Innehållsförteckning för May 2016 från PCWorld

DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS! The ghost of Steve Ballmer past lingers heavily over Microsoft’s annual Build conference, but despite ostensibly being an event dedicated to code monkeys, Build’s always brimming with consumer-friendly news about the future of Windows, Office, and more. This year was no exception—and it even managed to squeeze in a few eye-opening surprises. Let’s dig in to the biggest reveals from Microsoft Build 2016. Windows 10 keeps on climbing A mere four months after announcing that Windows 10 was running on 200 million devices after the holidays, Microsoft’s racked up another 70 million new users— Windows 10 is installed on 270 million devices now, the company announced at Build. Some of those are no doubt due to holiday purchases, and some no doubt stem from Microsoft’s heavy-handed upgrade…

HELLO, BEAUTIFUL. Acer revealed its first-ever 14-inch Chromebook—the aptly named Chromebook 14 (go.pcworld.com/acerchromebook14)—on recently and it sure seems like it was worth the wait (at least on paper). The Google-licious laptop only costs $300, but offers premium touches missing from the majority of the plastic-clad Chromebook army, like an aluminum chassis, USB 3.1 ports, a trim sub–4 lb. weight, and a whopping 14-hour battery life claim. The Chromebook 14 comes in two main versions with either a 1080p or 1366 by 768 resolution IPS display. That luxuriousness extends to the display. The Chromebook 14 comes in two main versions with either a 1080p or 1366 by 768 resolution IPS display. The 1080p models feature a punier 12-hour battery-life claim, but on the other hand, 1080p IPS displays are a relative…

WELL, NOW WE KNOW why Microsoft’s Windows Phone didn’t appear during Microsoft’s Build keynote: it simply isn’t on Microsoft’s radar screen at the moment. The question, of course, is whether it will ever be again. “We’re going to do some cool things with phones, but this year phones are an important part of our family but not the tip of the spear,” Windows chief Terry Myerson told The Verge. Phones, Myerson added, “is the wrong place for us to lead.” Why this matters: Myerson’s comments have to feel like a bit of a slap at those dedicated Lumia phone fans who have stuck with the company’s products through thick and thin. Those numbers are dwindling, however: Holiday sales for Lumia devices plunged to about half that of the year prior,…

IF TECHNOLOGY WERE people, Samsung’s Galaxy TabPro S (go.pcworld.com/galaxytabpros) would clearly be a supermodel: It’s willowy thin, extremely lightweight, and has a jaw-dropping OLED screen. Even better, Samsung’s first convertible is a PC. This sleek 12-inch tablet sports Windows 10 Home, and it’s paired with a pretty peppy CPU, too. Did we mention this machine has an OLED screen? Samsung isn’t the only manufacturer to announce an OLED in a PC—Dell, HP, and Lenovo all showed off laptops with OLEDs at CES in January. This is the first one we’ve seen in a shipping product, though, and it’s a doozy. It has an OLED display! OLED! Long used in smartphones, organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens differ from the typical side-lit LED panels found in the majority of laptops and tablets…

NAS BOXES ARE nigh on perfect devices for storing and streaming your multimedia collections—music, video, and photograph—throughout your home. Traditionally, however, that streaming hasn’t included UHD/4K/2160p video, which requires a fair bit of CPU power. Enter Synology’s DS216+ (the box Synology sent us for testing; go.pcworld.com/synologyDS216) and it’s new DSM 6.0 operating system. Before you get too stoked, Synology’s NAS boxes can only transcode 2160p to 1080p (or a lower resolution, depending on the device receiving the stream). The same goes for Synology’s chief rival QNAP. That means you can stream UHD/4K, but not at its true resolution. Note that I’m talking about using Synology’s integrated Video Station player or its DLNA server. You can open any file directly and play it at full resolution if your TV or device…

LINKSYS THINKS MU-MIMO is the EA7500’s key selling point. It’s not. While this might be the least-expensive router to support MU-MIMO, that technology is just too new and under-supported on the client side to be anything other than a checklist item. Fortunately for Linksys, the EA7500 includes most of the features that do matter, and it delivers strong performance in general—particularly in the area of network-attached storage. Linksys has been building routers in this form factor for a number of years. It’s definitely a more mainstream look than the company’s aggressively designed WRT series (go.pcworld.com/ linksyswrt1900acs), but it doesn’t go so far as to hide its antennas inside the enclosure in a futile attempt to blend into your home’s decor. The EA7500 uses Linksys’ Smart Wi-Fi firmware, which has a…

