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Sep 19, 2020
President Trump has signed off on a deal that will put TikTok's U.S. operations under control of Oracle, Walmart, and other U.S. investors, apparently in exchange for a $5 billion fund that Oracle and Walmart would set up to fund the education of young Americans.
The Wall Street Journal reported that both Walmart and Oracle would share approximately a 20 percent stake in the new company, which would be headquartered in the United States. In total, U.S. investors would own 53 percent, Chinese investors would own a 36 percent stake, with European investors taking up about 11 percent, the paper said.
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Sep 18, 2020
Cyberpunk 2077 looks like a truly next-gen game from everything we've seen, but you won't need a futuristic rig to run it. CD Projekt Red unveiled the system requirements for the hotly anticipated game on Friday, and they're surprisingly forgiving. You'll need more powerful gear to unlock the real eye candy, though.
On the processor front, your needs are minimal: an ancient Intel Core i5-3570K or AMD FX-8310 CPU. That's likely because Cyberpunk 2077 is also landing on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, which rock ancient, atrocious AMD Jaguar cores. You'll need only a 3GB GeForce GTX 780 or Radeon RX 470 graphics card, too, so this should run on most modern gaming PCs, even modest ones. The 8GB RAM and 70GB storage requirements are probably more onerous than the CPU and GPU demands.
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Sep 18, 2020
Buying a processor for a gaming rig isn't as hard as it used to be. Now that Ryzen 3000-series and Intel's 10th-gen Core CPUs come with more performance and cores than ever before, it's hard to buy a stinker these days—especially because most games favor graphics firepower over CPU oomph. All that said, there are specific chips that stand out from the horde as the best gaming CPUs due to their price, performance, or nifty extras.
Best CPU for gaming cheat sheet
Our quick-hit recommendations:
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 18, 2020
Microsoft said Friday that it has finalized its next Windows 10 feature release, code-named 20H2, which it has now released to beta testers as the Windows 10 October 2020 Update.
"We believe that Build 19042.508 is the final build and still plan on continuing to improve the overall experience of the October 2020 Update on customers' PCs as part of our normal servicing cadence," Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc, a senior program manager at Microsoft on the Windows Insider Program team, wrote in a blog post.
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Sep 18, 2020
Microsoft's Windows 10 October 2020 Update (20H2) update will usher the new Microsoft Edge browser onto millions of PCs, while upgrading the venerable Alt Tab shortcut with a needed new function. But Microsoft's designers have turned the once-colorful Start menu into watery gruel with a less-than-impressive visual update.
All in all, the Windows 10 October 2020 Update is another in a line of anemic fall feature updates. And that's okay! We expected this. For the past two to three years, Microsoft's major feature updates have coalesced within the "spring" releases, leaving mainly minor patches and quality updates for the fall release. (See the Windows 10 November 2019 Update.) This year is no different, though the small list of changes do allow for some interesting tweaks to your Windows 10 PC.
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Sep 18, 2020
Pour one out, enthusiasts. Nvidia's beastly new GeForce RTX 30-series graphics cards just slammed the final nail into SLI's coffin. Well, almost.
A glaring fact jumped out at me while I was sifting through Nvidia's product pages for our GeForce RTX 30-series vs. RTX 20-series spec comparison: Only the monstrous $1,500 GeForce RTX 3090 includes support for NVLink, the proprietary connector that enables SLI mult-GPU configurations. Even the $800 GeForce RTX 3080 lacks it, and Nvidia calls that graphics card the 30-series flagship. (The RTX 3090 is a "BFGPU" above and beyond the rest.) Given that Nvidia controls 80 percent of the graphics card market, it seems clear that the days of slapping multiple graphics cards into your PC to boost frame rates is effectively over.
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Sep 18, 2020
While we await word of a sale or some kind of a compromise, the popular TikTok and WeChat mobile apps will be removed from Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store at midnight on Monday, September 21. The announcement follows months of jockeying and negotiations after the Trump Administration put the two apps on notice for allegedly collecting personal data from U.S. citizens and funneling it to the Chinese government.
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Sep 18, 2020
"What graphics card within my budget gives me the best bang for my buck?"
That simple question cuts to the core of what people hunting for a new graphics card look for: the most oomph they can afford. Sure, the technological leaps behind each new GPU can be interesting on their own, but most everyone just wants to crank up the detail settings on Battlefield and get right to playing.
Gaming GPU cheat sheet
Our quick-hit recommendations:
Best budget GPU: GeForce GTX 1650 Super [amazon.com]
Best 1080p GPU: GeForce GTX 1660 Super [newegg.com]
Best 1440p GPU: None, or GeForce RTX 3080 [nvidia.com]
Best 4K/60Hz GPU: GeForce RTX 3080 [nvidia.com]
Updated September 18, 2020 to update the news, 1440p, and 4K sections with information about Nvidia's GeForce RTX 30-series resetting performance baselines, and to name the RTX 3080 the best option for high refresh rate 1440p and 4K gaming.
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Sep 18, 2020
Do you need to upgrade your power supply for Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card? That's a concern many people have, but it's actually two concerns clumped into one.
First, people fear they'll need a new PSU to handle the new 12-pin connector on Nvidia's own RTX 3080 Founders Edition. Second, the RTX 3080 pulls more wattage than even the prior-gen RTX 2080 Ti flagship. That's why Nvidia bumped the recommend power supply rating up to 750 watts to compensate, up from a 650W maximum last go-round.
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Sep 18, 2020
We've been telling you for a while that it's an awful time to buy a graphics card, but now we're serious. Nvidia's next-gen GeForce RTX 3080 is here (with the RTX 3070 and 3090 coming soon), and it basically turns all GPUs that came before it into the walking dead—graphics cards that aren't worth buying unless they're deeply discounted.
