible to make the argument that Epic’s store is “good”. It unquestionably sucks. It lacks functionality. It’s yet another client to install. And…

While the US-China trade dispute drags on and we ponder Huawei’s future, the company charges into the 5G arena with its new Mate 20 X 5G. We’re curious to see what this plus-sized phablet conceals, and how independent the hardware might be – even as Huawei faces the possibility of being banned from doing business with US companies. MAJOR TECH SPECS ■ 7.2-inch 1080×2244 OLED multitouch display ■ Octa-core Huawei Kirin 980 chipset, with 8GB RAM ■ 256GB onboard storage ■ Balong 5000 multimode 5G modem ■ 4,200mAh battery with 40W SuperCharge 2.0 support ■ Triple rear cameras: 40MP f/1.8, 20MP f/2.2, and 8MP f/2.4 lens with 5x optical zoom KEY FINDINGS ■ On the bottom we recognize the usual suspects: a USB-C port, two mic holes, and a speaker…

Acer seems to have done some work on its thermal interface for the Predator Helios 300, introducing some cool looking blue radiator grills, we assume inspired by Dell’s G5 15 Special Edition, and a nuanced rear vent shape that is borrowing some elements we loved on the past few years’ worth of Aorus Laptops. Unfortunately these appealing details are hampered by a predictable square top edge and a lightweight plastic undercarriage, which drags the overall aesthetic back into the mundane. The Helios 300 15-inch and 17-inch models are squarely aimed at the entry level gaming market so none of their specs are going to seem out of the ordinary. Both units sport an Intel Core i7-9750H CPU, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB PCIe SSD. Where they differ is in…

Need a NAS in your home or office, but physical space to stash it is at a premium? Maybe you need to lug a NAS with you on the road? Synology’s new DS620slim NAS might be the answer to your prayers. This little guy has six 2.5-inch drive bays in a compact 121mm x 151mm x 175mm rectangle, so it can fit in the tightest of comms cupboards, studio apartments or Pelican cases. Powering the DS620slim is an Intel Celeron J3355 CPU, which has QuickSync support, allowing this NAS to do hardware encoding and decoding of H.264 and HEVC (H.265) video. Nifty for any Plex users out there. There’s 2GB of R AM from the factory, but there’s an SO-DIMM slot free for you to install extra memory if you…

SteelSeries’s Apex 7 sits in a difficult position. It’s an Apex Pro in all but its switches – and given that the Apex Pro’s customisable hall-effect switches are (in theory) pretty much the most interesting keyboard controls of a generation, it’s not immediately clear where the Apex 7, a linear-switched board that’s a mere $40 cheaper, stands. Is it good enough, without that gimmick, to sit so high on the price ladder? In its own bubble, at least, it’s certainly a feast for the eyes. The RGB lighting hits you first, and it hits hard – both the key illumination and background coronae are absolutely superb, with a bright glow that seems to have been tuned away from the lurid side of RGB and into a more hip, warm, retro…

“If you didn’t see the Moto G7 and G7 Plus’ price tags before picking them up, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were far more expensive than the usual budget offering. ” For many, the Moto G name has become synonymous with quality on a budget. Motorola has a knack for delivering relatively higher spec handsets than its competition at the same price point, and its new Moto G7 series is no exception. Taking a lot of what made last year’s Moto G6 series so great for users on a budget, the new Moto G7 range boasts a lists of refinements that make each phone feel even more like an upper mid-range product. If you didn’t see the Moto G7 and G7 Plus’ price tags before picking them up, you’d…

$14.29/MONTH | ADOBE.COM | NEEDS MACOS 10.12 OR HIGHER Back in 2017, Adobe rewrote its professional photo editing and cataloguing software, Lightroom, to bring feature parity to its desktop and mobile versions. In doing so they dropped a lot of features and functionality users had enjoyed in the much more mature Lightroom Classic CC (which is still on sale), but the developer has been steadily reintroducing features via updates since then. The reason this is important to mention is that Lightroom Classic CC is still a more ‘professional’ app – and still gets updates – but will invariably be discontinued, while Lightroom CC (the new version) will live on. Priced at $14.29 a month, Lightroom CC is both slick and streamlined, while providing more powerful and fine-detailed editing tools and photo…

FREE | N/A A lot of apps tap into our collective nostalgia for the aesthetics of – let’s be honest – lesser technologies, the static and hiss and bleed that we used to put up with and now sort-of miss. Fimo is a digital recreation of an analogue camera, which transforms your screen into, curiously, a recreation of an early-2000s digital model that takes film. You can switch between eight different film stock types, and you’ll have dust and scratches, frame shakes, light leaks, and other old-skool issues to contend with. At first it feels a little silly, taking shots on a modern phone with the field of view shrunk down and a big digital button that can’t recreate the tactile feeling of an old camera’s little click-and-snap. But then…

■ The concept of random-access memory has been around since the 1940s, although it didn’t exist in its current form until 1968. When we talk about RAM here, we mean DRAM – dynamic RAM – the kind of memory you’re probably familiar with: Sticks that plug into your motherboard and use binary capacitors and transistors to temporarily store readable data. Early RAM worked differently, using electrically charged spots on cathode ray tubes or networks of magnetised metal rings. The core principles remain the same, though – the points of positive or negative data could be read in any order, therefore denoting them as “random access.” The current model of RAM, using transistors to store data as combinations of charges, came into commercial use in 1970 with the Intel 1103 chip.…

