Innehållsförteckning för April 2025 från PCWorld

Microsoft tips and tests new Windows 11 features throughout the year as part of its Windows Insider programs. But there’s an almost surefire way to tell what features will actually arrive on your PC in the near future: a new Windows 11 Release Preview build. And one recently dropped. Microsoft released Windows 11 Build 26100.3321 to the Release Preview Channel in February, with a list of new features, including a new battery icon, an improved File Explorer, and tweaks to the Windows Spotlight screensaver. Given that it’s a Release Preview, Microsoft should be releasing it relatively soon. This collection of new features isn’t as momentous as, say, a fall feature release. What’s important about it is the relative certainty that even if you don’t opt in for the Release Preview build,…

Some of my colleagues based on the West Coast have recently been commenting on how expensive hotels have become. Sure, they’ve become pricier for everyone, but now, they were saying, it’s getting ridiculous. At first, I just chalked it up to the post-pandemic tourism boom. But then articles started to pop up accusing popular hotel booking sites of a predatory technique called price discrimination. Residents of the notoriously affluent city San Francisco were charged higher rates for hotels online than those based in other places. A study by researchers at Northeastern University found that users of some sites were unwittingly placed into pricing buckets based on their stored cookies and steered toward more expensive hotels. The list goes on. So what does all of this mean, and can you use it to…

After more than a year out of sight, Alexa+—the new Alexa with its AI-powered revamp—took center stage at a crowded coming-out party in New York City on Wednesday, and I got a first-hand look at what this turbocharged voice assistant can do. Following the big unveiling, we were all led to a demonstration hall with about a half-dozen break-out rooms, where we were able to see and hear—but not participate in—Alexa’s new conversational tricks, from controlling smart home devices and researching sports tickets to suggesting recipes and dialing up tunes on Amazon Prime Video. If all that sounds like old hat, consider this: While the old Alexa requires falling back into what Amazon devices head Panos Panay rightfully described as “Alexa-speak,” the new Alexa is a far more flexible and…

OpenAI’s ChatGPT Pro—the highest tier of access for individuals—is far from cheap. It costs $200 per month, and, unlike most of its competitors, OpenAI doesn’t offer any discounts for an annual subscription. The company also avoids limited-time sales. That’s a hefty price to swallow. At $200 per month, it’s more than twice the price of Adobe Creative Cloud’s Business Plan. It’s enough to finance the monthly payment on a Hyundai Ioniq 5 lease. It’d even make a huge dent in paying down student loans or credit card debt. So, is ChatGPT Pro worth it? To find out, I spent $200 of my own money and used ChatGPT Pro’s features for a month. WHAT YOU GET WITH CHATGPT PRO What exactly do you get with ChatGPT Pro that you can’t get…

Sweden-based Mullvad is like the Swiss bank account of VPNs—it doesn’t ask questions and gives you the best privacy and security possible. When I say that Mullvad takes your privacy seriously, I mean it. Unlike other VPNs, Mullvad goes so far as to disconnect your account from an email by auto-generating an account number for you. They will even let you pay in cash. And this level of anonymity goes well beyond just registration, permeating everything you do with the app. Since our last review, the service has undergone another independent audit and adopted post-quantum encryption on all platforms, further cementing its place as one of the most secure and trustworthy VPNs on the market. Read on to learn more, and then see our roundup of the best VPNs for comparison. Mullvad…

When will your computer die? Be assured, it’s a question of when and not if. Though I can’t give you a precise date, I can tell you the next best thing: all the skills you need to know to be prepared for it. The most crucial part of your PC, assuming that you can’t guarantee the hardware will last forever, is the data. I’ll show you how to protect it. I’d recommend treating this article like a checklist. How you accomplish each task isn’t really as important as knowing that you can do it…preferably with some practice. 1. HOW TO REPLACE A HARD DRIVE OR SSD The storage drive is where your data lives on your computer. And if you want more of it—or your current drive fails—then you might…

For the most part, we’re fans of Roku’s friendly, intuitive remotes, and particularly the ones that have voice capabilities. But there’s a sticking point—four of them, actually—when it comes to the Roku remote: the quartet of buttons at the bottom stamped with the logos of popular streaming services. WHAT ARE ROKU ‘QUICK SHORTCUT’ BUTTONS? Those so-called “quick shortcut” buttons let you jump to streamers such as Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video with a single button push—convenient, if you happen to subscribe to one or more of those services. The reality is that most of us aren’t subscribed to four streamers at once, or if we are, they aren’t necessarily the services slapped on those quick shortcut buttons (and yes, streamers do pay Roku for the privilege of getting…