THE 2016 CHEVY Volt wants to be the Johnny Depp of hybrid vehicles: the quirky character who becomes the star of the show, like Depp playing Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. Long before Depp became a famous pirate, though, he was already a cult favorite for his unique performances in movies like Edward Scissorhands and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. In the same way, the Volt (go.pcworld.com/volt) is already a star among green-car nerds who love how this plug-in hybrid electric vehicle combines solid electric vehicle range with convenient backup by a gasoline engine. These Volt fans bought prior generations of the car even though it looked a little weird. And now they’re excited about the 2016 Volt because it promises 53 miles of EV range—a big jump…

How to build, maintain, and fix your tech gear. PAT STUHLMAN WAS happy with Windows 10. Then, suddenly, the Start menu stopped working. The return of the Start menu is probably Windows 10’s most popular feature. But it doesn’t work on all PCs. You can click the Start button, or press the Window key until Apple, Google, and Microsoft all merge together and switch to Linux, but the menu just won’t come up. Here are three possible fixes. I can’t guarantee that any of them will work, but hopefully one will. 1. Fix corrupted files If the Search bar still works, search for powershell. Then right-click Windows PowerShell in the search results and select Run As Administrator. But if the search bar doesn’t work either, press WinKey-R, type powershell, and…

GOOGLE DRIVE IS one of those services that works best when you’re all in. The search and productivity capabilities of Drive and its connected apps make Google’s cloud storage solution an ideal place to save everything. There’s no need to wonder if you saved an image to your Downloads folder or another cloud service. You know it’s in Drive, and Google’s search powers make it easy to find. But there’s a big sticking point to Google Drive: It can be tricky to save articles and other random bits from around the Web (which services like OneNote and Evernote excel at). Sure, there’s Google Keep (go.pcworld.com/googlekeep5ways), and it’s a pretty good note-taking and organization tool—but there’s a lot it doesn’t do. Fortunately, there are ways to supercharge Google Drive’s Web-saving abilities.…

IT FEELS LIKE an undercover operation: While Microsoft executives are rehearsing their keynote presentations for Microsoft Build 2016, I am in a hotel room next door to the conference venue, testing out what everyone is coming to see: the HoloLens Development Edition. This is actually the third time I’ve gone hands-on with HoloLens hardware, and it is clear Microsoft has used the last 15 months of HoloLens development to craft a remarkably polished experience. Microsoft has already detailed some of the amazing games and apps (go.pcworld.com/hololensapps) that will ship with the HoloLens Development Edition, but this time I demoed something new: a proof-of-concept HoloLens business app for Citi created by a company called 8ninths. (I’ll cover this experience in detail in an future article.) Microsoft plans to let Build attendees…

INTEL PROMISED SUPERFAST and high-capacity SSDs with 3D NAND chips last year, and the company announced the first of those drives at the end March. The new SSDs stand out for blistering speed, but top out at 2TB of capacity, which may be a disappointment to some customers considering the drives could potentially hold up to 10TB. The new lineup of SSDs with 3D chips includes the SSD DC P3320, SSD DC 3520, and SSD DC D3700 and D3600. The SSDs are targeted at data centers, workstations, and storage arrays. Intel remains far behind rival Samsung, which earlier announced the PM1633a SSD, which has 15.36TB of storage. The Samsung drive also uses 3D NAND chips. The Intel SSDs were built more for speed, durability, and reliability, which is a priority…

Make smart purchases, stay safe online. The malicious program will rewrite the computer’s MBR and trigger a critical Windows error that causes the computer to reboot—a condition known as a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). IT’S HARD ENOUGH for non-technical users to deal with ransomware infections: understanding public-key cryptography, connecting to the Tor anonymity network and paying with Bitcoin cryptocurrency. A new malicious program now makes it even more difficult by completely locking victims out of their computers. The new Petya ransomware overwrites the master boot record (MBR) of the affected PCs, leaving their operating systems in an unbootable state, researchers from antivirus firm Trend Micro said in a blog post (go.pcworld.com/petyatrendmicro). The MBR is the code stored in the first sectors of a hard-disk drive. It contains information about…

This isn’t a normal review. How could it be? We mark the cusp of not just an entirely new technology, but also the culmination of three years reporting on virtual reality. E3 2013, Indiecade, GDC, E3 again (and again), two Oculus Connect conferences, and a bunch more events in between. And now the official consumer-facing virtual reality launch, with—finally—the release of the Oculus Rift (oculus.com). The slow burn’s undoubtedly been weird—maybe even frustrating, from an outside perspective. “Oh great, more news about a technology I still can’t buy.” But now you can, and the upshot is that, having gone through the original developer’s kit (DK1), the second generation (DK2), and two prototypes, we know where VR came from, where it is now, and where it’s going—assuming, of course, it goes…