■ Memory speed isn’t the only thing that affects your RAM. Latency and memory timings encompass a huge variety of key statistics that affect memory performance, and many of those numbers will be meaningless unless you’re a die-hard hardware-head. The one to look out for is CAS (column address strobe) latency, which is an indicator of how quickly the RAM stick responds to a memory call. Bear with us, because it’s going to get mathematical. CAS latency by itself isn’t necessarily a helpful figure – in order to get a genuinely useful number, there’s a formula you need to use. Real-world latency = (2,000/ RAM speed) x CAS latency, with speed measured in MT/s and latency measured in nanoseconds. So, if you’ve got a memory kit that runs at 3,000MT/s…

We’re going to suggest three other commercial password managers – the ones that crop up most often, and generally offer similar features at similar costs. So, it’s down to you which you feel works the best. The first is 1Password.com; prices start at US$2.99 per month for a single user, and US$4.99 for a family account for four people. DashLane (www.dashlane.com) is a major player and offers a number of plans that will suit a wide range of consumer and business uses. The basic plan is free for all, but is limited to working on a single device. The paid home plan is US$3.33 a month, and supports unlimited devices, password sharing, and Yubikey 2FA support. A business plan starts at US$4 per user, and includes remote management, group sharing…

Facebook’s Libra is nearing launch, and if the plans bear fruit, it’s going to be the most disruptive thing to come out of Silicon Valley for years. Let’s start with what Libra isn’t. It’s not a cryptocurrency, you won’t be able to mine coins, and it’s not an opportunity for speculation or investment. It does use similar blockchain tech to drive it (see “The Blockchain” box), but it’s a closed system designed for stability. It’s also designed to be fast, something bitcoin struggles with (it can barely manage seven transactions a second; Libra will start at 1,000). It isn’t a bank account either, something Facebook is keen to stress for legal reasons, so you won’t be earning interest on your account, or get credit. Libra is a stable private blockchain…

While the individual amounts may not be large, the scale of the whole business is huge. The World Bank estimates that US$715 billion is moved around the world annually, supporting over 800 million people, and making major contributions to the economies of many nations. The established wire transfer services, such as Western Union, take a cut of this. The global average for transfer fees is 7 percent, which is quite a hit: Seven bucks for every hundred of hard-earned wages disappear when you simply send money home. There are currently few ways to avoid these fees, and they have a disproportional effect on wealth. UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation) has called for this to be reduced to a maximum of 3 percent to aid the developing…

Windows offers two features to accelerate Storage Space performance: write-back cache and SSD tiers. On the consumer release of Windows 10, these can only be implemented through PowerShell when the Space is originally created. We failed to add an SSD tier to a parity array of HDDs, but did have success with a single SSD and a simple array, plus a mirrored SSD and HDD array. We’ll look at how to create both. We’re starting the process from a blank slate, so first remove your Spaces and pools. We’ll be using PowerShell, so search for that, and run it in Administrator mode. Step one is to create a variable that stores the available blank drives; run this command without $disks = to see the output. We can then create our…

1 CHOOSE YOUR MODE You can select between modes here. All profiles are set to “default” at first; no overclocking whatsoever. 2 MAKE THE LINK These icons indicate whether each CCD and CCX (core groups) are linked. Green is linked, red is unlinked. Linked cores match each others’ frequency. 3 FIDDLE WITH THE FREQUENCY This is the operating frequency of each core, adjustable by the green bar. Cores can be disabled by clicking the green box, but we wouldn’t recommend this. 4 SPEED STARS This icon represents which core is the fastest: Yellow stars denote the fastest core; gray is the fastest within that CCX. 5 AMP UP THE VOLTAGE Voltage control should always be left included. Tweak it upward in small increments using the arrows. 6 FORGET THE MEMORY…

A table of contents (TOC) itemises the parts of a document so the reader can jump to the page they want. It could just be a list of chapters, or might include several levels, from sections to individual subheadings. “In a Page Layout document, the TOC exists as a feature that readers can access on screen; it’s included when you export a PDF.” Pages for Mac can generate a TOC automatically, and the iWork update in March brought this to the iPad. The TOC is based on paragraph styles: apply the same style to each chapter title, heading and so on, and they’re collated. You can then choose which to include; the list is limited, so delete unused styles to avoid confusion. If you want some headings to have a…

Like it or not, Pokemon Go ended up becoming one of the most downloaded gaming events of 2016 and the first mainstream app to bring the world of augmented reality (AR) to our collective mobile consciousness. Sure, AR tech has been with us since at least the 1960s and you could argue since WWII, thanks to the gyro-powered gunsight reflector used in the famed Spitfire fighter plane. But until Pokemon Go, AR was mostly reflected in standalone hardware – think Microsoft HoloLens or Google Glass. But over the last 12 months or so, we’ve started seeing new AR capabilities reach right down into surprisingly affordable Android devices. Throw in new free software development kits from Google and the world of AR looks set to go far beyond chasing pocket monsters.…

We’re all pretty familiar with the concept of autonomous vehicles, whether you’re a fan of driverless cars or the Boston Dynamics ‘Atlas’ robots that leap over obstacles with human-like agility (bostondynamics.com/ atlas). But unless you have your own car corporation or financing your own squad of robots, it can be difficult to get a handle on just how machine-learning is applicable in your own applications or your own business. This month, we’re looking at some practical applications of machine-learning and how it fits into the bigger world of knowledge discovery. CASE STUDIES One of the best ways to learn how to apply knowledge in a particular area is to read how it’s been used previously. Now you might get the impression that a lot of academic research is just theory,…

