Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2017 i PCWorld

Tech and trends that will affect you today and beyond. AMD'S ZEN IS finally here. In August, AMD stunned the hardware industry by showing that its Zen architecture could compete with Intel’s best. Now AMD has revealed more details about what executives call its most exciting processor in 20 years, including its brand name, its clock speed, and the five underlying “SenseMI” technologies that make the chip so efficient. What AMD has previously referred to as its Zen architecture now has a formal brand name: Ryzen, which unfortunately sounds like the title of a bargain-bin videogame. The first chip in the desktop family, code-named Summit Ridge, will be AMD’s focus for 2017. Using Handbrake and ZBrush benchmarks, AMD recently demonstrated that its 8-core Summit Ridge chip can keep up with,…

THE DAYS ARE numbered for the last remaining Galaxy Note7 holdouts. In an effort to safeguard any devices that are still in circulation, Samsung announced it will be pushing out a software update that will prevent charging, effectively bricking the beleaguered handset. In a press release, Samsung said that while it has had “overwhelming participation” in the Note7 U.S. recall program, some 7 percent of devices remain in customers’ hands. Starting Dec. 19 and continuing over the following 30 days, the company will be working with carriers to ensure any outstanding devices are rendered inoperable and returned, though it remains to be seen how smoothly the rollout will go. In a statement released shortly after Samsung’s announcement, Verizon initially said it would not be taking part in the update “because…

GOOGLE’S PARENT COMPANY does not yet have the courage to build a car with no steering wheel or pedals, preferring to put its self-driving technology into existing cars from traditional auto manufacturers. That is the conclusion of news site The Information in a report published recently citing people close to Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle project. The technology is moving closer to market, and the company no longer considers it a “moonshot,” the head of its “X” research lab Astro Teller told The Wall Street Journal in October. It’s over a year since it appointed former head of Hyundai U.S. John Krafcik to oversee its autonomous driving activities, which it began accounting for as a separate business on Jan. 1, 2016. But now, The Information said, the company is moving away from…

OH, YAHOO. It was bad enough that the company already announced a breach exposing 500 million user accounts two years after it happened. Then late one recent night Yahoo revealed that it had uncovered another unrelated hack exposing the account details of one billion users. It’s not clear how much of that is overlap, but at this point does it really matter? I don’t know about you, but I’m done. I wasn’t much of a Yahoo user to begin with but the uses I do have for the company are over. I know that’s easy for me to say. I have a single account that I only use to play fantasy football. But what about those of you who are more fully invested in Yahoo? Here’s a guide to replacing…

Google delivers much more router than you’d expect for $129, but just one Google Wifi won’t be enough for most people. Unless you live in a studio apartment, you’ll want to avail yourself of two or three of these devices so you can deploy a mesh network. The master router and a single node probably would be adequate for the 2800-square-foot home we tested in, but adding a third node delivered a significant boost to the farthest corners of the house. Google encourages this approach by offering a substantial per-unit discount when you order a three-pack for $299. The Google Wifi is a dual-band router, of course, operating on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands. Google describes it as an “AC1200 2x2 Wave 2” device, which means it supports…

ACER BOASTS THAT its Swift 7 is the “world’s thinnest notebook PC.” While technically true, that marketing angle sells only one aspect of the machine—and it’s not the most important one. PC vendors love to sell the idea of thin, and for good reason. Thin implies light, portable, and attractive. But a notebook can end up spreading outward (making it larger and more difficult to pack) or sacrificing performance in the quest to be the thinnest. The Acer Swift 7 does both. So while this $1,100 13-inch notebook (available at Amazon, go.pcworld.com/swift7amz) is slender and quiet, it’s bigger and slower than similarly priced ultrabooks. Rivals like the barely thicker HP Spectre 13.3 and smaller-but-heftier Dell XPS 13 easily outpace the Swift 7. It is a good-looking laptop, though. Measurements and…

BELIEVE IT OR not, the gamer who buys Gigabyte’s latest Brix Gaming mini-PC (go.pcworld.com/brixgaminguhd) has a lot in common with the gamer who rolls a full-sized tower stuffed with overclocked parts. Both have the same hunger for power. It’s a quest to maximize what you can get out of the space available, and given just how small this ultra-compact tower is, the Brix Gaming UHD does a pretty bang-up job. It looks good on a shelf or a desk, it isn’t too loud, and it offers better performance than a traditional gaming console (while having a much smaller footprint). That said, the Gaming UHD adds to the solid options for tiny gaming PCs rather than overthrowing the existing top dogs. Other systems might have slightly better graphics or be more…

