Innehållsförteckning för December 2021 från Maximum PC

IT’S BEEN a heck of a month for myself and the team at Maximum PC. There’s been a lot going on in the background, and the next few issues look seriously awesome from a content perspective. Honestly, some of the features we’ve got lined up are going to be epic! From Ian’s long-form excellence to Nick’s software-based goodness, it’s all go. On top of that, we’re expecting new processor launches too (which always makes us happy fellas). AMD is, without a doubt, king of the hill right now when it comes to CPU performance, but with Intel about to debut its next-gen chips, could this be the moment Team Blue takes back the multi-core crown? We’re not so sure, only time will tell. With that notion wedged firmly in our…

TESLA HAS LAUNCHED a beta version of what it terms Full Self-Driving (FSD)—not technically fully autonomous driving, but close. You’ll still need to sit in the driver’s seat and prove you are a safe driver, with Tesla examining your driving record for examples of hard turning or braking, and collision warnings. Meanwhile, the National Transportation Safety Board and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are busy investigating a number of Tesla crashes. The NTSB has called the name Full Self-Driving “misleading and irresponsible”, since it certainly isn’t ‘Full’. Accidents with self-driving cars are over reported, but there has been an issue with cars plowing into emergency vehicles under Autopilot. A big part of the problem is a false sense of security from the drivers. A recent report from MIT confirmed…

WE EXPECTED trouble of some sort with Apple’s AirTag. The button-sized tracker lends itself to misuse, but we didn’t see this one coming. Security researcher Bobby Rauch has uncovered something nasty. If you lose your AirTag, you can activate Lost Mode, which creates a unique address on the Apple servers with a message and contact details. If your lost tag is picked up by a compatible device, you might get a call, and your AirTag back. That’s the idea, but the phone number field isn’t protected and can be filled with a malicious script instead of plain numbers. This can be used to redirect you anywhere, for example to a spoof iCloud login, where your details can be stolen. A strategically placed AirTag could now become a trap for the…

Take former Maximum PC editor, Alan Dexter. His attempt to upgrade from 10 to 11 ended up with a non-functional chimera, a blend of two operating systems that was far from ideal. It had Windows 10’s taskbar, but Windows 11’s rounded-cornered windows, and we dread to think what Geiger-esque blasphemy the Start menu would have presented had he been able to pop it up. If ever there was an argument that Windows 11 is just Windows 10 with a facelift, that’s it right there. Windows 10.5 is possible, you just wouldn’t want to try to use it. Elsewhere, the wisdom of carrying out a clean installation rather than an in-place upgrade has been borne out. Known issues include compatibility problems with Intel’s Killer network drivers; a memory leak in the…

For anyone still using these computers, the main task is usually writing. They provide simple text editing, without the clutter and noise of a modern OS. Some use their old-fashioned Lotus spreadsheets, or as Linux dumb terminals. Some of the more powerful devices here can be a way to play DOS games, or use OS/2 or Windows 3.x (or Windows 9.x with later machines) on real hardware. Of course, copying files between these machines and modern computers can be a challenge. If your old computer has a PCMCIA slot, you’re in luck: there are plenty of cheap adapters online for using Compact Flash or SD cards as a replacement hard drive. Simply remove the card when you’re not using it, then plug it into a modern PC.…

Most netbooks are too big to be called ultra-portable but are usually the first thing people mention when asked about tiny computers. While numerous products could claim to be the first netbook, the Asus Eee PC in 2007 kickstarted the category. The Eee PC was nine inches wide, with a 7-inch display and a decent keyboard. Costs and power consumption were cut by removing optical drives, and early models shipped with a custom version of Xandros Linux and a 4GB SSD. Response to the Eee PC was overwhelming, spawning many rivals, but most netbooks from this point shipped with standard mechanical hard drives and Windows XP. Most grew in size to between 10 and 14-inches. Netbooks were most popular with students: they fit easily into a backpack and could be typed on…

2021 HAS BEEN A MIXED YEAR for PC gaming, with standout hits such as Deathloop and Resident Evil Village almost drowned out by a sea of mediocre titles and endless delays and cancellations. Happily, 2022 looks like being a more exciting year, with a whole host of original games and sequels on the way. Many of these upcoming releases have been in the works for a long time, including Starfield (the concept work for which began way back in 1997) and Elden Ring, the latter of which has been on many a gamer’s mind for years. Yes, we know George RR Martin is involved. Hopefully, the game comes out before The Winds of Winter. Some of these games don’t have official release dates yet, so we’ve limited our list to titles…

