Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2023 i APC

"Finding good free apps is a tricky business now. There are so many traps, and honestly it’s hard to know what the best option is from what used to be a simple Google search." PCs have always benefitted greatly from cool free software. I think it’s fair to say we all have our ‘essentials’ list that we install after setting up a new PC. The little apps that do big things, and do them better than the OS does. Like IrfanView, which has been a personal favourite for image processing since the very early 2000s. Or LibreOffice for local docs. These are the apps I can’t do without, but it’s getting harder to find good ones you can trust anymore. That’s the point of the guide we’ve worked on this…

If you look to the history books of pioneering fields like medicine, psychology and even space exploration, you don’t have to go far to find harrowing examples of inhumane actions done in the name of science. We like to think that we’ve evolved beyond the need for these extreme experiments; opting for lighter touch solutions that take longer, but inflict far less suffering. And when it comes to experiments on human subjects, contemporary safeguards in many countries make it far less likely to be unethically treated during an experiment, but you’d probably struggle to make such a compelling case for experiments on animal subjects. A recent reminder of this came in September when Elon Musk, serial Tweeter (now X poster) and founder of brain chip startup Neuralink, replied to a…

"It wasn’t until July that a sole 7900 board, the XTX, appeared in Steam’s Hardware Survey" Spend enough time in this game and you get a feel for rumours that are very likely true. And I’m getting the sense that the latest ones suggesting AMD has ditched the high-end variants of its next-gen RDNA 4 graphics family are on the money. At first glance, this seems pretty disastrous, especially given how expensive gaming GPUs have become and how desperately we need somebody to put Nvidia under pressure. But is it? Is it actually? The bones of the story go like this. AMD has cancelled not only the top Navi 41 GPU but also Navi 42. It’s the mooted cancellation of Navi 42 that’s most worrying. Navi 41, just like Navi…

From $3,299 | apple.com/au THE HOTTEST GEAR LABS TESTED The original Mac Studio, with the first iteration of Apple processors, was an impressive device that really showed the potential of Arm chips in a permanently powered system by beating almost everything else available – so the 2023 update has high expectations to live up to. Headlining the upgrade list on this device are the new M2 processors which boast improved performance, larger memory capacities, improved bandwidth, and upgrades to the Neural Engine that translates non-native MacOS programs into RISC language and takes on the workload of AI processing tasks. Much like its predecessor the 2023 Mac Studio is a desktop PC sitting above the Mac Mini, without pushing into the specialised $10K-plus space that the Mac Pro occupies. You can…

$3,098 | dell.com/en-au The G16 is your classic performance first gaming laptop. Its 16-inch form factor is bulky and it carries a lot of thermal architecture in its 2.99kg total weight. So while it’s able to go into a sturdy backpack, it’s not exactly pleasant to commute frequently with. This additional bulk means it’s capable of running a 24-core Intel Core i9-13900HX CPU with a 55W Thermal Design Power (TDP), to really push performance. We tested a Lenovo Legion Pro 5i with very similar specs back in APC 519 and this unit lines up almost identically to that one in performance and specs, sharing the same CPU, Nvidia GeForce 4070 GPU (140W) GPU and 32GB RAM allocation. You can expect the highest levels of CPU performance available on a laptop…

$1,299 | www.tp-link.com/au TP-Link used to impress us with excellent performance and features at a low price. Then, after winning a bunch of awards, it started pushing mediocre Wi-Fi kit that cost a fortune. However, there’s something different about the XE200. It’s a two-node, mega-mesh kit that uses the Wi-Fi 6E (6GHz) channel for dedicated backhaul. History suggests that’s a winning formula. The nodes are stylish, large and feature two, 1Gbps network ports plus a rare 10Gbps port. The processor is a speedy 2.2GHz quad-core that ensures all settings and commands are responsive and that there are no internal performance bottlenecks. We powered on and downloaded the Deco app which immediately found the primary node and simply asked for a network name and password. Done. It even configured all our…

$229 | asus.com Asus’s TUF Gaming series are designed with long-term reliability and high performance in focus and are being marketed accordingly. The new 850W Gold variant of this series aligns with Intel’s ATX 3.0 design guidelines, with the 80Plus Gold certification and 10-year manufacturer’s warranty as the major highlights, and retails for a reasonable price tag. A fair bundle can be found inside the box of the TUF Gaming 850W Gold PSU. Aside from the typical AC power cable and the mounting screws, Asus also supplies several cable ties, three quality cable straps, and a thick manual in 30 languages. There is also a “certificate of reliability” that indicates which tests the capacitors and chokes of the units had to pass for Asus to use them. Most of them…