Don't get me wrong: These are all still great graphics cards if you already own one. But if you bought any of the seven last-gen GPUs listed below right now, without a substantial discount that takes the value of RTX 30-series graphics cards into account, you'd be the sucker that retailers are hoping to find. Let's get you smart so that doesn't happen.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 18, 2020
It's not perfect, but the B-hyve XR is both flexible and reasonably priced.
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Sep 18, 2020
But the sonic balance tips toward the bass and away from the mids and highs.
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Sep 17, 2020
If you suddenly can't seem to get your Tile Pro to be seen by your iPhone, you're not alone. The company has acknowledged that some of the users of its Tile Pro locator beacons were having issues locating their Tiles. Tiles use Bluetooth LE to help you find your keys, wallet or even pets, from your phone.
The problem appears mostly limited to those who use the company's Tile Pro units on an iPhone. For example, a Tile Slim might still be seen by your iPhone, but the Tile Pro won't respond no matter how close you get or how many times you power-cycle your phone or Bluetooth. PCWorld has also tested Tile Pro units on Android without issue. The Tile app on two different iPhones, meanwhile, had issues seeing Tile Pro units.
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Sep 17, 2020
You might not have noticed many changes to Android 11 when you updated your Pixel phone last week—unless you tried to take a screenshot on your Pixel 2 or Pixel 3. Depending on which navigation method you selected, you might have lost the handy screenshot shortcut that was built into the power button.
While Google has taken away two-button navigation on the Pixel 4 and 4a, it remains on the Pixel 2 and 3, which is where the problems begin. If you were using 2-button navigation on Android 10—with the pill-shaped home button and back arrow—it'll remain on Android 11. However, like the other Pixel phones, when you long-press the power button, you'll get a whole new set of options. At the top are three buttons for Emergency, Lockdown, and Power, followed by Google Pay and Home actions.
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Sep 17, 2020
You're casually browsing through YouTube, video after video. Suddenly, you jolt upright. Some content creator you've never heard of is trying to tell you the moon landing was faked...or worse. A lot worse. And like you, Mozilla's RegretsReporter browser plugin wants to know how in the world that happened.
In a way, Mozilla's new RegretsReporter plugin—available for Mozilla Firefox and Chrome—takes a look back at the "Elsagate" scandal of 2017: when videos supposedly depicting child-friendly characters were put into bizarre, disturbing situations by creators hoping to game YouTube's recommendation algorithm. YouTube said later that it had demonetized those types of videos and prevented them from appearing on YouTube Kids.
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Sep 17, 2020
It wouldn't be a stretch to say that Intel's 11th-gen Tiger Lake is perhaps the most important laptop CPU launch for the company. While previous generations suffered no real competition from AMD, Tiger Lake enters the ring facing a legitimate foe: Ryzen 4000.
You can read up on AMD's game-changing Ryzen 9 4800HS, or its recently surfaced and equally impressive Ryzen 7 4800U for mainstream laptops. And yes, that was a budget Acer beating a Core i7 MacBook senseless.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 17, 2020
While Microsoft's Game Pass for PC is scheduled to more than double in price as it comes out of beta this week, don't despair! Microsoft Rewards is your ticket to getting the best deal in gaming, for free.
Microsoft Rewards is basically free money, and not enough of you know how to use it. We're going to show you how to use Microsoft Rewards to help buy all the things you want—an Xbox Series X! Starbucks! Amazon gift cards!—beginning with the awesome Game Pass for PC subscription.
Like the name says, Microsoft Rewards is Microsoft's incentive program for using its consumer services. Using Bing earns you points. Playing Xbox games can earn you points. Playing PC games can earn you points. You can "chase points" as much as you'd like, and earn more and more. Or you can chill, go about your daily activities as you normally would, and still earn points. All of these points can be traded in for stuff you'll actually want.
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Sep 17, 2020
In this episode of The Full Nerd, Gordon Ung, Brad Chacos, Alaina Yee, and Adam Patrick Murray dive into graphics, graphics, and more graphics, because it's GeForce RTX 3080 time.
Brad kicks things off with his review of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition. Bottom line? It's an absolute beast, and a quiet one at that, but you may need to upgrade your power supply to feed it. Check out all his coverage below:
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Sep 17, 2020
Q: I plan to buy an Nvidia RTX 3080 because of its HDMI 2.1 support—it'll pair nicely with my LG C9 TV. I've researched cables, but information about actual HDMI 2.1 48Gbps compliant ones is all over the place. Do you have a recommendation for what to buy?
If you're able to shop at a physical store, the easiest solution is to look for an Ultra High Speed HDMI cable when they become available in Q4 2020. Cables with that specific label must support all HDMI 2.1 features, including bandwidth up to 48Gbps—and can only earn the designation after undergoing mandatory certification from the HDMI Licensing Administrator group, which oversees the HDMI specification. Genuine products will have an official QR code and hologram on the packaging that you can scan in a mobile app for verification.
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Sep 17, 2020
It wouldn't be a stretch to say that Intel's 11th-gen Tiger Lake is perhaps the most important laptop CPU launch for the company. While previous generations suffered no real competition from AMD, Tiger Lake enters the ring facing a legitimate foe: Ryzen 4000.
You can read up on AMD's game-changing Ryzen 9 4800HS, or its recently surfaced and equally impressive Ryzen 7 4800U for mainstream laptops. And yes, that was a budget Acer beating a Core i7 MacBook senseless.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 17, 2020
The GeForce RTX 3080 hits the streets today. Fueled by Nvidia's next-gen Ampere GPU architecture, it wields enough power to trample its predecessor, the GeForce RTX 2080, by up to 80 percent. Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition showed just how dominant this new GPU is—and how much juice it requires to push that many pixels. The spectacular Founders Edition deploys a new 12-pin connector and unique "flow-through" cooler design to tame the beastly RTX 3080.
