Innehållsförteckning för June 2016 från PCWorld

NVIDIA’S LONG-AWAITEd GeForce GTX 1080 is real (geforce.com/hardware/10series/geforce-gtx-1080) and it’s spectacular—at least on paper. If you missed the big reveal, here are the 10 things you need to know about Nvidia’s ferocious, cutting-edge GeForce GTX 1080 and the just-as-impressive GeForce GTX 1070. 1. Ludicrous speed The most important thing to know: This thing is fast. Ridonkulously fast. “Faster than dual GeForce GTX 980s in SLI” fast, which handily beats Nvidia’s flagship Titan X (go.pcworld.com/ titanxreview), the most potent single- GPU graphics card ever released. During a demo, the new Doom topped out at roughly 200 frames per second at 1080p resolution, with all the graphics settings cranked. As I said in my initial coverage: Hot damn. 2. Ludicrous speed redux Remember how I said the Titan X is the most…

IN MARCH, OPERA added native ad blocking (go.pcworld.com/adlbockopera) to a developer edition of its browser. Now, the company has pushed that feature into general release, dramatically decreasing the load time of webpages at the expense of the advertising revenues that would normally be driven to the site. Native ad blocking is available both as a browser for Windows PCs and the Opera Mini browser for Android. Blocking ads not only speeds up the overall browsing experience, according to Opera, but can also eliminate a significant chunk of data that must be downloaded by smartphone users to view a webpage. An Opera spokesman said users could expect roughly the same performance from the stable version as they’d experienced in the developer build, with pages loading up to 90 percent faster than…

Watch the video at go.pcworld.com/2016mbookvid WHEN IT COMES TO hardware, Apple isn’t afraid to force its users to adapt, to change habits. Longtime Mac users remember when Apple stopped including floppy and optical drives, or when FireWire was discontinued. More recently, Mac users have had to accept the inability to upgrade hard drives and RAM, or that the Magic Trackpad 2 (go.pcworld.com/magictrackpad2) is the preferred input device, with its support for gestures that can’t be performed on a Magic Mouse 2 (go.pcworld.com/magicmouse2). The MacBook,available in the Apple Store (go.pcworld.com/macbook), is one of those game changers. When it was released last year (go.pcworld.com/12inchmacbook), it was pretty obvious that Apple wanted to push its users in a certain direction, to a place where there are no wires, where you depend on the…

MY, HOW DECEIVING looks can be. At first blush, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B (go.pcworld.com/element14) appears physically identical to the year-old Raspberry Pi 2 Model B: the same port selection, the same GPIO pin layout, the same basic board layout, et cetera. But don’t let that fool you! The leap to the Raspberry Pi 3 is just as significant as the prior upgrade, super-charging performance even further and eliminating what few linger-ing setup hassles remained in the Raspberry Pi formula, all while maintaining the same dirt-cheap $35 price point. But while the Raspberry Pi 3 is easily the most convenient and powerful Raspberry Pi ever, and the first that can potentially be used as a proper PC, it’s still more of an evolutionary upgrade than a revolutionary one—which is…

RECENTLY I PLAYEDDay of the Tentacle (dott.doublefine.com) legally. Those of you who played it back in 1993 understand why this is such a big deal. And the rest of you? If you’re wondering “Why would he start off a review with such a banal statement?” then blame LucasArts. See, Day of the Tentacle is the latest Double Fine re-release, following in the wake of last year’s Grim Fandango Remastered (go.pcworld.com/grimfandango). Despite being a classic point-and-click—and many people’s favorite point-and-click of all time—it’s been pretty much impossible to buy Day of the Tentacle for the last fifteen or so years. And now you can. With spiffy new music and graphics, to boot. It’s enough to make you throw up your tiny purple tentacle arms and cheer. Day of the Tentacle Remastered…

WORD MACROS CAN take almost any repetitive word-processing task and do it for you faster, in just a few keystrokes. Here’s a classic example: You’ve received a document with incorrect formatting throughout. You know what to do—use Search & Replace to fix them all—but doing that manually would be tedious for a short document, and insane for a longer document. Here’s how to program macros to fix them all for you. Note: It’s always best to create several smaller macros that perform a single function than one large macro that does it all. The primary reason for this practice is troubleshooting: If the macro fails, it’s much easier to locate and repair a single error than to debug a longer, more complicated macro. Macro basics: Name and assign keys Recording…

SO THERE YOU are, running from meeting to meeting on a particularly busy day when you suddenly notice your iPhone or Android phone’s battery gauge is deep in the red. It’s too late for sensible battery-conservation tips—you need power for your dying handset now, or at least a way to staunch the bleeding. We’ve gathered seven tips that’ll help preserve the last precious drops of juice in your phone’s battery, as well as ways to find emergency sources of power while you’re on the road. 1. Turn your handset off and then on again It’s one thing if your phone’s battery is dying simply because you’ve been using it all day without a break. But if you’re watching your battery gauge drop 5 or even 10 percent in a matter…

