Innholdsfortegnelse for Christmas 2020 i TechLife

AMD just announced its latest financial results for Q3, with a strong showing driven partly by some seriously impressive sales of Ryzen processors (although that’s likely no surprise to anyone, let’s face it). AMD’s Computing and Graphics division (CPUs and GPUs) managed to attain a revenue of US$1.67 billion which was almost a third stronger than in the same quarter last year (up 31% to be precise). That figure was also up 22% compared to the previous quarter (Q2 fiscal). The company noted: “Revenue was higher year-over-year driven by a significant increase in Ryzen processor sales partially offset by lower graphics revenue.” So while there was a ‘significant’ boost on the Ryzen front, it wasn’t the same story for graphics cards. AMD clarified that lower year-on-year revenue from GPU sales…

Researchers have discovered a deep underwater trough in Antarctica that could spell doom for one of the continent’s vulnerable ice shelves. Located below the Shirase Glacier in East Antarctica, the trough appears to be funnelling warm ocean water directly against the base of the glacier’s ice shelf, known as the Shirase Glacier Tongue, which juts out into the nearby bay like a frosty peninsula. This pipeline of warm water is causing the tongue to melt from the bottom up at an alarming rate. Due to this the base of the Shirase Glacier Tongue is losing 7 to 16 metres of ice per year, potentially making it the fastest melting region in East Antarctica. “This is equal to – or perhaps even surpasses – the melting rate underneath the Totten Ice…

Oh, sure. Amazon is becoming basically overrun with Chinese wireless cams, some as cheap as $50. But you’re not an idiot (or you might be, Guru isn’t here to judge) so you’ll realise that a budget security solution is basically the tech equivalent of buying cut-price toilet paper: it’s neither pleasant nor a particularly secure experience, and one which may just let human waste through. “A budget security solution is the tech equivalent of buying cut-price toilet paper: it’s neither a pleasant nor a secure experience.” GaGu would absolutely steer you towards a known brand that costs slightly more, be that the only-vaguely-known Kami (check out the chunky Wire Free Outdoor Camera, priced around $140) or Amazon-owned Blink (the XT2 is compact, comes with a hub, and lasts for two…

Virtual reality is taking us further than it ever has before with new cameras launching alongside NASA astronauts to document ISS spacewalks and shrinking us to the size of beetles in a new VR Attenborough documentary. If that wasn’t enough the US military is also upgrading it’s canine units with AR goggles in order to command them remotely and AI is learning to decipher written languages to try to decode some of history’s lost dialects. Machine learning has also been polishing it’s drawing skills, adding Pictionary to the long list of tasks that AI now dominates mankind in. XR Space Explorers - The ISS Experience $4.49, time.com/space-explorers/ Capturing a spacewalk on the ISS is a much more difficult task than you might initially think. As one of the more dangerous…

Studio head Adam Badowski and CEO Marcin Iwinski told fans that “the biggest challenge for us right now is shipping the game on current-gen, next-gen, and PC at the same time, which requires us to prepare and test 9 versions of it” including Stadia and backwards compatible versions,” and that “since Cyberpunk 2077 evolved towards almost being a next-gen title somewhere along the way, we need to make sure everything works well and every version runs smoothly.”…

“There were a number of small but cumulative factors that demonstrated that not only was the machine and the games great for their time, [but] they were satisfying the gaming demands of a lot of players.” Peter Moore has spoken candidly in the Edge Game Changers series about the demise of the Dreamcast. Moore, who was the President of Sega Of America at the time, is a recognisable face amongst gamers (not least for the time he got a tattoo of GTA IV to announce it was coming to Xbox 360), and he opens up on the challenges the Dreamcast faced when it came to going up against the PlayStation 2 in the Sega Dreamcast Edge Game Changers feature. Moore said: “PlayStation did a brilliant job of FUD-ing Sega and…

$US19.99, Switch, PC www.nintendo.com In the face of an impending disaster, there’s no resting in peace for Morris just yet, but what is a dead man to do? With the spirit of your beloved canine companion Sparky at your side, you set out to find a new custodian to protect the island using your new-found ghostly ability. Yes, in the afterlife Morris discovers he has a “slicing” ability that enables him to see inside anything and everything, including the heads of living people to see their memories. It’s a bit like ghostly X-Ray vision, and there’s something undeniably satisfying about letting your nosy side thrive by looking inside every object you come across. During my time playing I Am Dead on the Switch, I was utterly charmed by its unique…

