PCWorld October 2024

Berlin’s annual IFA electronics show isn’t typically a hotspot of PC news, since it follows hot on the heels of the computer-centric Computex in June. Instead, it’s usually more of a mobile and smart home event. But not this year! Intel used IFA to launch its hotly anticipated Lunar Lake Core Series Ultra 2 processors, packing a radical new architecture and seriously improved graphics chops. Not to be outgunned, Qualcomm revealed new 8-core variants of its Snapdragon X PC chips, aiming to bring multi-day battery life to sub-$900 laptops. The result? A flood of laptop announcements at IFA 2024. With so many notebook reveals crammed into such a short time span, however, the deluge felt a bit samey at times—but not with the delightfully unorthodox systems below, which lean on surprisingly…

If you’re wondering why you need Intel’s latest Core Ultra laptop processors, code-named Lunar Lake, the answer isn’t a simple one. If you want to buy a Lunar Lake laptop, however, you’ll probably understand the differences between the various chips almost immediately. Intel unveiled the Core Ultra Series 2 at a launch event in Berlin in early September. In total, there are nine new Lunar Lake processors, which will have begun shipping inside laptops from PC makers like Acer, Asus, HP, and Lenovo by the time you read this (they were scheduled to launch September 24). A few months ago, Intel unveiled the guts of the new Lunar Lake architecture, offering a sneak peek into how much performance it will offer and how much power it will consume. Today we…

When Windows 10 launched, its new Settings app was slated to eventually take over for the Windows Control Panel—and yet that conglomeration of settings is still very much alive and kicking. Talk of its impending demise has never gone away, though, with new chatter surfacing recently. Most Windows users probably are fine with that move. I am not. Sure, the Windows Control Panel looks like a relic. It gets less use than its successor. And its layout isn’t always the fastest to navigate. But the Settings app is an imperfect replacement. For starters, it’s missing the full range of settings available in the Control Panel. (That’s a failure on Microsoft’s part, and one that’s lasted for almost 10 years at this point.) The interface isn’t always the easiest to quickly…

The new Apple Intelligence within the new Apple iPhone 16 provides a surprisingly practical approach to AI. It’s straightforward, helpful, and well, boring—a stark contrast to Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs, which position themselves as the cusp of a revolutionary new era of computing, complete with a mandatory new keyboard button. Apple, which touts itself as the foundation for creative work, could have used AI to allow creatives to generate “photos” of imaginary objects, as Google’s Pixel now does. It could have used AI, either running locally on in the cloud, to produce AI-generated art, or AI-produced facsimiles of celebrity voices. It did none of that. Instead, the Apple iPhone 16 uses AI as a productivity tool, first and foremost, with a focus on supercharging existing features with machine smarts. Apple is…

Time has run out—Kaspersky antivirus finished its U.S. shutdown in September. In June, the Russia-based company was classified as a risk to national security, resulting in a ban on operations inside the U.S. and on any hardware owned by U.S. residents. If you’re still using Kaspersky, you’ll need to remove the app from your PC and switch to replacement software that will continue to get regular updates. For free users, the simple choice is to fall back to Windows Defender, while paid users get an automatic rollover to rival company Pangos’ UltraAV software at no cost. But should Windows Defender lack features—or UltraAV’s lower prominence cause concern—and you want a closer replacement for Kaspersky and its features, you can try one of the options below. BEST AV REPLACEMENT FOR KASPERSKY STANDARD PLAN…

In 2023, Microsoft announced that the Mail, Calendar, and People apps on Windows were officially coming to an end and would be replaced by Outlook for Windows. Those apps are still available on the Microsoft Store, but only until December 31, 2024. From then on, we’ll only have Outlook for Windows—and up until now, that’s been a sore point for many users who have criticized the newer app’s lack of many features from the older apps. But it seems as if Microsoft has listened and taken the criticism to heart. According to Windows Latest, you can expect to see around 30 new features added to the Outlook app later this year. The new features will include support for PST files, better control over email retention lengths, and the ability to…