But Nvidia's $699 Founders Edition isn't the only RTX 3080 in stores today. In an unusual move, a wide range of customized graphics cards by Nvidia partners will also be available on day one, including the $750 MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio 10G on our test bench today. Where Nvidia turned to technical tricks with its Founders Edition, MSI cranks its overpowering card to 11. The MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio 10G overclocks the GPU to 1800MHz, feeds it with a trio of 8-pin connectors, then cools it down with a massive three-slot, triple fan cooler loaded with new technologies and yes, RGB lights. It dwarfs Nvidia's offering.
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Sep 17, 2020
Nvidia's Ampere-powered GeForce RTX 3080 chews up games and spits out frames for breakfast, as we covered in-depth in our comprehensive Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition review. You need a pixel-packed monitor to get the most out of it, though—like a 3440x1440 ultrawide display.
Our initial tests of the GeForce RTX 3080 showed it really flexing its muscles at 4K resolution, where the graphics workload is so heavy that your CPU is pretty much taken out of the equation. At 4K, the RTX 3080 performed up to a whopping 80 percent faster than its RTX 2080 predecessor in some games. Stepping down to 1440p, the RTX 3080 continues to dominate, but not quite as much as at 4K, because at the lower resolution your CPU struggles to feed frames to the ultra-fast graphics card fast enough. A 3440x1440 ultrawide monitor splits the difference between the two more standard resolutions.
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Sep 17, 2020
TiVo vs. Tablo vs. HDHomeRun: An illustrated guide to cord-cutting DVRs
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Sep 17, 2020
It provides fast network storage and a great feature set, but NVMe caching adds a lot to its price tag without delivering much in the way of hard benefits to the home user.
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Sep 16, 2020
Microsoft may announce support for emulating 64-bit Windows apps alongside a refresh of the Surface Pro X this fall, according to a report.
Sources talking to Windows Central report that Microsoft plans a refreshed Surface Pro X using Microsoft's SQ1 chip, a derivative of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G, itself the next iteration of the Snapdragon 8cx chip that powered notebooks like the Samsung Galaxy Book S. Microsoft's version of the 8cx Gen 2 5G would reportedly be called the SQ2.
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Sep 16, 2020
After launching its latest standalone VR headset, the Oculus Quest 2, on Wednesday, Facebook quietly dropped a bombshell: Oculus is moving away from PC-only VR headsets.
The company that introduced the original Oculus Rift in 2016, which relied on the PC's native CPU for the rendering, said in a blog post that it "won't pursue PC-only hardware" any more.
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Sep 16, 2020
A week to the day after Microsoft announced pricing for its imminent next-gen consoles, Sony struck back with firm details of its own during a digital event on Wednesday. The PlayStation 5 will cost $499, while the disc-less PlayStation 5 Digital Edition will cost $399 when they launch on November 12 in several countries. Preorders will start tomorrow at select retailers.
Microsoft's flagship Xbox Series X will also cost $499 when it launches November 10 alongside the stripped-down $299 Xbox Series S. That's an incredibly competitive price for the level of hardware inside the Xbox Series X. Microsoft's console probably puts your PC to shame.
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Sep 16, 2020
The new Facebook Oculus Quest 2 isn't just about playing games. Facebook also debuted a concept called "Infinite Office," a Facebook "experiment" that will move the concept of multiple displays into virtual reality when it debuts this winter.
Facebook will even get around the problem of typing in VR—when, otherwise, you wouldn't be able to see your hands—by partnering with Logitech on a keyboard. The Infinite Office keyboard will exist in the real world and be seen by the Oculus Quest 2 hardware as well.
Facebook's idea is that productivity should exist in the virtual space, as well as in the real world. With so many people working from home, they may not have a large physical workspace upon which they can mount many monitors—which improves productivity for most people. By placing those monitors in a virtual space, Infinite Office allows users to surround themselves with screens, and thus accomplish more during their workday.
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Sep 16, 2020
The Oculus Quest 2 is here. Announced Wednesday at Facebook Connect, it builds upon the untethered appeal of Facebook's original Oculus Quest, whose freedom of movement came with performance limitations. Oculus Quest 2 brings important improvements—most notably, 2K displays running at 90Hz.
While many details of Facebook's new Oculus Quest 2 headset leaked out early, what we didn't know was the price: $299, a significantly cheaper option versus the $399 Oculus charged for the Facebook Quest. Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, introduced the Quest 2 by identifying the $299 price point. But there will apparently be two models: the $299 model with 64GB of storage, and a more expensive $399, 256GB model, according to Road2VR.com, which received a briefing on the Quest 2 news. Preorders will begin October 13.
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Sep 16, 2020
DJ Khaled, Becky G, Will Smith and more are slated to produce exclusive Amazon Music podcasts.
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Sep 16, 2020
Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card symbolizes why we tell people to wait for the second generation when bleeding-edge technology appears.
The radical new-look Turing GPUs inside Nvidia's GeForce RTX 20-series packed all sorts of cutting-edge technologies designed to usher in real-time ray tracing, a long sought-after goal for the gaming industry. Not only did Turing introduce specialized RT cores devoted to processing ray tracing tasks, it also debuted tensor cores, dedicated hardware that uses machine learning to help denoise ray traced visuals and enable AI-enhanced tools like the fantastic Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology. Turing's improvements also extended to the traditional shader cores, introducing an overhauled processing pipeline better equipped to handle games built using the newer DirectX 12 and Vulkan graphics APIs. All of these were huge departures from the norm.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 16, 2020
The GeForce RTX 3080 is a monster.
Nvidia promised that the Ampere GPU-powered RTX 30-series GPUs would be the company's "greatest generational leap" ever, and it wasn't exaggerating. The $699 GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition absolutely demolishes its predecessors in performance while working in all sorts of technological advances. It's one of the best graphics card upgrades we've seen in a long, long time.
You can read every nitty-gritty detail in our comprehensive review of Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition. But if you don't feel like sifting through thousands of words of technical and testing details, here are the five key things you need to know.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 16, 2020
Apple is now selling three models of its Apple Watch and choosing between them isn't so easy. Until you know what to look for.
