Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2025 i APC

So what’s the connection between quantum and cryptography? Quantum computing is a tricky topic, but you can think of it like this: in a quantum computer, a single bit of data can represent both zero and one simultaneously. These magical registers are called qubits, and if you stack a lot of them together you can perform mathematical operations on millions of different values at once – and then use probabilistic analysis on the results to extract the answer you’re looking for. And the connection to code-breaking? Many mainstream cryptographic systems are asymmetric. They rely on the fact that it’s quick and easy for a computer to multiply two prime numbers together, but much more time-consuming to reverse the operation and find the prime factors of a given number. In fact,…

PRICE $327 WEB amazon.com.au The new Amazon Kindle Paperwhite Signature Edition (SE) has three clear advantages over the plain $299 Paperwhite, which has also just been updated. First, it comes with 32GB of storage rather than 16GB. Second, it supports wireless charging. And third, you aren’t hit by any ads. Add an auto-adjusting front light and there really is no good reason to consider the Paperwhite, other than Amazon often slashes its price in flash sales. Both new Paperwhites use the latest E Ink black-and-white Carta 1300 display. This doesn’t offer more sharpness than past Kindle screens, but it does increase contrast ever so slightly. That helps text stand out, making it easier to read without straining. Pictures look surprisingly good in 16 levels of grey. The visual quality is…

PRICE $1,338 WEB www.westerndigital.com We’ve done it, people; we’ve hit maximum SSD. 8TB of gloriously fast NAND flash baked into a single M.2 stick. Let’s be clear: from a purely practical perspective, it’s hard to justify a drive like this. On the one hand, yes, you can store a lot of data on it; on the other, if you did hypothetically fill up 70 percent of it, if that drive failed without a backup, you’d be in a world of hurt. It’s a lot of capacity to house on a single stick, that’s for sure. WD’s not pulling its punches. The SN850X initially launched at the tail end of 2022. However, its maximum capacity was limited to a paltry 4TB. This modern SN850X, however, is a different beast. WD’s managed…

DEVELOPER FunOS Team WEB https://funos.org LICENCE Mainly GPL Successive versions of this Ubuntu-based distro have been released since January 2024. However, its focus is on stability, so the latest versions are based on LTS (Long Term Support) releases of its parent OS. FunOS also stands out as it abhors a traditional desktop environment in favour of JWM. The developers claim this results in fast and responsive performance. We used the link on the main site to download the 1.9GB ISO from SourceForge. As we did so, we read through the release notes, which state that FunOS 24.04.1 ships with Linux kernel 6.8.0-41. This is consistent with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, as even though this kernel has theoretically reached its end of life, Canonical maintains its own patched version. The developers also pride…

Ah, Windows 11, you old devil. Microsoft’s latest iteration of its operating system line might be quite contentious these days, filled with advertising, data scraping, and enough bugs to make even a Tyranid Hive Fleet jealous, but it’s nothing if not a consistent thread throughout our custom PC building life. It represents the ultimate middle-ground OS – versatile and customisable enough to outpace the very best of MacOS, yet with more than enough compatibility and stability to give any Linux distro a run for its money. If you just want to get an install up and running quickly, tailored just how you like it, and compatible with 99.9 percent of all the programs out there, then Windows is the place to be. That said, it’s not without its pitfalls. In…

There are plenty of video-editing tools out there, but DaVinci Resolve is unique in offering a comprehensive professional-grade workflow completely free of charge. It’s a well-established tool, too: the software turned 20 last year, and has been used on big-name Hollywood films including Bohemian Rhapsody, La La Land and Spectre. If you’ve ever used another non-linear video-editing suite, such as Premiere Pro or Apple’s Final Cut Pro, you should have no problem getting started with DaVinci Resolve, as it uses industry-standard tools and workflows. If you’re coming from a simpler tool such as Windows Movie Maker or iMovie, the interface might seem daunting at first, but don’t be put off. Spend an hour or two exploring what DaVinci Resolve has to offer and you’ll soon start to feel at home…