This odd genre mash-up looks like it was coughed out by a game development algorithm. It’s equal parts a third-person looter-shooter and a Dark Souls-inspired boss rush, with a cooperative emphasis and a dynamically generated campaign. Stylistically it’s inspired by fantasy, science-fiction, Westerns, post-apocalyptic worlds and various kinds of horror fiction. Even the title reads like it was generated by a Twitter bot. And it gets off to a rather underwhelming start. Its introduction sees your character washed up on an island with nothing but a sword and the clothes on their back. Eventually you end up at Ward 13, the Firelink Shrine of Remnant’s world. Here you learn that a race of tree-people called the Root have conquered Earth. Despite the fact that you’ve just arrived, the leader of…

Twenty years ago a new science fiction world was born, as relatable as it was outlandish. The Matrix was a rallying cry for anybody whose internet life had become more real to them than their daytime drudge; a freeing fiction that overlaid our own world like a sheet of graph paper and made sense of its unexplained repetitions and irregularities. As much as it was a nightmare or warning, it was also vicarious fantasy – it was pasty Keanu Reeves, asleep at his PC while Massive Attack plays in his headphones, clinging to the side of a building for dear life, eventually bending reality to his will. On some level, everybody watching wanted that call from Morpheus. To wake up, to know kung fu, to move like they do. That’s…

$29.95 | PC, XB1, PS4, SWITCH | BANDAINAMCOENT.COM/ GAMES/RAD Double Fine’s post-apocalyptic mutant-basher embraces the current 80s retro fad. The devs have poured lavish detail into every synthesised riff. Every sunset in the background is a neon CRT wonder, every bark of the narrator a gruff, biting commentary. Vendors will lavish you in free gear for landing a sick 720. It’s the Goonies meets Bill & Ted in an end-of-the-world adventure. It’s the far future. We’ve wrapped up one apocalypse, but another hit us with a cheap shot. With the adults nowhere to be seen and mutants breaking down the walls. Rather than picking up new tricks and tools from vendors or drops, you’re mutating a new power every time you collect enough rads. But you’re getting properly messed up…

ISSUE 473, NOVEMBER 2019 Please note that these exclusive downloads will only be available for a limited time, from 07/10/2019 to 24/11/2019 FLUSH YOUR REGISTRY WELL AND GOOD OPTIMISE YOUR PC’S PERFORMANCE. FULL VERSION WORTH $20 The Windows registry is, in a way, the administrative center of your system. Different settings and configuration data for Windows and most of your program’s settings, like for example autostart settings, are saved there. Over time errors creep in the registry. One result is that your PC will become slower, e.g. when starting the system. Problems when uninstalling software and a large number of error messages could point to problems in the Windows registry. With the Ashampoo Registry Cleaner you will easily and safely delete redundant or damaged registry entries. Faulty links in the…

In a past consultation paper, NBN Co floated the idea of raising the prices for Australian internet users based on the type of data they were using rather than the amount. Essentially, this translated to what was dubbed the ‘Netflix tax’, as it was predominantly targeting streaming media during peak hour. The proposal was met with wide backlash and considered an attack on net neutrality, but NBN backpedalled on the seriousness of the proposal. Now, NBN Co’s chief customer officer Brad Whitcomb has said there are “no plans” to charge users based on their streaming, with the most recent consultation paper revealing that only two internet service providers (ISPs) actually supported charging users based on their usage, but they proposed video streaming be charged less. In order to accommodate these…

A new report claims that Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2060 mobile GPU is a poor value proposition for laptop gamers, and that of all the RTX mobile offerings, it’s considerably more off the mark compared to its desktop variant. This conclusion is drawn by Notebookcheck.net, which benchmarked the RTX 2080, 2070 and 2060 mobile graphics solutions in 3DMark, comparing them to their respective full-fat desktop graphics card versions. Going by the 3DMark scores, the RTX 2080 mobile GPU was between 8% to 10% slower than its desktop version, with the difference being a more pronounced 14% to 18% with the RTX 2070. However, the real eye-opener was the RTX 2060 mobile which was 20% to 25% slower than its desktop counterpart. The problem here being that when a consumer sees the…

OLED is one of the most widely used display technologies in the premium TV space and AMOLED is the foundation for basically every smartphone screen, but other than a short-lived appearance on some expensive ultrabooks in 2017, the technology hasn’t really been seen in PC displays… until recently. Samsung’s SDCA029 15.6-inch OLED laptop panel was shown off at the start of 2019 for CES, boasting a 4K resolution, 0.0005 to 600 nit brightness range and a 120,000 to 1 dynamic contrast ratio. This panel was also priv y to the surprisingly low response times of OLED displays and benefits from wide viewing angles comparable to that of LCD IPS panels. What seems most critical this time around however is the cost, with these OLED panels not being any more expensive…

