Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2023 i APC

Oh the ups and downs of the Dramatown we live in online. Did you jump straight into Threads and make yourself an account the day it was available? I sure did. I’m not much of a social media poster, as anyone that’s stumbled upon my long dormant Twitter (correction: 'X'...) account would know, but still I went in and Threaded myself up. My reasons were pretty much the same as most people’s. It was a protest against Elon Musk turning the platform into a soapbox for his increasingly disturbing personal views, playing with it and its members like a bad forum moderator on a personal power trip, enabling and encouraging extreme hate speech, and the clear downward trajectory it was all heading in. And I want it down for the…

1 LEICA M11 MONOCHROM $14,990 (body only) | leica-camera.com Admittedly, Leica’s monochrome range is niche, but if you want the best equipment for black-and-white photography, check out the series. The M11 Monochrom’s back-side illuminated (BSI) CMOS image sensor forgoes colour filters in pursuit of an unprecedented level of mono sensitivity and detail, while triple-resolution tech enables you to switch between 60, 36 and 18MP resolutions. Plus you can shoot in Raw (DNG) format as well as JPEG. The camera is unmistakenly Leica, although this model does not carry the familiar red badge. It’s light and easy to handle, yet built to the highest standards, with an all-metal body and top plate made of top-quality aluminium, a sapphire glass display and solid leather finish. If you like playing in the…

◾ $5,298 | dell.com/en-au We’ve tested a few 18-inch devices this year, and none of them have been particularly impressive to date – so we had reservations about Dell’s Alienware m18 release. Adding to this was the fact that Dell sent us a slightly abnormal configuration with a more conservative 165Hz QHD+ screen, Nvidia GeForce 4080 GPU and 1TB SSD that is paired with a massive 64GB of RAM. So the Alienware m18 was definitely something we weren’t too sure about… but our first impressions couldn’t have been more wrong. What’s most important in a supersized gaming workstation is performance and Alienware’s unique configuration performed exceptionally well in a wide range of tasks. Despite going up against Nvidia 4090 GPUs with just a 4080 inside, the Alienware was able to…

◾ $699 | Lenovo.com The bigger the screen on a monitor, the greater the resolution needs to be to keep it looking sharp. Standard 1080p screens can start to look blocky if they are larger than 30 inches, because the pixels have to be bigger to fill the increased surface area. Taking the necessary leap to 4K resolution can be expensive, but this 32in 4K screen from Lenovo is one of the best-value models we’ve seen to date. It has a resolution of 3840x2160 pixels, which provides a pixel density of 140dpi. The stand is relatively basic, with movement limited to forward and backward tilting. There’s no height adjustment or side-to-side rotation. There is a generous selection of ports. For extra monitors there’s both an HDMI port and a DisplayPort,…

◾ $449 | www.mobvoi.com The TicWatch Pro 5 marks a debut for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon W5+ G1 chip, and it promises over three days of battery life. With a rugged design, could this be Android’s answer to the Apple Watch Ultra? The TicWatch Pro 5 certainly makes a fine first impression. Its aluminium casing is finished in gunmetal grey with a subtle ridged pattern on the bezel’s outer edges that sends all the right signals in terms of quality. It’s chunky, standing 12mm proud from your wrist, but during long walks, runs and numerous tennis matches it never felt intrusive. It also boasts full MIL-STD-810H certification (as opposed to passing a selection of hand-picked tests), along with 5 ATM water resistance. It’s a great choice for open-water swimming. This 1.43in AMOLED…

Licence GNU GPLv2 | http://tinycorelinux.net Your DVD player doesn’t need to print. Your thermostat doesn’t need to browse the web. The Core project is here to provide you a base to build on, one that includes nothing unnecessary.” So it is written on the back of Into the Core by the creators of Tiny Core Linux. If this isn’t enough of a giveaway, the underlying concept behind this original distro is to let you build your operating system your way. This stripped-down approach is taken seriously – Tiny Core doesn’t even come bundled with a web browser or word processor but you can install them easily enough using one of the few built-in apps. Instead of installing programs into the system file space, Tiny Core uses program ‘extensions’ that are…