IN DESIGN, YOU SOMETIMES NEED your work to have an element of the wow factor. Yes, we are talking about the glitz and glamor of creative work. A great way to really spice up your designs is to introduce gradients and shiny textures into your themes. For example, Apple’s advertising relies heavily on this style of art, with the company often pairing this with clean photography to create a high-contrasting and striking image. And we can safely say that Apple is doing a pretty decent job in respect of its advertising campaigns. There are many ways you can implement this technique in your work and it’s up to you how you add these elements and get creative with these patterns and texture styles. They can be used in text, backgrounds,…

CAN NOVEMBER really be rolling around again? Yep, and that can only mean one thing—Black Friday is just around the corner. It’s the best day of the year to get great deals on PC kit, but how do you get the best deals and how, exactly, does it all work? The easy answer is to log on to the websites of Maximum PC’s sister titles, including www.techradar.com, www.tomshardware.com and www.pcgamer.com and let them do the heavy lifting for you. All the best deals are neatly categorized and simple to select. But that leaves the question of how those websites themselves go about selecting the best deals. You’re in luck, for your erstwhile correspondent has been a member of the crack deal team on several occasions. Here’s your behind-the-scenes peek at…

TWO MICE in one issue? Yep, we’ve got a gluttony of the funky pointers this month. We’ve seen the “surprisingly good” (to quote Christian) Marsback mouse with its perforated form and tiny fan, and now, this plucky wireless number, the Sabre RGB Pro Wireless Champion Series. We’ve already taken a look at the wired version, so I didn’t think it was worth giving it the full review treatment. On paper, there isn’t much of a difference between the two—both have the same ergonomic shape, feature Omron switches rated for 50 million clicks, on-board memory profiles, RGB, and can theoretically be used in a wired mode (the wired version’s cable is about 12-inches longer). They are roughly the same weight, with the wired variant weighing in at an impeccably light 2.61oz…

NEARLY 800 BUCKS for a 1440p panel? In 2021? This thing needs to be very good indeed. Enter the new Corsair Xeneon 32QHD165, a 32-inch IPS gaming panel with a 1440p native resolution, 165Hz refresh, and sub-3ms pixel response. On paper, that’s not a hugely impressive core feature set, especially for the money. But there’s more to a subjective gaming experience than mere numbers. Some things require a more subjective, qualitative assessment. But, let’s cover the 32QHD165’s speeds and feeds. The 1440p resolution translates into 2,560 x 1,440 pixels on an 16:9-aspect panel and sub-100dpi in terms of pixel density. An Apple Retina-style display this isn’t. Speed-wise, it has a 165Hz refresh and response of below 3ms by the grey-togrey standard and 1ms in the alternative MPRT metric. VESA DisplayHDR…

BY ANY MEASURE, Facebook is a picture of success. From small beginnings in 2004, it has grown into a company with a market capitalization of around $900bn. There are nearly 2.9 billion users worldwide, with an estimated 70 percent of all Americans having an account. On top of this, you can add a billion Instagram accounts. Success inevitably brings detractors, but Facebook is under fire, and its ex-employees are providing some of the best ammunition. A Facebook data engineer, and whistle-blower, Frances Haugen, leaked thousands of internal documents that highlight the problems and went on to testify to the US Congress. “The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,” said Haugen. “Facebook,…

Either that or Ubisoft felt it was more important to hit higher framerates on consoles and that the ray-tracing effects didn’t warrant the performance hit. It’s another slap in the face for fans of ray tracing, but not without reason. Testing the game with and without ray tracing, the visual gains are more subtle than you’d expect from the drop in performance. However, I’m not convinced that the consoles couldn’t have handled the RT workload. Case in point: the RX 6600 XT only has 32 CUs and ray accelerators, with a 128-bit memory interface. That’s slower than any of the latest generation consoles, except for the Xbox Series S with 20 CUs/RAs. The performance at higher resolutions with ray tracing enabled on the RX 6600 XT isn’t that bad. At…

QUANTUM COMPUTING is one of those technologies that seems forever just over the horizon, much like the flying car or an iPhone that lasts all day on a single charge. Developments come and go, announcements are made, each sounding crazier than the last, but tangible benefits never seem to appear. Physicist Richard Feynman, one of the first to conceive of a quantum computer, due to his interest in the relationship between physics and computation, often has a quote attributed to him—it’s possibly apocryphal, but most certainly apt: “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don’t.” The same is almost certainly true of quantum computing, where there are so many new terms and variables to consider, it seems impossible for a single human brain to hold them all. The fact…

Shenzhen is often dubbed “China’s Silicon Valley”, with a techno culture unlike anywhere in the world. What would normally take months of development in the West takes weeks in Shenzhen. Rather than supplying traditional brick-and-mortar stores, most companies sell online. Huge bazaars of electronic components allow developers instant access to the parts they require. Need an arcade button? Then simply go to the stall selling buttons. Need an analog stick? There’s probably a stall for that too. In Shenzhen, it’s not uncommon to see people rummaging through bins, however, they’re looking for old phones to salvage parts, rather than searching for food. This hyper-availability of parts has created a market of niche gadgets where anything gets made. Ideas are copied (or stolen) and improved upon. Open-source software and hardware are popular, with Linux and…