$169 (65in); $229 (85in) | nanoleaf.me Back in 2004, Philips wowed TV watchers with Ambilight, its first TV equipped with a rear-mounted light strip. The TV claimed to produce a more immersive viewing experience by splashing colours on the wall behind it to echo those on screen. While Ambilight is a lot of fun, it’s hardly essential, especially when it means having to buy a whole new television in order to take advantage of it. However, smart-lighting geniuses Nanoleaf have come up with a better way… Nanoleaf 4D takes the Philips Ambilight idea and runs with it, enabling anyone with a television to achieve a similar effect with minimal outlay. In the box, you’ll find Nanoleaf’s first addressable light strip, which comprises a string of LED lights (10 per metre)…

Needs iPadOS 16.4 or later (device with A12 Bionic chip or later) | $7.99/month, $59/year (one-month free trial) | apple.com/au Apple has been trying to convince us for a number of years that an iPad can replace a Mac for professional creative work and, in a handful of cases, like art and graphics that’s arguably been true. For music production, however, serious Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) haven’t made the leap to iPad, with the notable exception of Steinberg’s Cubasis. Perhaps in an effort to remedy this, Apple has created Logic Pro for iPad. Light years more powerful than GarageBand, it’s also not a direct port of Logic Pro for Mac. Instead, Apple has created a supremely powerful new app that will be familiar to existing users but is completely reworked…

How do you make F1 more exciting? Danny Baker had the brilliant idea of making drivers do the first lap on foot, but that’s unlikely to go down well with Lewis Hamilton and co. Instead, ahead of the 2022 season, the F1 authorities decided to use the power of cloud computing to make races more competitive. Nobody wants to spend two hours of their Sunday afternoon watching cars file round a track in a procession – least of all the millions of fans drawn in by the deftly edited highlights shown in Netflix’s Drive to Survive. So, Formula One decided to change the rules, to enforce modifications to the design of the cars that would make it easier to overtake, inducing more of those moments that make Martin Brundle’s voice…

The Raspberry Pi Pico is powered by a dual-core ARM CPU, and in this tutorial we will learn how to run two threads of MicroPython code independent of each other. The code in core 0 will wait for a user to press a button, and when they do, the code will choose a random number to emulate a D20 die roll. If the user is unsure what to do, a simple instruction will scroll across a seven-segment display, a TM1637 connected to the Raspberry Pi Pico using I2C. The second core will run a light show, designed to entice the user to try our project. The light show is powered by a stick of WS2812B RGB LEDs, commonly known by the Adafruit brand of NeoPixels. These RGB LEDs require perfect…

Educator Gary McNab vividly recalls a brief conversation he recently had with a four-year-old pupil. “I was visiting a primary school and he turned to me and said, ‘Gary, have you come from the 1980s?’” Yet the question wasn’t entirely bizarre. McNab was attending the school armed with a bunch of computers from that decade along with other machines from the 1970s to the 1990s. “I replied to him, ‘yes, I’ve come back to the future in my Sinclair C5’,” he laughed. And the response contained more than a grain of truth. “His work entails delivering workshops in schools in which he shares memories of what it was like growing up in an era when home computing was no longer a pipe dream.” McNab is no time-traveller (or at least…

We’re hearing more and more about quantum computing, and you might be starting to wonder what value it could have for your business. The answer is far from clear, because good, practical information about this new frontier is hard to come by. While the nascent technology might not be about to transform every computing task, I’ve had some conversations in the past year that suggest it’s time for businesses to start thinking about potential real-world quantum applications. That primarily means processes that involve performing analysis or computation on large data sets. For example, George Gesek, CTO at quantum specialist QMWare, gives the example of vehicle testing: when large manufacturers put their designs through the full range of product-testing procedures, they get back over 260 distinct statistics, settings, results and predictions…

I love a good computer jumble fair. You never know what you might find, and there is always the tantalising possibility of coming across something extremely rare that you have been hankering after for years. Even decades. So when I heard that the most excellent Centre For Computing History in Cambridge was going to be holding just such an event, it had to go into the diary. Upon arrival, straight away on a table I spotted something that immediately piqued my interest. A fully boxed HP 360LX Palmtop PC, complete with accessories, manuals and full documentation including the licence sheet from Microsoft for CE 2.0. Which even had the hologram sticker in place. I had one of these back when they were new, so how could I not renew the…