Now that Apple’s introduced the first major update to its MacBook Pro lineup (go.pcworld.com/mbp2016lineup) in years, it’s time to square off the best of the best in Mac and PC laptops to see who currently prevails in this age-old rivalry. The contenders For this comparison I reached for the newest Surface Book (go.pcworld.com/sbooki7rv). It’s a top-of-the-line model with a Core i7-6600U, a GeForce GTX 965M, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. The updated product line varies from $2,400 to $3,300 (our model) in price. All three net you a 6th-gen Skylake dual-core Core i7 chip, and all three get you the same Performance Base with a GeForce GTX 965M. From what I can tell, the only differences are in the size of the SSD and how much RAM you…

NAVIGATING YOUR WAY around a new Android device will get a lot easier once you’ve mastered a few handy touchscreen gestures. For example, you can switch between Chrome tabs with a single swipe, while a two-finger swipe will add a whole new perspective to Google Maps. No sign of the virtual Home button? There’s a gesture that’ll bring it back. A quicker way to get to your Quick Settings When you swipe down from the top of the screen on your unlocked Android device, you’ll see a small row of buttons sitting at the top of your various notifications (or in the very top corner of the screen, on pre-Nougat handsets). These are your so-called “quick settings”—a series of one-tap buttons that’ll let you do things like turn Wi-Fi on…

EVEN AMD FANBOYS have to admit that the company's CPUs haven’t been competitive with Intel’s chips in a decade. With AMD finally unveiling its official CPU brand, Ryzen, as well as the first chip’s base clock speed, there are signs Intel might actually have a fight on its hands. Here’s every single thing we know about AMD’s Ryzen CPU so far. Your conspiracy theory? Wrong AMD shocked the PC world in August by showing its 8-core Summit Ridge CPU (featuring Zen architecture) matching the performance of an 8-core Intel chip in the open-source Blender application. The internet, of course, immediately spawned conspiracy theories that AMD “probably” used Blender because it could recompile the open-source program to run better on the Zen architecture. Wrong. PCWorld asked AMD officials if this was…

IT SURE LOOKED like Microsoft was putting MS-DOS out to pasture. Now it’s saying that the MS-DOS command prompt cmd will continue to live on. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, “Microsoft is not removing Cmd from Windows, but rather changing the default shell, launched via File Explorer and the [Win] + [X] power-user menu, from Cmd to PowerShell. Users can opt to change the default shell back to Cmd via Settings and can continue to launch whichever shell they prefer, be it Cmd, PowerShell, or Bash (if enabled) via the Start menu. The Windows Cmd shell has a long heritage and is an essential tool used by millions of businesses, users, and developers every day. It remains an integral part of Windows.” Microsoft may be making this move because, while…

APPLE TV RECEIVED a major update recently, but cord cutters aren’t its target audience. The latest version of tvOS includes a new “TV” app that pulls together videos from across dozens of other video apps, including Hulu, ABC, and Comedy Central. Think of it as a modern take on the TV guide, letting you browse through movies and TV shows without having to bounce between apps. Apple clearly sees the TV app as the interface of the future for Apple TV. But right now, it doesn’t support enough video sources, especially if you don’t have a cable TV login. No free ride With the new version of tvOS, Apple has changed the default behavior of the Siri remote. Pressing the home button now takes you straight into the TV app—from…

IN A PERFECT example of how public wireless networks can be dangerous for privacy and security, an Israeli hacker showed that he could have taken over the free Wi-Fi network of an entire city. On his way home from work one day, Amihai Neiderman, the head of research at Israeli cybersecurity firm Equus Technologies, spotted a wireless hotspot that he hadn’t seen before. What made it unusual was that it was in an area with no buildings. It turned out that the hotspot he saw, advertised as “FREE_TLV,” was part of the citywide free Wi-Fi network set up by the local administration of Tel Aviv, Israel. This made Neiderman wonder: How secure is it? For the next few weeks, finding a way to compromise this network became a side project…

WE CAN ALL agree that Dell’s latest XPS 13 with Kaby Lake (go.pcworld.com/dellxps13kaby) is an incremental update. But when your ultrabook is the one that’s being copied by everyone, that’s not such a bad thing, is it? Externally, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference between the latest XPS 13 and its direct predecessor. You still get that beautiful InfinityEdge, nigh-zero bezel that lets Dell put the guts of a 13-inch laptop into the body of an 11-incher. The outside is still brushed aluminum and the keyboard deck, carbon fiber. The real changes are inside, where you’ll find Intel’s latest 7th-gen Kaby Lake CPU, basically a souped-up Skylake chip (go.pcworld.com/ kbylkrev) that’s roughly 10 percent faster. On the GPU side, you’ll see a similar boost. Dell also increases the battery…

