Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2025 i APC

Microsoft is busy making preparations for when Windows 10 reaches end of support in October 2025, including an option to keep paying for support for the first time. Windows 10 is still by far the most used version of Windows in the world, with six in ten active Windows installations still running Windows 10, according to the October 2024 data from Statcounter. That presents Microsoft with an enormous problem, with it looking increasingly likely that Windows 10 will still have a greater installed base than Windows 11 by the time the operating system is officially retired in less than a year’s time. “Windows 10 is still by far the most used version of Windows in the world, with six in ten active Windows installations still running Windows 10, according to…

APC is Australia’s oldest consumer technology magazine – having been consistently in print for over forty years, since our first issue way back in May 1980 – and we take that heritage and responsibility very seriously. While our focus is obviously on the personal computer the very definition of the PC has changed and shifted markedly since the early 1980s. As such, we touch on many other areas of tech, too, from smartphones and apps to peripherals, accessories, and beyond. We have two goals: to find the best modern tech and to help you make the most of it. Independent reviews Championing technology doesn’t mean we’re unrelenting yes-men and -women, however, and APC aims to be as objective as possible in all our coverage. That means identifying the best products…

PRICE From $1,999 WEB apple.com/au Alongside new Mac mini and MacBook Pro models, Apple has updated its iconic all-in-one desktop. It’s not a major redesign, but it brings some welcome improvements over last year’s model – not just the latest M4 processor, but also a doubling of the starting RAM and a better webcam. The colour line-up has been updated too, with new shades of blue, green, orange, pink, purple and silver. As always, the defining feature of the iMac is its screen, and that remains as delightful as ever. At 24in it won’t dominate your desk, but it provides much more workspace than a laptop, and also works well for video streaming: I tried watching some of my favourite shows and movies on the iMac and was delighted by…

PRICE $2,799 WEB lenovo.com The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura is a premium slim yet powerful laptop designed to appeal to creators over competitors like the MacBook Air. It features Intel’s new Core Ultra 7 258V CPU, backed up by 32GB LPDDR5x RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a delightful 15.3in 2.8K display – all in a thin laptop that weighs just 1.53kg. While IPS rather than OLED, the Aura’s display is a standout feature. The 2880 x 1800 resolution in a 15.3in form factor gives a very sharp image without being an overt drain on battery life, while the 120Hz refresh rate ensures smooth visuals when needed. The panel is rated for 100% DCI-P3 and sRGB color accuracy, and the 500-nit brightness means use outdoors is reasonably good. With a…

PRICE $2,489 WEB https://www.lg.com/au We’ve had some amazing monitors through our Labs in recent months, but a standout model was Asus’ amazing, $2,300, matte-finished OLED PG32UCDP gaming monitor. Having a reflection-free OLED screen is something we’ve been crying out for. Now, here’s LG with an 800R-curved, anti-glare, anti-reflection, 240Hz OLED rival. Could it be even better? LG makes its UltraGear monitors in three sizes, 34, 39 and 45-inches and we reviewed the middle one... which feels massive. Construction is simple, thanks to its three-part, tool-less design and the small-footprint base provides a solid base. Basic connectivity is covered at the rear: there are two HDMI 2.1 ports, DisplayPort 1.4, a two-port USB-A 3.0 hub and a 3.5mm audio jack. There are also some RGB flourishes but don’t expect to see…

Gaming laptops have grown in popularity over the years, but they’re often heavier and noisier than models that use integrated graphics. AMD and Intel have both released new mobile processors in recent months, with beefed-up GPUs that have taken over the budget sector of the graphics market. It’s telling that we haven’t seen much in the way of new budget mobile GPUs in the past few years. Nvidia still offers older Turing and Amperederived solutions in the MX550 and MX570, but without any of the RTX features, like DLSS and ray tracing. Those were both launched in March 2022, but if you only need that level of graphics performance, you might find that the latest iGPUs from AMD and Intel are sufficient. We collected three similarly configured laptops and put…