$139, www.amazon.com.au If you’re looking to buy an ereader right now, it’s almost certain you’ll be looking to buy something from Amazon’s Kindle range. With three products on offer, the Kindle family offers something for everyone, with top-end features restricted to products like the Kindle Paperwhite or, even more so, the Kindle Oasis. That said, the cheapest and most basic Kindle option – the one we’re reviewing here – is getting better with each passing generation. In fact, the tenth generation (released in early 2019) is one of the most capable ereaders ever. Whether you’re looking to upgrade your existing ereader, swap from reading ebooks on your phone, or take the first step towards your elibrary, the 2019 edition of the Amazon Kindle may be exactly right for you. The…

“The BlackShark V2 Pro is a fantastic wireless headset that’ll work well for general gaming or anyone with esports aspirations.” $299, www.razer.com Razer BlackShark gaming headsets focus primarily on three attributes: positional audio, communication clarity and noise cancellation. During pro-level esports play, those characteristics are incredibly important in maintaining a competitive edge. This new Razer BlackShark V2 improves upon its predecessors through the TriForce Titanium 50mm drivers, removable HyperClear Supercardioid Mic, Ultra-soft FlowKnit memory foam ear cushions, passive noise cancelation and THX Spatial Audio for surround sound. For the feature heavy BlackShark V2 Pro, wireless capabilities are added into the mix alongside a 24 hour battery life. Audio latency also becomes nearly non-existent and sound quality remains consistent thanks to Razer’s HyperSpeed 2.4GHz connection. The BlackShark V2 Pro is a…

1 USE THE APP LIBRARY Swipe left across the Home screen until you see the App Library after the last screen of apps. Tap a large app icon to open the app. Or tap a small app icon to open that folder and display all the apps that are inside it. 2 HIDE PAGES The App Library means you no longer need pages full of apps. Tap and hold on any empty part of your Home screen. When the apps start to jiggle, tap the bar with dots in it at the bottom of the screen. 3 PICK PAGES TO HIDE You’ll see a grid of pages. Tap the check mark to de–select pages, which will hide them and make accessing the App Library quicker. When you’re finished, press Done.…

1 CHOOSE A LANGUAGE Tap the language at the top–left of the screen. Choose the language you want to translate from. Now, on the right, choose the language that you would like your word or phrase to be translated into. 2 SAY THE WORDS Type your word or phrase into the box, or tap and hold the mic icon and speak. Tap “go” or release the mic button for the translation. Press the play button if you want to hear the spoken version. 3 SAVE YOUR FAVORITES To save the current translation as a Favorite, tap the star icon to the left of the play button. To see a list of Favorites and recent translations, press Favorites at the bottom of the screen. A CURATED GUIDES Maps has curated guides…

Like Volkdering, Ian Murdock (who tragically died at the end of 2015) was frustrated at the buggy state of SLS. So he set about making his own distro, which he called ‘the Debian Linux Release’, Debian being a portmanteau of Debra (his then girlfriend) and Ian. Murdock had tried modifying SLS but decided the best approach would be to start from scratch. The first version, 0.01, was released about one month after the initial Slackware release, though this (and the next few releases) were only available internally. The first public release was 0.91 at the beginning of 1994. Murdock realised that one of the reasons for SLS’s shortcomings was that it was all the work of one individual. Why not, reasoned Murdock, use the community development model which, by this…

The term ‘distribution’ didn’t really become commonplace until 1995. By now we have a fairly concrete (and relatively luxurious) notion that a distro consists of an installer; a set of customised packages compiled from (modified) upstream sources; a kernel (which is just a package); a desktop environment; documentation and so forth. We’ve come to expect some kind of support too, generally through forums and IRC channels often provided by the community. We have also come to expect some means of creating your own packages, either in the hope that they will be included in a future release or just so that software unavailable through the standard repos can be cleanly added. But this word, ‘distribution’ has meant different things at different times, and its meaning continues to evolve with the…

While there’s a lot to be said in favour of web-based email services such as Gmail and Outlook.com, they can be frustrating. You may be free to access your email from any computer that’s connected to the internet, but they lack the power and features of a dedicated email client, and not everyone needs to be able to access their emails on more than one computer. eM Client is a great alternative. It not only handles email, it can also be used to mange your contacts, calendar and task. It really is a complete alternative to the desktop version of Outlook, a fully-fledged PIM (personal information manager). The idea of switching to a new email client can be intimidating – but really there is nothing to worry about. eM Client…