IT DOESN’T TAKE a genius to realize that when you hit pay dirt, you might do so again if you keep digging in the same area. That’s the tack Dell takes with its redesigned XPS 15 (go.pcworld.com/xps15redesigned) laptop: It’s easily summed up as a bigger, more powerful version of the super-popular XPS 13 (go.pcworld.com/skylakexps13). Bigger isn’t always better, of course, but in the case of the XPS 15, it worked out pretty well. Its body has the same aluminum top and bottom. The familiar carbon-fiber keyboard deck is there, too. Also like the XPS 13, this XPS 15 features an ultrathin “InfinityEdge” bezel around its 15.6-inch screen. The model I reviewed is midrange. That means a 1920x1080 resolution non-touchscreen, though a 4K Ultra HD screen with touch is available. Regardless…

FOR MOST PEOPLE, an AC1900 Wi-Fi router hits the sweet spot. It delivers enough speed to support media streaming, and enough features to handle the needs of most homes without blasting a hole in your pocketbook. This type of router isn’t the most powerful, but it’s much less expensive than higher-end routers equipped with all the latest whiz-bang features. This review compares two of the newer contenders: the Buffalo WXR-1900DHPD (go.pcworld.com/wxr1900dhp, notable for its use of open-source DD-WRT NXT firmware), and the somewhat more conventional Linksys EA7500 (go.pcworld.com/ea7500linksys, one of the lowest-price routers to offer MU-MIMO, go.pcworld.com/ mu-mimo). I’m not a big fan of the router industry’s methodology when it comes to identifying 802.11ac router speeds. Manufacturers sum the maximum theoretical speeds available on each frequency band (often rounding up…

A FUNNY THING happened while I was reviewing the 9.7-inch iPad Pro (apple.com/ipad-pro). I forgot my computer at home and only brought the iPad to work. This wasn’t intentional. I’m not doing the “Can the iPad Pro replace my laptop?” challenge. I tried that (go.pcworld.com/ipadprorev) briefly with the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, and didn’t have the best results, constantly running into annoying little roadblocks and workarounds that slowed down my workflow. The reason I didn’t notice that my laptop wasn’t in my backpack that morning is simple: I’m carrying two iPads right now, both the 9.7-inch iPad Pro and its big old 12.9-inch sibling, and the larger iPad Pro is almost as big as my laptop. Yes, at 1.5 pounds, the big iPad Pro is lighter than my 2.4-pound 13-inch MacBook…

THERE ARE ALMOST as many Android camera apps as there are Android phones, and as of 2014 Google has its own camera app—the aptly named Google Camera. At first glance, Google’s Camera app looks surprisingly simple—nothing but a viewfinder and a shutter release. Once you start tapping and swiping, though, you’ll find a bevy of hidden options, ranging from a self-timer and exposure settings to a panorama mode and even the ability to create a Street View–like “photo sphere.” Read on for 12 gotta-know Google Camera features. Note: Not all of the following features will be available for every Android phone; for example, Android tablets without a flash won’t have any flash settings, while gyroscope-less devices won’t be able to create panorama shots. Snap photos with the volume buttons As…

THINK YOUR EIGHT-CORE PC is cool? Not anymore. Intel is turning loose a 22-core monster of a CPU, dubbed the Xeon E5-2600 V4. The CPU’s 22 count is made up of Broadwell cores, which when combined with Hyper-Threading, amounts to no fewer than 44 threads in a single-socket computer. On a dual-socket machine, you’re looking at 88 threads in a workstation. Yes, cue Johnny Dangerously joke here. The new Xeon E5-2600 V4 hasn’t shown up on Intel’s ARK product list (ark.intel.com) yet, but the top-end part with 22 cores is the Xeon E5-2699 V4 with a base clock speed of 2.2GHz, 55MB of cache, and a TDP that isn’t that crazy at 145 watts. An enthusiast eight-core Haswell-E has a TDP of 140 watts, but runs at 3GHz and supports…

MICROSOFT’S LINUX LOVE affair continued at the company’s annual Build keynote, with the revelation that popular Linux command-line tool Bash is coming to Windows 10. Whoa. And no, it’s not running in a virtual machine, Cygwin, or an emulator. Microsoft partnered with Canonical, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, to build native Ubuntu binaries directly into Windows 10 that allow Bash to run. And Microsoft’s already brought SQL Server (go.pcworld.com/sqllinux and Visual Studio (go.pcworld.com/visualstudiolinux) to Linux, and embraced Red Hat (go.pcworld.com/redhatlinux) for Azure services—this commitment to open-source is starting to look pretty darn serious. The blog of Microsoft employee Scott Hanselman provided more details about Bash integration than the brief demonstration onstage. “This is a genuine Ubuntu image on top of Windows with all the Linux tools I…

