Innehållsförteckning för February 2016 från PCWorld

PCWORLD EDITORS have spent several long, exhausting days in Las Vegas, combing the frenzied floors of CES 2016 for a glimpse of the future of computing, and we didn’t walk away disappointed. But don’t take our word for it; check it out for yourself. Here, all in one place, we offer the wildest and most powerful PC gear from CES 2016. AMD Wraith cooler Enthusiasts may sneer at stock coolers, but the vast majority of PC users don’t overclock their processors. So it’s nice to see AMD address the long-standing issue of noise in its stock cooling solution. The new Wraith cooler features a larger design with a bigger fan that runs constantly at lower speeds. That combination makes Wraith far quieter than its predecessor. Look for it to ship…

IN A DECLINING PC market, high-priced gaming desktops and laptops are thriving. PC shipments totaled 71.9 million units during the fourth quarter of 2015, declining by 10.6 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2014, according to a study recently released by IDC. But high-end gaming PCs are the fastest-growing segment alongside all-in-one PCs, IDC analysts said. Gamers upgrade hardware much more quickly than other users and are typically not affected by the industry trends that led to a decline in PC shipments overall. For one, smartphones and tablets haven’t replaced gaming PCs, as has happened with mainstream PCs, said Lewis Ward, research director for gaming at IDC. Gamers also aren’t price-sensitive, and are willing to spend to get the latest and greatest technologies. Many gaming systems are built by…

IF YOU LIKE your RAM super-sized and face-meltingly fast, you’ll definitely want to check out G.Skill’s latest memory kit. The newest member of the Ripjaws V lineup seems to check every possible box enthusiasts could ask for: It’s 128GB of cutting-edge DDR4 RAM (go.pcworld.com/allaboutDDR4) clocked at a blisteringly fast 3000MHz, with ultra-low CL14-14-14-34 CAS latency times to top things off. The set of eight 16GB sticks was built to complement quad-channel X99 (a.k.a. Haswell-E Extreme Edition, go.pcworld.com/HaswellEExtreme) setups, and not just ones rocking the swanky $1,000 Core i7-5960X either; the picture shows the 128GB Ripjaws V set nestled next to an Intel Core i7-5820K processor. Memory kits only crossed the 64GB barrier in 2015 (go.pcworld.com/64GBbarrier), and 3000MHz is almost twice as fast as the 1666MHz DDR3 RAM found in many…

EVERY TIME A stolen laptop leads to a data breach, you wonder why the business involved hadn’t set up any safeguards. When the unencrypted laptop was stolen from a former physician at the University of Oklahoma, for instance, or when a laptop was stolen from insurance provider Oregon Health Co-op containing data on 15,000 members. You’d think money would motivate them, if nothing else. In November, EMC and Hartford Hospital were ordered to pay US$90,000 to the state of Connecticut over the theft of an unencrypted laptop in 2012 containing data on nearly 9,000 people. The laptop was stolen from an EMC employee’s home. The problem extends far beyond the healthcare industry, too—such as the laptop stolen from SterlingBackCheck, a New York–based background screening service. The laptop contained data on…

MSI’S GT72S DOMINATOR PRO G DRAGON breaks barriers unheard of just a few years ago by offering desktop-class CPU performance, desktop-class storage performance, and desktop-class graphics performance in a laptop. The attention-grabber here is the use of Nvidia’s new GeForce GTX 980 chip, which promises 1:1 performance of the desktop GeForce GTX 980. Yes, really. No joke. If you need it explained in pictures, it’s like Nvidia took this: and jammed it into this. Bam! Don’t yawn, you cynical gamer. Sure, we’ve been able to get GeForce GTX 980M graphics chips all year long, but that part has only 75 percent of its desktop counterpart’s power. With the confusingly named GeForce GTX 980 mobile chip (go.pcworld.com/GTX980), it’s true desktop performance at last. Before we dive into performance, more on this…

IT ALMOST FEELS useless to write anything about the DeathAdder because chances are you already know whether or not you want it. Razer’s signature gaming mouse is one of the most pervasive, iconic peripherals of the last decade. It is, for a lot of people, the gaming mouse. Me? I think it’s pretty average. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. There are no significant disadvantages to the DeathAdder. It is the ultimate no-frills, jack-of-all-trades Razer mouse. It’s the vanilla milkshake or the peanut-butter and jelly sandwich. It’s the Top 40 pop song or the Toyota Camry. It’s a workhorse—a mouse that would serve 90 percent of the population well, and one you’d be happy to own. There just might be something out there that works better. Something…