YOU WILL LEARN All about Haptic Touch for iPhone and how it differs from the older screen technology 3D Touch. Remember 3D Touch, Apple’s technology for iPhone screens? It’s gone, replaced by a technology Apple calls Haptic Touch. The results feel very similar, but the two technologies are very different. 3D Touch vs Haptic Touch: what’s the difference? Apple introduced 3D Touch in the iPhone 6S in 2015, and the technology was used across the iPhone range up to and including the iPhone X, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max. The idea behind 3D Touch was to make additional options available to you if you pressed harder on your phone’s screen. 3D Touch is a pressure-sensing technology that can tell not just where your finger is but how hard you’re…

Potatoes $3.50 per kg, youtu.be/KFDlVgBMomQ Potatoes have kind of a bad rap on the internet for being a bit simple, but the starchy staple is about to have a dramatic perspective makeover since it was uncovered that they contain the internal power to run Doom. Sure you need 700 of them and even then they’ll only run doom on a low voltage graphing calculator, but caveats aside, running Doom is an impressive feat for a potato and you should be impressed. This was uncovered by YouTuber Equalo who worked out that if you stick a galvanised nail into a russet potato you can get 0.9 Volts of direct current. Yanko Design Smart Minion Projector $TBC, yankodesign.com We’re not sure exactly which design whiz realised the projector lens looks identical to…

Perfect your photos Ensure pristine quality with Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 2020. Full version after registration. The Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 2020 photo editing software optimises and edits photos at the click of a button. Cropping, rotating, blurring and printing of photos is also supported. Your photos will be auto-analysed and all potential weaknesses regarding lighting, color temperature and contrasts detected. Afterwards, the new algorithm will recreate each photo – with powerful results. Even mediocre shots will suddenly appear more vibrant and harmonious. Download link: www.techlife.net/exclusives Give your PC a makeover. Optimise and personalise with Abelssoft PC Fresh 2020 Full version worth $52 PC Fresh optimises computers – and now file associations too! Windows does what it pleases – and that’s usually far too much. PC Fresh cuts the fat off, ending…

Rumors persisted that Apple has been developing its own search engine to replace Google on its devices, but those efforts might be ramping up – just as Google is facing potential anti-trust actions by the US Department of Justice. Apple is likely to have been working on this search engine for years, according to a Financial Times report citing key hirings and software hints as evidence that is more suggestive than conclusive. The report prominently cites Apple’s 2018 hiring of John Giannandrea, former Google head of search, to improve AI tech and Siri, while other job listings suggested Apple’s effort to improve search. Meanwhile, the Applebot web crawler has seen increased activity for years, potentially laying the groundwork for a search engine. That activity spiked around the launch of iOS…

When a teen unknowingly swallowed a small sewing pin while tailoring his clothes, he didn’t even notice. So it was a surprise to everyone when some days later doctors found it in a very unusual place: his heart. The 17-year-old went to the emergency room after experiencing chest pain for three days. He said the pain was sharp, radiated to his back and was worse when lying down or breathing deeply. The results of an electrocardiogram (ECG) – a test of the heart’s electrical activity – were abnormal, and doctors were concerned the patient had perimyocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle and the surrounding membrane. Lab tests also showed the teen had increased levels of proteins in his blood that can indicate heart injury. A CT scan of his chest…

Choice of charge The Honda e can either be slow, fast or rapid charged using the different connectors to supply a range of wattages. These are available at many public charging points and provide an option for fast and more frequent charging or a slower process with long-lasting power. Type 2 connector This type of connection can be used when charging the vehicle at home or at public charging points. When using ‘fast-charging’ mode, bringing the battery from 0 to 100 per cent will take roughly four hours, while on slow charge this will take about 12 hours. The cars are very rarely charged from a completely drained battery. Status indication This is an LED strip programmed to change colour based on the power status. When charging begins the light…

Blizzard veterans Chris Metzen and Mike Gilmartin are starting their own tabletop gaming company - or more accurately, they’re turning their gaming club into one. Metzen previously served as Blizzard’s senior vice president of story and franchise development, with credits ranging from creative director of Overwatch to artist and designer on Warcraft 2: Tides of Chaos. He finally retired from the company in 2016, though he has continued voicing Warcraft’s orcish hero Thrall since then. Mike Gilmartin was vice president of quality assurance at the company until he retired earlier this year. Metzen and Gilmartin put together a video message to fans where they explained the roots of their company, Warchief Gaming (which started out as a members-only gaming club in Orange County) and shared their excitement for getting back…