Scribus Free Affinity Publisher $119 (single app), $274 (universal license) First, let’s address the elephant in the room. There is one app that has come to dominate the world of desktop publishing, and that is Adobe InDesign. If you’re working for a company that uses InDesign, there’s no point having anything else. The same goes for QuarkXPress, the former leading light in the industry that has been somewhat eclipsed by the rise of Adobe’s app. It’s the same argument that has been put forward for Photoshop or Premiere Pro. If the entire workflow for your project – which involves lots of other people collaborating – is built on Adobe software, then you need Adobe software. Substituting for something else will probably cause the whole thing to collapse. However, if you’re…

From $1,199 | gigabyte.com/au Gigabyte, the company behind Aorus Gaming laptops, has updated its 15-inch G5 entry level gaming laptop to make it a solid contender for the best budget gaming laptop in 2023. There have been a few iterations of the G5 already, some of which are still on shelves today, so the current iteration has been able to keep costs down by dropping either a Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 or 4060 into the latest offering without tweaking too much else on the existing design. This strategy means that the entry level RTX 4050 G5 can be had for as little as $1,199 when on sale, making it cheaper than many devices offering last gen 3050 or even 2050 GPUs. There are a few other sacrifices required to achieve…

$5,499 | au.msi.com/Laptops MSI has partnered with car company Mercedes AMG on a customised Stealth 16 Studio A13V laptop dubbed the Stealth 16 Mercedes-AMG Motorsport A13V. The Stealth 16 Studio range is technically pitched at creative professionals since it comes with studio drivers and Windows 11 Pro, but it’s a blurry line at best since MSI offers some models with 240Hz monitors that you’d really only use if you were buying a laptop primarily (or at least partially) for gaming. Mercedes AMG is actually a good partner on this front since the consumer cars offer a premium elegance that line up with the work side of the Stealth 16 pitch, but the company’s F1 participation means it’s also capable of talking about gaming performance.The Stealth 16 is available in a…

$969 | www.sapphiretech.com AMD has itself a strong competitor in the Radeon RX 7800 XT. At its base price of $879, it made the RTX 4070 look pretty pricey, though it became less so after it received a discount. For review we have the Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7800 XT. It’s safe to say it’s faster, cooler, and quieter than base models, but it’s also more expensive. Is the price of a top-tier RX 7800 XT like the Nitro+ worth its $90 premium? The Nitro+ is built around the fully enabled Navi 32 chiplet GPU. It includes a single 5nm Graphics Compute Die and four 6nm Memory Cache Dies. It comes with 16GB of 19.5 Gbps GDDR6 memory and a 256-bit bus. That’s the kind of memory configuration we want…

$229 | zowie.benq.com Why is this no-frills looking wireless mouse so expensive? It’s all in the (minor) details. The Zowie EC2-C is often cited as being among the greatest tools for FPS pros, especially Counter-Strike. The EC3-CW is a wireless version of that respected workhorses. It’s for serious players of serious twitch-oriented competitive games. Nowadays, that is not incompatible with wireless peripherals. The question of value was on my mind as I unboxed the EC3-CW. It’s a lean beast, with no tactile grips (or “dimples”) on either side of its elegant /kind of boring matte veneer. I didn’t like this smoothness at first, but the matte finish didn’t lead to the slippage I expected, and it’s also easier to clean. Other surprising minimalist traits: There are conspicuously few areas that…

$499 | digital3d.com.au When it comes to fully featured graphics tablets, Xencelabs is on a tear right now – and it’s easy to see why. The company’s Pen Display 24 wowed us recently with its incredible build-quality and cool features. Now it’s the Xencelabs Pen Tablet Medium Bundle’s turn. And it’s great. For $499 you get a medium-sized graphic tablet (measuring 320.5x232.5x8mm), a Quick Keys remote control, two styli (the 3- Button Pen and the Thin Pen with two buttons) and a pen case, which comes with all kinds of add-ons and accessories. An equivalent Intuos Pro tablet from Wacom would cost $599 just for the tablet alone – accessories like a second thin pen and spare nibs will cost extra. The Xencelabs Medium Tablet Bundle’s pen case is, ahem,…

Like many great ideas, Peppermint OS was conceived after a night in the pub. If you’re wondering about the moniker, one of the lead developers, Kendall Weaver, also works on Linux Mint. The name itself comes from the creators’ desire to build on Mint’s success but also add web integration, hence the extra zing of ‘Peppermint’. The project has had a mixed history, previously being based on Lubuntu and incorporating elements of the LXDE desktop environment. These days, however, there are two main branches of Peppermint. One is based on the Debian fork (Devuan), while the version that forms the basis of this review is based on the most recent stable release of Debian itself (Debian 12 Bookworm). It uses the lightweight Xfce desktop environment and the inimitable Thunar file…