WHEN I REVIEWED the Amazon Echo 13 (go.pcworld.com/azechodot2) months ago, I predicted that people would want one in every room. The Echo can control your home’s lighting, play music, estimate your commute time, operate a timer, answer trivia questions, read books and news bulletins to you, tell you which movies are at your local theater, and so much more. You can order a pizza from Dominoes, a ride from Uber, or virtually anything from Amazon. You’d want one in every room so you didn’t need to walk to the room it was in to use it, or yell “Alexa!” from across the house to get its attention. I’m sure Amazon loved my idea, but it was never going to happen on a broad scale at $180 a pop. So Amazon…

IMAGINE A WORLD in peril. Kyros, the overlord, dominates everything in the known world—except for one tiny realm, that is. Known as the Tiers, this last bastion of goodness, of freedom, holds out in the face of impossible odds. Armies clash, and Kyros’s overwhelming forces handily dispatching the desperate populace until all hope seems lost. In a normal video game, this would be the point where your untrained, unskilled, and unknown Joe Nobody enters the picture to save the day, to beat back the tides of darkness, confront Kyros, and eventually defeat him. Not in Tyranny (tyrannygame.com), though. Sympathy for the devil In Tyranny, the latest isometric CRPG from Obsidian (following Pillars of Eternity), you work for Kyros. You are the bad guy, or at least one of his many…

SKYPE RECENTLY ADDED an interesting new feature that allows anyone to use the free version of the messaging app without an account. To use it without an account, you must use Skype for Web; however, account holders can still join in using a regular Skype client. This is an extension of a feature Skype rolled out in October 2015, which allowed Skype users to add non-Skype users (go.pcworld.com/ skypeallchat) to their conversations. When you use Skype’s account-free options, you’re considered a guest. All conversations are based on a unique link that you can share with anyone you want to talk to over Skype. Guest conversation links last for 24 hours and allow up to 300 people to have a text chat, or up to 25 people to participate in a…

STRIKE ANOTHER PROGRAM down for Windows XP (and Vista) fans. Google recently announced that the Google Drive desktop utility (go.pcworld.com/gdrutility) would cease support for Windows XP, Vista, and Server 2003 beginning January 1, 2017. This is the second major desktop-cloud sync program to dump older versions of Windows after Dropbox did so in April (go.pcworld.com/dropbwinxp). With Google Drive going away, what’s an XP (or Vista) fan to do? Here are some solutions. Just keep on, keepin’ on Unlike Dropbox, Google isn’t turning off Google Drive for the desktop. As long as you have the utility up and running on an XP and Vista computer before January 1, 2017 you can continue to use it. Even though it will continue to work, Google says the program “will not be actively…

YOU KNOW HOW many cores it has (eight). You know what motherboard socket it will fit in (AM4). But one tantalizing thing you don’t know about AMD’s much-hyped and highly-anticipated Zen CPU is just how much it’ll cost. All the benchmarks and all the talk of a clean-sheet design and 40 percent IPC increase, be damned. You just want to know if Zen (aka Summit Ridge) will be affordable. AMD isn’t doing this just to play with your emotions, though. The company is currently engaged in a high-stakes poker game with Intel, the all-time reigning world-champion of CPU pricing, so this isn’t the time to act like a shirtless drunk in a Reno casino with the hole card. The good news is AMD's reluctance doesn’t stop us from making guesses…

A SILICON VALLEY biometrics company says it has developed a fingerprint sensor that can sit under glass so smartphone screens don’t need a cutout or extra button to accommodate the sensor. The Synaptics FS9100 sensor can sit under a millimeter of glass and still provide accurate fingerprint readings, so it should be easier to integrate one under a display. At present, most fingerprint sensors have to sit above the glass, necessitating a cutout in the face of the phone or a dedicated button that houses the sensor. That’s the case on market-leading handsets like the iPhone 7 and Samsung Galaxy S7. And while there are some fingerprint sensors that work under glass, that glass needs to be thinner than 1mm, so the glass needs to be shaved in the area…