PART 3 OF 5 Don’t miss next issue, subscribe on page 22! Jack Tramiel was just ten years old when the Nazis marched into Poland in 1939. He and his Jewish family were soon shunted to the Lodz ghetto, west of the capital, Warsaw, and finally to the horror of Auschwitz concentration camp. But in a stroke of fate, Jack and his father were selected to work in a labour camp in Ahlem in northern Germany. His parents didn’t survive the Holocaust, but Jack was rescued by the U.S. armed forces in early-1945. During the decades to follow, this survivor would deliver the world’s most popular home computer, the Commodore 64. The Reckoning It still ranks as one of the biggest movies of all-time. However, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial also spawned…

Whether to preserve one’s sanity or just to get a sense of productivity and organisation into our lives, we’ve all created a to-do list at some point. The simplest to-do list is a text file comprising a list of tasks to be accomplished. Maybe with a due date thrown in, and perhaps liberal use of symbols, such as dashes and stars, to distinguish important and urgent tasks. The only downside to such an approach is the inability to quickly glean useful data from it, or to rearrange the list based on priority or due date. This is where to-do managers such as Dooit come in. "Dooit presents a clutter-free and intuitive interface that can be managed with Vim-like keybindings." Dooit presents a clutter-free and intuitive interface that can be managed…

◾ Release: 2005 Developer: Lionhead Studios Publisher: Electronic Arts Link: bit.ly/42YGFTP What exactly is a god game? It’s a question that I’m quite sure if you asked a hundred PC gamers almost all would answer with, “Well, it’s a game in which you play some sort of deity.” And that’s definitively true. It is a prerequisite for a game to be classed in this genre. However, with that established prerequisite crossed off the list, what exactly is a god game? What do you do? What is the story? What are gaming mechanics? How does the game look and feel? How does the player interact with the game world? And how do all these things interact together? Here the answer from those exact same hundred PC gamers would be indefinite and…

◾$5,099 | razer.com/au-en THE HOTTEST GEAR LABS TESTED The Razer Blade 14 has long been one of the best ultraportable gaming laptops around, but a close partnership with AMD and Nvidia in 2023 means the latest device is even more powerful than you might expect. "AMD has made it its business to go after the Apple M2 Pro and Max processors with the Ryzen 9 7940HS CPU and Integrated Radeon Phoenix 708M graphics." AMD has made it its business to go after the Apple M2 Pro and Max processors with the Ryzen 9 7940HS CPU and Integrated Radeon Phoenix 708M graphics, and it’s using the Blade 14 to showcase the capabilities of these new processors. The 7940HS has a traditional 8-core 16-thread structure that uses high-frequency 4.0-5.2GHz cores to achieve…

◾ $545 | www.msi.com Nvidia’s RTX 40-series range is almost complete. Apart from a probable RTX 4050 and potential RTX 4090 Ti, this GeForce RTX 4060 is shaping up to be one of the final RTX 40-series offerings. At $545, on paper the RTX 4060 looks like a good value. After the chilly reception the more expensive RTX 4060 Ti received at $699, the question is whether the RTX 4060 is good enough to appeal to gamers waiting for a worthwhile and affordable Nvidia upgrade. Nvidia is positioning the RTX 4060 as a capable 1080p card with excellent power efficiency, and support for Nvidia’s key technologies, including DLSS 3 with Frame Generation. In fact, it’s really pushing DLSS 3 as the killer feature of the RTX 4060. The MSI Ventus…

◾ $139 | www.netgear.com If you’re lucky enough to have a Wi-Fi 6E router or mesh system, but you’re using an older desktop or laptop that doesn’t support the latest networking tech, then you might not be getting the most out of your network. The Netgear Nighthawk A8000 USB dongle aims to address this – it’s a simple, affordable way to complete the Wi-Fi 6E loop. You get two main components in the box with the Netgear Nighthawk A8000. First is the Wi-Fi 6E antenna, which looks like a chunky USB drive and folds out to form an antenna. Second is a dock for this antenna, which connects to your laptop or desktop computer via a USB-A cable. You can either plug the antenna straight into your computer, or use…