If you fired up Google Chrome today and the version that first launched in 2008, you’d struggle to tell them apart. The address bar runs along the top, there’s a row of bookmarks underneath, a few basic buttons to the left, tabs at the top, and that’s yer lot. Has the way we use the web really not changed in 15 years? There are alternative browser makers out there who would strongly disagree. Google pioneered the fuss-free, feature-stripped browser in 2008 and the rest of its mainstream rivals followed. But there’s a new undercurrent of “power browsers” designed to satisfy users who want more from their web browser. Browsers with built-in email clients and feed readers, browsers that separate home and work life, browsers that don’t endlessly distract you from…

Baldur’s Gate III is my dream game: the best parts of Ultima, Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Divinity: Original Sin. But it also does so much more than tap into the RPG greatest hits, finding a way to unite disparate philosophies like cinematic storytelling, unhinged sandbox mayhem and tabletop-style roleplaying. And boy is it absolutely massive, as deep as it is wide. Each of the three acts could be their own epic RPG, jam-packed with elaborate dungeons, strikingly memorable quests and unique stakes, supported by systems that offer a huge amount of player freedom. It is a game overflowing with crossroads, with every step conjuring up yet more paths trying to seduce you off the beaten track. Venture forth The opening act sees you wrestling with the…

CHIP CHAT JOEL BURGESS REPORTS ON THE UNUSUAL SIDE OF TECH NEWS A lawsuit filed in the North Carolina Superior Court in September accuses Google Maps of gross negligence, following an incident in 2022 where the software directed a driver over a bridge that had collapsed back in 2013. Philip Paxson, a 47-year-old father of two, was driving home from his daughter’s ninth birthday in Hickory, North Carolina, when he drove his Jeep Gladiator off the end of the road and into a six metre deep ravine, subsequently drowning in the river below. The lawsuit alleges Paxton was following Maps’ directions, having only recently moved to the area from Florida, down a privately owned road with no barricades in low visibility conditions. PALMER LUCKEY ANNOUNCES LETHAL AI JET FIGHTER ChatGPT…

"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." 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…

Last month Microsoft inadvertently leaked troves of internal communications related to its Xbox business, thanks to an accidental exchange of unredacted documents with the Federal Trade Commission. Its revelations are abundant, though perhaps unsurprising: the documents include references to a 2024 mid-gen refresh of the Xbox Series X and a new DualSense-inspired Xbox gamepad, to name two examples. A 2020 presentation contained in the leaks made reference to unannounced projects like Dishonored 3, Ghostwire: Tokyo 2 as well as Oblivion and Fallout 3 remasters. These should be taken with a hint of scepticism because software pipelines are hugely beholden to change: the Oblivion remaster was meant to release during fiscal year 2022, for example, but has yet to materialise or even be announced. These details are interesting, though again, it’s…

$2,196.70 | dell.com/en-au The XPS range has long been a leading professional ultra-portable, but the Plus range that debuted last year attempted to push that even further by adding a series of high end features to the base level XPS. While that made the XPS 13 Plus a pricey option last year (starting at $2,599), it’s come down a couple of hundred dollars for an entry level model this year. The 2023 XPS 13 Plus range starts with a device running a 13.4-inch FHD+ display, Intel Core i5 CPU, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for $2,398. This wasn’t the best value option at the time of writing since there was a higher specced i7-configuration for just $2,196.70. This i7-1360P model shares all the same entry specifications, but offered…

$1,199 | Samsung.com This is the smallest and most affordable of the three tablets in the new S9 series. The S9 Ultra has a 14.6in screen and costs $1,999, the S9+ has a 12.4in screen and costs $1,699, while the standard S9 we’re reviewing here has an 11in screen for $1,199. That’s even less than the last generation Tab S8 is still selling for, and even at its regular price, we have no reservations in calling it our new favourite Android tablet As you’d expect from a device at this price, the S9 is a premium product both inside and out. Without a case, the S9 is a slip of a thing at 498g and measuring a compact 254x166x5.9mm. That means you can easily hold it with one hand while…