Make smart purchases, stay safe online. INTERNET GIANT YAHOO announced a massive data breach recently that affected over one billion accounts, making it by far the largest data breach in history. This follows the disclosure in September of a different breach that affected more than 500 million of the company’s customers. What stands out with this new security compromise is that it occurred over three years ago, in August 2013, and that hackers walked away with password hashes that can be easily cracked. If you’re a Yahoo user you should consider your password compromised and should take all the necessary steps to secure your account. You should follow all of Yahoo’s recommendations (go.pcworld.com/yahooacctsecurityfaq), but here are a few more that you should have in mind: If you’re a Yahoo user…

GOOGLE’S ADDING A new weapon to its Safe Browsing arsenal (go.pcworld.com/safebrowse) to fight back against dodgy websites. Sites now can be labeled as “repeat offenders ” (go.pcworld.com/gglprotect) if they repeatedly switch between operating a clean site and one filled with malware or unwanted software. Why would a website do that? Simple. Unscrupulous sites can make money with deceptive practices such as forcing unsuspecting downloads on users. Eventually Google flags these sites as unsafe, which reduces site traffic since users see giant red warning signs in their browsers with no obvious way to continue. To get around that problem, sites clean up their act, apply to Google to get the site warning lifted, and then—once the warning is gone—the malware or unwanted software returns. Google’s harsh stand on harmful sites will…

COMPUTER MAKERS, MUCH LIKE Hollywood filmmakers, love sequels. But just as with movies, there’s always a risk with sequels. Will it be a franchise-killing dud like Ghostbusters II or a modern masterpiece like The Godfather Part II? The good news, folks, is that the next-gen HP Spectre x360 13 (go.pcworld.com/hpspectrex36013) leans toward the latter, and is arguably even superior to the original. That’s not to say the original Spectre wasn’t a great convertible laptop (convertible, in that its screen folds all the way back to simulate a tablet experience). In fact, it was one of our favorites when introduced. But it wasn’t quite perfect. With the reimagined Spectre x360, HP seems to have gone about correcting everything that irked users in the first go-round. It’s smaller and lighter The most…

VIRTUAL REALITY ISN’T yet a mainstream phenomenon. Sure, Samsung has sold (and given away) a lot of Gear VR (go.pcworld.com/gearvrapps) headsets. The Oculus Rift (go.pcworld.com/oculusriftrev) HTC Vive (go.pcworld.com/htcviverv) are building momentum, and Playstation VR is off to a strong start. It’s all good news for VR fans, but we’re still a long way from hundreds of millions of daily users. Google thinks it has a solution: Daydream VR (go. pcworld.com/daydreamview). It’s not a single product, but rather a set of requirements and standards. Phones that meet the right specs (high-end GPUs, accurate and speedy sensors) and run the right software (Android 7.1 with Google’s services) can be labeled “Daydream ready.” Any of these phones can be used in any Daydream VR headset. Over the next few years, the ecosystem could…

How to build, maintain, and fix your tech gear. YOU NEVER KNOW when you’ll need a Windows recovery drive, so the time to make one is now—and it’s very easy to do. A recovery drive is similar to the media you’d receive if you bought a pre-built system. Back in the day, PCs would ship with a CD or DVD that included an image of the system as it left the factory. If your PC’s OS went sideways, you could easily revert to the way things were on day one (though you’d lose all of your subsequently created data and applications, obviously). Nowadays manufacturers usually just put an image of the system as it left the factory on a hidden partition of your main drive. A Windows recovery disk builds…

“SUBSCRIBE NOW!” BLARES the banner at the bottom of Google’s Play Music control panel, and indeed, everything about the just-revamped app seems to be shilling for its subscription streaming service, particularly the new auto-generated radio stations that sit (quite stubbornly) in Play Music’s Home tab. But even if you don’t want to cough up $10 a month to play a streaming shuffle on your phone, there’s still plenty of free stuff to like in Google’s Play Music app for Android and iOS. For example, you can bring pretty much your entire music collection wherever you go once you upload your tunes and create and save “instant mixes” based on any of your songs. There’s also an offline mode and bandwidth settings to keep you from blowing through your mobile data,…

PATRICK SCOTT BOUGHT some laptops for his kids, but they were so slow the kids stopped using them. This is a common issue with bloatware-laden consumer laptops, sadly. He performed a “factory reset,” with the hopes of reinstalling the OS without all the crap that was preinstalled. To his horror he discovered the factory reset reinstalled all the bloatware, leaving him back where he started. Luckily for Patrick, there’s a way to get a clean installation of Windows 10, without all the apps that came with your PC. Here’s how it works. 1. From Windows 10’s Start menu, go to Settings > Update & security > Recovery. You can also get there from the traditional Control Panel by clicking Recovery. At the bottom of that window, click the long…