◾ $619 | pg.asrock.com If you’re on a tight budget, it might seem like Ultrawide gaming monitors are way out of reach… but there’s a range of 34-inch VA panel displays out there that offer some pretty impressive specs without being totally unaffordable. Take the new PG34WQ15R2B from Asrock, for example. With an RRP of $619 for a 34-inch curved Ultrawide monitor that you can game on is an exceptionally appealing offering. If that initial set of specifications wasn’t enough, it’s also got a 3440 by 1440 pixel WQHD resolution and a snappy 165Hz refresh rate. That is fast enough to service everything but the absolute top gaming PCs so there’s plenty of room for your system to grow with this display. There’s no doubt that the VA panel isn’t…

Windows 10 or 11 | Free | github.com/roines02/glow APPS FOR ALL YOUR PLATFORMS Windows doesn’t make it easy to find information about your PC, such as the make of your processor, the amount of available storage space or which version of the operating system you’re running. Glow provides a free solution to this problem by offering a comprehensive but simply presented overview of your system. It looks and works much like Piriform’s Speccy, which has sadly been neglected since Avast bought the company in 2017. As in Speccy, Glow organises its information about different aspects of your PC’s hardware into logical categories, including Motherboard, Processor, Memory, Storage and Network. Select one of these in the menu on the left for in-depth details, such as each component’s manufacturer and model, its…

Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 | US$19.95 | Free trial: 10 days www.pdfshaper.com This program for converting PDFs comes in three versions – Free, Premium and Professional – with each offering an appropriate range of features, depending on how much you’re prepared to pay. The free edition is basic compared to other PDF software. Aside from converting PDF files to text or an image format, and vice versa, its options are limited to merging and splitting PDFs, extracting text and images, and inserting, rotating and cropping pages – which are tasks you can perform using free online tools. Pay for the Premium version of PDF Shaper and you get some useful extra features, such as the ability to protect your PDFs with a password and digital signature. You can…

◾ $89 | diablo4.blizzard.com | PC, PS4/5, XB1/S/X Diablo IV is a reboot. An unnecessary reboot, but one with a recognisable goal: to reconfigure the series’ strengths into a modern live service format that fits into the lives of players who probably have a handful of other games to play. Once you finish its campaign, its glorious depth reveals itself, but the overwhelming grind restrains the creativity in its intricate RPG systems. Today’s prevailing live service structure might seem to be a good fit for Diablo’s replayable co-op design, but it actually requires a huge structural shift. Diablo IV begins like a story-driven adventure, but it’s not until you finish the campaign that its best parts start to unfold. The six-act campaign sends you around Estuar trying to stop Lilith…

Two donkeys go into a pub. When they get in, what do they order? According to The Man’s Daddy – an oddball with a penchant for telling nonsensical jokes – the answer is chicken. And if you laughed at that, then it’s highly likely you’d have enjoyed Digitiser, an offbeat, surreal videogames magazine broadcast on Teletext in the UK between 1 January 1993 and 9 March 2003. Daddy was a pixellated character who graced Digitiser’s on-screen pages, but he wasn’t the only one. There was The Man himself (aka The Man with a Long Chin), Zombie Dave, Insincere Dave and the innuendo-laden Chester Fisho. They formed a little world of their own alongside sword-selling Britt Slaps, prankster Phoning Honey and Mr and Mrs Nude. Readers would also be treated 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. We’re also an open church in terms of platforms. We know most people aren’t wed to a single brand’s products and use a variety of devices. And, like you, APC’s journalists…