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Sep 15, 2020
The Apple Watch SE isn't just a cut-rate version of the Series 6. It's a fantastic wearable in its own right at a killer price.
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Sep 15, 2020
The good news is that the price is the same. The bad news is that so is nearly everything else.
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Sep 15, 2020
This Apple Watch update the biggest yet, with new colors, new sensors, and a new service.
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Sep 15, 2020
The new Air takes design cues from the iPad Pro and gets a huge speed boost from the A14 processor.
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Sep 15, 2020
Want to know when your favorite band is hitting the virtual road? Spotify can help.
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Sep 15, 2020
We're mere days from the debut of Nvidia's next-gen GeForce RTX 30-series graphics cards, with the $700 GeForce RTX 3080 scheduled to hit the streets on Thursday. And Fortnite will be right alongside it, as the world's most popular game will add real-time ray tracing, Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) 2.0, and Nvidia Reflex to Fortnite on September 17, Nvidia said Tuesday.
Nvidia previously teased Fortnite flipping on RTX during the RTX 30-series reveal, but there wasn't a firm release date. While some games only dip their toes into real-time ray tracing with an effect or two, Fortnite is diving in, with ray traced reflections, shadows, global illumination, and ambient occlusion. Oh my. That many goodies could land Fortnite alongside Minecraft and Control as the standard-bearers for ray tracing.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 15, 2020
The best thing about Photoshop is the huge selection of special effects called filters. But the real genius comes when you learn to mix them into new and even more astounding effects, such as Fresco and Paint Daubs together, or Poster Edges with Watercolors. The purpose of this article is to introduce, explain, and show examples of these amazing features.
What are Photoshop's Artistic filters?
In a nutshell, Photoshop Artistic filters are computerized, artistic techniques (or special effects) that enable you to create images that simulate artistic styles such as colored pencils, watercolors, chalk pastels, charcoal, pen and inks, crayons, and dozens of other artistic media. In the current version of PS, there are over 225 special effects filters.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 15, 2020
Smart smoke and carbon monoxide detectors don't just sound the alarm, they also alert your smart phone and more.
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Sep 15, 2020
It's not a "smart" smoke alarm, per se, but it does offer solid protection on a budget.
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Sep 14, 2020
Seeking to derail the roaring hype train for Nvidia's imminent GeForce RTX 3080 launch, AMD teased the reference design for its own upcoming Radeon RX 6000-series "Big Navi" graphics cards on Monday, and it looks like nothing AMD has ever released before.
AMD has caught a lot of flack for the design of its awful reference coolers over the years, and well, it's deserved. Former flagships like the Radeon R9 290X and Radeon RX Vega 64 screamed and howled underneath AMD's blower-style reference coolers, only to prove much more capable when paired with custom coolers offering better airflow. The song (or the shrieking) remained the same with the Radeon RX 5700 and 5700 XT. Sure, those reference cards offered a big quality-of-life improvement over Vega, but custom Radeon RX 5700 models with axial coolers fared far better.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 14, 2020
When it comes to office productivity suites, there is little doubt that Microsoft Office dominates. But despite its deep roots and reknown, as well as its comprehensive array of offerings, Office is not necessarily the best option for everyone. Parsing the ever-expanding list of features—many of which you'll never use—can feel overwhelming. For the majority of users, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are all that's really wanted. Which brings us to the final issue: Office's hefty price tag.
Fortunately, free office suites abound, many of which are compatible with Microsoft Office docs. We compared six of the most popular free alternatives to see how well they replicate the most commonly used features of Microsoft Office.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 14, 2020
On Monday, Microsoft announced more than 150 games that consumers will be able to play on its cloud gaming initiative (formerly known as Project xCloud) beginning September 15. But the cloud-gaming initiative omits one key feature: the ability to play on a PC.
Microsoft began offering Project xCloud as a beta late last year, and the technology is a marvelous achievement. You can play otherwise top-tier games on an Android tablet or phone, powered by Microsoft's network of cloud servers. (Cloud gaming runs on a powerful though remote GPU, meaning that even a smartphone can "run" a top-tier, AAA game.) The service, now simply called "cloud gaming," is part of Microsoft's Game Pass Ultimate subscription, available for $15 per month. (Or less, if you know how to work the system.)
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 14, 2020
And the winner of the TikTok bidding war is... Oracle? Yes, well, sort of.
According to NBC News, Oracle and TikTok reached an agreement to buy TikTok's United States operations. On Monday, Oracle confirmed only that it is "part of the proposal submitted by ByteDance to the Treasury Department over the weekend in which Oracle will serve as the trusted technology provider."
What has been confirmed, however, is that Microsoft is officially out of the running. The company said Sunday night that TikTok parent ByteDance would not be selling TikTok to Microsoft.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 14, 2020
If you thought LG's gesture-based ThinQ phones, water droplet-inspired Velvet, and DualScreen cases were brilliant moves by a smartphone maker way ahead of its time, wait until you get a load of the Wing, a gotta-see-it concept phone that's straight out of an episode of Westworld.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 14, 2020
Nvidia's chief executive said he's interested in using Arm's network of partners to license its GPU technology—and that it might be in your smartphone someday.
In a conference call early Monday morning, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said he wants to use Arm's relationships as a distribution channel to license a broad set of Nvidia technology, including graphics. "The first obvious thing for us to make available through ARM's vast network is our GPU and our accelerated computing architecture," Huang said in a conference call on Sunday evening.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 14, 2020
Most industry watchers think that antitrust agencies will ask some hard questions of Nvidia's $40 billion acquisition of Arm, the largest chip deal ever and one that would put control of the entire mobile CPU industry in Nvidia's hands.