MICROSOFT SAYS THAT 300 million devices now run Windows 10. And if yours isn’t among them, time is running out. Recently, Microsoft began showing potential customers of Windows 10 the carrot as well as the stick, touting Windows 10’s success but also warning that the free upgrade offer would expire in a couple of months. If consumers don’t upgrade their PCs from Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 by July 29, Microsoft will charge $119 for a copy of Windows 10 Home when they eventually do. First, however, Microsoft demonstrated the extent to which Windows 10 had already progressed. Windows 10 is now on 300 million active devices, according to Microsoft; Microsoft said in its April earnings call that Windows 10 was on 270 million devices, and in January executives said…

INTEL’S KEYNOTES CAN be fun, with robots parading on stage and drones zigzagging around the room. Now Intel’s making new hardware to help enthusiasts join the fun by building robots and drones at home. The Robotic Development Kit and Aero Kit (go.pcworld.com/ intelroboticdevkit) provide the necessary hardware and software tools to build robots and drones, respectively. The kits were announced at the Intel Developer Forum in Shenzhen, China. A major element of the developer boards is the RealSense 3D camera, which will ship with the kits and help the robots and drones navigate and avoid obstacles. The depth-sensing camera can recognize items and determine the size, shape, and contours of objects. For robots, the camera provides computer vision, which is analogous to eyes in humans. The Robotic Development Kit is…

MOST FORMS OF MALWARE hide their infections, but ransomware (go.pcworld.com/5ransomware) boldly declares itself and demands money or you’ll never see your beloved files again. And if you haven’t taken the right precautions ahead of time, your choices really are either pay the money or lose your files. Your best defense is to block the malware before it can infect your PC. Use an antivirus program, keep it running whenever your PC is on, and keep it up-to-date. Don’t click links or download files from suspicious emails—even if you think you know the person who sent it. Finally, be careful (go.pcworld.com/avoidmalware) about downloading and installing software. If ransomware strikes, only a good backup can save your files, your money, and your dignity. Not every backup is good enough, though. As the…

Watch the video at go.pcworld.com/usbc explained USB TYPE C is the intriguing new port that began appearing in laptops, tablets, phones, and other devices well over a year ago, but we had no real way to test its throughput performance until now. Thanks to SanDisk’s Extreme 900 (review on page 62), we’re finally able to push that tiny reversible port to its limits. To do that, I gathered up no fewer than eight laptops equipped with USB Type C ports, and threw in a desktop PCIe card for good measure too. What your USB Type C port isn’t telling you USB Type C is supposed to be a universal standard, but it’s just universally confusing. A USB Type C port can run at either 5Gbps or 10Gbps and still be…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WINDOWS 10 Microsoft’s planning a big bash for Windows 10’s first birthday, and you’re the one receiving presents. This summer, the company will push out the free (and boringly named) Windows 10 Anniversary Update (go.pcworld.com/win10anniupdate) to Windows 10 PCs, and the update’s chock-full of all sorts of new goodies for you to play with—some niche, some helpful, and all free. It’ll be a few months before the Windows 10 Anniversary Update rolls out, but Microsoft’s already revealed many of its new features. Even better: If you don’t mind living dangerously with unfinished software, you can try many of these new features in Windows 10 preview builds (go.pcworld.com/win10previewbeta) today. Let’s dig in! BASH SHELL This will only appeal to developers, but it shows just how far Microsoft has come…

WHILE GMAIL DELIGHTS in any browser, it’s particularly powerful when used in Google Chrome thanks to the wealth of extensions (go.pcworld.com/gmailchrome) that expand its capabilities. Here we look at a few add-ons that fill some holes in Gmail’s functionality and help keep your inbox under control. Actions for Gmail Gmail’s interface requires you to select or open a message before you can perform any action on it. That doesn’t sound like much of a hassle, but repeated over and over it can quickly eat away time better spent on more productive tasks. The simple Actions for Gmail (go.pcworld.com/gmailactions) extension lets you add up to four buttons—Archive, Delete, Mark As Spam, or Mark As Read/Unread—next to each message in your inbox, so you can process it with just one click. The…

AN EASY WAY to divide a room of Windows 10 fans is to start debating the merits of the tiles section in the new Start menu (go.pcworld.com/win10start). Some people love it, others don’t. Personally, I think Live Tiles on a PC can be helpful for quick hits of information like the weather, news headlines, and stock prices. That said, lately I’ve been playing around with a tiles-free version of the Start menu. It’s very minimalist and forces me to make some hard choices about what I put on the taskbar. That’s because when you give up the Live Tiles section, you have almost zero control over the rest of the Start menu. Nevertheless, right now I’m finding it useful and you might too. It’s that easy Open the Start…

AMAZON IS TURNING the e-reader into a luxury item with the new Kindle Oasis (go.pcworld.com/oasispreorder). Starting at $280, the Kindle Oasis is Amazon’s most expensive e-reader since the Kindle DX (go.pcworld.com/kindledxrev) from 2010. Amazon says its mission with Kindle is to “make the device disappear so you can lose yourself in an author’s story,” and in this case, that means making the device more book-like. To wit: One side of the Kindle Oasis sports an extra-wide, extra-thick bezel, which seems like a nod to the spine of a paper book. Users can hold it in either hand, and the screen will flip around accordingly. Amazon is also including a leather cover with the Oasis. Aside from just making the package look classier, the cover includes its own battery, which combines…