YouTube Premium ain’t cheap at $13.99 per month for ad-free streaming, especially since it seems like YouTube is intentionally making itself worse to get you to pay up. How does $7.99 sound instead? Starting today, YouTube is offering its Premium Lite paid tier to users in the U.S. after having tested it out in a handful of other countries. You pay less for fewer features, but you still get to block ads…mostly. According to the announcement, YouTube Premium Lite offers a mostly ad-free experience for watching videos on desktop and mobile apps, but there are a few provisos and quid pro quos. First, you don’t get to play videos in the background or download them for offline viewing—that’s a big kick in the teeth compared to the full-fat version of…

Could you fix your laptop if it breaks? And I mean physically fix it with tools, not just install some driver updates. According to an industry report, you might be okay if it’s an Asus or Acer model. But if you’re using a recent laptop from HP, Apple, or especially Lenovo, you’ll have some serious issues getting it up and running again. That’s according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund, which commissioned a report (spotted by Ars Technica) analyzing repairability for both smartphones and laptops available to U.S. buyers. While smartphones are getting easier to repair with better options for screen and battery replacement, the PIRG report says that improvements on the laptop side have been slow and inconsistent. The fiscal year 2025 edition gave Lenovo…

AI is the hot buzzword in tech. We’re hearing it repeatedly from major tech companies, as they integrate AI models into their products. The latest company to trumpet the inclusion: Google, in its Chrome browser. It’s a pair of announcements in recent weeks, with the most current an update to Google’s Enhanced Browsing protection, which screens your browsing data in real time for threats like malware, fraudulent websites, and sketchy extensions. The opt-in program received an official boost from AI, which Google says aids the detection of internet dangers. Details have yet to be shared of how exactly the AI screening works, which mirrors another piece of news that involves Chrome and its password manager. As shared by Windows Report, the AI settings in an early Chrome build signal that…

Not all of us prefer or have the opportunity to work in a spacious, well-lit office. And if you don’t, you’ll need a webcam that compensates for that. eMeet’s Piko+ 4K webcam does, and does so marvelously. It was a cold, dark February day when I unboxed the Piko+ webcam. I bought my home in California for many reasons, but none of them included the amount of light in the spare bedroom that serves as my office. In winter, not a whole lot of sunlight reaches my desk. Add rain to the equation, and my office was just plain gloomy. But when I plugged in the Piko+, I actually swore. This 4K webcam’s capabilities, especially in low light, are revelatory. I just wish it came a traditional webcam clip. But…

Shoppers looking for a 24-inch 1080p monitor may be tempted by budget options that dip below $100. If you extend your budget to about $150, however, you can afford a more capable display like the Vero B247Y G. Though still basic, it delivers extras like an ergonomic stand and a 120Hz refresh rate, which makes it a good choice for both productivity and entertainment, including PC games. SPECS AND FEATURES The Acer Vero B247Y G’s basic specifications are nothing to get excited about. It’s a simple 24-inch, 1080p widescreen monitor with an IPS LCD panel. Dozens of competitors provide similar specifications, and quite a few are less expensive. Display size: 23.8-inch 16:9 widescreen Native resolution: 1920×1080 Panel type: 8-bit IPS LCD Refresh rate: 120Hz Adaptive sync: Adaptive Sync HDR: No…

After October 14, 2025, Microsoft will no longer release any regular updates to Windows 10. The company may make exceptions if a really serious security flaw is discovered—this has happened with older, discontinued versions like Windows XP and Windows 7. Many people who are running Windows 10 and haven’t updated to Windows 11 are doing so because their computer doesn’t support the greatly increased system requirements. So what can you do if you have one of these millions of computers? If your computer has no other faults and is not too slow for your needs, buying a new one just to get system updates probably seems unnecessary. OPTION 0: POSTPONE THE DECISION—PAY FOR EXTENDED SUPPORT If you don’t have the time or energy to organize a longer-term solution and don’t…

