Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2016 i PCWorld

A WINDOWS 7 PC running Skylake: If this is your dream, you’ll have over 100 systems to choose from in the list of PCs (go.pcworld.com/win7skylake) from Dell, HP, Lenovo, and NEC that Microsoft recently published. It’s all part of a plan (go.pcworld.com/upgradewin10) Microsoft outlined to push customers to Windows 10 through a list of modern PCs that can be configured with either Windows 7 or Windows 8.1. But there’s a catch: OS support for the new systems runs out on July 17, 2017, when the systems must be migrated over to Windows 10. Meanwhile, customers who buy PCs using last-generation silicon, such as Intel’s Broadwell chips, will receive a longer leash: support until 2020 for Windows 7 and 2023 for Windows 8.1. This staggered support plan has irritated a vocal…

AFTER MONTHS OF testing, rumors, and general user anxiety, Twitter is now employing an algorithm that displays some Tweets out of chronological order. The feature, known as “Show me the best Tweets first” (go.pcworld.com/showbesttweets), gathers up older tweets that Twitter thinks you might have liked seeing, based on “engagement and other factors,” and pushes them to the top of the Timeline. Below this cluster of Tweets, users will still see their Timelines in reverse chronological order, and refreshing the Timeline will instantly make the algorithmic Tweets disappear. On some level, it’s a prioritized version of the “While you were away” (go.pcworld.com/awaytweets) feature that Twitter introduced a year ago. Twitter has been testing the algorithmic Timeline (go.pcworld.com/algorithmicttime) since December, and has been talking about it for much longer (go.pcworld.com/newtwittertime). In a…

INDEPENDENT ANTIVIRUS TESTING lab AV-Comparatives works hard all year testing AV suites to let consumers know what to expect from the major service providers. The Austria-based organization just released its 2015 report (go.pcworld.com/av2015) rating 21 major security suites for Windows, with Kaspersky Lab taking the award for product of the year. Kaspersky won top honors for having the best overall performance across a variety of tests such as real-time protection, file detection, and malware removal. Although Kasperksy won the top spot, it actually tied with Bitdefender—but AV-Comparatives' rules against awarding a company product of the year two years in a row bumped the 2014 winner to second place. This is something of a trend for AV-Comparatives, as the 2013 product of the year award went to Kaspersky Lab, which is…

THE ACT OF CONNECTING Lenovo’s Thinkpad Stack (go.pcworld.com/thinkpadstack) peripherals, one atop the other, each one clicking into place via magnetic couplers, is very satisfying. Maybe I’m easy to please, but it’s a pleasant tactile sensation. It’s also a clever concept—handsome, stackable peripherals that tear down into miniature bricks that are super easy to store and travel with. With such a winning design idea, you’d think nailing the particulars would be easy. But as they say, the devil is in the details, and my satisfaction with the Stack was short-lived. Setting it up The Stack system consists of four modules, identical in their measurements at three inches wide and just under six inches long. Thickness varies from about a half inch to a full inch, depending on function. Said functions are…

IT’S A GOOD day for fans of open-source software. The Document Foundation is releasing LibreOffice 5.1 (libreoffice.org) for Windows, Linux, and Mac. On tap are reorganized menus, integrated support for remote servers like Microsoft SharePoint (go.pcworld.com/sharepoint) and Google Drive, improved compatibility with Microsoft Office documents, and too many smaller improvements to count. LibreOffice 101 LibreOffice is the product of more than 1,000 developers, most of whom are volunteers, and has an estimated 100 million users worldwide. Born in 2010 as a fork of OpenOffice, LibreOffice has taken the lead and left its progenitor in the dust (go.pcworld.com/uselibre). In keeping with the Document Foundation’s time-based release schedule, this latest release comes six months after LibreOffice 5.0 (go.pcworld.com/libre5)—and will be followed by another release in six months’ time. Make no mistake: If…