“THIS IS PROBABLY the first time high-profile scientific journals are publishing screenshots from EVE Online,” said Attila Szantner, cofounder of Massively Multiplayer Online Science (MMOS) (mmos.ch). “This is going to be the next big revolution in citizen science.” Szantner was standing on stage at EVE Fanfest 2016 talking about Project Discovery (eveonline.com/discovery), a minigame in EVE Online that’s quite a bit more than it appears. In-game, Project Discovery is a “classified research program” run by the Sisters of Eve to analyze samples of the Drifters, a mysterious and threatening faction in New Eden lore. Players are told that these biological samples hold the key to Drifter technology. That’s in-game. But out-of-game, Project Discovery is actually a joint partnership between EVE developer CCP, MMOS, and the Sweden-based Human Protein Atlas (HPA)…

WHEN THE FBI paid someone to crack the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, it didn’t just deftly bypass Apple’s objections. It also made the public aware of the business side of hacking—a business that is apparently as lucrative as it is discreet. “The recent argument between Apple and the FBI over unlocking an iPhone has likely revealed to the public for the first time that companies who specialize in cracking mobile devices even exist,” said Bill Anderson, chief product officer at OptioLabs (optiolabs.com), a mobile-security developer. Everything we learn about the FBI’s hackers makes the situation more intriguing. Initial reports indicated the feds were using the services of Israeli mobile forensics firm Cellebrite to crack open Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone. Since then, a Washington Post report claimed the FBI hired independent…

Watch the video at go.pcworld.com/sandisk 900video AFTER TESTING SANDISK’ new Extreme 900 portable SSD, I just have one question for the rest of the industry: What’s taking so darn long? We’ve waited seemingly forever for 10Gbps USB 3.1 devices to arrive, and the Extreme 900’s 800MBps performance has us wanting more. SanDisk Extreme 900 PROS • A drive that can hit 10Gbps USB 3.1 speeds! • Includes both USB Type C and USB Type A cables • Gives you all the speed you demand in a portable drive CONS • As big as a portable hard-disk drive • Not exactly cheap • A 10Gbps USB 3.1 port is needed to take advantage of it $1,000 Specs and pricing Unlike Samsung’s pint-sized T1/T3 (go.pcworld.com/samsungt3rev), the Extreme 900 is roughly the…

THERE’S A REASON the sequence 123456 remains the most popular password. We tend to use passwords we can easily recall. And that means they’re easy to hack. A good password manager is the best way to relieve the burden of memorizing complex logins and keep your data secure. These tools encrypt your login info in a virtual vault—either locally or in the cloud—and lock it with a single master password. Considering that the security of sensitive data is at stake, you shouldn’t take choosing a password manager lightly. This guide will tell you what features to look for in a password manager and compare four of the best. What to look for Password managers come with myriad features, but at a minimum they should have the following capabilities: Password generation:…

Intel’s storage czar has a thing or two to say about the future of drive technology, naturally, but it’s not all party line. PCWorld recently sat down with Bill Leszinske, who heads Intel’s NVM (non-volatile memory) Solutions Group, to get his take on interfaces, hard drives versus solid-state drives, and when storage and RAM will merge. SATA EXPRESS WHO? Remember the SATA Express port? It arose in 2013, intended as an evolution of the slower SATA interface. While some systems began supporting the interface, however, drives for it never appeared—at least none we’ve ever seen. SSD performance also quickly eclipsed the capabilities of SATA Express. SATA Express may never officially have been declared dead, but to Intel’s drive division, at least, it is. “I’m not planning to offer SSDs in…

WE NOW KNOW the trade-off for free Windows 10: Microsoft wants data about what you do with your device. But you don’t have to send everything you do back to Redmond. You can control the data you send back, and how often, by delving into Windows 10’s privacy settings, we’ve taken you here (go.pcworld.com/win10privacy) before, and looking specifically at Feedback Frequency and Diagnostic And Usage Data settings. The former is typically just an automated survey, but the diagnostic component actually peers into your machine. These features comprised the Customer Experience Improvement Program, or CEIP, in previous versions of Windows—and they were voluntary. In Windows 10 they’ve become mandatory, but you can control some aspects. Start by going to Settings > Privacy > Feedback & Diagnostics in Windows 10. Changing the…

Martin Anisko fell for a phishing attack, and a hacker succeeded in taking over his Facebook account. If a crook succeeds in stealing your Facebook account, they can masquerade as you, find out a good deal about you, and get access to your friends. If the email address and/or password on your account has changed—and you didn’t change it—your account has been hacked. Other possible symptoms that should worry you include new “friends” that you never approved, and status updates and messages allegedly going out from “you” even though you didn’t send them. The following instructions assume that you’re accessing Facebook from a full, desktop-oriented browser rather than a mobile browser or app. First, try to change your Facebook password: 1. Click the little white triangle near the upper…