A few weeks back at Computex, Asrock unveiled a pair of interesting motherboards: The Z790 Taichi Lite and the B650E Taichi Lite. I’ve just received the Z790 version for review, which will appear in next month’s APC. The idea behind the Lite series is simple. They’re otherwise identical to their existing Z790 and B650E Taichi counterparts, but with a simpler – and importantly, cheaper aesthetic. “Why can’t we have something like a high-end board with nothing more than SATA cable or two, and a manual?” The concept behind these motherboards got me thinking a bit about the overall motherboard market. There are cheap boards, mid-priced boards and expensive boards. Fundamentally, a cheap motherboard has a basic feature set and a basic bundle. Of course, it’s the opposite for a high-end…

FUTURES WE EXPLORE THE TRENDS AND TECHNOLOGIES THAT ARE SET TO SHAPE THE FUTURE We’re in the middle of the Forth Road Bridge in England, when the automated systems controlling the bus decide they’re unhappy and ask the safety driver to take back control. He does so, without any appreciable change in the handling of the bus – which is to say, as we sped over the bridge, I noticed nothing at all. This is not only the UK’s first autonomous bus operating on a real schedule with actual customers, but, it is believed, the world’s. For the price of a bus ticket, you can hop on at Edinburgh Park on the western edge of the city and ride to Queensferry before crossing the picturesque bridge, admiring the views of…

◾ Chrome Remote Desktop Free ◾ Microsoft Remote Desktop Free (with Pro version of Windows) We spend much of our time with firewalls and other security apps trying to prevent other people from connecting to our PCs and taking control of them over the internet. However, there are times when you need to help someone out, or administer one of your computers while you’re not physically sitting in front of it. This is where Remote Desktop applications come in. Administrators of large numbers of commercial PCs will have networks set up specifically with this in mind, using commercial software packages such as TeamViewer, but there are also free options that are ideal for anyone who just wants to remote-control one Windows PC at a time. "Both allow you to remotely…

◾ $1,799 | hp.com/au-en The HP Victus 16 is a price-conscious gaming laptop that is squarely aimed at taking on the popular Acer Nitro 5, and for the most part it does a pretty good job of it. It’s worth noting up-front that the HP Victus 16 is packing a 12th generation Intel processor and a Nvidia RTX 3060 GPU, so it’s very much near the end of its current shelf life, but these components are powerful enough to be good value on a clearance sale. And at $1,799 down from $2,699 at the time of writing, it’s a pretty solid deal that’s worth considering. The most significant difference between the Victus 16 and the Nitro 5 that we covered back in APC 512 (Nov 2022) is that the GPU…

◾ $699 | www.tp-link.com/au The Deco PX50 mesh Wi-Fi kit consists of three large(ish), cylindrical nodes. They’re stylish enough to fit into an elegant home (or sharp-looking office) and feel very well built. Unusually, there’s no power brick and the electronics are on the inside. The reason for this is integrated powerline networking. We didn’t expect that. We used to rely heavily on powerline networking – back when Wi-Fi had limited performance at range. However, we churned through expensive kits regularly as performance and reliability was hit and miss and depended entirely upon the wiring situation of one’s particular premises. They were arguably made redundant by Wi-Fi 6 and mesh systems so, to see on integrated into a Wi-Fi 6 mesh system, raises an eyebrow. Set-up is relatively simple. You…

◾ $1,399.95 | sennheiser-hearing.com/en-AU The unpleasant side effects of ageing are an unavoidable consequence of living a full life, but things like hearing loss are now more manageable than ever. Many people benefit from a medical hearing aid, but this industry has been primarily focused on the noise amplification arena in its recent history, which means most solutions simply turn up the volume on everything. This can be discombobulating for anyone with hearing loss in very specific frequencies and mean they’re unlikely to get much benefit from these expensive devices. Smartphones and Active Noise Cancelling (ANC) headphones are a competitive consumer market and the race to filter out unwanted sounds during audio calls and offer more immersive entertainment means that the consumer focused space has made a lot of progress…