WHAT YOU CAN DO • Detect and update all outdated software on your PC• Automatically install the latest versions of programs• Schedule software to update at a convenient time• Prevent software updates from failing to install• Download thousands of free tools without any junk• Get notified as soon as new versions are available Most of us are aware of the importance of keeping Windows up to date, to protect us against the latest security threats and fix newly identified bugs. This task is generally handled well by Windows Update, which means we don’t need to worry about installing updates ourselves (at least until Windows 10 support ends next October). The same applies to antivirus software, which quietly downloads new malware definitions in the background. Sadly, many of the other programs…

If you want to edit and enhance your photos, you don’t need to install a weighty app – you can do it right in your web browser. One way is to use Adobe’s online version of Photoshop (tinyurl.com/APC541photo), but this requires a full-price Photoshop subscription, making it uneconomical for casual use. A great alternative is Photopea (photopea.com). This browser-based image editor offers a versatile, professional-grade editing environment with support for a wide range of file formats – and its interface will be immediately familiar to anyone who’s used Photoshop or other serious image-editing software in the past. Best of all, if you don’t mind seeing a few ads, you can use all its built-in features free. Here’s everything you need to know to make the most of this powerful online…

IT WILL TAKE 20 mins YOU WILL LEARN How to efficiently store files in the cloud and ensure they’re available everywhere YOU’LL NEED Mac, preferably with macOS 15 or later, and iCloud set up For years, we’ve become accustomed to using iCloud Drive. Aside from being a great way of backing up your files and making them available across all of your devices, it provides more storage space for you to play around with and, since it’s baked into macOS, it pretty much works seamlessly. So much so that most of the time you’re not even aware you’re using it. But that’s not to say you won’t benefit from better management of the service and it’s worth learning a little more about what makes iCloud Drive tick. Here we’re going…

PRICE $109.95 PLATFORM PC, PS4/5, XBS/X WEB www.callofduty.com/au/en/blackops6 At some point when I wasn’t watching, Call of Duty’s campaign became a bad stealth game. Gone are the perspectives of the faceless soldiers, replaced with characters who look and feel like they came from a Netflix Original movie. When Black Ops 6’s campaign occasionally channels the bombastic scope of its predecessors, it rocks, but all too often it’s bogged down in tedious espionage. I don’t accept that the largest videogame franchise on the planet, especially with such a rich history of incredible single-player campaigns, should be so thoroughly mediocre. Call of Duty used to at least have an engaging perspective, putting you in the hot seat of the turning-point battles of the near-modern world, but Black Ops 6 offers nothing like…

MYFITNESSPAL $14.99 per month / $79.99 per year, www.myfitnesspal.comCRONOMETER $14.99 per month / $89.99 per year, www.cronometer.com Look, we get it, nutrition and fitness is a bit left field for APC – it’s not something we often cover. That said, it’s an integral part of all our lives, and the better we look after ourselves, the more time we can spend in good health with our loved ones, doing the things we enjoy (namely, tinkering with PCs). Staying inside of healthy weight ranges is one of the best and most effective ways of reducing the risk of all-cause mortality. It’s almost at the level of being a complete panacea in a lot of measures. The science has come a long way in recent years, so much so that we now…

PRICE From $1,799 WEB apple.com/au If you’re looking for a lightweight and compact tablet, the smart move might be to opt for the latest iPad mini. It’s not a revolutionary update over the sixth-generation model, released in 2021, but a few under-the-hood improvements make it an all-round superior tablet that’s well worth a look. The design still resembles a shrunken-down iPad Air, and since it comes with iPadOS 18 preinstalled, you get all the same software features as found on the latest iPad Air and Pro models. Those include the upgraded Calculator app and the Smart Script feature, which cleans up your handwriting in real time to make it more legible. Perhaps more significantly, it’s also in line to receive the full set of Apple Intelligence features – which the…

