Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2025 i PCWorld

PCWorld executive editor Gordon Mah Ung, a tireless journalist we once described as a founding father of hardcore tech journalism, passed away over the weekend after a hard-fought battle with pancreatic cancer. Gordon was 58, and leaves behind a loving wife, two children, older sister, and mother. With more than 25 years’ experience covering computer tech broadly and computer chips specifically, Gordon’s dogged reporting, one-of-a-kind personality, and commitment to journalistic standards touched many, many lives. He will be profoundly missed by co-workers, industry sources, and the PC enthusiasts who read his words and followed him as a video creator. Gordon studied journalism at San Francisco State University and then worked as a police reporter for the Contra Costa Times in the late 1990s. In 1997, he joined Computerworld (a PCWorld…

At CES 2025, AMD revealed the Ryzen 9 9950X3D for desktop PCs, which the company is calling both the “world’s best gaming processor” and the “world’s best processor for content creation.” On paper, the comparison is brutal: AMD says its new chip is 20 percent faster in gaming than Intel’s Arrow Lake flagship, the Core Ultra 285K. AMD will ship the Ryzen 9 9950X3D and a second Ryzen 9 chip with v-cache, the Ryzen 9900X3D, to PC makers and customers beginning in the first quarter of 2025. Both of AMD’s new desktop chips outperform the existing Ryzen 9800X3D in terms of clock speed and core count—and give buyers additional choices to fill out their gaming systems. Remember, the Ryzen 7 9800X3D obliterated the competition in its review, then immediately sold…

At CES, Qualcomm announced its new Snapdragon X processor. The company aims to bring fast performance as well as efficient battery life to a wider market by designing the chip with mainstream and budget laptops in mind, which could make $600 Snapdragon PCs a thing. This is exciting news, as we’ve seen first-hand how battery efficient Snapdragon laptops are. The Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6, for example, ran for almost 24 hours during our exhaustive battery test. Excuse me while I pick my jaw up off the floor… We hope to see similar results from the newest Snapdragon X processor, but only time will tell. Let’s get right into the deets. SNAPDRAGON X In terms of hierarchy, the Snapdragon X appears to sit below the X Plus and the X Elite.…

Intel’s $249 Arc B580 is the graphics card we’ve begged for since the pandemic. That was the headline I used for our initial coverage of Intel’s second-generation discrete graphics cards, because it’s true—at least on paper. Nvidia and AMD have been nerfing the memory system of sub-$350 graphics cards since the pandemic, limiting their best use to 1080p resolution. Meanwhile, gamers are increasingly buying 1440p monitors, a very tangible and affordable upgrade. Intel’s Arc B580 packs 12GB of VRAM to excel at 1440p gaming, with a $249 price point that undercuts its rivals’ entry-level 1080p offerings. Now that we’ve spent a week testing and gaming on the Intel Arc B580, I can confirm it: Intel’s $249 Arc B580 really, truly is the graphics card we’ve begged for since the pandemic.…

Acronis True Image (2024), nee Cyber Protect Home Office, nee True Image, is without question the most comprehensive suite of utilities for keeping your computer backed up and secure. It’s not even a particularly close contest, in fact. Marrying anti-malware and backup, as True Image does, might seem like an odd choice at first. However, the ability to fire off a backup or shut off access to previous backups when malware is detected makes a whole lot of sense. I was a bit skeptical when the company first started down this path. Now I’m completely on board with the concept, if perhaps not the heavy system footprint and copious telemetry. FEATURES There’s a lot to cover in a program as comprehensive as True Image. I’ll get to the malware protection…

Remember back when Windows 11 first came out and Microsoft gave everyone a free pass to upgrade? On the surface, it was a generous move; in actuality, it was a ploy to lure us away from Windows 10. Obviously, if Microsoft was giving something away, it was going to come with a catch. In this case, it’s all the ads that are being added to Windows 11, going above and beyond what we’ve seen in previous versions. Fortunately, we can disable those ads…for now, at least. If you’re fed up with all the ads and recommendations popping up throughout Windows 11, there are plenty of ways to push back. Here are the settings you need to turn off to ditch Windows’ worst ads. 1. SHUT DOWN START MENU ADS The…