◾ $419 | www.razer.com/en-au If you’ve ever tried to mix audio digitally, you’ll know that it can be an absolute nightmare. It’s achievable to set up a working streaming setup with nothing more than a mic, some software, and a dream, but be prepared to have to sacrifice easy-to-use sound settings on your PC to get it done. The other option is an external mixing device, like this Razer Audio Mixer. There are many mixers on the market, and the Razer Audio Mixer is a lot like one of the most popular today, the GoXLR Mini. I’ve used both, and they share a relatively similar shape, button layout, and connectivity. They’re a match in most ways, bar software support. The Razer Audio Mixer is controllable via Razer’s Synapse app, which…

LABS Needs macOS 11 or later | $79.99 | pixelmator.com Pixelmator Pro has always positioned itself as a more user-friendly alternative to Photoshop and, since the release of version 3, that’s a more apt description than ever. In fact, while it lacks some of the Adobe app’s very advanced features that are of interest mainly to pro designers, it has some tools that Photoshop does not. Priced at $79.99 as a one-off purchase – something Adobe no longer offers – it’s remarkable value too. "Pixelmator Pro is a superb application that provides a selection of the kinds of tools you get across several of Adobe’s apps in one easy-to-use package. " The app is slick and well designed, making use of your Mac’s GPU to keep things nice and snappy.…

After a long wait, we finally have some new entries at the bottom end of both AMD and Nvidia’s latest generation of graphics card lineups. These should be their most popular cards, having ok performance while not costing an arm and a leg to obtain. Unfortunately, this generation, like the top-end cards they’re also rather disappointing from a value perspective. Even looking at just performance, they’re underwhelming. AMD’s RX 7600 merely matches the last-gen RX 6650 XT, Nvidia’s RTX 4060 is a good 18 percent faster than last gen’s RTX 3060 which sounds great, but only puts it equal to AMD’s RX 7600, and the RTX 4060 Ti comes in five percent slower than the old RTX 3070. There’s a saying that goes “There’s no such thing as a bad…

TOP TIPS TO TACKLE TECH TROUBLES Blue screen of death I recently booted into Windows, only to encounter the dreaded blue screen of death. On rebooting, the same error popped up again – something about a page fault in a non-paged error. Windows booted to a recovery screen, but I tried one last restart, and this time Windows loaded with no problems. However, Malwarebytes reported that its ransomware protection component had been switched off. Could the two be related, and should I re-enable it? Robert M Hagan "Malwarebytes reported that its ransomware protection component had been switched off." APC responds: You can find out more about any blue screen of death error with the help of a tool called WhoCrashed. Download and install the free Home edition from www.resplendence.com/whocrashed…

IT WILL TAKE15 minutes YOU WILL LEARNHow to add useful Actions to Finder YOU’LL NEEDmacOS 12 or later macOS is full of useful things, but it’s not always obvious where they are. For example, one of the really cool features in Finder is tucked away in the Ctrl-click menu under Quick Actions. Here you’ll find automations to turn photos into PDFs, to open PDFs in Markup mode and to change photos from one format to another, and you can also add your own. Creating automations used to be the job of Automator, which was brilliant but pretty intimidating to newcomers. The Shortcuts app, introduced in macOS Monterey, is much friendlier – but, as we’ll discover, it’s still more than capable of doing some clever and useful things. Quick Actions are…

JOEL BURGESS REPORTS ON THE UNUSUAL SIDE OF TECH NEWS If you’re anything like us you’re incapable of playing a game like GTA5 correctly. There’s just too many innocent pedestrians to be mowed down and that Turismo Classic is always worth a 15 minute high speed car chase. But there may be hope thanks to a haptic vest, from Spanish startup Owo, that’ll make you think twice about casually catching a bullet. The €499 vest attaches 10 high-conductivity electrodes to your skin and will shock the crap out of you when your character gets hit. We can’t say we’ve ever yearned to feel the chest crushing pressure of a Leap of Faith, but a new Assassin’s Creed edition vest will get you palpably close to the feeling of death by…