What’s better than a 4K screen on a professional ultrabook? One and a half 4K screens on a professional ultrabook. As you might have guessed, Asus’s latest brainchild, the Zenbook Pro Duo, has two screens: a 15.6-inch Full HD or 4K OLED panel in the usual spot, and a second, half-height 14-inch touchscreen that sits directly underneath it, just above the keyboard, with a resolution of 3840 x 1100. “We were a little apprehensive about just how essential a second touchscreen was, especially when you factor in the additional battery drain.” While it’s logical to think that Asus decided to take Apple’s idea of a touch bar and expand it into a full touchscreen, the catalyst for the ZenBook Pro Duo’s additional screen, we’ve been told, was actually just one…

The world’s smallest 14-inch laptop. That’s Asus’s sock-it-to-you sales pitch for the new Zenbook 14 UX433F. It’s not the only thing this slick Intel-powered laptop has going for it, of course. There’s powerful quad-core processing, just for starters. Claimed all-day battery life and Harmon Kardon audio sweetens the deal, too. But it’s that slim-bezeled ‘NanoEdge’ display and the extremely compact proportions it enables for a laptop in the 14-inch segment that most defines the Zenbook’s proposition. What’s on offer here, in effect, is a laptop that feels like it’s from the segment below in terms of size, but delivers a larger, more ergonomic 14-inch viewing experience. That means this 14 incher is barely any bigger than many 13-inch ultrabooks, like Dell’s XPS 13, while 14-inch Ultrabooks including the Lenovo ThinkPad…

“Impressively for the price, the access point includes the ability to create a mesh network of up to eight VigorAP 903s. ” Aimed at businesses who want to expand their Wi-Fi coverage, the DrayTek VigorAP 903 is designed to be an easy to setup and manage solution. At the time of writing the VigorAP 903 is quite new so there aren’t a lot of options for shopping around, but the price is still quite competitive at $280. The access point uses AC1300 spec Wi-Fi, with two dual band radios and removable antennas. It can handle eight different SSIDs and two virtual LANs, to create different user groups with specific network rules. The AP also has a five port Gigabit switch built in, and supports power over ethernet. While the access…

Henceforth abbreviated as Floe Riing 360 TTPE, Thermaltake’s big RGB cooler certainly gives us a lot to talk about. It’s RGB, and if you don’t like that you can even turn the feature off. You could even leave the controller out of the circuit if you never plan to use its RGB features. The box includes the radiator, three special nine-pin fans, a five-device controller hub, mounting brackets for Intel square-ILM interfaces and AMD rectangular-spaced mounts (both legacy and AM4), standoffs to support all those brackets, a lock ring to hold the brackets onto the head unit, fan and case mounting screws with washers, and adapter cables. The controller hub supports up to five devices, including RGB control for both the pump and fans, and fan control. A set of…

“In addition to a larger 10-inch screen, the Nest Hub Max also has a camera that can be used not just to make video calls, but doubles as a security camera. ” Later to the smart display market than Amazon, Google has taken a halfhearted approach to the category. Until recently, it’s let others take the lead with Google Assistant-powered smart displays. Perhaps frustrated by the fact that only Lenovo, JBL, and LG have done so, Google released the 7-inch Nest Hub ($299) last year, and is now following up with the larger Nest Hub Max. In addition to a larger 10-inch screen, the Nest Hub Max also has a camera that can be used not just to make video calls, but doubles as a security camera. It also comes…

FREE (PREMIUM FROM $23.49) | CALORY.APP NEEDS IOS 11 OR LATER C alory keeps track of your calorie intake (and despite its name it can measure in kilojoules). It uses age, height and weight to calculate a daily target based on your weight loss or gain goals, and you then enter your intake into the app to monitor your progress. You can do that on iPad, iPhone or Apple Watch; the app supports Siri Shortcuts and can send and receive data to and from Apple Health. It provides a range of feedback tools including daily, weekly, monthly and annual reports. The basic app is free, but the developer has since introduced premium features – such as barcode scanning for food logging, a large database of branded foods, a Today widget…

RAM is a core component of any computer. With DDR4 now well and truly entrenched in the memory market and DDR5 on the horizon, manufacturers are looking out in different directions: massive 64GB and 128GB sets running across eight channels, and faster speeds than ever seen before. Frequencies only continue to rise, with companies such as HyperX and Corsair pushing commercially available sticks at well over 4,000MHz. But it isn’t cheap. RAM price-per-GB skyrocketed between 2016 and 2018, although recent trends have shown that DDR4 kits have slowly lowered in price from the latter half of 2018. RAM offering 3,000MHz and above remains expensive, with a seemingly endless list of brands and product lines to choose from. It’s daunting. The vast majority of modern memory comes packaged with integrated heatsinks,…

■ We know, memory speed can be complicated. Speed and frequency are often treated as interchangeable statistics, because they are directly tied to each other; RAM, like many other components, operates at a specific frequency. This frequency represents the number of times per second an individual transistor gate can open and close. With memory operating at, say, 1,000MHz, these transistors can cycle at a fairly nippy 1,000 million times per second. If you’re the memory-savvy type, though, you might be more familiar with the MT/s figure than MHz. Shorthand for megatransfers per second, MT/s was introduced as a metric for memory speed when DDR (double data rate) was first produced, because the newer format of memory was able to process data at twice the speed by registering an additional data…

■ We’ve mentioned that memory specs have different impacts on Intel and AMD processors. In broad terms, memory speed hasn’t historically made much difference to processor performance, but with AMD’s Ryzen series of CPUs, that norm changed in a big way. Due to conventional processor architecture, Intel CPUs (currently the Core series) only see minimal gains from memory speed; a couple of percent at best in the vast majority of benchmark functions. With Ryzen, though, AMD did something different: The interface that connects the processor cores together – called the Infinity Fabric, if you subscribe to funky hardware marketing jargon – is controlled from the integrated memory controller on the chip. What this means is that when supported by faster RAM, the memory controller can run faster, and transfer data…