That Arm holds a virtual monopoly in the smartphone industry is unquestioned—practically every smartphone made includes some derivative of an Arm chip design. Arm designs the fundamental CPU architecture and associated logic, then licenses it to companies like Qualcomm and Apple. Those licensees can modify the design according to the terms of the contract, then manufacture them.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 14, 2020
Intel appears to have hidden Iris Xe Max, an unannounced version of its Xe GPU branding, inside of the "sizzle reel" for its new logo.
Fast-forward thirty-six seconds into Intel's "Wonderful New Look" video, and you'll see that Intel has published an array of its new logos—everything from the Celeron to the Pentium to the Xeon. To the upper left, however, is something new: a logo touting the Iris Xe Max, a brand that hasn't been announced yet. Unfortunately, most of the comments attached to the promo reel hiding the new Intel Xe Max brand focused on the new Intel jingle 57 seconds in—which, well, sounds pretty unflattering.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 14, 2020
Office 2010 users, we know you're out there. As recently as 2017, according to a survey published by IT marketplace Spiceworks, Office 2010 was being used in 83 percent of the companies surveyed. But your time's up on October 13, when Microsoft officially ends support for the Office 2010 productivity suite. That means no more technical support, no more patches, and no more security updates.
With a scant 30 days left, you do have some options. We'll go over them below.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 14, 2020
Sound and motion alerts, intelligent reminders, and motorized pan and tilt highlight this camera's well-rounded feature set.
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Sep 13, 2020
Intel has quietly confirmed that it will do an 8-core version of its 11th-gen Tiger Lake chip.
In a September 3 blog post on Medium noticed by Tom's Hardware, Intel's Boyd Phelps confirmed that in addition to the quad-core 11th-gen CPUs due in October, the company will also push out an 8-core variant.
"The Willow Cove core increases the mid-level cache to 1.25MB—up from 512KB," Phelps wrote, on the site usually associated with 12,000-word essays on avocado toast. "We also added a 3MB non-inclusive last-level-cache (LLC) per core slice. A single core workload has access to 12MB of LLC in the 4-core die or up to 24MB in the 8-core die configuration (more detail on 8-core products at a later date)."
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 13, 2020
And the winner of the TikTok bidding war is... Oracle?
According to NBC News, Oracle and TikTok reached an agreement to buy TikTok's United States operations. Neither company has confirmed the deal (NBC cited "a source with direct knowledge").
What has been confirmed, however, is that Microsoft is officially out of the running. The company said Sunday night that TikTok parent ByteDance would not be selling TikTok to Microsoft.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 13, 2020
Nvidia agreed to purchase Arm for up to $40 billion in cash and stock, the companies said Sunday night. This mammoth deal in the chip industry is expected to bolster AI and GPU powerhouse Nvidia's chip portfolio, even as it's sure to attract antitrust attention in the smartphone market.
Nvidia will pay Softbank, the company's current owner, a total of $21.5 billion in Nvidia stock and $12 billion in cash, including $2 billion payable at signing. Nvidia will also issue $1.5 billion in equity to Arm employees. It may also pay Softbank up to $5 billion in cash or stock if Arm meets specific financial performance targets—bringing the final purchase price up to $40 billion -- the largest chip deal ever.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 12, 2020
Surprise! Late Friday night, Nvidia quietly announced the availability date for its hotly anticipated $499 GeForce RTX 3070. The next-gen graphics cards will hit the streets on October 15. At the GeForce RTX 30-series reveal, Nvidia only said that the cards will be available sometime in October.
The $699 GeForce RTX 3080 lands on September 17, while the monstrous $1,499 GeForce RTX 3090 is scheduled for release on September 24. And notably, after Nvidia revealed its next-gen GPUs, AMD has said its own next-gen RDNA 2-based "Big Navi" Radeon RX 6000-series graphics cards will be announced on October 28.
To read this article in full, please click here
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Sep 11, 2020
Anyone who uses a smartphone knows the importance of carrying a backup battery pack. But given the large number of options on Amazon, you might feel overwhelmed, understandably. Besides the various charging specs, ports, and even cables you have to consider, there are a ton of competing brands. But how do you know which ones actually deliver on their promises? Is it worth saving a few bucks if a battery pack's performance is lacking?
Cheat sheet: Best power banks 2020
Mophie Powerstation XXL: Best overall [mophie.com]
Xiaomi 10,000mAh Mi Power Bank: Most portable [amazon.com]
Sherpa 100AC Portable Power Bank: Best for road warriors [goalzero.com]
Anker Powercore 26800 PD: Best USB-C pack with Power Delivery [amazon.com]
RockPals 300W Power Station: Best portable power station [amazon.com]
We decided to do the legwork for you, acquiring a wide range of power banks from different manufacturers, some offering unique features. We then spent weeks testing the packs (read about our testing process in detail below).
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Sep 11, 2020
Battery packs typically don't offer anything more than, at most, a couple different ways to charge your devices, and that's it. The BentoStack Charge 8000 has a USB-C port, a USB-A port, and wireless charging—checking all the basic requirements—but it also offers a stack of storage compartments and boxes, the inspiration for its clever name.
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Sep 11, 2020
This successor to what most people consider the best active noise-cancelling headphones on the market features minimal, but welcome upgrades.
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Sep 11, 2020
Why aren't Ryzen gaming laptops getting the same GPU love that their Intel-based rivals are? In the same week that Alienware updated its M17 and Area 51m with GeForce RTX 2080 Super GPUs, and Gigabyte introduced its Aorus 15P aimed at professional gamers with its 10th-gen Intel CPU and GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q, Ryzen got blanked, with no new gaming laptops featuring anything faster than a GeForce RTX 2060.
Even HP's recently released Ryzen-based Omen 15 can't get a break. The version of the Omen 15 with an 8-core Ryzen 7 4800H offers a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti right now, with an RTX 2060 Max-Q version on the way. The Intel version, however, comes with a 6-core Core i7-10750H and up to a GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q.
