Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2016 i PCWorld

MICROSOFT’S BIG EVENT in New York featured plenty of new Surface hardware, but nevertheless, it’s easy to see why the company called this a Windows event rather than a Surface shindig. Windows and devices chief Terry Myerson kicked things off with a tantalizing glimpse of the features that will debut with the new Windows 10 Creators Update, scheduled for release in the spring. The rest of the event was dedicated to new Surface gear designed specifically to marry powerful, thoughtful hardware with the best of those new software features. But don’t take my word for it! Here’s everything Microsoft announced at its October 26 Windows event. Windows 10 Creators Update As I said, the freshly revealed Windows 10 Creators Update, scheduled to arrive in early 2017, kicked off the show.…

FLOATING SOMEWHERE ON the Internet is a PCWorld burrito truck, thanks to the power of Microsoft’s Paint 3D Preview. One version even has wings. Virtually everyone who’s used Windows is familiar with Paint, the default drawing program that’s shipped with generations of Windows. Microsoft needed a bridge between Paint and a new generation of users that Microsoft wants to get hooked on the HoloLens and 3D printing, so it created the 3D Builder app in Windows 10. That app got no traction, so for its next attempt, Microsoft folded the features into the familiar Paint name, retooling the app for 3D—which Insiders can now download from the Windows 10 Store. Sure, you can use Paint for some 2D functions. But this is really about 3D content creation. How to get…

THE FUTURE OF Windows phones…might not be phones? Rumors and hopes for a category-defining Surface phone were not satisfied at Microsoft’s press event in October. The company didn’t even mention Windows 10 Mobile. With the collective market share of Windows phones stagnant at about 1 percent, customers and partners have to wonder why anyone should bother investing in Microsoft’s mobile strategy. In an interview with ZDnet’s Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft executive vice president of Windows and devices Terry Myerson was asked just that. But instead of committing wholeheartedly to Windows phones—or declaring that product line dead—Myerson tried a different tack: obscurity. “Technically, there are really two things that are unique about Windows Mobile,” Myerson replied, when asked why Microsoft was, in Foley’s words, “wasting time” upgrading Windows 10 Mobile. “One…

MICROSOFT’S BROWSERS HEMORRHAGED another 40 million users last month, according to analytics vendor Net Applications, pushing the year’s total number of deserters near the one third of a billion mark. Net Applications pegged the combined user share of Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge at 28.4% for October, a fall of 2.3 percentage points. The month’s decline was the second-largest ever for Microsoft’s browsers, behind only May’s plummet of 2.7 points. Unlike in most previous months, Microsoft’s bane was not Google’s boon, but instead Mozilla’s. Firefox’s user share jumped nearly 2 percentage points, to 11.1%. Atop an almost-as-large increase in September, Mozilla’s Firefox has stepped away from a precipice, and in two months recovered almost all the losses it incurred during the past year. IE has shed 20.2 percentage points in…

APPLE GAVE ITS new MacBook Pro a thinner, sleeker case, which demanded a new, lower-travel keyboard, a new venting system, and even a smaller battery. But while I appreciate a Mac that’s smaller and lighter, I’d rather have a Mac that’s easier or just more fun to use. These 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pros with Apple’s new Touch Bar are both. The Touch Bar brings my favorite things about the iPad Pro’s software keyboard to the Mac. The amount of useful shortcuts it adds is ridiculous, and this is before most third-party developers have even had a chance to add Touch Bar support. Even for a premium price— and these Macs aren’t cheap—I think the Touch Bar makes this a much more compelling buy than the MacBook Pro with function…

OK, NOW THIS is clever. That was my reaction when I asked Google Home (madeby.google.com/home), “What’s the temperature inside?” and the spunky little assistant replied, “It’s currently 73 degrees, but the Nest is set to 65.” Google’s hyper-aware, voice-activated speaker dishes up a lot of surprising answers, and it’s smarter, better sounding, and better looking than Amazon Echo (go.pcworld.com/echorev). At $129, Google Home also beats the Echo’s current price by $51. That’s significant, because the two digital assistants promise essentially the same features and benefits. Both stand sentry in a constant state of awareness, listening for voice prompts. Both stream music, Internet radio, and podcasts. Both answer search questions. And both let you control other smart home devices with voice commands. Google Home and Amazon Echo are the only real…