The new Outlook impresses with versatile functions and customization options that make everyday work more efficient. With the right settings and tips, you can minimize distractions, manage emails optimally, and always keep an eye on appointments and tasks. Check out the following useful tips. 1. MANAGE EMAILS BY DEACTIVATING AUTOMATIC READING By default, Outlook marks emails as read as soon as they are clicked briefly. This can lead to important emails being overlooked. To avoid this, deactivate this function under Settings > Email > Message handling. You can find the settings in the new Outlook via the cogwheel icon at the top right. Select the option Don’t automatically mark items as read. This allows you to retain control and decide for yourself when a message is considered read. This is…

The annual Consumer Electronics Show is always a massive event that sees dozens of laptops announced, but CES 2025 was especially notable. Nvidia, AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm all made significant hardware announcements, and those announcements meant every laptop maker had a hoard of refreshed, upgraded laptops to show. But the show wasn’t just about the hardware. CES 2025 also saw Lenovo debut the world’s first rollable OLED laptop, a serious new MacBook Air competitor from Asus, and a flagship gaming laptop that seems a bit too obsessed with Skyrim. Much as we did with our roundup of the best monitors at the show, we’ve picked the best laptops of CES 2025 (see page 34). 1. ACER ASPIRE VERO 16 Acer found an unusual way to generate headlines at CES 2025:…

CES 2025 was packed with all kinds of techie announcements, but for me the highlight was all the new graphics cards. Nvidia and AMD both played their hands with next-generation products, with some caveats. Nvidia certainly stole the show, with the GeForce RTX 50 Series announcement serving as the key opening message in CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote speech. AMD was much softer in its talk, with sparse details on its new RDNA 4 graphics cards, resulting in similarly sparse enthusiasm. Let’s go over what we learned from both companies about their GPUs and where your attention should be in 2025. THE GOOD AND THE ALMOST GOOD… Right off the bat, here’s the good news for us: We’re definitely getting some new GPUs, starting with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 50 Series. The top…

CES 2025 did not disappoint monitor enthusiasts. Samsung, LG, Asus, MSI, Acer, and HP (among others) all came to the show with fresh monitors that push resolution and refresh rates to new heights. OLED once again stole the show, thanks to new 5K2K ultrawides and 4K 27-inch widescreens. But the show also brought new 6K options for content creators and an oddball 27-inch portable monitor from LG. These were the best monitors at CES 2025. 1. LG ULTRAGEAR 45GX990A The LG Ultragear 45GX990A is a 45-inch OLED ultrawide but, unlike most ultrawide monitors, it ups the resolution to 5,120×2,160. Despite that, it also has a refresh rate of 165Hz. If that refresh rate feels a bit slow, the Dual-Mode feature can reduce the resolution to 2,560×1,080 to achieve a refresh rate…

Adobe created the PDF two decades ago, and its PDF editor has continued to rule the category, despite what many users felt was an exorbitant price. But a couple of years back, Acrobat adopted a cloud subscription model that now makes it more affordable for folks without an enterprise budget. Acrobat Pro is composed of three components: Acrobat, which allows you to perform a variety of editing functions on your PDFs on desktop and mobile devices; Adobe Document Cloud, which lets you create and export PDF files, as well as store and send files and collect electronic signatures; and Acrobat Reader, which enables you to read, print, and sign PDFs. Acrobat’s workspace sports an easily navigable tabbed interface. The Home view is where you land if you don’t have a…

Budget gaming monitors just keep getting better, and refresh rate is one of several areas where they’re pushing forward. The Lenovo Legion R27fc-30 has a refresh rate of 240Hz, yet it typically retails for less than $200. That’s less than a buck a hertz! SPECS AND FEATURES The R27fc-30’s basic specifications are typical for a budget monitor. It has a 27-inch widescreen display panel with a resolution of 1920×1080. Refresh rate is the monitor’s most alluring specification, as it can reach up to 240Hz (or 280Hz in the overclock mode). Display size: 27-inch 16:9 curved widescreen Native resolution: 1920×1080 Panel type: Vertical Alignment (VA) 8-bit Refresh rate: Up to 240Hz, up to 280Hz (overclocked) Adaptive sync: AMD FreeSync Premium Pro HDR: Yes Ports: 2× HDMI 2.1, 1× DisplayPort 1.4, 1×…