PC GAMING DOESN’ need to be expensive. Sure, you could throw down $70 on a Mionix Castor or $80 on Logitech’s G502 or a whopping $90 on the Razer Diamondback. But you don’t need to. One thing I like about SteelSeries (and Logitech too) is that they have a habit of shoring up their peripherals lineup with some lower-cost alternatives. Damn good alternatives, for that matter—just missing some of the bells and whistles. Alternatives like the $40 Rival 100. Entry-level Despite sharing a name with the Rival 300, the two aren’t really that much alike. This isn’t just “The standard Rival with a slightly worse sensor.” It is, as far as I can tell, a different product—slightly different shape, different thumb buttons, different feel. I joke about the DeathAdder being…

THE ROCCAT TYON feels like a relic from another age—one where mouse manufacturers frantically tried to cover every surface with buttons in some sort of mad arms race (or fingers race, if you will). Why settle for one button for your index finger when you can have three buttons? And three for the ring finger. While we’re at it, why not build the thumb its own telegraph switchboard? Cheaper by the dozen The main draw of the Roccat Tyon is the buttons. Sure, it has an 8,200 DPI laser sensor, the standard 1,000Hz polling rate, and a nifty RGB light channel around the bottom of the mouse. But the buttons. The Tyon has (to my count) twelve buttons and an analog paddle that wobbles up and down. What’s more, one…

ABDI HAMID MALIK upgraded to Windows 10, and it changed his login password to his Hotmail password. (Hotmail passwords are also Microsoft passwords.) Microsoft really wants to attach your Windows environment to your online Microsoft account. Whether you think it’s a good thing depends on how you balance convenience with privacy—and how much you trust Microsoft. But even if you vote for convenience, you may not want to log in with your Microsoft password, which may be harder to remember or type than a Windows login password. Here are three solutions: Change Microsoft password If your Microsoft password is too difficult to type every time you boot or wake up your PC, change it to something simple. But not anything too simple. Online passwords are more prone to hacking than…

INTEL’S ITTY-BITTY MINI-STX motherboards (go.pcworld.com/mini-STXmotherboards) are poised to become real in 2016. Several PC makers and component makers were at CES this year, showing off early concepts of how they plan to use the new motherboard design, from mini-PC concepts to cases and, of course, the motherboards themselves. Intel first introduced the mini-STX in August, although it was christened “5x5” at the time to denote its size—generally 5 inches by 5 inches. This board is significant since it fills the gap between the Intel NUC and the mini-ITX form factor. It also allows you to switch out your CPU, unlike NUCs. Mini-STX motherboards come with an LGA1151 socket, allowing you to pick and choose your Intel processor up to 65W TDP, similar to mini-ITX boards. But it’s closer in size…

MICROSOFT HAS RELEASED the first batch of security updates for 2016, and they include critical fixes for remote code execution flaws in Windows, Office, Edge, Internet Explorer, Silverlight, and Visual Basic. The company has also fixed remote code execution and elevation of privilege vulnerabilities in Windows, and an address spoofing flaw in Exchange Server, that were rated important, not critical, due to various mitigating factors. In total, Microsoft issued 9 security bulletins (go.pcworld.com/msbulletins) covering patches for 24 vulnerabilities. According to Wolfgang Kandek, the CTO of security firm Qualys, administrators should prioritize the MS16-005 security bulletin, especially for systems running Windows Vista, 7, and Server 2008. This patch addresses a remote code execution vulnerability tracked as CVE-2016-0009 that has been publicly disclosed, making attacks more likely. The second most important bulletin,…

WOW, FACEBOOK IS GETTING downright emo. In a recent blog post (go.pcworld.com/fbbreakups) titled “Improving the Experience When Relationships End” (and, no, that’s not a Morrissey song), Facebook introduced features that mitigate the awkwardness of breakups in the social media age. If you’ve ended a romance in the last seven or eight years, you probably know that “it’s complicated” barely begins to describe the weirdness of seeing your ex’s posts in your news feed—or knowing that he or she can see yours. The new tools address all that. Once you change your status to single, Facebook’s emotional-insulation agents come to the rescue. One tool lets you see less of a former flame in your news feed without fully blocking them or unfriending them. And it goes the other way: You can…