WE GET PITCHED on a lot of new products and technologies here at TechHive. Every now and then, something great pops up. But most of the better mousetraps we see are over-hyped and/or relatively trivial. You might say we’ve become a bit jaded about it. So when I pulled my colleagues aside and asked them to take a look at Samsung’s UN65KS9800 65-inch, 4K UHD smart TV with HDR support, I heard a lot of muttering along the lines of “4K UHD? HDR? So what? <yawn> $3500? No way I’m paying that for a TV! I’m really busy--can we do this later?” But when I showed them the stunning vista of the KS9800 displaying 2160p HDR demos, the muttering was replaced by exclamations of “Oh, my.” “Wow!” “Whoa!.” And at…

THERE’S NO DENYING that our smartphones have made our lives so much easier, putting our contacts and schedules, our driving directions, the whole internet, right at our fingertips. But if you’re using an Android phone you might be leaving even more convenience on the table. There are a bunch of super-smart settings in Nougat and Google Now that’ll make your Android device feel like it’s 10 steps ahead of you. Your Android phone can be proactively telling you how long it’ll take to get to work in the morning, and nudging you when your favorite team is about to take the field. Your device can keep itself unlocked whenever it’s on you, and those snapshots you just took can automatically be arranged into beautiful collages. Battery running low? Android can…

ANSWER LINE MIKE WANTS TO save a video from Facebook. Luckily if you’re using a desktop or laptop PC it’s quite easy. I can almost hear you saying, “Hold on Josh—when I watch a Facebook video on my PC there aren’t any links to save it!” Correct, but all you have to do is trick your browser into thinking you’re browsing Facebook on your phone. Here are the steps: Right-click any non-Youtube video and select Show video URL Copy this URL to your clipboard, then paste it into the browser’s address bar. Hit Enter to open this page Delete the ‘www’ in front of the URL and replace it with the letter ‘m’ so the links look like this: Hit Enter to open the mobile version of the video…

MICROSOFT SEES THE HoloLens and what Microsoft calls “mixed reality” as a big part of the company’s future. We’ll get our first major taste of that vision this spring when the next major update to Windows 10, dubbed the Creators Update, rolls out. The new update appears targeted especially at Windows users between the ages of 12 and 24—who, Microsoft says, value creativity more highly than previous generations. That said, everyone else can come along for the ride, too, with new 3D creation tools for smartphones, PCs, the HoloLens, and virtual reality headsets. Gaming also gets a big nod in the Creators Update, with a built-in game broadcasting feature, custom gaming tournaments, and Dolby Atmos support for the Xbox One S. Here’s a breakdown of what’s coming. Windows Capture 3D…

DELL’S GETTING READY to take on Microsoft’s Surface Studio (go.pcworld.com/surfacestudio) in 2017. During a promotional video (youtu.be/Y5E_dGW2DFY) at Adobe Max, Dell revealed a Surface Studio–like PC aimed at creative professionals—but don’t call it a copycat device. HP introduced the first creative-oriented PC (go.pcworld.com/hpsprouthandson), the Sprout, two years ago, and Dell says it’s been working on (go.pcworld.com/smartdeskproto) what it calls the Dell Smart Desk (working title) (go.pcworld.com/dellsmartdesk) for about three years. Shortly after Adobe Max, the company took to Twitter (twitter.com/Dell/status/ 793898480582422528) to say the Smart Desk will be formally announced during the Consumer Electronics Show (pcworld.com/category/ces) in January. The Smart Desk actually appears a bit more complicated than the Surface Studio. Microsoft’s new enterprise product is essentially a massive tablet that can sit at a comfortable angle for touch interaction…

When Microsoft’s Windows 10 deadline passed, many heaved a sigh of relief, thinking that Microsoft’s obnoxious popup reminders had finally been laid to rest. Surprise! Microsoft’s at it again, reminding users to sign up for Microsoft Rewards (formerly Bing Rewards go.pcworld.com/mcrsft rewards) by using Edge, Windows 10’s built-in browser. My colleague Brad Chacos was hit by the ad on the previous page after hours, reported it, and immediately erased Edge from his taskbar. Here’s what we know: The popup doesn’t seem to appear if you use Edge frequently (Brad does not). Personally, I’ve never experienced a similar ad, though I use Edge as well as Microsoft Rewards, meaning there’s no need for such an ad to appear. A notification here, a suggestion there: Microsoft’s gently slipped in promotions for Office…

