Innehållsförteckning för Aug-15 från PCWorld

Beginning July 29, Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users will be able to download Windows 10. It’s a monumental shift for both Microsoft and its customers. But Microsoft has provided a wealth of information to ease the transition, and let you upgrade to Windows 10 as simply and easily as possible. For consumers, the choice is a simple one: You’ll be upgraded to one of two versions of Windows 10: Windows 10 Home, or Windows 10 Professional. (This guide doesn’t cover the upgrade process to Windows 10 Mobile for phones.) Microsoft has also released the official retail pricing for Windows 10 (go.pcworld.com/win10cost), in case you’re building your own PC. During the update process, plan to invest some time in prep work and at least an hour in the upgrade process…

How far can we push Moore’s Law (go.pcworld.com/moore)? It’s starting to become a concerning question as processors push into almost infinitesimally small process nodes. Intel’s 14-nanometer Broadwell chips suffered from lengthy delays, stuttering Intel’s vaunted tick-tock manufacturing schedule. TSMC, the company that manufactures graphics processors for AMD and Nvidia, has been stuck at the 28nm node for years now. Intel plans to push into 10nm in 2017, but IBM’s looking beyond that, and just revealed the world’s first working 7nm processor—but it took some pretty exotic manufacturing to get there. Creating a working 7nm chip required moving past pure silicon, IBM revealed (go.pcworld.com/ibm). IBM—working with GlobalFoundries, Samsung, SUNY Polytechnic Institute, and others—carved the transistor channels out of silicon-germanium (SiGe) alloy in order to improve electron mobility at such a small scale.…

Fresh from its defeat in women’s World Cup soccer, Japan wants to take on the United States once again—in giant robot combat. Suidobashi Heavy Industry has agreed to a challenge from Bostonbased MegaBots that would involve titanic armored robots developed by each startup. While robot combat contests such as RoboGames are nothing new, the duel is being billed as the first of its kind involving piloted machines that are roughly 4 meters tall. Unveiled in 2012, Suidobashi’s Kuratas robot was designed by blacksmith Kogoro Kurata, who was inspired by the “mecha” robots of Japanese science fiction animation. Weighing some 5,000 kilograms, Kuratas has three wheels, two arms, a one-person cockpit and various mock weapons that shoot pellets and fireworks. It was put on sale on Amazon Japan as a starter kit…

With the arrival of El Capitan (go.pcworld.com/elcapitan2) on Google Street View recently, you can now haul yourself virtually up one of the most famous rock faces in the world. Navigating certain streets in urban areas, however, can still be a challenge. As Google expands Street View into ever more exotic places, it appears to have a problem in many of the towns and cities where the service has been available for years. Look closely at any major city, especially the residential areas, and Street View is littered with hundreds, even thousands, of little gaps. And although it’s hard to be sure, the problem may be getting worse. Street View is still a powerful tool and the gaps don’t greatly diminish its utility—unless they happen to be in front of the building…

AMD’S Radeon R9 Fury X kicks ass. It’s important to note that right up front, because AMD’s graphics division has had a rough year. The company’s been forced to watch Nvidia release not one, not two, but five new GeForce graphics cards— the entire GTX 900-series line—since the Radeon R9 285 launched last September. What’s more, those GeForce cards delivered so much performance and sipped so little power that all AMD could do in response was steeply slash the prices of its Radeon R200-series graphics cards to stay competitive. And AMD’s “new” Radeon R300-series cards are basically just tweaked versions of the R200-series GPUs with more memory. Through it all, the promise of the water-cooled Radeon R9 Fury X (go.pcworld.com/fury) glimmered as the light at the end of the tunnel,…

UP Front: There are going to be spoilers in this review. Or, at least, a few of you may deem them spoilers—I am going to actively discuss some of the villains in Arkham Knight. By name. And a few of the plot points. Why? Because there are very specific examples that I feel embody Arkham Knight’s failings, and it’s easier for me to just talk through them than talk around them. Good? Good. Let’s dig in. Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na Phew. Where to even start with Arkham Knight? I mean, we could take the easy route on this one and talk about how busted the PC port is. It is busted. I got a higher frame rate in The Witcher 3 on Ultra than I did in Arkham Knight, and I don’t just…

This one's for the anti-clickers. Despite fast Internet connections and zippy PCs, web designers still like to organize really long content into multiple pages. That can be for financial reasons (more clicks equals more ads thus more revenue) or just because the designer thinks it’s more manageable for the reader. Visual content in particular suits itself well to slideshows. But the downside for the user is you have to constantly click through to the next page, whether it’s a Google search, or a lengthy news article. All that clicking can interrupt your concentration. There are a whole bunch of add-ons that try to solve this problem. To save you a few clicks they automatically load multipage content while you scroll. I’ve been trying out a bunch of these add-ons.…