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Sep 10, 2020
Gateway is back! One of the earliest American PC companies, Gateway may be most remembered for its black-and-white-spotted "cow" logo, a reference to the company's start (as Gateway 2000) on a farm near Sioux City, Iowa, in 1985.
A lot has happened in the last 35 years. After Acer agreed to acquire the Gateway brand for $710 million in 2007, the company essentially went quiet.
In its new life, Gateway is a Walmart-exclusive, value-priced brand offering everything from an Android tablet to a gaming laptop. (Walmart also manufactures its own lineup of Motile laptops, which we've found to be surprisingly good.) It appears that the iconic "cow"-spotted boxes have returned, too.
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Sep 10, 2020
Microsoft Surface Duo officially goes on sale today, but before you drop $1,400 on one, you might want to read a few of the reviews. Because the first impressions of the unique device aren't great.
The overall feeling is best summed up by Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal who says the device isn't ready unless "you want an Android device that repeatedly ignores your taps on its screens, randomly slows down, struggles to figure out its own up, down and sideways positioning, and abruptly rearranges parts of its own interface." That's pretty scathing, but unfortunately, Stern's conclusions aren't out of the ordinary.
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Sep 10, 2020
The $10-a-month IFTTT Pro plan lets you create unlimited applets with new and advanced features, while capping the number of applets that free users can create at three.
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Sep 10, 2020
Sorry PC Xbox fans, the party is over. Alongside a flurry of announcements about the new Xbox Series X and Series S this week, Microsoft also confirmed that the price of Xbox Game Pass for PC will be doubling to $10 a month on September 17.
That shouldn't come as a total surprise to PC players. Xbox Game Pass for PC has technically been in beta all this time, and Microsoft has consistently said the $5-a-month pricing was for a "limited time."
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Sep 10, 2020
Ever since Google launched the first Pixel phone in 2016, its main appeal, even more than the camera, has been the delivery of Android updates before every other phone. From security patches to full version releases, Pixels are consistently at the front of the line, forcing other phone makers to catch up.
Many of them have come close. Earlier this year Samsung was able to match Google's speed with a few security updates, as well as a guarantee of three generations of updates for most new Galaxy phones. OnePlus and Oppo have already launched near-final public beta previews for Android 11, and One UI 3.0 is starting to roll out to developers. Budget phones are now launching with the newest version of Android on board.
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Sep 10, 2020
Ever since Google launched the first Pixel phone in 2016, its main appeal, even more than the camera, has been the delivery of Android updates before every other phone. From security patches to full version releases, Pixels are consistently at the front of the line, forcing other phone makers to catch up.
Many of them have come close. Earlier this year Samsung was able to match Google's speed with a few security updates, as well as a guarantee of three generations of updates for most new Galaxy phones. OnePlus and Oppo have already launched near-final public beta previews for Android 11, and One UI 3.0 is starting to roll out to developers. Budget phones are now launching with the newest version of Android on board.
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Sep 10, 2020
Cooler Master's SK621 keyboard is a teachable moment for high-tech hardware companies everywhere. When the company's latest wireless keyboard stumbled out of the gate, Cooler Master made a move we wish all companies would: Fix the product, rather than make users buy a new one.
All this concerns's the company's SK-series of keyboards, which came out to much fanfare because of their flat keys and Cherry MX low-profile switches.
Unfortunately, a lot of people hated them. Our review of the SK621 criticized the cramped layout, hard on all but those with the most delicate digits.
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Sep 10, 2020
The FCC dismantles CableCARD and cable-box competition rules for good.
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Sep 10, 2020
Zoho on Thursday introduced Zoho Workplace, a cloud-first suite of nine office productivity tools that are more tightly integrated than ever before.
Zoho Workplace ties nine of Zoho's existing productivity apps into a web-based UI. It's reminiscent of the sort of app ribbon that unites some of Microsoft's Office products, such as Outlook, or the icon menu that you can click while working in Google Docs, for example.
Zoho
Zoho's Workplace dashboard.
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Sep 09, 2020
Stay on top of the latest tech with PCWorld's Digital Magazine. Available as single copies or as a monthly subscription, it highlights the best content from PCWorld.com—the most important news, the key product reviews, and the most useful features and how-to stories—in a curated Digital Magazine for Android and iOS, as well for the desktop and other tablet readers.
In the September issue
This month we look at the $1,000 Galaxy Note 20. We've got three great reasons to buy it, and three reasons not to. Windows 10 is 5 years old. Find out how it has transformed the PC. Plus, why your laptop's card reader might be terrible.
Other highlights include:
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Sep 09, 2020
AMD chief executive Lisa Su said Wednesday that her company will be launching its next-generation Zen 3 microprocessors on October 8.
"It's going to be an exciting fall for gamers... time to start a new journey with @AMDRyzen Zen3 and @Radeon RDNA2," Su tweeted, just below a small promotional video of the launch that advertised the October 8 launch date. (AMD today also confirmed the October 28 launch of its "Big Navi" Radeon RX 6000 series cards to take on Nvidia.)
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Sep 09, 2020
After the better part of a year of teasing, the countdown timer is finally ticking for AMD's next-gen "Big Navi" graphics cards. The company announced today that the Radeon RX 6000 series will be revealed on October 28, hot on the heels of the news of the $500 Xbox Series X's November 10 release date.
Microsoft's next-gen console is powered by an AMD chip that blends Ryzen CPU cores with Radeon GPU cores built using the company's new RDNA 2 graphics architecture. At the Bank of America Securities Global Technology Conference in early June, AMD CFO Devinder Kumar said that "Big Navi" graphics cards will be the first RDNA 2-based product for AMD. Today's announcement confirms it.
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Sep 09, 2020
Thanks to Amazon's new partnership with AT&T, you can basically turn Alexa into a phone.