We like open source; it might not always produce the most polished-looking software – [cough] GIMP [cough] – but for security software, its publicly scrutinisable code tends to provide peace of mind, while largely ensuring a project can continue even if the original organisation or developer packs up their bags, as the source code stays open to be picked up by someone else. We’re going to highlight two strong open-source candidates. The first is the well-known KeePass.info. Don’t confuse this with the largely defunct KeePassX. org that hasn’t been updated for two years. There is a fork called KeePassXC. org, which is up to date, but we’ll stick with KeePass as it has many unofficial respins for Android and other devices that make it easier to use. KeePass isn’t as…

Essentially, it’s an electronic ledger that tracks the movements of digital tokens between wallets – apps that store the tokens. The tokens can represent anything: ownership of a share or proof of identity, for example. Each transaction is verified and added to the list, or chain. The wallets have two cryptographic keys, one private and one public. A transaction is encrypted using your private key and the recipient’s public key. At the other end, the process is reversed, so it can only be unscrambled by the intended recipient, and they know it’s from you. The scrambling involves that complicated math we mentioned. Each transaction becomes part of the whole, because it’s mathematically linked to previous transactions, so it’s virtually tamper-proof. It’s a neat system, which can run on a distributed…

We all know SSDs are coming to kill old spinning storage, but for many of us, a bank of HDDs still offers the capacity we need – 8K footage, a mass of multi-megabyte photos, and who knows what other encyclopedic-level storage demands the discerning APC reader has? – without totally breaking the bank. There’s no doubt SSDs are catching up with their clunky spinning brethren on capacities, but the cost of a 4TB cutting-edge SSD drive would buy you nearly 30TB of spinning storage. If only there were a way to combine the storage space of old spinning drives with super-fast solid storage…. Well, say hello to Microsoft Storage Spaces. A modern solution for an ancient problem: Where to store all your old junk without enraging the other half. Storage…

For our testing, we used a bank of four 1TB Toshiba 7,200rpm SATA hard drives in a number of Storage Space configurations: Simple, Mirrored, and Parity. Alongside this we ran two mismatched 480GB SSD SATA drives. We’re only interested in an overview of performance, so we relied on CrystalDiskMark 6 for our results. We even created a couple of Spaces through the Spaces GUI to see what it would make of them, and if the PowerShell route was actually superior.…

Mwave S66a $3,799 TINYURL.COM/APC473MWV An interesting build this one. It goes quite high-end on the non-processor parts like motherboard, RAM, cooler and SSD, but then dials it back on the parts that make the most difference to performance: the CPU and GPU. Don’t get the wrong idea, it’s still a very potent combo for 1440p gaming, but for the price there will be faster options out there depending on your needs. If you’re thinking long term, this is a great system for those wanting a solid base to upgrade from later when there are better options available. If you’re wanting the best gaming performance straight out of the box at this price, look elsewhere, but lots of RAM and a PCIe 4.0 SSD makes this immediately best for those processing…

APPLICATIONS MISSING INSTALLER BLOCKS UNINSTALL I’m unable to remove a program from my PC because I’m told the installer is missing. How do I go about resolving this issue? Jack Mahoney “Start by visiting the program’s home page – download the latest installer from there and then run it to see whether it detects the existing installation and allows you to remove it.” Start by visiting the program’s home page – download the latest installer from there and then run it to see whether it detects the existing installation and allows you to remove it. If not, and the version number is roughly the same, you may find installing the program over the top of itself restores the missing links and allows you to subsequently remove it. If this fails,…

Gadgets such as GoPro cameras and the iPhone can do an excellent job of capturing high-quality video footage for your iMovie projects. However, the audio content you end up with may not the match the quality of the visuals. For example, sound levels can be weak because of the distance between the camera’s microphone and the subject. Background noise, such as a passing car or plane, may also drown out your subject’s voice. Luckily, iMovie boasts a collection of audio post-production tools that can boost weak sound levels in a click, automatically ensure that music doesn’t drown out speech, and even reduce background noise. We’ll show you how to use those capabilities and give you tips on capturing better quality sound in the first place, such as turning your iPhone…

Everyone needs a note-taking app – a way of quickly scribbling anything from a to-do list to a detailed breakdown of an upcoming project. When it comes to choosing which app to trust with your notes, you’re spoilt for choice. One place you won’t find a notes app is in your default Ubuntu installation, however – you’ll need to make a choice. In this tutorial we’re going to focus on two note-taking apps, Standard Notes and Joplin. They share some common features: they’re both open-source, naturally, both support syncing and work across multiple platforms, so you can access and update your notes from anywhere. But there are also some notable differences, which means you’ll probably find one is a better fit for your needs than the other. While Standard Notes…

If you’d like to run Joplin from the Terminal or other shell environment, you’ll need Node.js 8.x or later. If it’s not on your system, enter the following commands (skip the first if curl and git are already installed): Once done, type joplin and press Return to launch the application. It runs independently of your desktop app, but has a similar interface, albeit with just three panes: Notebooks, Notes and the currently selected note. Use Tab and Shift-Tab to move between the windows, and the cursor keys to navigate within the currently selected pane. To issue commands, press : followed by the command – for example, type :config editor nano (substitute nano with your choice of text editor) and press Return to associate it with Joplin. Now typing :edit $n…