$839 | www.sapphiretech.com With the launch of the AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT, AMD’s RDNA 3 line-up is apparently complete. For review, we have Sapphire’s RX 7700 XT Pure. Note that all RX 7700 XT cards are partner cards. The Pure is Sapphire’s mid-tier RX 7700 XT, positioned below the luxurious Nitro+ and above the base tier Pulse. At $839, the Sapphire Pure carries a price premium over the $779 price of base cards. That leaves it in a bit of a no man’s land. It’s a lot more than the RTX 4060 Ti, and less than the RTX 4070. But the main competition for the 7700 XT, and particularly premium models like the Pure, is the 7800 XT, which can be found for as little as $40 more. The…

$1,649 (256/8GB); $1,849 (512/8GB) | samsung.com If you’re not a fan of the Fold, why not try the Flip? Whichever way round you prefer your hinges, Samsung has you covered, and this fifth-generation clamshell smartphone is its most mature and practical model yet. One big advantage of the Z Flip5 over the Z Fold5 is the price – it’s a whopping $1,000 cheaper, and now comes with 256GB of storage as standard, up from the Flip4’s 128GB. There’s also a 512GB option. The expanded display isn’t all that’s new about the Galaxy Z Flip5. The other major upgrade is a new hinge, which lets the phone close up completely with no more gap – catching up with rivals such as the Motorola Razr 40 Ultra and the Oppo Find N2…

Windows 10 or 11 | tinyurl.com/APC525fix FIXWIN 11.1 System tool You can fix many problems with Windows by tweaking the registry or running special commands, but unless you know what you’re doing, you could further mess up your PC. FixWin provides one-click repairs for dozens of common issues and annoyances, in an attractive, easy-to-understand interface, and it works with both Windows 10 and 11. The program’s Welcome screen provides handy shortcuts to run the System File Checker (SFC) and DISM commands, which are often all you need to fix PC errors, as well as the option to create a system restore point before you make any changes. If these don’t help, you can explore its range of fixes, which are organised into logical categories, such as File Explorer, Internet &…

Licence GPL V2 | http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/ Every dog has its day and for the team at Fatdog, there have been many. The project started out in 2008 as a simple extension of Puppy Linux. Any experienced Linux user will tell you that Puppy’s designed to be lightweight and easy to use, but the number of customisation options and requirement to install extra software to have a workable OS make it unsuitable for beginners. Fatdog (as the name suggests) is the pup grown up. Its developers have placed emphasis on a fatter – that means more bundled apps – version of Puppy, while remaining very fast and efficient. We couldn’t see any better proof of this than when downloading one of the latest versions (814) of Fatdog, as the ISO weighed in…

The world of semiconductor manufacturing is an opaque one. Enthusiasts understand what a CPU is and what it does, but the actual steps and processes involved in their manufacture is far less understood by anyone that doesn’t hold an advanced engineering degree or two. So, when Intel invited me to visit its facilities in Penang, Malaysia to learn more about chipmaking wizardry, I was more than happy to accept. Broadly speaking, Intel’s Malaysian facilities include areas that cut and sort incoming wafers followed by assembly and installation onto substrates before they take their final forms. At all stages there are tests and more tests before they’re tested further. We were also invited to visit labs that analyse failed dies and chips, and even one that builds testing equipment for Intel…

TOP TIPS TO TACKLE TECH TROUBLES EmulationStation DS query I was intrigued by EmulationStation DS for retro gaming. I set up Batocera Linux, love the ES user interface, and I’d like to replicate that on my PC. Is it really such a hassle to set up the DS version in a standard Windows installation? Jon R Hurst APC responds: The biggest issue with the DS build of EmulationStation (ES) is that you must install and configure RetroArch, the underlying tool powering your various emulators, separately. There’s a lot of configurability beneath the hood, and it’ll take some trial and error to get things working the way you want them to. However, as a quick guide, start by downloading and installing RetroArch from www.retroarch.com – we recommend the 64-bit installer…

Release: 2000 (2012 HD) Developer: Smilebit (BitWorks HD) Publisher: Sega Link: bit.ly/43FPQIQ Jet Set Radioooooooo!” yells DJ Profesor K, as the title screen burstes into life with a remix worthy of Fatboy Slim himself. The cel-shaded action skater game with a Y2K aesthetic and a cool electronic, funk and hip-hop soundtrack – that is still dynamite to this day, might I add – is undergoing a bit of a resurgence as of late. This has all stemmed from the lead-up and launch of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, a spiritual successor that looks to build upon everything that made the original so damn engrossing. Not that Jet Set Radio needs a renaissance. The fanbase and ever-lasting admiration for Beat, Gum and the ever-growing GGs gang has prevailed for more than two decades…