Anyone who logs into a public Wi-Fi network or surfs the internet without protection quickly runs the risk of exposing their data. A VPN for Chrome can help and allows you to surf the web securely and anonymously—directly via the Google Chrome browser without having to install any additional software. But how does a Chrome VPN differ from other VPN services, which providers are recommended, and how secure are the free solutions? We explain. WHAT MAKES A CHROME VPN DIFFERENT FROM OTHER VPN PROVIDERS? A Chrome VPN, or more precisely a VPN Chrome extension, only protects the data traffic in the browser, while a classic VPN app encrypts all of the device’s internet traffic. This means a VPN Chrome extension is quicker and easier to install, but offers less security.…

Ever feel like tech support systems are designed to frustrate you, perhaps in the hope that you’ll just give up and stop trying? For HP, that was literally the case. It’s been confirmed that the company had a mandatory 15-minute wait period for all support calls in the UK and other countries. The policy has since allegedly been removed. The Register reports that it saw an internal policy document for HP’s support team in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, and Italy, which said that everyone who called in for tech support for PCs and printers would have a minimum wait time of 15 minutes before getting through to a human operator. The idea was to “influence customers to increase their adoption of digital self-serve,” essentially forcing people to interact with…

Okay, it’s time to stop pretending that the “retail price” of a graphics card means anything at all. AMD made a big press splash about launching its new Radeon RX 9070 cards at $550 and $600, sliding in well under Nvidia’s pricing for the same performance level. Surprise, surprise—it’s essentially impossible to find a new card at that price on launch day. It is, for all practical purposes, a lie. Without any real intent to pull the “complete order” trigger, I looked around for a $600 Radeon RX 9070 XT card this morning. Initial reports from retailers indicated that there were a lot more AMD cards available than there were for the recently launched RTX 50-series, for which Nvidia seems to have completely abandoned any pretense of delivering chips to PC gamers.…

AMD loves to build to a crescendo. As it’s shown since 2016, when its first Ryzen CPUs launched, the company progresses incrementally but steadily—until Team Red sits all the way at the top. That time has come for its 3D V-Cache processors, which sport extra L3 cache to boost gaming performance. When AMD released its first variant into the wild, that AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D shot past Intel’s best in gaming—but only gaming. Ryzen 7000X3D chips pulled more even with Team Blue, but still couldn’t pull ahead in some key benchmarks. But now, with the release of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, AMD can take the crown for best chip for both gaming and productivity tasks. This $699 16-core, 32-thread slots above last August’s Ryzen 9 9950X, which previously served as the company’s…

Nvidia fumbled the ball with its $549 GeForce RTX 5070, and AMD’s new Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT are primed to seize advantage. The RTX 5070, hitting store shelves today, is a good 1440p graphics card but a stagnant generational sidegrade at best. Enter the $549 Radeon RX 9070 and $599 Radeon RX 9070 XT, launching tomorrow. Both cards are faster than the RTX 5070, with the 9070 XT going toe-to-toe with the $750 RTX 5070 Ti in many games, and each includes an ample 16GB of VRAM. The RTX 5070 is stuck with a disappointing 12GB. Even ray tracing, long an AMD weakness, improved dramatically! Bottom line? AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 series is the new 1440p gaming champion. If you opt for an RTX 5070 instead to get in…

If you haven’t been paying attention to the news, heads up—prices for tech gear are shooting up. Tariffs are now in effect for goods imported from China, and they’ve doubled since their original announcement. The U.S. government is now imposing an additional 20 percent tax instead of 10 percent. Name any kind of tech device and it’s affected: laptops, desktop computers, PC components, monitors, smartphones, e-readers, and much more. An overwhelming majority of electronics are produced in China. Big retailers have already warned about imminent price hikes, with the CEOs of both Best Buy and Target commenting on the breadth and immediacy of the tariff effects. Here at PCWorld, I’ve been wondering specifically about the impact on computers (surprise!)—laptops and desktop PCs are both major interests of our readers. To answer…

From the department of Things I Should Have Started Doing Sooner, I have finally discovered the magic of email aliases. Aliases are kind of like alternative email addresses, except that when email is sent to an alias, it still arrives in your main inbox. Use them in conjunction with filters and folders, and you’ve got a powerful way to organize incoming messages. While email aliases aren’t a new concept, I’ve been leaning into them lately as I experiment with migrating from Gmail to a new email provider. Now I wish I’d been doing it sooner. Here’s why. EMAIL ALIASES, EXPLAINED If you’re using Gmail, iCloud.com, or Outlook.com, creating an alias is easy. Whenever you’re inputting your email address into a form, enter it like usual but add a plus sign…