This issue’s project is a tiny OLED screen that will provide useful data about a Raspberry Pi at a glance. We will also run our project on boot to monitor the system as we work. The OLED screen connects to the Raspberry Pi GPIO using an I2C interface. This is a special interface that only needs four pins on the Pi in order to send data. To connect your Pi please refer to the diagram on the following page. With the physical connection made we now need to enable I2C on our Pi – do this in the Raspberry Pi Configuration tool. We will also need to install two Python libraries for this project. The first library is for our OLED screen and the second enables our code to work…

Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise is a video game that exists somehow, thank goodness, and it’s coming to Nintendo Switch. The sequel to the cult classic B-game will continue the story of detective Francis York Morgan next year as he takes on a new case in 2020 – actually an old case, more on that in a bit – but don’t worry if you haven’t played through the original yet. Deadly Premonition is coming to Switch too, and you can start playing it today as Deadly Premonitions: Origin on the Nintendo Switch eShop. If you’re never heard of Deadly Premonition before, you have been missing out. It first came out in 2010, and its intrinsic weirdness that strode the line between Twin Peaks inspired weirdness, janky video game…

A lazy journalist would call this Hearthstone meets Yahtzee, and just as a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day, sometimes lazy journalist comparisons are bang on. Dicey Dungeons rolls you a few dice, presents you with cards which harness those dice in damage-dealing or character-buffing fashion, then pits you against a series of opponents in a dungeon-crawling RPG setting. It feels like playing a CCG while wearing X-ray specs. Because while the roguelikes and card games that Dicey Dungeons is referencing with its visuals and mechanics would hide away their RNG elements, Terry Cavanagh’s new game puts it under a spotlight. Quite literally. The setup is that of a gameshow, so while you’re fighting sneezy hedgehogs and sharply dressed hammerhead sharks there’s a studio audience gasping and…

In years past, high end desktop (HEDT) platforms really stood out. More cores, higher clocks, more PCIe lanes, more memory channels and better expandability. Many of these traits are still apparent. But, now that AMD is set to offer a 16-core AM4 CPU, and Intel will soon offer a 10 core model on its upcoming mainstream platform, the question is, does the high end desktop have the appeal it once did? “Now that AMD is set to offer a 16 core AM4 CPU, and Intel will soon offer a 10 core model on its upcoming mainstream platform, the question is, does the high end desktop have the appeal it once did?” HEDT will soon come back into the spotlight with the upcoming launches of some tasty gear. On paper, the…

18945 The build number for a new edition of Windows 10 currently being tested by Insiders. This build shows the future of Cortana as a chat app, rather than integrated in the Search box. ONE THIRD The number of fitness tracker owners who stop using their device after six months, according to consulting firm Endeavour Partners’ survey. US$3,000,000 The prize pot taken away by the winner of the Fortnite World Cup held at the end of July. Total prizes in the tournament reached US$30 million. 04 The number of GPUs Intel appears to be readying for market. Little is known about the new Gen 12 graphics chips, except that, with up to 512 execution units, the chips, known as Xe, seem to be aimed at the likes of Nvidia and…

“If you’re happy with 1080p gaming the Nvidia GTX 1050 GPU is serviceable, netting around 30fps for current games on Ultra 1080p settings.” The new Dell XPS 15 can be configured with an overclockable Core i9-9980HK CPU, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD in RAID 0 configuration for $5,199. This is a powerful CPU that we’ve really only seen on overpowered gaming rigs and while it’s great to see this chip on Dell’s ultrabook, it requires a generous cooling infrastructure to work well, and we’re not fully convinced that Dell has nailed the thermals just yet. The real headline feature, however, is a new 15.6-inch 4K OLED screen model that is 20% dimmer than the more expensive UHD touch display, but offers amazing 100,000 to 1 contrast ratio…

Samsung had a lot of success with its Frame televisions, which sacrificed top-of-the-line specifications for a TV that looked as nice switched off as it does when in-use, so it seems only natural that its a stylish, minimalist monitor for the design-conscious PC user should follow. The key component in Samsung’s new Space Monitor is an easy to install support arm that clamps to the rear of your desk and lets you quickly adjust or swap the screen’s position to suit your needs. On the one hand, the screen can be pushed right to the back of the desk, with the monitor arm standing straight up, even if the desk is flush against a wall. While this might seem like something that all monitors should intrinsically do, you’re often either…

Here’s the latest soldier in the battle to change memory from a commodity to a luxury hero item. This particular design is, somehow, a little less show-offy than some of its competitors, with a relatively restrained set of coloured blocks on top in a fairly elegant and simple arrangement. I think it looks pretty decent, and I usually have this stuff tuned off. It hooks into Thermaltake’s lighting management software TT RGB Plus, as well as Razer Chroma, combining forces with your other light sources within your PC to shout colour at your feet. And, because this is the future none of us asked for, it responds to voice commands through Alexa or TT’s own app. Thermaltake has non-RGB ToughRAM to come, though we don’t know the final specs yet.…