TIP OF THE MONTH RESTART GRAPHIC DRIVERS Sometimes your PC has a brain freeze, and the go-to fix is to restart your machine, the classic turn it off and on again. However, this shortcut may be worth trying instead. If your PC screen freezes or inputs are delayed, hit Win+Ctrl+Shift+B to restart your graphic drivers. Your screen may flicker, but everything should soon be back to normal. Open applications won’t close, so try this before the old-school way next time. MAKE – USE – CREATE  58 How to add color gradients in Adobe Illustrator  64 Travel back to 1985 with Japan’s MSX2 machine  68 AMD vs Intel in a battle of the integrated GPUs SETUP IMPROVEMENTS So in the last issue, I mentioned that I decked out my setup with…

A major part of the designing process is selecting colors that you can incorporate throughout your design. This is known as part of the design language. You may see these colors appear as part of the logo, typography, accent colors, and any additional branding. There are certain colors that you associate with a brand and that’s the ideal scenario. Select a few colors to keep cemented in your work, it will gradually become synonymous with those colors. Ideally, you don’t want more than four main base colors when creating work. Any more than this, and your work could become a little overwhelming and it could lose some of its design language. Sure, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all rule, but take this into consideration when creating a style. As we said at…

THIS MONTH, WE HEAD back to Japan to revisit the MSX standard with its 1985 sequel, the MSX2. While the original MSX machines were fairly middle-of-the-road 8-bit microcomputers, the second-generation version gained a big jump in performance. The MSX2 introduced key improvements to the base RAM (64K to 512K), video memory (64K to 128K, with higher resolution, more color, and support for vertical scrolling), and sound chip specifications. For fans of the Sega Master System and Nintendo Famicom (NES), MSX2 computers provide a genuine alternative that will make any Japanese game geek salivate. –JOHN KNIGHT 1 A POWERFUL UPDATE The MSX was a standard for 8-bit microcomputers developed by Microsoft Japan in cooperation with the ASCII Corporation. If every MSX computer had a set of standardized components, software written for…

FAST. MYSTERIOUS. Unbeatable. So proclaims the writing on the back of ASRock’s RX 6700 XT Phantom Gaming OC card. We’re not sure where the mystery comes in, unless it’s referring to actually finding one for sale. Regardless, AMD’s RX 6700 XT delivers a healthy amount of performance at a theoretically reasonable price. ASRock’s Phantom Gaming variant, not so much. ASRock mostly plays it safe with the Phantom Gaming line, with a triple fan design and a fair amount of RGB lighting, which can be disabled at the flick of a switch. The card is longer and thicker than the reference design, but the added cooling allows for higher TDPs and lower temperatures, with a modest factory overclock tossed in for good measure. The boost clock of the reference card is 2581MHz,…

OK, SO IT MIGHT mildly resemble Emperor Palpatine’s personal shuttle (the Lambda-class T-4a, not the Sentinel-class, that thing sucked), but Netgear’s Nighthawk RAX200 is an absolute monster in the world of personal networking. Staying with the Star Wars analogies, it’s like the Empire took the Deathstar, merged it with an Imperial Class Star Destroyer, and then condensed it all down into something the size of a Millenium Falcon. And boy, is it expensive. Yep, this thing is $500 of routing nuttiness that leaves us with mixed emotions. First, let’s start with the positives. It’s a WiFi 6, tri-band router, complete with 12 streams, 2.5Gbps Ethernet ports, Multi-gig internet ports (via link aggregation), VPN support, eight WiFi antennas, beamforming and MiMO as standard, 2x USB 3.0 ports, a quad-core 1.8GHz processor,…

MORE AND MORE features are being added to webcams these days. On the one hand, this is great to see, yet it throws these machines' simplicity straight out of the window. Sometimes, all you need is a small, easy-to-use webcam that delivers a high-quality image you can take with you on your travels. The StreamCam by Logitech claims to be a premium webcam for Full HD streaming and content creation. So does it meet these expectations and should you be adding this peripheral to your setup? Logitech’s contender takes the crown for the smallest of the bunch of our recent cam reviews, although it’s a little on the chunky side. With its lightweight form, it’s ideal for either a more minimal setup or one where portability is key. This may give…