The games we play PRICE $109.95 PLATFORM PC, WEB flightsimulator.com Presenting the entire Earth in even greater fidelity than its 2020 predecessor, it’s hard to overstate what a remarkable technical accomplishment Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 represents. The aircraft and cockpits are astoundingly detailed, both visually and in how they function. The physics of flight are delightfully authentic, and while it has its quirks, no one has ever even tried to include our entire planet in a game with such fine-grain detail. Microsoft has identified three types of players Flight Simulator aims to cater to: hardcore simmers who want the most realistic experience, gamers who want to earn rewards for completing challenges, and sightseers who want to visit cool world landmarks. While I’d say the simmers and sight-seers are well served,…

Old games, new perspectives RELEASE 2005 DEVELOPER Infinity Ward PUBLISHER Activision LINK callofduty.com It’s 2005 and I’m strapped into the back of a truck, driving once more into a North African town in the level The End of the Beginning in the demo for Call of Duty 2. Ahead, El Daba is masked by desert haze and a grave instrumental underscores the nervous energy of boys from the 7th Armoured Division. Suddenly fighter planes are swooping above, the tank ahead explodes along with the Tommies who were riding it, and your driver swerves to avoid the wreckage as it chugs smoke over the landscape. This is the kind of non-interactive, bombastic spectacle which would define the series – not always to its credit. But here, as I replayed the demo…

B&O Beoplay Eleven Looking for an even more stylish alternative to Apple’s AirPods? Give these wireless earbuds from Danish audio makers Bang & Olufsen a try. Available in Natural Aluminium and Copper Tone finishes, they boast an AirPods Pro-like in-ear design with Active Noise Cancelling (ANC) to keep unwanted sounds out and great sounds in. Equipped with six microphones, the Beoplay Eleven include both Wind Guard (to reduce ambient wind noise) and Transparency modes (to let some sounds in), as well as Bluetooth multipoint so you can seamlessly switch between devices without missing a beat. Water- and dust-proof to IP57 and made from aluminium and toughened glass, the earbuds can last for up to six hours between recharges (with ANC on) with an additional 14 hours provided by the case.…

PRICE $699 WEB asus.com The Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 shows how much value ChromeOS devices can pack into a budget-friendly package, if priced well. Built around Google’s Chromebook Plus initiative, this laptop aims to challenge entry-level Windows devices by delivering reliable performance, robust features, and unique design elements. In other words, an everyday laptop or even work from home machine that’s affordable, but also actually nice to use. Under the hood, the older but decent Intel Core i3-1215U (as tested) or i5-1235U CPU is good enough to ensure smooth multitasking, while the 8GB of LPDDR5 memory is sufficient for light to moderate workloads like streaming, document editing, and running Android apps. The CX34 is sold with a 128GB, 256GB or 512GB SSD – though only the latter is a full…

PRICE $699 WEB www.dell.com The Alienware 27 AW2725QF tricked me. When I pulled it out of the box and set it up, I originally assumed that it was an OLED monitor, down to its impressive matte screen and handling of darkness, forgetting that it was instead an IPS screen. OLED is the direction many monitor makers are heading in, but the AW2725QF reserves a space for graphics and competitive game lovers who don’t want to spend too much. You fooled me, Dell! The AW2725QF fills the niche of wanting a high-end monitor that sheds the high cost of OLED, ditches the curved display and doesn’t bother with ultrawide proportions. For gamers looking to make their gameplay as beautiful as possible, the 3840 x 2160 resolution supports up to a 180Hz…

PRICE $649 WEB amazon.com.au We need to address the obvious: the Amazon Kindle Scribe now costs more than an iPad. It’s also almost twice the price of the original 2022 Scribe. But don’t turn the page on this note-taking wonder just yet, because there are genuinely strong reasons to buy it. It’s not just a little better than its predecessor, it’s a whole new level of better. This is no longer a big e-reader with doodling features tucked away. This is a fully fledged writing tablet, and it does some things better than any other writing tablet I’ve seen. The improvements are all down to AI. But don’t be put off by the buzzword: it’s so good that I almost wish Amazon hadn’t told me the Scribe uses AI. I…