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Sep 09, 2020
A mere day after leaks forced the sudden reveal of the previously unrevealed $299 Xbox Series S, Microsoft has drawn the curtain fully back on its next-gen console. The company announced Wednesday that the flagship Xbox Series X console will cost $499 when it launches alongside the Series S on November 10. Preorders open on September 22. That's an insanely good price for a backward-compatible console that probably puts your PC to shame, but Microsoft's optional payment plans make the price even more affordable in an uncertain world.
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Sep 09, 2020
With 300Hz panels, real-time ray tracing, and 8-core CPUs, gaming laptops today are leaps and bounds better than they were just five years ago—except for one area: sound quality.
In fact, after working our way through gaming laptops from just about every PC vendor you can name, the only thing we can conclude is that gaming PC laptops just don't care about PC audio. Sure, they'll put a sticker on the laptop's body proclaiming, "Audio by X," but our ears don't lie: They're almost all subpar.
Before we get too far down this blame game, we'll note that larger gaming laptops generally don't suffer this fate. But by larger laptop, we speak of Acer's brutal 10-pound. Predator Helios 700 or Alienware's 8-pound Area 51m. Both laptops are huge desktop replacement models.
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Sep 09, 2020
Microsoft launched its Office app for iOS and Android in February, a few weeks before the pandemic drove us all indoors. Who knew, as my family hunkered down to work and study from home, that the Office app would quickly turn into an indispensable tool for managing day-to-day document tasks for my kids as well as myself. If you don't know how much it can do, keep reading to find out.
If it is or could be a document, Office can help
We've used the Office app on Android, and it allows you some frankly amazing flexibility. You can take a picture of a page of a book and use the Office app to extract the text automatically using optical character recognition. You can turn a photo into a PDF. You can sign a PDF that you've already created. You can take a photo of a spreadsheet and turn that into an Excel table, or turn a document into a PDF, or vice versa. Don't underestimate those last features, either, as PDF-to-Word conversion tools can be hard to come by. And, of course, unlike most of the PDF editors we're reviewed, all these Office app functions are free.
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Sep 09, 2020
Usability isn't this smart irrigation system's strong point, but it gets water where it needs to be in your landscaping.
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Sep 08, 2020
If you own a Pixel 2 or later, your phone is about to get some new features. After months of betas, Google has begun rolling out Android 11 to "select Pixel, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Oppo and Realme phones," but if you don't own a Google phone, you won't see the full version yet.
OnePlus, Oppo, and Realme have announced that some customers will be getting access to public betas and previews while the full version is still being developed. That's better than usual, but still a far cry from iOS 14, which will be available on hundreds of millions of iPhones when it launches sometime this fall.
Still, if your phone isn't on that list, you're not missing out on all that much. Android 11 is very much a maintenance release, and as such, it has few new features that you'll notice. The most obvious is Bubbles, which lets you respond to a message and see whole conversations without needing to launch Android Messages or other supported messaging apps. Small circles will appear on the screen when a new text arrives and you'll be able to expand it and reply without leaving the app you're working in.
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Sep 08, 2020
Microsoft announces a second, cheaper console to complement its Xbox Series X: the Xbox Series S. Here's what we know about it so far.
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Sep 08, 2020
Microsoft apparently is going back to its roots with a new "Surface for students"—a smaller, cheaper Surface Laptop that it reportedly plans to announce this fall.
A smaller, 12.5-inch Surface Laptop priced somewhere around $600 might not be the most exciting laptop Microsoft has ever produced, but there's something to be said for cutting out the razzle-dazzle and simply selling a general-purpose Surface that targets cost-conscious consumers.
The new laptop, code-named Sparti, is scheduled to be part of the traditional fall refresh of Surface devices, according to Windows Central. Microsoft has typically used this period to release an updated Surface Pro tablet, as well as new Surface Laptops, and sometimes new Surface Studios as well.
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Sep 08, 2020
NFL Redzone has a standalone streaming option for $35 per year, but few people are aware of it.
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Sep 08, 2020
Apple has sent out an invite for an online event on September 15.
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Sep 08, 2020
The radon-detecting Wave's little brother is a great way to start checking for airborne irritants.
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Sep 08, 2020
Leaks claim the new Microsoft Xbox Series X and new Xbox Series S will launch on Nov. 10, for the same retail prices as the current consoles. Microsoft itself confirmed the Series S price.
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Sep 08, 2020
Updated to reflect the most recent versions of NordVPN and Mullvad.
Choosing a VPN is a challenge when there are so many available—as our comprehensive roundup of VPN reviews demonstrates. Everywhere you look online, some service is offering to help obfuscate your location and protect your browsing habits from internet service providers (ISP) and anyone else lurking around the web.
Before plunking down your cold hard credit card number, however, there are many questions to ask. Can you trust the company? What are the speeds like? Is there a desktop app and is it easy to use? How many country locations are there, and can you still watch Netflix while connected?
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Sep 08, 2020
Get the Mac experience without spending a bunch of money on a Mac.
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Sep 08, 2020
While you can spend a thousand bucks or more on a phone if you want, you don't actually need to anymore. In the past few months, Apple and Google have both released impressive mid-range phones that cost less than $400 and bring many of the features usually reserved for premium handsets, including wireless charging, all-screen designs, and impressive battery life.
But as with all things Apple and Google, the iPhone SE and Pixel 4a are not created equal. But I wanted to see just how different they are. I had been using the iPhone SE since receiving it in early June, so when the Pixel 4a arrived on my doorstep, I popped out the SIM and jumped back into the world of Android. Here's what I learned:
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Sep 08, 2020
While it packs DTS Virtual:X and high-resolution multi-room audio, Yamaha's BAR 400 lacks Dolby Atmos support and a center channel.
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Sep 07, 2020
You probably don't need to buy a HDMI cable to go with your new TV, but here's how to tell for sure.
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Sep 07, 2020
If you rip and library your own media, there's no better tool for storing and streaming it than a NAS box. These versatile storage devices also serve as the perfect personal, secure cloud for backing up your PCs and other devices.