PRICE $3,699 WEB hp.com The HP Omnibook Ultra is a more than capable laptop with a gorgeous aesthetic and enough processing power for day to day work, or even casual gaming. Our review machine has the new series 2 Intel Ultra 7 258V CPU, plus 32GB RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 14in OLED touchscreen display. Weighing only 1.34kg, the OmniBook Ultra makes for a brilliant premium laptop, capable of being folded flat on its back to double as a tablet,or standing on its own. The OmniBook is overly expensive at the full $3,699 RRP, though we have seen it on sale for under $2,999, which is slightly more palatable. The OmniBook Ultra Flip stands out thanks to a vibrant, bright 2880 x 1800, 120Hz OLED display and two uniquely…

NEEDS Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 WEB https://windirstat.net WinDirStat analyses your PC’s hard drive(s) to identify files and folders that are taking up a lot of space. You can then delete large and unnecessary items to free up valuable storage. Incredibly, this is the first major new version of the program for 19 years, though there have been incremental updates in that time. Since 2013, it’s been overtaken in popularity by WizTree (https://diskanalyzer.com/), but WinDirStat 2.0.3 should help redress the balance. It introduces lots of new features and improvements to make managing your drive space easier than ever. When you launch WinDirStat, you can choose to scan all local drives, specific drives or partitions, or individual folders. It can even scan online-storage services such as Google Drive, OneDrive and…

In 1525, the German painter and engraver Albrecht Dürer pioneered a new method for creating art. It involved using a grid and a piece of string to accurately trace the movement of light from 3D surfaces onto the 2D plane of a canvas. Dürer correctly recognised that light travels in straight lines, so the string could represent the path of light from the image to the observer’s eye. The artist could then make a series of marks on the picture to represent areas of high and low contrast. This was one of the first documented ‘ray tracing’ techniques, whereby an artist tried to realistically portray how light interacts with objects in different ways to produce an image. Light doesn’t behave this way in the natural world. In reality, photons emanate…

YOU’LL NEED • CCleaner Optional, download it from www.ccleaner.com • A stable internet connection APC readers will know that nothing quite compares to the glee of firing up a brand new laptop or computer for the first time. Unfortunately, your excitement can easily be dampened by the presence of ‘bloatware’. This is software that usually comes bundled with Windows, and provides no significant value to the user. Common culprits included third-party antivirus and media software. As Windows veterans know, these programs may offer a free trial, and even work unobtrusively for a short period of time. However, at the end of the trial period, users are usually plagued with pop-ups encouraging them to register and/or subscribe. Bloatware, by definition, is software that is unnecessary to the smooth running of the…

The games we play PRICE $73.50 PLATFORM PC, PS4/5, XB1/S/X WEB MW5CLANS.COM MechWarrior is back and going harder than ever with a completely standalone game confusingly titled MechWarrior 5: Clans, some five years after MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. It’s the classic campaign of mech-tweaking and smashing enemies, but Clans is a bold game that improves on the classic sim-lite action of MechWarrior by adding a more modern, story-driven framing. That setting matters more than before. MechWarrior 5: Clans does something quite new for the series: it attempts to give you the kind of story found in the BattleTech books and novels, which have kept mech-heads invested in this world of space nobility and war machines for decades. The campaign follows a group of newly-proven teen MechWarriors, all of whom are artificially…

Inspirational stories from computing’s long-distant past In December 1994, it was becoming clear where gaming was heading: straight down the road to the third dimension. Although 3D games had been around for a while – DOS titles Wolfenstein 3D and Doom being the most notable – one play of Ridge Racer was all it took to convince larger numbers of gamers that 3D was the future. Ridge Racer was a launch title for Sony’s PlayStation, a console that had made its debut in Japan. As history will attest, this machine forever changed the course of the videogame industry by successfully smashing the long-held Nintendo-Sega duopoly. It drove forward with fresh thinking and a determination to turn the industry on its head. In short, the PlayStation was a game changer. It…