NEEDS Windows 10 or 11 , macOS, Linux, Android or iOS WEB https://localsend.org Sharing photos, videos, documents and other files between your PC and phone usually involves either sending them as email attachments or uploading them to an online-storage service. LocalSend offers a much easier solution by letting you share files directly across your Wi-Fi network, without using an intermediary service. It works in the same way as Apple’s AirDrop feature and Google’s Quick Share, but is cross-platform, which means it works across Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS devices. LocalSend is completely free to use and you don’t even need to sign up for an account. Simply download the Windows program from https://localsend.org/download, and install the LocalSend app for Android (tinyurl.com/APC542local) or iOS (tinyurl.com/APC542localio) on your phone. Provided the…

PRICE $499.99 NEEDS macOS 14.6 or later WEB apple.com/au Back in June of 2011, Apple’s professional non-linear editor (NLE) Final Cut Pro became Final Cut Pro X. Over the following decade, Final Cut Pro removed the X from its title, but its toolset evolved to become a more useful resource for professional video editors. The Final Cut Pro 11 release deserves its full new version number as it boasts much more than a few tweaks to existing tools. As you’d expect with a new Apple product, Apple Intelligence has been used to give Final Cut Pro 11 a big upgrade – speeding up tedious tasks with smart artificial intelligence (AI) powered tools. “The new Magnetic Mask tool is outstanding. Simply click on a person (or drag an effect on to…

YOU’LL NEED • Lossless Scaling ($10.25 on Steam)• Games A lot of digital ink has been spent recently on extolling the virtues of resolution upscaling in games. This new technology allows games to run in a lower resolution internally, before being upscaled to a higher pixel density with apparently no effect on performance. Of course, there’s always a cost, and that’s why upscaling features are often gated behind hardware upgrades. If you want the latest version of Nvidia’s DLSS, which includes frame generation to boost frame rates as well as resolution, you’ll need a GeForce RTX 4000-series card. The same thing will almost certainly happen when the 5000 series is released. There is, however, a software solution that can allow upscaling features to run on unsupported hardware, and it’s on…

CHROME Customise Chrome with colourful new themes At the start of 2024, Google added an AI option to Chrome that lets you create your own themes for the browser by specifying a subject, mood, visual style and colour. Sadly – like several other new AI tools in Chrome – as we reach the end of the year it’s still not available anywhere outside the US. Google has, however, added a new set of (non-AI) themes that let you customise Chrome with colourful designs. Created by “rising artists”, these decorate the browser’s ‘New tab’ page and toolbars to add a bit of variety and make it look more vibrant and interesting. To apply the new themes, click the Customise Chrome button in the bottom-right corner of a ‘New tab’ page, then…

PRICE $102.50 PLATFORM PC, PS5 WEB tinyurl.com/APC542hill This modern remake of that legendary tale gets off to a great start, offering an extensive range of graphical settings and accessibility options. It doesn’t take long to tweak the game into a smoothly running ray-traced beauty, or to adjust the controls and their behaviour so they’re just the way I like them. Those horrors look impressively familiar, even decades removed from the game’s PlayStation 2 debut. The rust-covered hellscapes, the signage, the glistening sacks of flesh scuttling past locked-up homes tumbling into the abyss – it’s easy to believe Silent Hill 2 always looked this good, but that illusion takes a lot of hard work. The remake’s treatment of the series’ signature fog is just as remarkable. It seems to roll over…