YOU KNOW IF you need a gaming mouse. You’re not pushing virtual paper around on your desktop; you’re fragging bots and shooting zombies. Seeing how they run It was brutal work, but we’ve put a small herd of gaming mice through their paces. Everything from ultra-budget to ultra-customizable to ultra-small to ultra-packed-with-buttons is in the running here, and then some. What paces, you ask? First, we assess its skills in general use and gaming—from browsing Reddit to video editing to perusing Spotify to playing through Fallout 4 and Star Wars Battlefront. We also consider the preferred grip. How do you grip your mouse? It’s probably not something you think about consciously—like which sock you put on first or whether you hang your toilet paper over or under. But it’s important.…

RAZER ACTUALLY RELEASED two Mamba models this year—the luxury model (named, simply, the Razer Mamba) and its sibling, the Mamba Tournament Edition (or Mamba TE for short). They’re pretty much identical except the high-end Mamba is optionally wireless, has a built-in battery, and has “adjustable click force technology.” Oh, and the Mamba TE costs half as much. The Razer Mamba Let’s take a look at the luxury Mamba first, because damn. Razer didn’t build a mouse. It built an art exhibit. The Mamba is a wireless, 16,000 DPI mouse with a 1 millisecond polling rate and some nifty LED tracks down the sides. Plus a majestic, LED-equipped stand for recharging. It looks lovely, with an elegant aesthetic that matches its absurd $150 price. But does it perform like a $150…

YOU MAY THINK you know all you need to know about Gmail to manage your account, but it’s always safe to assume the powerful service has more up its sleeve. In fact, many of its coolest features may slip by you if you don’t know where to look. Here are five tips for getting more out of what Gmail has to offer. Easily unsubscribe to bulk emails As good as Gmail’s spam filter is, it can’t catch everything, and bulk email messages will inevitably find their way into your inbox. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to weed them out. Just type “unsubscribe” into Gmail’s search box and it will respond with a cascade of daily deals, newsletters, and other offers to which you’ve long since forgotten subscribing. To stop receiving…

IT’S A GOOD thing that Wi-Fi can bring so much magic into your house, it almost makes up for all the pains that come along with it. Almost. One of the biggest pains of Wi-Fi is actually something that’s self-inflicted: forgetting your network password. We’ve all been there. You take the advice of the security experts by creating a random, long Wi-Fi network password…and then promptly lose or forget that complicated password. That’s not a problem for any of the machines that were previously set up, but it could be an issue when you have guests or bring home a shiny, new Chromecast for your TV. Here’s how to retrieve all those seemingly lost passwords from your PC. When currently connected For users on Windows 7 and up, it’s…

YOU’VE HEARD OF Christmas in July. Well how about spring cleaning in January? Microsoft is kicking off 2016 with arguably its most significant Patch Tuesday in months. Microsoft has bid goodbye to all but one version of Internet Explorer (go.pcworld.com/goodbyeIE8910) and a Windows release (go.pcworld.com/cutoffwin8) it would rather forget. The biggest item on the chopping block is Windows 8. Not Windows 8.1—that sweeping update is still supported—but the original, non- Start-button version of Windows 8. After the update, Microsoft ceased support for the 3 year, 2 month, and 17-day-old operating system. That means Windows 8 is going the way of Windows XP; no more security updates, no bug fixes, nothing. Users still on Windows 8 will have to upgrade to Windows 8.1 or make the jump to Windows 10. Both…

I’VE BEEN IMMERSED in some compelling virtual reality experiences before. Heck, earlier this week, trying a Mount Everest demo on the HTC Vive (go.pcworld.com/EverestVR) invoked my fear of heights to such an extent that I froze in terror for a long, long time. But I’ve never witnessed anything as, uh, stimulating as VR porn. And even if adult video isn’t your thing, these pioneering videos have a lot to teach about how to craft films made for VR, as opposed to shoehorning your traditional film into VR. Naughty America, one of the United States’ largest adult film creators, invited me to try their virtual reality experiences on a Samsung Gear VR at CES 2016, and how could anyone pass that up? But the experience wound up being far more vivid,…