MOZILLA’S FIREFOX CHIEF promised massive leaps in the web browser’s performance via “Project Quantum,” an entirely new web engine that will power Firefox beginning in 2017. Quantum, according to David Bryant, the head of platform engineering at Mozilla, will take full advantage of modern PC and mobile hardware, exploiting parallelism to run processes across multiple cores and the GPU. Quantum will be the code at the core of the browser, responsible for its overall performance. “We are striving for performance gains from Quantum that will be so noticeable that your entire web experience will feel different,” Bryant wrote in a blog post. “Pages will load faster, and scrolling will be silky smooth. Animations and interactive apps will respond instantly, and be able to handle more intensive content while holding consistent…

THERE ARE TWO types of products that send the PCWorld lab into retest mode: those that perform better than expected, and those that perform worse. Toshiba’s 2.5-inch, TLC NAND-based, OCZ-branded TL100 definitely falls into the latter category. As a matter of fact, after seeing a sustained write speed of less than 100MBps, a far cry from the “up to 530MBps” you’ll see advertised, we started kicking tires with particular energy. Three TL100’s were tested on four separate PCs and three different operating systems (Windows 7, 8.1, and 10) to confirm that the bad write numbers it was pulling weren’t somehow related to our MO or hardware. Results varied only slightly. The drive will write around 500MBps, but only for a few seconds, then speeds decline precipitously to the 100MBps level…

WE GAVE LENOVO’S ThinkPad X1 tablet high marks (go.pcworld.com/thinkpadx1rev) not for its performance, but for the elegance of its design. We still have mixed opinions on its three related productivity modules, due to price, performance, and some small plastic bits that you’ll have to be careful not to lose. Modularity has emerged as a theme for Lenovo, home of the Moto Mods (go.pcworld.com/motomods) and Thinkpad Stack (go.pcworld.com/thinkpadstackrev) modular accessories. Now a series of three “modules” do the same for the Lenovo X1 Tablet: the $150 Productivity module, the $280 Presenter module, and the $220 3D Imaging module. Lenovo shipped us the first two, which we didn’t have at the time of our X1 tablet review. Think of Lenovo’s three modules as a utility belt of sorts for business users (although…

SHORT-FORM VIDEO CREATORS everywhere were dumbstruck at the end of October when Twitter announced it was killing Vine. There’s still no word on when Vine might see its final day, and there are rumors that Twitter may sell Vine to a third-party, giving the service new life. But the fact is Vine’s fate is still uncertain, and anyone who can’t get enough of their seven second videos should back up their memories. It’s likely Twitter will provide a way for users to export and save their videos should the end truly come. For now, here are two ways to save your Vine videos to a PC, as long as your Vine account isn’t private. Giphy The most publicized tool for grabbing your Vines is a new site created by Giphy.…

MICROSOFT’S SURFACE STUDIO charges aggressively into territory once held by Apple, combining an elegant design; a massive, lovely display; and an eye-popping price tag. We had a chance to try the company’s first-ever desktop after it was announced (go.pcworld.com/surfacestudio) the morning of October 26. Here’s what stood out during the demo. Although the specs fall slightly short (go.pcworld.com/surfacestudiospecs) of state-of-the-art, everything felt extremely fast and responsive. The base $2,999 offering includes a 6th-generation (Skylake) Core i5, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 965M 2GB GPU, a 1TB hybrid drive, and 8GB of memory. At the highest end, the $4,199 model includes a 6th-gen Core i7, 32GB of memory, and a GTX980M GPU, along with 2TB of storage. What I like most about the Surface Studio is how it pivots, literally, from a…

MehBook “Pro” The immediate reaction to Apple’s long-overdue MacBook Pro overhaul (go.pcworld.com/mcbkprotouchhandson) seems mixed, to say the least. For every excited reaction to the laptop’s adaptive Touch Bar keys, we see people lamenting the lack of ports (go.pcworld.com/7techkilledinmcbk 2016) that professional users actually need, the lack of a 32GB memory option, the lack of an SD card slot, and the lack of, well, pretty much any “pro” features in the entry-level MacBook Pro model (which still costs $1,500 and up). Fear not: If “Pro” is more than a mere buzzword to you, there’s a veritable cornucopia of attractive, yet powerful, PC laptops just waiting to scratch your itch. And Windows itself is bending over backward to cater to professionals, recently adding in tons of power tools—even Linux’s beloved Bash (go.pcworld.com/bashhowto)!—with…