PRICE 102.50 PLATFORM PC, XBS/X WEB www.stalker2.com It might be shinier and it might have gamepad support, but STALKER 2 is still STALKER down to its bones, that unique and unreplicable mixture of FPS, survival horror and immersive sim. Whether X-Ray or UE5, the game’s ambition still strains against the seams of its engine. It’s still filled with systems – factions, artefacts, anomalies, a world filled with people going about their business and the staccato thuk-thuk of Eastern Bloc weaponry – that at times push the whole thing to breaking point and beyond it. It’s excellent, and undoubtedly my personal game of the year, though there were errors, crashes, progress-halting bugs and at-times hilarious glitches in animation and AI, plus minor stuttering that I just came to accept as the…

Inspirational stories from computing’s long-distant past In the late 1980s, Apple embarked on one of its most ambitious software projects: the creation of a next-generation operating system, codenamed Pink. Presented on a pink index card (hence the name), it was the brainchild of a small group of Apple engineers who believed the Mac needed memory protection to safeguard users’ work in the event of a system crash. This innovation also helped to pave the way for an alliance with IBM that had the potential to revolutionise computing forever. Around 1988, the Mac was experiencing a period of flux. Launched in January 1984, it had initially achieved success but most of the computer’s original team members, including Steve Jobs, had dispersed and cracks were beginning to appear. While improvements had been…

Ridiculously fast response times, per-pixel lighting, stupendous HDR performance, almost infinite viewing angles – OLED displays have everything. They’re now available in a multitude of form factors, and they’re getting cheaper. Okay, they’re not truly cheap yet, but they are becoming more affordable. Here’s our pick of the best that are currently available. 5 ALIENWARE 34 QD-OLED AW3423DWF Alienware was pretty much first to market with an OLED gaming monitor, and the AW3423DWF was a slight revision on that early entrant. It was a bit cheaper thanks to 165Hz rather than 175Hz refresh and the removal of the Nvidia G-Sync chip. Even now, its QD-OLED panel is a ripper, and it’s been gradually getting cheaper. Today, it’s just $1,400 – a full $300 cheaper than its launch price, meaning it’s…

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 $8,999 WEB au.msi.com The MSI Titan 18 HX is a laptop for those who demand no compromises in power, performance, and luxury. Designed as a true desktop replacement, this 18in behemoth offers cutting-edge specs and features tailored to extreme gamers and perhaps even creative professionals. However, with prices in Australia starting from around $7,000 depending on spec, it’s far from accessible for most users. MSI’s flagship packs an Intel Core i9-14900HX processor, an Nvidia RTX 4090 (or 4080) GPU, 16GB to 128GB of DDR5 RAM across 4 slots, plus as much as 4TB of SSD storage in dual M.2 slots – pushing the boundaries between gaming laptops and desktops. Its 4K Mini LED display (3840 x 2400) delivers excellent visuals, with a 120Hz refresh rate, HDR1000 certification, and top-notch…

PRICE $619 (CP1350); $699 (CP1600) WEB cyberpowersystems.com Some of us never experience power blackouts – the lucky ones that live in apartments with back up generators, mostly, but for most people – especially those in areas that are vulnerable to blackouts like many rural areas – a UPS is essential. Whether you have it active at all times to protect critical work, or just keep it stored and ready to go for unexpected emergencies, a decent UPS brings peace of mind and protection. Expectations need to be reasonable for how you use a UPS at home. A connected PC drawing 600w for example will be UPS-powered for just five minutes, which may sound paltry, but it’s enough to save your work, or win your gaming tournament if you’re lucky. The…

PRICE $169 WEB raspberry.piaustralia.com.au When the Raspberry Pi 400 was released, the world was in the grip of Covid-19 and chip shortages meant that stocks of common electronics were in short supply. That includes the Raspberry Pi 4. This made the idea of a computer in a keyboard all the more enticing, especially as it invoked nostalgia for anyone who used Commodore or Sinclair machines in the 1980s. First impressions “It’s just a keyboard, right?” is what I thought when I received the Raspberry Pi 400 out of the blue in 2020. For the 400 looks like the official Raspberry Pi keyboard, but while the Raspberry Pi 500 retains a similar form factor, the colour scheme favours all white instead of raspberry red and white used in the 400. All…