U.S. GOVERNMENT AGENCIES have filed more than 70 orders requiring Apple or Google to help law enforcement agencies unlock mobile devices since 2008, despite the agency insisting its fight with Apple in a recent terrorism case was limited in scope. The Department of Justice dropped its California case against Apple after the FBI found a way (go.pcworld.com/fbi) to break into one of the San Bernardino shooters’ iPhone without assistance. The U.S. Department of Justice is demanding assistance to unlock mobile devices from Apple or Google in more than 60 cases, according to information from the American Civil Liberties Union. CREDIT: ACLU “The San Bernardino litigation isn’t about trying to set a precedent or send any kind of message,” FBI Director James Comey wrote in February. But the American Civil Liberties…

AFTER YEARS OF teasers and hardware iterations, the Oculus Rift VR headset launches, and it’s a magical piece of hardware. But when it comes to splurging on a $600 peripheral—especially one that promises to transport you to virtual reality worlds—I’d wager that software is the more important part of the equation. So I spent a week trying out everything the Oculus Store’s Rift Launch Lineup section offers. It’s a huge and diverse list, with experiences ranging from first-person point-and-clicks to third-person dungeon crawlers to real-time strategy games to space dogfighters and virtual tourism. If ever you wondered “Could a person really spend eight or more hours a day in virtual reality?” the answer is “Yes.” (Though I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it.) But I’ve emerged from the warm embrace of the…

FOR $500 MSRP (and as low as $350 on sale), the E45W-C4200X (go.pcworld.com/E45WC4200amz) is a lot of laptop. Not many similarly priced products offer a fully reversible 14-inch touchscreen display—as a matter of fact, I can’t think of one. It’s true the E45W-C4200X’s display is “only” 1366x768, but to a lot of people that won’t matter. Yes, 1080p video won’t look as sharp, but given the laptop’s price and features, it’s pretty easy to overlook that. Configuration and performance Our test E45W-C4200X featured a Core i3-5015U CPU, 6GB of DDR3/1600 memory, and a 500GB 5400rpm HGST hard-disk drive. That storage disk isn’t fast, testing at a tortoise-like 60MBps, but its performance is well within the expected range for a platter-based drive running at that speed. You also get 802.11ac Wi-Fi…

FANS OF OPEN-SOURCE software might initially find Buffalo’s WXR-1900DPHD appealing because it uses the open-source DD-WRT firmware. This firmware is famous for unlocking hardware features that router manufacturers choose not to expose to end users for one reason or another. But that’s not the case here, because Buffalo chose the underdeveloped DD-WRT NXT build, which is stable but not at all comprehensive when it comes to enabling this router’s hardware features. One of the most disconcerting omissions is the absence of support for either of the router’s USB ports (there’s a USB 2.0 port in back and a USB 3.0 in front). Whether you’re looking for Time Machine support to back up your Mac, interested in streaming media from a shared hard drive, or intend to share a USB printer…

CONGRATULATIONS TO BEAMDOG. I’m pretty sure that Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear (siegeofdragonspear.com) now holds the record for “Longest Time Between Base Game and Expansion,” at seventeen years. Described somewhat tongue-in-cheek as Baldur’s Gate 1.5, Siege of Dragonspear sees Beamdog move from a curatorial role (Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition:go.pcworld.com/baldursenhanced) into a more authorial role in the fabled RPG series, creating a thirty-hour expansion that pretty much doubles the length of the original game. But can you really go back to 1998? I spent two weeks finding out. Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear AT A GLANCE Siege of Dragonspear is an expansion to a game seventeen years old, which invites the question: “Can you really go back to 1998?” In this case the answer is, mercifully, yes—with some small caveats. PROS…

ONE OF THE great things about computers is they make it so easy to copy information. That’s why there’s nothing more infuriating than encountering a situation where you can’t copy what you need. Windows error pop-ups are a perfect example. Not only do they have inscrutable codes that are meaningless without a Google search, you often can’t copy them. Before you bother to take a screenshot or, heaven forbid, write down the error code with pen and paper, try out Textify. This free program for Windows is an easy-to-use utility that lets you copy text from areas on your display that weren’t designed with copying in mind. There’s really not much to it. You download Textify from the developer’s site in a ZIP folder, extract the EXE file, and run…

Venka Tesh asked how to diagnose possible RAM problems. Random Access Memory (RAM) wears out over time. If your PC frequently freezes, reboots, or brings up a BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death), bad RAM just might be the problem. Corrupt files can be another sign of bad RAM, especially when the corruption is found in files that you’ve used recently. Another possible symptom: The PC slows down considerably as you use it, but seems re-energized after a boot. But don’t just pull out and replace all of your RAM sticks. You need to diagnose them. That way, you’ll know which stick (if any) is bad. And no, don’t try to replace individual chips on the stick. Windows comes with its own memory diagnostic tool. Use the Search tool that…