A few well-regarded flagship devices, a focused core experience, a vibrant app ecosystem, and a belief in the quality of its own products: Apple lives and breathes these things, and has achieved massive profitability in the phone space as a result. And it’s about the only strategy Microsoft has left to try. Soon after purchasing Nokia’s device business for $7.2 billion last year, Microsoft began to dismantle it—first laying off a third of the staff, and more recently waving goodbye to business unit head Stephen Elop and other top executives. Now it’s writing off (go.pcworld.com/writeoff) another $7.6 billion in impairment from the Nokia Devices and Services Business and laying off 7,800 employees. These actions tacitly acknowledge two errors: First, buying Nokia itself was a colossal mistake. Second, the strategy of making…

The bbc is getting into the hardware hacking craze with its second device in the last 34 years for school-age children. The British broadcaster recently unveiled the Micro:bit, a mini-programmable computer meant to teach children how to code and develop hardware projects. The device will be given away to every child in Year 7 at schools in the United Kingdom—around one million students—beginning in for sale to customers in the U.K. and other points around the globe. Presumably that includes the United States. Unlike other popular boards such as the Raspberry Pi, the Micro:bit is not meant to be used as a standalone PC. Instead, it’s a basic board for embedded projects such as a gaming device or a remote control. It’s also compatible with more advanced micro PCs like the…

T-Mobile announced that there would be no added charges for its U.S.-based Simple Choice customers when they call, text, or use data to Mexico and Canada or when traveling there. The move makes T-Mobile the first carrier to offer continental phone service under a single plan anywhere in the world, company officials said. The new Mobile without Borders plan means that customers can call from the United States to both countries for no added cost, as well as make calls from those countries when they travel in either one. Both consumers and business customers will be eligible, although business customers will pay $1 more per phone line for accounts with more than 10 phone lines, with no added cost for the first 10 lines. T-Mobile CEO John Legere said the…

For years, AMD has prioritized raw graphics processing horsepower over things like power efficiency and quieter operation. Then Nvidia’s Maxwell architecture came along and proved that video cards could dominate the benchmarks while still sipping power. With the launch of the new Radeon Fury X and Radeon R300 series, AMD has responded to community criticism and competitive heat with Frame Rate Targeting Control, a meaningful feature that has a serious impact on daily gaming sessions. Frame Rate Target Control (FRTC) is a new option in AMD’s Catalyst Control Center that lets you set a maximum frame rate between 55 frames per second and 95 frames per second (fps) for the majority of DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 games. The message from AMD is that FRTC is a triple threat of benefits:…

Intel’s fifth-generation broadwell CPU has been the default laptop processor of choice since its debut in January, but it’s been difficult to get a real bead on just how much of an improvement it was on its Haswell predecessor. That’s because unlike desktops, where it’s easy to control the environment they run in, laptops are complete packages. I tried to compare the updated ThinkPad X1 Carbon with Broadwell to the Haswell ThinkPad Carbon X1, for instance, but it wasn’t quite applesto-apples. I initially determined that the Broadwell CPU was significantly faster than the Haswell. Something didn’t ring right, though, and ultimately I decided Lenovo’s redesign of the laptop likely contributed to the results and really made it useless to try to draw any conclusion on the CPUs themselves. My second chance…

So, what else can Excel do? People ask this question all the time. The answer is “almost anything.” Excel has evolved into one of the most versatile programs available. In addition to spreadsheets that calculate everything, it’s also a database, a programming tool, a graphics program with charts, tables, drawing tools, photos, clipart, and even layout abilities, and it’s a limited, but functioning, word processor (with a spell checker, Thesaurus, grammar tools, research capabilities, translation functions, and more). With its graphic features, you can create anything from a detailed drawing to an edited photo. You can make calendars, note pads, list pads, schedules, grid/graph paper, greeting cards, business cards, etc. If you’re wondering why anyone would use Excel over programs such as Photoshop and/or Illustrator, the answer is simple. Not everyone…

Anand prabhu asked if there’s a way to put an SSD and a hard drive into the same laptop. A flash RAM-based SSD gives your PC amazing speed, but it’s expensive by the gigabyte. An old-fashioned, spinning-platter hard drive gives you vast amounts of storage for very little money. But if you use both, and set them up (go.pcworld.com/setup1) intelligently, you can enjoy a hard drive’s mass storage without losing too much performance. But that only works if you can install two drives into your PC. That’s usually an option only in larger laptops. Some laptops, even affordable ones, support the standard 2.5-inch hard drive/SSD and also have the options to support the flash-only mSATA or M.2 drives. The PC makers then fill the bays depending on what you buy.…

Users of microsoft’ original Surface and other Windows RT devices won’t have to wait much longer to get some features of Windows 10. As WinBeta (go.pcworld.com/winbeta) notes, Microsoft has updated its Windows 10 FAQ (go.pcworld.com/win10FAQ) with a short line about what Windows RT users can expect. “If you’re running Windows RT, your device won’t upgrade to Windows 10, but we will have an update for you around the time of Windows 10 release,” the FAQ says. (Note: Microsoft’s popular Surface Pro line runs the full-blown version of Windows and will receive Windows 10.) Windows RT was Microsoft’s ill-conceived effort to run Windows on ARM, the architecture that powers most smartphones and tablets. Although Windows RT looked similar to Windows 8, it couldn’t run desktop software with the exception of Microsoft’s…