Everything you need to know from the month in tech Intel’s second-gen Battlemage graphics tech is official, it’s announced, it’s real and it’s here. Going by Intel’s claims, the actual architecture looks pretty great, too. It’s been updated to be more efficient, to deliver better utilisation and performance per graphics core and also sports improved ray tracing and AI performance. Indeed, dollar-for-dollar, it looks like Intel may now be able to match Nvidia for ray tracing performance. But what about the bad news? Well, the new B580 and its B570 sibling are fairly low end cards. Nvidia is only aiming at marginally beating the Nvidia RTX 4060 for now. As for key specs, the B580 is a 12GB card with a 192-bit bus, which gives it a much more powerful…

EAT E-Glo II Now here’s something to make you glow on cold winter nights – the glorious sight of old school valves on European Audio Team’s E-Glo II. Stylish designed in black or silver, the E-Glo II is a dedicated phono stage that sits between your vinyl turntable and your hi-fi amplifier (or any other device that can handle a RCA phono input). Compatible with turntables fitted with either a Moving Magnet (MM) or Moving Coil (MC) cartridge, the E-Glo II adds up to 76 decibels of gain, amplifying the sound from the needle as it traces around your vinyl’s grooves, so they can be picked up and further amplified by your hi-fi. Weighing in at a hefty 5.3kg and and made from premium materials, there’s something rather lovely about…

PRICE $829 WEB amd.com The eternal battle for best processor goes on, and this month we test the latest salvo from AMD. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D is an out-and-out gaming processor, while Intel’s Core Ultra 200K series (codenamed Arrow Lake) are all-rounders. In particular, they’re the first x86 desktop CPUs to include a neural processing unit (NPU). So, in truth these are very different chips. AMD spends the cache AMD follows a similar approach to the 9800X3D as it did with the 7800X3D. It has the same 8-core/16-thread setup as the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X, but with an additional 64MB L3 cache to take the total to 96MB. In the first iteration of 3D V-Cache, as AMD calls it, the extra die was stacked on top of the main processing…

PRICE From $2,499 WEB apple.com/au Apple’s latest MacBook Pro looks and feels a lot like the 2023 model, and it comes in the same 14in and 16in formats as before. However, it brings several upgrades – including a nano-texture screen option, the new, faster M4 processor and improved battery life – that make it Apple’s most compelling high-end laptop yet. The MacBook Pro M4 looks identical to its predecessor, with an aluminium design that’s easy to carry yet feels rock solid. I continue to appreciate the front lip that makes the lid easy to open, and the Touch ID button for logging in quickly – although I really wish Apple would add Face ID at this point. Connectivity is improved over the M3 version, with the M4 offering three Thunderbolt…

PRICE $2,299 WEB msi.com With monitors growing in size and new panels now offering some very interesting choices, the new MSI MPG 491CQPX QD-OLED presents a very compelling option for extreme gaming. This is a 49-inch beast with stats to match its imposing size. It’s functionally quite similar to Samsung’s G9 Neo, which I’ve reviewed, but has the edge in a couple of appealing ways. Most pleasingly, it doesn’t force you to use a remote like the Samsung does, and the MSI’s OSD is one of the best I’ve ever used, being clean, sensibly arranged and well designed. The hero stat is the fast 240Hz refresh. MSI has a similar MPG 491CQP model that tops out at 144Hz, and this is largely similar to that model in most other respects.…

PRICE $816 WEB www.xpg.com/au/xpg/pc-components-fusion Made in partnership with Delta Electronics, the impressive Fusion 1600 is XPG’s top offering. With the latest in transformer and transistor technology, the patented planar transformer and GaN FETs translate into extremely efficient switching and voltage conversion, giving this unit its 80 Plus and Cybernetics Titanium certifications. Such efficiency means less waste heat, so there’s a significant dearth of heatsinks inside the unit. It runs so cool that the 135mm double ball-bearing fan won’t even spin up until you’re pulling around 640W to 800W. The fan curve can be tweaked via XPG’s Prime app, along with monitoring voltages, temperature, and power draw. Though marketed at gamers, the high 1600W rating of this power supply means it’s really only for those seriously pushing power envelopes with overclocking…