THE UNITED STATES doesn’t have the world’s worst Internet access by a long shot. But the country that invented the Internet has fallen well behind other wealthy democracies in online access. According to one report (go.pcworld.com/accessspeed), a resident of Washington, D.C., will get only 26.42Mbps of download speed for $50 a month. In London, that same price brings 78.70Mbps. In Hong Kong, 302.61. So what’s our problem? According to Susan P. Crawford, author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, it’s unregulated monopolies. DSL has become too slow for modern uses (such as streaming video). In most neighborhoods, the only other option is your local cable provider, who has to compete with no one. “The monopoly power of local cable incumbents over wired…

A DISCOVERY BY a well-known Google security researcher provides further proof how antivirus programs designed to shield computers from attacks can sometimes provide a doorway for hackers. Tavis Ormandy (taviso.decsystem.org), an information security engineer with Google, wrote (go.pcworld.com/ormandypost) that he found bugs in Trend Micro’s antivirus product that could allow remote code execution by any website and steal all of a user’s passwords. The security firm has confirmed it has released an automatic update that fixes the problems. “As part of our standard vulnerability response process we worked with him to identify and address the vulnerability,” wrote Christopher Budd, global threat communications manager at Trend Micro, in an email on Monday. “Customers are now getting protections through automatic updates.” Ormandy posted emails (go.pcworld.com/ormandyemails) he exchanged with Trend officials, occasionally expressing…

MEET THE CASTOR: A stripped-down, comfortable right-handed mouse with few buttons and even fewer frills. Or, as I like to call it, Mionix’s DeathAdder. It’s not a one-to-one copy of the DeathAdder, as we often see from low-budget knock-offs. The Castor is decidedly its own mouse, with a unique ergonomic shape. You certainly wouldn’t confuse the DeathAdder and Castor if you set them next to each other. But the similarities are apparent as soon as you lay hands on the Castor’s silky-smooth frame. Clone wars The Castor is a simple six-button mouse—left, right, and middle mouse, two thumb buttons, and then a DPI switcher to the rear of the scroll wheel. For the record, the Castor supports up to 10,000 DPI. I know you were wondering, since Mionix neglected to…

2016 WILL BE A BANNER YEAR for new headphones. This year’s CES saw headphone manufacturers moving in several directions. Almost every lifestyle brand has gone wireless for convenience’ sake, but top-of-the-line offerings remain wired so as not to compromise audio quality. Thanks to rumors that Apple is doing away with the 3.5mm audio port on its next phone, several companies are looking to find digital solutions that plug directly into an iPhone’s Lightning port (or the microUSB port on every other manufacturer’s smartphone). Bottom line: There’s something for everyone. If you’re looking for your next wear-em-’til-they-fall-apart go-to headphones, here are 14 pair we think you’ll want to know more about. Sennheiser HD 800 S Sennheiser’s HD 800 S circumaural headphones have some of the largest ear cups I’ve ever encountered,…

INTEL HAS CONFIRMED a bug in some Skylake CPUs could cause them to lock up under “complex workload conditions” but noted that a fix is on the way. The bug initially was reported only with the Core i7-6700K desktop CPU with Hyper-Threading enabled, but Intel’s confirmation seems to indicates it impacts more CPUs in the lineup. In a post (go.pcworld.com/intelskylakebug) on Intel’s forums, an Intel community manager wrote: “Intel has identified an issue that potentially affects the 6th Gen Intel Core family of products. This issue only occurs under certain complex workload conditions, like those that may be encountered when running applications like Prime95. In those cases, the processor may hang or cause unpredictable system behavior. Intel has identified and released a fix and is working with external business partners…

Rick Klemann bought a new modem/router, and wants to know “whether I will shorten it’s lifespan if I keep it on. My son-in-law turns his off every night and I’m wondering if I should do that.” My answer covers more than networking gear I have yet to see evidence that leaving an electronic device on 24/7 wears it out faster than turning it off at night. On the other hand, I haven’t seen any evidence that turning it off at night hurts it, either. Nevertheless, I vote for turning things off whenever practical. Leaving something on when you’re not using it wastes electricity, and electricity costs money. What’s more, if your electricity comes from burning carbon, it damages the planet we depend on. I’m not saying you should move…