AMD’s polishing up software support for its new Fury X and Radeon R300 series graphics cards with the release of new WHQLcertified Catalyst 15.7 drivers. This sweeping update plays nicely with Windows 10, adds the clamored-for (and oft-delayed) CrossFire multi-GPU support for FreeSync monitors (go.pcworld.com/crossfire), and extends some of AMD’s formerly exclusive features (like frame rate target control) to the full range of older Radeon R200 series graphics cards. The Windows 10 support is no surprise, given that Microsoft’s nextgen operating system launches as we go to press. Nvidia also recently pushed out Windows 10-compatible WHQL-certified drivers for its GeForce graphics cards. DirectX 12 cometh (go.pcworld.com/directx)! But beyond that, Catalyst 15.7’s new offerings should have Radeon gamers shouting “Hallelujah!” from the rooftops. The story behind the story AMD is often criticized…

Google’s refusal to implement the EU’s controversial right-to-be-forgotten rules in the United States amounts to an unfair and deceptive business practice, a frequent critic of the search engine giant said. Consumer Watchdog (consumerwatchdog.org) filed a complaint against Google with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, said John Simpson, director of the group’s Privacy Project. The complaint (go. pcworld.com/complaint) asked the FTC to rule that Google, by declining to delete search engine links on request from U.S. residents, is an unfair business practice that violates the U.S. FTC Act (go.pcworld.com/usftc). Arguing that the right to be forgotten is an “important privacy option,” Consumer Watchdog’s complaint stated that although Google claims to be concerned about users’ privacy, it doesn’t offer people in the United States “the ability to make such a basic request.”…

Humans like to celebrate barriers being broken. The speed of sound. The first 1GHz processor, or 1TB hard drive. So get ready to pop the California sparkling wine, because we just smashed right through the 64GB system RAM barrier. That barrier, if you didn’t know, has vexed consumer computing for years now. Mainstream desktop PCs have all featured four slots for a maximum of 32GB of DDR3 RAM. At the high end, prosumer PCs doubled that to eight slots for a maximum of 64GB DDR3. With the move last year to DDR4 RAM in Intel’s Haswell-E, we were promised we’d finally break the 64GB mark. That time has come. Both Corsair and Kingston recently announced 128GB memory kits using 16GB DDR4 memory modules. We had to try one out. What…

I eagerly anticipated reviewing the most powerful single-GPU graphics card to ever grace PCWorld’s test bench—and I wasn’t disappointed. But the card that claimed that title wasn’t the one I expected! While AMD’s new, hotly anticipated Radeon R9 Fury X is a beast in its own right, the title of new heavyweight champion instead lies with EVGA’s $680 GeForce GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ with ACX 2.0+ (go.pcworld.com/evgagtx980ti), a custom-cooled, overclocked variant of Nvidia’s ferocious GTX 980 Ti. EVGA sent me this card out of the blue on the same day I received the Fury X—a coincidence, I’m sure. But the GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ doesn’t just triumph over AMD’s new flagship, it outpunches Nvidia’s own $1,000 Titan X in raw firepower. What’s more, even though AMD’s dual-GPU Radeon R9 295x2 still…

After playing the Batman: Arkham Knight game on several PCs, it’s obvious why WB Games decided to suspend sales. PC gamers, we should have expected this. Despite this year being our year, with our own dedicated PC-gaming show at E3, Batman: Arkham Knight (batmanarkhamknight.com) is an unkindly reminder of where we stand with game developers: Console gamers got a brilliantly crafted game while we’re stuck with a standard-issue, glitch-filled port. At least that’s what nearly 8,000 and counting people on Steam are saying about this brand-new game. The torches and pitchforks became numerous enough that WB Games made the nearly unprecedented decision to indefinitely suspended sales of the PC version of Arkham Knight until its problems can be resolved. As one of the hottest games of the season, Batman: Arkham Knight…

Forget about sliced bread—Wi-Fi is easily one of the greatest inventions of the last few decades. Thanks to Wi-Fi every device in your home can easily get online, whether it’s your iPad, desktop PC, the high-definition television in the living room, and maybe even your coffee pot or fridge. But are you getting the most out of your wireless Internet connection? Is it truly as fast as your service provider claims? Are the neighbors screwing up your signal? Do you know how to connect all your various devices together to share files at home? Wi-Fi made more wonderful Here are five free Wi-Fi-enhancing tools that can help you answer “yes” to all of those questions. 1. Channel changers Sometimes getting a better Wi-Fi signal is as simple as changing the…

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/i0J-BnexmIE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Watch the video at go.pcworld.com/3Dhandvid Unlike high-cost, mass-market prosthetics, 3D-printed hands can be quickly repaired and have custom designs and features such as NFC modules in the fingertips, which could do everything from unlocking smart locks to authenticating mobile payments. Exiii engineers are testing an infrared muscle sensor to control the limb. It’s buggy, but it’s cheap and simple to set up.…