PRICE $362 WEB corsair.com It feels like yesterday that the first PCIe 5.0 SSDs were launching into the public arena. All of them were based on the same hardware setup. Each featured Micron 232-layer TLC NAND, and each packed that with a Phison E26 controller. On paper they were beasts; 10GB sequentials and high random 4K performance, but boy were they hot. Out of the gate, almost all of the drives had some form of active cooling solution built into them; tiny fans spinning around at ungodly RPMs in an attempt to pull that heat away from the NAND underneath. We’ve come a long way since then, and with multiple generations of the tech finally hitting center stage, the bigger manufacturers are starting to produce custom SSD designs on the…

PRICE $299.99 NEEDS macOS 14.4 or later WEB apple.com/au Logic Pro is one of the world’s most popular digital audio workstations (DAWs), and it’s also one of the world’s best software deals: we bought a copy in 2007 and that’s meant 17 years of free upgrades, both major and minor. The upgrade builds on the very solid foundations of Logic Pro 11 and adds Quantec Room Simulator, Plug-in Search (a big time saver), and a host of improvements that’ll feel very welcome to serious Logic users. Those improvements include the much-wanted ability to re-order the channel strips in your mixer; the ability to quickly share your mix to Voice Memos for easy previewing on iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch; easier plug-in removal; and a new sound pack called Modular Melodies…

It’s remarkable to think that a decade after its release, Windows 10 will enter 2025 as by far and away the most used version of Windows. In some ways, it’s a cause for a celebration. It shows that the majority of people still find Windows 10 suitably equipped for their computing needs and see no compelling reason to add to the mountains of e-waste by upgrading their computer. A win for the environment. However, Microsoft is preparing to call time on Windows 10, with the operating system reaching end of support later this year. That will give consumers and businesses a decision to make. Do they continue to cling to their Windows 10 hardware, grudgingly paying Microsoft for extended support? Do they upgrade to Windows 11 and, if so, which…

AI image generation I’ve started using Adobe’s Firefly AI image generation system (https://firefly.adobe.com) to produce photo-realistic images to my specifications. However, despite my best efforts, I frequently struggle to provide a prompt that will deliver an image suitable for my needs. What tips can you offer for improving the output that Firefly produces? Marcus Lyles APC Responds: While AI image generation is still relatively new, it’s capable of some stunning results – except when you start out using it, when you find yourself never quite able to capture what you’re looking for. It reminds us of the early days of AI-powered image colourisation, when early training models relied on humans to evaluate their work. Because the engineers involved couldn’t properly articulate their feedback, these models kept favoring ‘safe’ colours like…

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to use Apple’s Clean Up tool and access extensions YOU’LL NEED macOS 15.1 or later, Pixelmator Pro/ Adobe Photoshop optional Apple Intelligence is finally here – and that means Photos now has added image-editing superpowers, thanks to the new AI-assisted Clean Up tool. In older versions of Photos for Mac, you could try using the Retouch tool to replace unwanted spots or blemishes, but it struggled to remove larger objects without leaving smudged or blurry pixels. And there was no Retouch tool in the iOS version of Photos. The new AI-powered Clean Up tool does a much better job of replacing unwanted objects (such as a distracting background photo bomber) to create a cleaner shot. We’re looking at Clean Up on…

PRICE $74.87 PLATFORM PC, PS4/5, XBS/X WEB tinyurl.com/APC542slitt From the creator of Silent Hill and Forbidden Siren comes a game that spits in the eye of survival horror. Slitterhead is a bloody ridiculous action slaughterhouse. You play a mysterious floating entity with no memories (of course) who can possess almost any NPC in the game. You spend your initial moments bouncing between bodies until someone down a dark alley greets you with their head exploding, revealing your first Slitterhead. Luckily, you can fight back with any NPC you possess, and you’re encouraged to constantly hop between civilians with a brief damage bonus each time you do. But if you die three times before escaping your host body, it’s game over. Slitterhead is no open world game, but its large NPC-packed…