Google Drive’s austere interface can trick you into thinking what you see is all you get. But it’s actually packed with powerful productivity features (go.pcworld.com/5drivetricks) that aren’t immediately apparent (go.pcworld.com/5drivetips). And we’ve gone back to uncover even more. Here are five you probably aren’t using, but should be. DRAG-AND-DROP FILES 1 Normally when you want to upload a file to Google Drive, you go hit the big red New button, select File Upload, and then navigate the folders on your computer to grab the file you need. Here’s a simpler way: Just drag the file(s) from Windows Explorer or the MacOS Finder into your Google Drive file list. Google’s drag-and-drop icon will appear and you’ll see a progress bar showing you the upload status. BOOKMARK ‘QUICK CREATION’ LINKS 2 Here’s…

NOT ALL DOCUMENTS and spreadsheets are created equal. Some require finicky formatting, others have platform compatibility issues, and many are just plain long and unruly. When faced with these more problematic scenarios, add-ons (go.pcworld.com/gdocsaddons) for Google Docs and Sheets can be your greatest ally. Here are five that solve some common productivity challenges. Consistency Checker Those of us who work in publishing have the luxury of proofreaders. For everyone else, there is Consistency Checker (go.pcworld.com/ConsistencyChecker). This add-on scans your document for inconsistent hyphenation (email and e-mail), spellings, and abbreviations. It also looks for numerals in the middle of sentences. Once errors are found, you correct them using Doc’s Find And Replace feature. Consistency Checker is ideal for contracts, reports, and other multipage documents where maintaining consistency is a challenge. Translate…

Watch the video at go.pcworld.com/cleanyourphone How to properly clean and sanitize your smartphone Do you have any idea how gross your phone is? Back in 2011, it was discovered that 92 percent of phones have residual bacteria living on them. It sounds frightening, but it’s reality. And frankly, I’m embarrassed to admit that my phone is usually covered in nasty finger grease. Here are a few tips on how to clean your smartphone when it starts looking a little grimy.…

THE COMPUTING INDUSTRY’ betting big on the coming virtual reality revolution, but pushing headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive out to the masses isn’t as easy as you may think. Running them requires some pretty beefy PC rigs, and diving into nitty-gritty CPU and GPU specs—sadly—isn’t most people’s forte. That’s where VR certification programs that guarantee VR compatibility come into play. Oculus revealed the first batch of “Oculus Ready” PCs from Asus, Alienware, and Dell, complete with discounts if you buy them bundled with the Rift. The bundles start at $1,500—the exact price Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe suggested months ago (go.pcworld.com/oculuscost), not-so-coincidentally—and only go up from there, topping out at a whopping $3,150 for a blinged-out Alienware Area 51 (go.pcworld.com/alienwarea51) with an Intel Core i7-5820K, a GeForce GTX…

In the U.S., the recall is only for tablets sold before March 2015. THE SURFACE PRO 4 may reign supreme but news about the original Surface Pro and its descendants is heating up. Microsoft recently announced a voluntary recall for the AC power cords sold with the Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, and Surface Pro 3. The cords can apparently overheat if they are “wound too tightly, twisted, or pinched for an extended period of time,” a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to ZDNet. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to ZDNet that in the U.S. the recall would only be for tablets sold before March 2015. The Surface Pro 4 was released in October and is not affected by the recall. It’s not clear how many people are affected by the recall. Microsoft…

AT FIRST GLANCE, MOST WOULD DISMISS Dell’s 2016 refresh of the XPS 13 (go.pcworld.com/xps13) as minor at best. If you dig into the details, though, the upgrade to arguably the best ultrabook of last year is a worthy one. The highlights are the move from the 5th-gen Broadwell Intel chip to a 6th-gen Skylake chip and the inclusion of a rather cool USB-C implementation that we’ll get into later, but there’s a whole lot more here. If you didn’t catch our review of the XPS 13 (go.pcworld.com/XPS13rev) last year, I can sum it up as: great performance, reasonably priced, good build quality, and the smallest laptop in its class with a 13-inch screen. I mean, for a 13-inch laptop, this thing is freaking small. Its footprint clearly puts it in…