STRIKE ANOTHER PROGRAM down for Windows XP (and Vista) fans. Google recently announced that the Google Drive desktop utility would cease support for Windows XP, Vista, and Server 2003 beginning January 1, 2017. This is the second major desktop-cloud sync program to dump older versions of Windows after Dropbox did so in April. With Google Drive going away, what’s an XP (or Vista) fan to do? Here are some solutions. Just keep on, keepin’ on Unlike Dropbox, Google isn’t turning off Google Drive for the desktop. As long as you have the utility up and running on an XP and Vista computer before January 1, 2017 you can continue to use it. Even though it will continue to work, Google says the program “will not be actively tested and maintained.”…

It’s always been difficult trying to find the right category for Microsoft’s hybrid tablet/laptop Surface Book. And now with the new Surface Book i7 in hand, it’s even harder to figure out just what square hole to put this round peg into. Before we get too far into the review, let me say that the Surface Book i7 is incredibly fast for a laptop in its class, offering no less than twice the performance of the original Surface Book, which itself outstripped all others in its day. Even better, it has stupidly long battery life that bests all the laptops we’ve tested. Done. Fini. Move along, right? Well, not quite. The world isn’t the same as it was a year ago, and the Surface Book i7’s competitors have been hard…

NOT LONG AGO, we got our hands on a 2-in-1 notebook with an OLED screen—the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Yoga (go.pcworld.com/x1yogarev) —and were mesmerized by its display. It’s one of those technologies that once you see it with your own eyes, you can never go back to the old way of things. You become that person at parties who says, “You’re still using an LCD? I used to have one of those in 2015.” With the launch of Alienware’s all-new 13-inch notebook, the Alienware 13, mobile gamers can now finally experience the revelation that comes with gazing upon an OLED panel. Though this technology has had some issues coming to market (go.pcworld.com/oledmomen tum), it’s been trickling out over the course of this year—and putting LCDs on notice. Once seen as crisp…

BEFORE WE GET started, let’s just all agree that releasing Titanfall 2 the week between Battlefield 1 (which is quite good; go.pcworld.com/battlefield1rev) and Call of Duty: Dumb Subtitle (which will sell regardless) was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. Such an awful idea that I kept expecting EA to last-minute delay Titanfall 2 to...pretty much any other month. No such luck. Titanfall 2 releases as scheduled, in between two juggernaut shooters (one of which is also published by EA), and it’s a bad omen for a sequel to a game that’s world-renowned for rapidly losing its multiplayer audience the first time around. So I am admittedly skeptical whether Titanfall 2 will have a multiplayer community in a few months. Respawn’s biggest ploy is that all upcoming maps and…

There’s never been a better time to give Linux a try. Wait, don’t slam on that back button! I’m not one of those rabid “Year of the Linux desktop” types. Windows works just fine for hundreds of millions of people, and—sorry, Linux lovers— there’s little to suggest Linux usage will ever be more than a rounding error compared to Microsoft’s behemoth. That said, there are some pretty compelling reasons you might want to consider switching to Linux on your computer, or at least give it a hassle-free trial run. 1. Windows 10 is taking away your choices Bear with me. This may seem off-topic, but it’s the crux of the issue for a lot of people. Linux’s most alluring feature for many won’t be anything that Linux actually does, but…

BELIEVE IT OR not, File Explorer has a few handy image tools that can make your life easier. They’re nothing exciting—we’re not talking about hidden image-editing here. Nevertheless, these tools are helpful to know about in a pinch. All three of these tools exist under the Manage tab when you open a folder in File Explorer that contains images. The Manage tab will not appear if you’re looking at a folder with just documents or other file types. These features are available on Windows 8 and up. Start a slideshow The first feature is the ability to quickly start a slideshow. Open your folder of choice containing photos. Then click the Manage tab and select Slideshow from the various options. A slideshow will start that includes all the photos contained…

HASSLE-FREE PC MICROSOFT OUTLOOK 2016 has this really handy feature for adding attachments. When you click Attach File it lists the most recent documents you worked on regardless of which program you used. It can be a screenshot you recently took, a basic text file you opened in Sublime Text, or a spreadsheet in Excel. It’s a handy feature that would be nice to use in other programs or web apps that don’t offer similar functionality. By default, File Explorer in Windows 10 has a recent-files section when you open to the Quick Access section. That’s nice, but personally I’d prefer to look at a recently-used-files section that has its own full window. It’s actually very easy to achieve. Open File Explorer and then click on the address bar until…