BitLocker is a crucial Windows feature that helps secure the data on your PC. The full version of BitLocker is only available on Windows 11 Pro, but you can still use it to a lesser degree on Windows 11 Home. (In fact, it’s one of the best reasons to choose Windows 11 Pro over Home.) So whether you’re on Windows 11 Pro or Home, if you aren’t using BitLocker yet, you should definitely start. Here’s everything you need to know about BitLocker and how to get it set up right now. WHAT IS BITLOCKER? BitLocker is a secure disk encryption solution that’s built into Windows 11. When your PC uses BitLocker encryption, it stores all the files on its internal storage device in encrypted form. Modern Windows PCs normally save…

Microsoft really, really, really wants you to ditch Windows 10 and upgrade to Windows 11 already. (Better yet, just buy a new PC!) The company says that 2025 is “the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh”, and they’re trying their best to will that slogan into reality. Case in point: A new support page says that Microsoft Office 365 will lose support on Windows 10 in October, the same time the OS is shelved. “Microsoft 365 apps will no longer be supported on Windows 10 after it reaches end of support on October 14, 2025,” says the page. That doesn’t mean installed apps will suddenly cease to function on October 14th. They’ll simply be “unsupported.” Using the cloud-enhanced versions of the Office 365 apps and their many companion tools might…

Ten years ago PC gamers were eagerly awaiting Steam Machines, console-style Linux boxes built from the ground up to play PC games. They flopped, due in no small part to Steam operator Valve’s lack of experience working with hardware partners. But in 2025, both Valve and its home-built gaming operating system are different beasts. And Microsoft should be afraid of them. THE STEAM DECK DOMINATES PC GAMING The big story in PC gaming for the last three years has been the Steam Deck. This low-power, portable, relatively inexpensive machine is clearly something the market has been waiting for, exciting gamers and energizing PC makers to pump out imitators, like the Asus ROG Ally and the Lenovo Legion Go. But all of these machines lack a crucial component, despite copying…

For more than three decades, the TrackPoint’s iconic red rubbery nub has been a staple of IBM and Lenovo ThinkPad laptops. No longer: Lenovo has removed its famous TrackPoint from its latest ThinkPad laptops, calling it time for a change. Does that mean the TrackPoint is dead? No, thankfully. It will still appear in the other ThinkPads made by Lenovo, said a company spokesman. But for the 14- and 15-inch ThinkPad X9 Aura Editions launched at CES 2025 in Las Vegas, the TrackPoint has been removed entirely. The idea is that certain laptops—let’s say the Dell XPS—have managed to transcend the consumer, prosumer, and small business markets, and the TrackPoint is a legacy design, according to Lenovo. “That doesn’t resonate with all demographics, so to speak,” said the company’s spokesperson.…

The Corsair Survivor Stealth might appear to be a ruggedized, weatherproof, trail-tested Chapstick. In actuality, it’s an armored 10Gbps USB SSD that’s significantly faster than your average thumb drive. In fact, the internals are NVMe, so performance definitely leans in that direction, if not to the same degree as with larger external 10Gbps SSDs. FEATURES The Survivor Stealth is an approximately 3-inch long, corrugated black cylinder that’s around an inch across at its widest points—those being the soft rubber grips at either end of the unit. Basically, it’s a sturdy metal tube with a USB thumb drive sealed securely inside. Turn the end cap that has a lanyard hole, and you free the affixed drive from its protective sheath. Though the drive isn’t IP rated (Ingress Protection—an expensive process), I…

You never know what you’re going to get with CES. Of course, we knew we’d hear a lot about AI—check—and there’d be announcements of new CPUs and GPUs—also check. But you just never know how the all the pomp and hoo-ha of this annual mega tech event is going to pay off in the real world, for regular consumers. Does the average PC user have something to be excited about now that the veil has come off this year’s product launches? If the PCWorld staff is any indication, the answer is yes! We found plenty of cool products, innovations, and advances at this year’s show that are currently available or promise exciting things ahead. Our picks don’t stop at PC hardware, either. What’s CES without an array of goods for…

A new version of Google’s Chrome browser has recently been released, and one of the new features is the program’s performance tools. In particular, they are designed to reduce energy consumption, thus improving the battery life of a laptop. One way to do this is through something called inactive tabs. A tab that is open in the background can consume a lot of data, and the solution is to leave the tab inactive when you are not using it. An inactive tab consumes much less data, but it takes a little longer to open. Inactive tabs now have a dotted circle around them, and an icon that looks like a speedometer also appears. Clicking on it will show you how much memory Chrome has saved by making a tab inactive.…