OFTENTIMES, SOLID IS perceived as a boring adjective. (Unless of course, you’re talking about the ground you’re standing on in a liquefaction zone. During an earthquake.) But boring or not, solid as it pertains to the overall performance of Transcend’s Solid State Drive 370 (go.pcworld.com/ssd370w) has me doing a happy dance. Why would a midrange drive and mundane modifier invoke such delight? Too much time spent testing TLC SSDs that slow to hard drive speeds when writing large amounts of data, that’s why. When I found out that the SSD370 is available at the same price or less than those standing-on-shaky-ground TLC newbies, my dance went up-tempo into a very energetic jig. Design and price The SSD370 is a 2.5-inch, 7mm SATA 6Gbps drive available in 128GB to 1TB capacities…

I WAS READY to read out Hitman’s death warrant. “Here lies Agent 47. Alas, he went episodic.” It’s not that I have anything against episodic games in theory, but it seemed like yet another sign of troubled development on a game that’s been…well, troubled. Especially living in the specter of much-maligned Hitman: Absolution. (And, to some extent, that abysmal Hitman: Agent 47 movie that came out last summer.) But after a few hours of hands-on time, I’ve changed my mind. Don’t get me wrong: Hitman could still end in tragedy. I’ve only played the opening bit—a.k.a. the most-polished bit, the bit that is supposed to release in March. After that point, who knows? Square/IO Interactive have promised a bunch of content in the pipeline, including new maps and missions, but…

Windows 10’s deep stash (go.pcworld.com/win10tips) of carrots (go.pcworld.com/win10features) lured a record-breaking number of users to the operating system when it launched. But now that adoption’s slowing down, Microsoft’s breaking out the sticks in its quest to shift 1 billion users (go.pcworld.com/1billionusers) to Windows 10 by July 2018. Microsoft wielded the latest stick on January 15, when it declared that buyers of Intel’s new Skylake processors have to upgrade to Windows 10 in the next 18 months, or forgo all but the most critical security patches—and those will be available to Windows 7 and 8.1 users only if said patches don’t “risk the reliability or compatibility” on non-Skylake systems. Future processors from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm will only be officially supported by Windows 10, not 7 or 8. That’s a bombshell,…

GOT A GAME in your Steam library that you no longer play and just want gone? Maybe you bought something that turned out to be awful and you just don’t want to see it ever again. No problem: You can now easily remove games from your Steam library for good. The news comes via user “Enter the Dragon Punch” on the NeoGAF (go.pcworld.com/neogafcomment) forums, who came across the new perma-delete feature while visiting Steam’s tech support section. The newfound ability to permanently delete a game is a vast improvement on the old state of affairs, as PCGamer notes (go.pcworld.com/steampcgamer), which required you to get in touch with Steam’s support team. How to permanently remove games from your library Here’s how to do the deed. Visit the Steam support site (go.pcworld.com/steamsupport),…

THE CHEAP OVERCLOCKING party is over. An upcoming microcode update from Intel will close the door on a loophole that let users goose Skylake CPUs that weren’t meant to be overclocked. The company recently confirmed to PCWorld that an update would “align” the CPUs in question. “Intel regularly issues updates for our processors which our partners voluntarily incorporate into their BIOS,” an Intel spokesman said. “The latest update provided to partners includes, among other things, code that aligns with the position that we do not recommend overclocking processors that have not been designed to do so. Additionally, Intel does not warranty the operation of the processor beyond its specifications.” That’s basically a kinder way of saying: “You shouldn’t be overclocking these CPUs, so stop it.” Why this matters: Since December…