DEVELOPER Canonical Ltd WEB https://ubuntu.com LICENCE Mainly GPL Twenty years ago, in October 2004, the very first stable release of Ubuntu (4.10) was made available to the public. It represented the fruits of the labour of Mark Shuttleworth and a small team of Debian developers. Since that time, with one exception, new releases of Ubuntu have been issued every six months. Version numbers correspond to the current year and month of release. This has culminated in the latest version (24.10). In true Ubuntu tradition, it bears the alliterative code name of an animal (this time, it’s Oracular Oriole). As one of the most popular Linux distros, Ubuntu supports a wide range of architectures. The AMD64 ISO is a rather weighty 6.7GB. This is around a 1GB increase over Ubuntu 24.10, which…

In the introduction to his awesome treatise on the history of cryptography, The Code Book, Simon Singh likens the ongoing battle between those who seek to keep communications secret and the consequent efforts of others to expose them to an intellectual “arms race.” It’s easy to be smug about older ciphers, such as the Caesar cipher, which simply shifts each letter in the message three places, A becoming D, B becoming E, and so on. These kinds of monoalphabetic ciphers are so easy to crack, Edgar Allan Poe even used to run a column breaking enciphered messages sent in by readers of Alexander Weekly Messenger. The arrival of affordable computers in the ’60s didn’t initially herald a new wave of encryption. Secure cryptography was still the preserve of governments, though…

Transfer legacy apps What is currently considered the best (and easiest) way to migrate programs, settings, and so on to a new PC? I built my last machine back in 2009. Through the years, it has updated from Windows 7 to Windows 11 (with some effort), but has reached its limits. I have some legacy programs that currently work fine, but trying to re-install may not be possible due to the fact that they were supplied on diskettes. Ideally, I’d like to build a brand new machine and clone my existing unit – is that possible? Happy to pay for software. David Sollish APC Responds: While it might be technically possible to clone your old hard drive and transfer it to your new PC, that will be fraught with difficulties,…

Secret settings and best extensions CHROME Disable the ‘Search with Google Lens’ feature Google has now integrated its AI-powered tool Google Lens with Chrome. This lets you search for information about content on a web page – including text, images and videos – without typing anything. Instead you use Google Lens to capture a screenshot of selected content, and it displays ‘visual matches’ from across the web in the browser’s sidebar. It’s potentially useful but Google’s implementation of the feature seems heavy-handed. A ‘Search with Google Lens’ option now appears in Chrome’s address bar, its main (three-dot) menu, the right-click menu and even in the ‘Find on page’ box (1 in our screenshot below) that opens when you press the Ctrl+F keyboard shortcut. You’ll probably find all this annoying if…

PRICE $26.50 PLATFORM PC, Mac WEB tinyurl.com/APC541judero “Weirdness” can often feel like an affectation. Judero could have only been made by Talha Kaya and Jack King-Spooner, two independent developers who crafted a vision of the Scottish Borders entirely out of action figures and modelling clay. Judero is a game with the kind of rough edges and pleasant surprises that could only come from an artistic vision, and it’s one that will continue to stick with me. Judero casts you as the titular Judero: a rough-hewn warrior-priest clearly crafted out of Milliput and a GI Joe action figure. Judero uses real, physical models for its digital assets: full-on stop motion in its cutscenes while the gameplay uses sprites in 3D environments like the original Doom. The music is also a real…

PRICE $74.99 PLATFORM PC, PS5, XBS/X WEB tinyurl.com/APC541troop Compared to the seemingly similar Helldivers 2, Starship Troopers: Extermination is a surgically precise slapstick comedy. Extermination is a much broader, weirder, rougher affair. Extermination’s main event is its 16-player cooperative missions, in which four squads of four players work together to withstand the arachnid menace for the glory of the Federation. If the idea of building a base with 15 strangers sounds either tedious or intimidating to you, in my experience with Extermination it is neither. Bases are fully kitted out within minutes, as players work efficiently together to erect walls, place reinforced bunkers, situate ammo dumps, and station manned and automated gun turrets. Once the base is constructed (or in some missions, while the base is under construction) the arachnids…