It’s hard to imagine a better wireless gaming keyboard than the Logitech G915 ($250). It’s a sleek, attractive peripheral with satisfying mechanical switches, cool low-profile key caps, a full media bar, two kinds of wireless connectivity and generous battery life. Moreover, it’s not a tenkeyless model, it doesn’t require AA batteries and it doesn’t require tedious keyboard shortcuts to record macros. Aside from a missing wrist rest (and really, a keyboard this thin and this expensive should come with one), there’s very little to criticise in the G915. It’s absolutely everything I wanted to see in a wireless gaming keyboard, no compromises required. However, $400 is a lot of money, even for such a luxurious model, so weigh your options accordingly if you think you can live without a wireless…

■ The Joint Electron Device Engineering Council (JEDEC) is the body responsible for maintaining industry standards when it comes to numerous solid-state components, including RAM. With over 300 members, including Microsoft, Intel, and Apple, JEDEC pools resources to push hardware development forward. Its most important contribution to RAM standards is the adoption of a unified connection format for motherboards (the DIMM slot) to ensure compatibility, but that’s not all. Standards for data transfer rates and latencies are determined by JEDEC, so consumers choose between speeds such as DDR4-3000 and DDR4-3200, instead of 3060, 3111, 3187, and so on. It’s simple enough in principle, but these constraints ensure memory is easily put into straightforward brackets for our convenience. JEDEC’s members are also responsible for producing new hardware within the RAM universe.…

■ In the early years of commercial RAM, before the turn of the century, there was a serious disparity between CPUs and memory. Referred to as the “memory wall,” a problem arose where CPUs were developing faster than RAM technology, with RAM speed only increasing by 10 percent in the 14 years leading up to 2000, while CPU speeds increased by approximately 55 percent. For a long time, it looked like memory speed limitations might cause a significant bottleneck in the improvement of computer performance. Since then, CPU speed increases have slowed, due in part to physical design barriers around heat dissipation and die size in new chip designs. With the improvement of caching tech to speed up key processes and bridge the gap between CPU and RAM speed, it…

In any system, humans will find a way to subvert the rules for their own gain. It’s a recurring theme: from skipping class, cheating in games, fixing the banking system, and exploiting welfare, down to stealing from work, and gambling in Las Vegas. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that most humans choose the lazy option when it comes to password security. It’s too easy just to say humans are lazy, and pin terrible password security on that. Humans will always attempt to game systems at both ends, which is why passwords are being hacked and people want to avoid memorising them in the first place. It’s not good enough to just use a strong password; we now live in a world where so much is tied up with our…

This is a non-profit, independent organisation dedicated to running, controlling, and promoting Libra, as well as managing the reserve fund. Facebook hasn’t gone alone for a number of reasons, trust being one of them. As the project leader David Marcus admitted, “If we were controlling it, very few people would want to jump on and make it theirs.” The association has 28 founding members, and among them are such big names as PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, eBay, Uber, and Spotify. There are also some names you won’t know, unless you are familiar with blockchain development and venture capital. This is just the initial lineup – it is expected to grow to over a hundred members by the time Libra goes live. Each founding member paid in at least $10 million to…

Can you use drives of different sizes? Yes, but no. Clear as mud – just how we like it. The short and basic answer is that in any parity or mirrored pool, you can use any size of drives you like, but the maximum capacity of the pool is determined by the smallest drive. Take a mirror consisting of a 1TB and 2TB drive – the maximum mirrored capacity is 1TB; the 2TB drive is limited to 1TB of storage. For a parity array, take a 4TB, 4TB, and a 6TB pool of drives. The overall capacity would be 12TB, because the 6TB is limited to the 4TB of the two smaller drives, though space available for storage would be 8TB, as a third is reserved for parity data, as…

As AMD stands toe-to-toe with Intel in the CPU market, grabbing market share hand over fist, the GPU market has been largely left to Nvidia to dominate with recent estimates by the likes of Jon Peddie Research and some of our local retailers putting Nvidia’s discrete GPU market share at anywhere between 80% and 85%. Nvidia is the undisputed king of the GPU hill. Those stats however were from a few quarters ago. Now, in Q3 2019, while Nvidia is still the undisputed top dog, AMD has recently clawed back some market share, which continues to grow, in part thanks to two factors. Firstly, the pricing of its RX 500 series cards has been very aggressive, placing them in a price bracket no Nvidia GPU comes near to touching, bar…

We played with the idea of putting some new toys into the budget build this month, what with the advent of the Ryzen 3000 series of CPUs, but ultimately we opted to keep the cost down. New X570 motherboards, which are really needed to get the most out of those processors, are expensive; while the trusty Asrock B450M R4.0 just keeps getting cheaper. We also swapped out the GTX 1660 GPU from Gigabyte to Zotac to preserve the price, and last month’s Kingston HyperX RAM is no longer the best value, so back to Team Group’s T-Force line we went, sticking with a two-piece kit that would offer comparable performance. Lastly, we swapped the EVGA power supply for the remarkably priced Corsair unit listed. At just $49 it’s exceptional value…

Overclocking is a finicky business: Adjusting frequencies and voltages to try to eke out a bit of extra performance from your rig – while simultaneously avoiding the terror of the blue screen of death. It’s often a lengthy process, too, demanding repeated trips into your BIOS to make minuscule adjustments. AMD processors are also known to be a little tougher to effectively overclock than Intel’s K-variant chips, which have excellent overclocking headroom. Thankfully, there’s an easier way to manage overclocking on AMD processors. While there is plenty of licensed and unlicensed overclocking software out there, AMD has its own official piece: Ryzen Master, which can adjust both CPU and RAM settings on the fly in Windows. No BIOS trips necessary. Ryzen Master isn’t necessarily the easiest piece of software to…