LOOK ON THE bright side! There’s one good thing that comes out of all those website breaches every year: Security researchers get to comb through all the lists of usernames and passwords to remind us just how bad most of our passwords are. We may be well into 2016, but it’s not too late to heed the lessons password-management company SplashData conveys through its list of the 25 worst passwords of 2015. SplashData’s annual roundup of the worst passwords of 2015 is based on more than 2 million passwords that leaked online during that year. One trend the company found in 2015 is that while users are coming up with longer passwords (that’s good), they are simple and not random (that’s bad). Two examples the company points to are 1234567890…

LAST YEAR WE declared the Asus ZenBook UX305 (go.pcworld.com/ZenBookUX305) the best budget ultrabook of 2015, for delivering performance and quality that belied its price. It’s no surprise Asus has barely altered the blueprint for the 2016 model. The most notable difference is the CPU. The previous model’s Broadwell-based Core M-5Y10 is now replaced by Intel’s Skylake Core m3-6Y30 chip. Other than that, there’s little detectable difference. That means while the previous model’s strengths remain, so do its weaknesses. As before, the 13.3-inch, 1920-by-1080 IPS screen is merely average. There’s still no keyboard backlighting, and the trackpad, while adequate, has an unusual bounce to it. Also, in the light of 2016, it would be nice to see USB-C on the UX305 for charging—and as a replacement for the funky micro-HDMI port.…

QUANTUM DOTS, NANOCRYSTAL, magic diodes. Whatever you want to call them, these tiny entities are putting the color back into LCD displays. Shine a backlight at them and they re-emit a very pure color strictly in correlation to their size: smaller for blue, larger for red, etc. We’re talking nanometers here, one ten-thousandth the width of a human hair. Philips is here with its new FHD (1080) 276E display (go.pcworld.com/276Edisplay) as proof that filtering light with quantum dots (go.pcworld.com/quantum) enhances color. As you might guess from the name, it’s a 27-incher, and the 6 most likely represents its 60Hz refresh rate. E? Extra-special. Mostly. Color, color, color If it’s been a while since you rocked a CRT or CCFL-backlit LCD, you probably don’t even realize how subdued the colors in…

RAIZZA REYES ASKED ABOUT using a SATA/USB adapter to recover files from an unbootable PC. The right adapter might let you recover your files, but there’s no guarantee. A lot of it depends on the physical condition of the drive and the way your files are stored on it. But first, a reprimand. If you backed up your files daily, you wouldn’t have this problem. You could just restore the files from your backup. It really isn’t difficult (go.pcworld.com/restorefiles). Okay, let’s get on with your problem. A SATA/USB adapter temporarily turns an internal drive into an external one. You remove the drive from the computer, plug the SATA end of the adapter into your drive, and then plug the USB end into another computer. Windows—or whatever operating system the computer…

YOU HAVEN’T CUSTOMIZED the bejesus out of Windows 10’s Start menu unless you’ve done deep linking. Sure, you’ve rearranged the left side (go.pcworld.com/win10left) of Windows 10’s Start menu, gotten your tiles just the way you like them on the right (go.pcworld.com/win10right), and even added some website shortcuts (go.pcworld.com/win10website) to the mix. But with deep linking, you can pin specific pages from within a Windows Store app to your Start menu. Say you’re reading an ebook with the Kindle for Windows 10 app. You can pin the book itself to your Start menu instead of the entire Kindle app. That way you can always jump right back into your book even if the last time you closed the Kindle app you were looking at something else. Pretty cool, right? Here…

Sharon Hanan wants to know what to do about her husband’s PC. A power outage left it unusable. Electricity doesn’t always behave itself. Sometimes a power surge can fry a piece of your computer, rendering it useless. A surge protector significantly reduces the risk, but it’s still a possibility. And yes, a power outage often ends with a power surge. Should an electrical disaster leave your PC useless, you’ll want to protect your data, and then figure out what’s damaged. It’s easier and cheaper to replace a power supply than a whole computer. If you don’t have a backup of your data (and you should [go.pcworld.com/easybackups]), recovering your library files is your first priority. See my instructions on recovering files (go.pcworld.com/recoverfiles) from a dead PC (you can probably skip…