8 MSI OPTIX MAG342CQRV Not a 32-inch screen, but this is the ultimate productivity choice. VA, 100Hz refresh, 3440x1440, for $360. 7 ACER ET322QU Incredibly well rounded, budget monitor, 1440p, IPS panel, usually available for $245 or so. 6 LG 32GN650-B This mid-range 1440p monitor comes complete with 165Hz refresh rate and VA panel for punchy colors, $290-400. 5 SAMSUNG ODYSSEY G7 Aimed at gamers, the G7 packs 1440p and 240Hz on a VA panel for punchy pixels, $700-800. 4 LG 32UL500-W Our first 4K pick is a budget option with a VA panel. And, priced at just $320-350, it’s pretty affordable, too. 3 SAMSUNG UR59C Another 4K VA panel, but this one has better color accuracy for production work, and costs $400-$500. 2 GIGABYTE AORUS FI32U The ultimate gaming…

WHATEVER YOU WANT to call these things, in this feature we’ll be exploring the history of the ultimate in tiny computers—not including the now-ubiquitous smartphone. We’ll start with early and ground-breaking models in the 1980s, through to the more mature models in the ‘90s. We’ll also take a look at the UMPC craze of the 2000s and the wilderness years that followed, and dive deep into the resurrection of this form currently taking place in China, examining the models that are on the market today and where they’re going in the future. So how do you classify these computers? Well, to pull some rules out of nowhere, we’re going to define these as something that can fit ideally in your pocket; has some kind of integrated keyboard; and something that has…

While it may be handy to keep a running version of Windows XP for old proprietary software, these machines could be ideal candidates for lightweight modern operating systems, such as “lite” Linux distributions, BSD variants, AROS, or Haiku. For those willing to dig inside their machines, a modern SSD or IDE to SD-card adapter could provide an upgrade for anything lumbered with a mechanical hard drive. Other than increased reliability, these modern replacements should provide improvements to both performance and battery life.…

If you fancy a more simplistic gradient effect, then you will need the standard gradient tool. This is located in the left-hand side tool panel or by pressing the ‘G’ key. First, you will need to draw your shape, then open the tool and click inside the desired shape. It should automatically create an even linear gradient from one side to the other. Or if you click on the radial gradient option in the pop-out window, it will create an even round gradient effect. You can adjust the length and get a more precise gradient by drawing a line in the shape using the tool. There are also options to change the angle, opacity, and colors. You can choose the point at which you want the colors to appear in…

WITH UP TO 8GB OF RAM, USB 3.0, a quad-core CPU, and dual-band WiFi5, the Raspberry Pi 4 is the first iteration that can deliver a consistent, reliable desktop experience. But to fulfill that potential, you need a desktop case with space for additional storage, full access to the USB ports, and a reliable cooling solution. Among the various solutions available is the $55 DeskPi Pro from SeeedStudio (www.seeedstudio.com). It has everything you need to turn your Pi into a desktop system and delivers a great experience, but setup can be tricky. You can’t search through a list of Raspberry Pi accessories online without tripping over a bunch of cases. These range from the official white and red case to LEGO-compatible boxes, transparent cases, layers of plastic stacked one on…

THE RAZER BLADE 14 has been referred to as a subtle beast. Indeed, the chassis gives little away, other than that it’s clearly a premium laptop. But Razer is hoping that what lurks beneath the aluminum structure will lure gamers in. This time, Razer has introduced an AMD chip into the Blade 14—and not just any old chip, the AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX to be precise, a pretty mean processor for gaming. In this model, you can also find the range-topping GeForce RTX 3080. For a compact device, such as the Razer 14, this is a pretty impressive feat. So, let’s see how well Razer has executed this idea and whether it is worth your time. The laptop gives off a premium look and feel, with a build quality that’s…

BOTH INTEL and AMD-based ITX motherboards have come a long way in recent years and with M.2 based storage becoming so popular, it means that clean-looking SFF builds are appearing more and more, with the performance to match. To meet the surge in demand, we are seeing a whole load of companies pumping out matchbox-sized cases in 2021, taking advantage of the growing popularity of these builds. Gone are the years of oversized monster cases, it’s the turn of the little guys to prevail. Lian Li has been producing some amazing, functional, high-quality cases in recent times, and it is fast-becoming the case manufacturer that can’t put a foot wrong. Its Q58 is the latest example of how to do things right, with little to no compromise on either form or…

FIRST-PERSON SHOOTER TIME FLIES like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. And in Deathloop, time goes around and around and around. Unless that is, you can escape it. That’s the basic premise of Arkane’s game—to escape the time loop. Violently. You wake up every morning on a beach outside a facility that has been locked inside a time loop by AEON, a hedonistic organization one step outside a Bond movie that’s found a way to make sure the party never, ever stops. As a result, the island exists in a time loop. IT’S PARTY TIME, AGAIN… Whatever happens, no matter how hard you party or even if you jump off a wolf’s head statue into the icy sea below, you’ll wake up in the morning in the same place…