When filming a subject at a distance from your camcorder, you won’t be able to hear them clearly due to the gap between the subject and the camera’s built-in mic. Place the mic on your iPhone’s headphones near the person’s mouth and record a video in the Camera app while they speak. Import the iPhonesourced clip into iMovie, detach the clip’s audio and replace the distant camcorder’s inferior sound with the close-proximity sound captured on the iPhone. Now you can hear your subject’s voice regardless of their distance from the video camera.…

1 CHOOSE SYNC PROVIDER Select Tools > General Options. First, select your cloud storage from the ‘Synchronisation target’ drop-down: choose ‘File system’ and enter its full path if you have a shared network folder ready. OneDrive and Dropbox options are easy to set up: choose the option, click OK and then click Synchronise in the main window, before following the instructions to connect Joplin to your account. 2 NEXTCLOUD PRE-REQUISITES If you select Nextcloud, enter its WebDAV URL (visit your Nextcloud account in your browser and click the Settings button in the bottom left corner to find this), followed by your Nextcloud account username and password. If your Nextcloud account is on a secure (https) connection, tick ‘Ignore TLS certificate errors’ before clicking Apply followed by ‘Check synchronisation’. 3 APPLY…

“As always, getting the feel of the submarines right is a balancing act between accuracy, balance, and player expectation.” World of Warships dev Wargaming is no stranger to tweaking and adding content to its popular military titles. Submarines, a wholly new, fourth class of vessel, have been announced, and the game will never be the same again. Wargaming’s already invested years into the new addition, with the first hint of this direction coming with last year’s Halloween event, where players took command of fantastic steampunk submersibles in a limited, strictly PvE event. The work that went into even that short test was immense, and the work’s not stopped since. Submarines are going to be a whole new threat. Submarines operate at three preset depths: on the surface, at periscope depth,…

$49.95 | PC, XB1, PS4 | BANDAINAMCOENT.COM If it were a movie, this would be the kind that releases direct-to-video, one of those schlocky DVDs lining the convenience store displays. As a film, it would be fun, but familiar and forgettable. But as coop adventure game, Man of Medan is unparalleled. Think of it like a movie where you take control of one character at a time, oscillating between quicktime action scenes and dialogue sequences. Occasionally you’ll get time to look for story clues, tools, and soak in the setting. Early into my online co-op playthrough, my coworker Joanna and I coerce our ship captain into letting us explore a sunken plane at the bottom of the ocean, but we don’t play two characters in the same scene. We play…

Despite the vast potential of space’s expanse, coming from a small dev Rebel Galaxy Outlaw knows its limits, restricting its galaxy to 40-odd solar systems named after cities in the US. Its guitar-twanging rock soundtrack and vibrant colours give it the tone of a punky western. It’s thrifty where it needs to be, and does a commendable job of embellishing its relatively rote gameplay loop with presentational swagger. Driving the game’s spunky spirit is the protagonist Juno, a tough vagabond on the trail of the people who killed her husband and tried to knock her off too. You gain most of your intel by chatting with the patrons of bars dotted around the various space stations of the cosmos. Things get tough out there in the coruscating cosmos. It may…

Headspun is another twist on the genre, casting you as the boss of Cortex, a company headquartered inside the mind of Theo, a man emerging from a five-week coma after a car accident. Theo’s memories are scattered all over his subconscious, most of Cortex’s employees are dead, and it’s up to you, CEO Ted, to get his brain back in order. This manifests as a management game in which you rebuild the company, interposed with live-action video of Theo’s convalescence in hospital. Ted wakes up from his own coma to find Cortex in ruins following the accident, albeit kept in some semblance of order by his business partner Teddy, who represents Theo’s creative, romantic side. The game progresses in 24-hour days, with time passing whenever you engage Theo in mini-games.…

FREE | BROWSER-BASED | RARYKOS.ITCH.IO Game of Thrones’ Battle of Winterfell was a thrilling fantasy bust-up that had armchair strategists pulling their hair out, over the apparently dumb tactics involved. Now it’s your turn to do better. There are no Dothraki or giants here, as every unit type is represented by cute little icons on a tactical map, but it’s a cheekily similar situation to the battle present in the show. You’re attempting to preserve an important figure against a relentless hoard of undead enemies, and you do this by placing units at strategic positions, and by yelling out a few limited orders after the battle starts. But your most important decisions happen before fighting starts. Do you hide non-warriors inside the crypt, to improve morale, or make use of…

Social media platforms seem to have finally found their true calling – bringing the world together for fun, ridiculous events. Last month it was the Storm Area 51 Facebook festival, this month it’s a 3,000 person game of Hide and seek at an Ikea in Glasgow, Scotland. Perhaps because of its less-deadly nature, the latter actually made it to fruition in September, with Scottish hipsters and internet trolls turning up to tuck themselves in some Scandy furniture. The store caught wind of the unsanctioned fun-time and Police Scotland posted five officers to rebuff any youths looking too young to be spending their Saturday shopping for furniture. Tesla drivers becoming known for falling asleep at the wheel HOPEFULLY NOT A HIGHWAY TO HELL. Despite pretty clear legal signalling by the company…