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Sep 07, 2020
Just in time for the Labor Day holiday, version 3.3 of the Vivaldi browser is launching a "break mode:" a way to pause the browser and walk away without losing anything.
Break Mode, according to Vivaldi, is a one-touch mode in version 3.3 of its desktop browser. The new version of the browser will have a small "pause button" in the lower left-hand corner. When you want to pause what you're doing, just press the button. "Easily triggered with a pause button at the left corner of the Status Bar, Break Mode mutes and stops HTML5 audio and videos, hides all tabs, panels, and other content leaving the screen clean," Vivaldi said.
Normally, a user might take a break by walking away from the PC, minimizing the browser, or shutting the app (or the PC) entirely. But according to a Vivaldi representative, minimizing the app wouldn't pause any playing videos or shut down streaming audio. "If you minimize Vivaldi it will lose focus, and so it'll be more work to restore it the way it was before," she wrote in an email. "Break Mode is really quick."
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Sep 04, 2020
The best cheap laptop deals these days are harder to find, as anyone who can afford a laptop is getting one to work or study from home. We're here to help. Prices have inched up since the pandemic hit, but there are still decent deals to be had online, even if corners are cut here and there to hit a price point.
Your job is to find the one that checks off the most boxes for your needs—and doesn't saddle you with features (or lack thereof) that you'll regret in a year. We'll show you what to look for by highlighting which budget laptops among the best-sellers currently listed at Amazon. Just remember that pricing and availability can change rapidly because of the unprecedented demand.
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Sep 04, 2020
Gigabyte's new Aorus 15P is for professionals. Professional gamers, that is.
As its name implies, the Aorus 15P features a 15.6-inch screen, as well a 10th-gen, 6-core Core i7-10750H and GeForce RTX 2060 Max-Q or GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU. The laptop is expected to be on sale immediately, with the price starting at $1,599.
The laptop's configuration can have 8GB of RAM up to 64GB of DDR4/2666 RAM. Two M.2 slots handle storage, and the battery is a beefy 94-watt-hour cell. Because it's for pro gamers, the keyboard is naturally per-key RGB.
What's interesting to us is the choice of panels. Again, Gigabyte said the design is based on input from pro gamers, but the 15.6-inch 1920x1080 IPS panel with 144Hz refresh made us pause. We've already seen 300Hz panels in MSI's GS66 Stealth, and this week Alienware announced it will use a 360Hz panel in its newest Area 51m. So yeah, count us among the underwhelmed on the 144Hz panel choice.
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Sep 04, 2020
MSI will make a run at business laptops with its new Summit product line, featuring Intel's newly launched 11th-gen Tiger Lake CPUs. Pricing and availability of the Summit line, as well as refreshes of the existing Prestige and Modern laptop lines, were not announced, but there's plenty to look forward to, from PCIe 4.0 SSDs to 4K UHD displays to new laptop colors.
The Summit series will encompass both 14-inch and 15-inch models, with E-series and B-series tiers. While all will be based on the new 11th-gen CPUs, the E-series will feature Nvidia's discrete GeForce GTX 1650 Ti chips. The B-series will feature Intel's Iris Xe integrated graphics. The Summit E15 and Summit E14 feature up to 4K UHD IPS panels, while the B15 and B14 top out with FHD screens.
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Sep 04, 2020
The best laptops of 2020 are experiencing a seismic shift. With the near-simultaneous launches of AMD's Ryzen 4000 and Intel's Comet Lake-H mobile CPUs in January, we had a real fight for the first time ever: Ryzen 4000's cores vs. Intel's clock speeds.
But there's more: In September, Intel launched its Tiger Lake CPUs for thin-and-light laptops, promising yet again that thanks to flexible clock speeds, it would hammer Ryzen 4000. Or so Intel says.
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Sep 04, 2020
Two long years after the GeForce RTX 20-series kicked off real-time ray tracing and uncompromising 4K performance in earnest, Nvidia finally took the wraps off its hotly anticipated successors on Tuesday. The first GeForce RTX 30-series GPUs are damned impressive, culminating in the ferocious GeForce RTX 3090 with 24GB of cutting-edge GDDR6X memory and enough power to game on an 8K display. But glancing over the launch lineup, one things sticks out: Why is there no GeForce RTX 3080 Ti? The RTX 2080 Ti was the heavy hitter in the 20-series lineup, after all.
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Sep 04, 2020
Whether you've cut the cord or are sticking with cable, our guide will show you all the ways you can watch America's favorite sport on TV, including Monday Night Football and NFL RedZone.
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Sep 04, 2020
Ring's latest—and least-expensive—video doorbell impresses, but still doesn't work well with Google Assistant.
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Sep 03, 2020
Laptops and notebook PCs using Intel's first Tiger Lake chips will begin shipping in October, an Intel representative confirmed on Thursday.
Up to now Intel has been cagey, stating that the first laptops using its new Tiger Lake chips would be available this fall in time for the holiday season. Its presentation Thursday also clarified a fact that was left out of its press release: Two of the nine new Tiger Lake chips, the Core i3-1125G4 and Core i3-1120G4, won't be available until 2021. Some observers grumbled that Intel should have waited to launch Tiger Lake until PC makers were ready to ship.
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Sep 03, 2020
Should you preorder Nvidia's GeForce RTX 30-series graphics cards? If you want a GeForce RTX 3070, 3080, or 3090 in your hands any time near their various launches, I think the answer's a firm yes, assuming they're made available.
Let me add some context to that. I'm the guy who listed all the reasons why you shouldn't preorder last generation's GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. I'm the guy that pointed to first-gen Ryzen's disappointing gaming performance vs. a five-year-old Intel PC and said "see, this is why you shouldn't preorder." I'm the guy who literally wrote an article called Never Preorder, in which I declared "I have two words for you: Never preorder."
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