“Everyone loves a jump scare but uncertainty is an eroding, niggling doubt that never lets you feel entirely safe.” $US29.99, PC, PS4, Xbox One, www.amnesiarebirth.com Playing as Tasi, the amnesiac survivor of a 1937 plane crash in the Algerian desert, this trail of discovery begins exploring what appears to be a Foreign Legion fort in search of rescue and other survivors. From the start it subverts expectations – especially for a series built on wandering spooky corridors for a door to open. Instead, the intro places you in a desert full of space and sunlight as you poke around trying to work out what happened. The corridors are still there but there’s a lot more space and variation mixing things up between them. It’s a welcome change in a genre…

Marvel: Super War MARVEL-OUS MOBA. Free with IAP Marvel games on mobile have been the victim of most standard moneymaking tropes – collecting heroes, upgrading heroes, trading in paid currency for heroes. But in most of these games you do not really do anything that exciting, with control over your Spiderman or Black Widow relegated to choosing a skill and watching it play out on the screen. Much of the excitement tends to come from unlocking new equipment and watching it get boosted. Super War (by Chinese developer NetEase, who also recently released the brilliant Eve Echoes) takes an extraordinarily successful concept – mobile MOBAs – and inserts Marvel heroes with all their traditional weapons and abilities. What it results in is hands down one of the most polished and…

WD has refreshed its mainstream portable solid state drive, the My Passport SSD, giving it a new design, better internal components and a competitive price tag. However, the market has significantly evolved as well since the My Passport was originally launched in 2017. The landscape has seen some consolidation as well as the emergence of a whole raft of smaller, nimbler storage vendors that are not afraid to slash margins to the bone. Confusingly, there are three types of My Passport SSD, the 2017 version, one called My Passport Go and the 2020 version, the WDBAGF. Three capacities are available (500GB, 1TB, 2TB) in four different shades (blue, red, champagne gold and grey silver). The first thing that you notice when picking the drive up is how light it is.…

Linus Torvold wrote “A kernel by itself gets you nowhere” in the release notes for Linux 0.01 in 1991. This statement (or understatement) was apparent to early Linux adopters who actually wanted to use the OS for something and faced a bit of a struggle doing so. Torvald had already ported GNU’s Bash interpreter and the GCC compiler to Linux, but beyond that the operating system by itself wasn’t exactly capable. In fact, the 0.01 release consisted only of source code and was only released to those that had shown an interest in Torvalds’ Linux updates on Usenet. Compilation required a working copy of Minix too. Torvalds’ respected other people’s licenses and so was loathe to pinch Minix code without permission. Fortunately news of his nascent, free operating system soon…

For all its advances, though, SLS was considered buggy and hard to use. In 1993, a wise undergraduate named Patrick Volkerding was tasked with installing SLS on machines in an AI lab. He embarked on a mission to tidy it up, improving the install mechanism and noting post-install fixes. His hope was that his fixes would be incorporated into SLS, so he had no immediate plans to release them to the public. SLS, however, didn’t do this, so Volkerding eventually made his efforts available via FTP. By 1993 Volkerding’s contributions had made the resulting ‘distro’ unrecognisable and he decided to give it a new name, making it the first proper fork of a Linux distro in history. That name (referencing the Slack doctrine, an obscure text called The Church of…

It feels as though we’ve now accepted streaming and welcomed it into the hi-fi community. Fears were real, and often founded, that it would replace physical media to detrimental effect, offering up inferior performance in return for perceived convenience. In many ways, though, it has helped us fall in love again with those cumbersome old discs; being able to throw music from your palm to your speakers can be wonderful, but our desire to fall for an album’s cover and actually hold our music has far from been quelled. That speaks for vinyl more than CD, of course, with the latter’s sales dropping dramatically over recent years. But that doesn’t have to make for wholly miserable reading: more likely it is the rise and ubiquity of CD-quality streaming, not to…

Ask anyone to sum up the high-octane action of motorsport in one word and they’ll probably choose speed. But conveying movement in a still image isn’t paticularly easy. Some of the best motorbike images retain their sense of movement due to three indicators of motion: the position of the rider; spinning wheels; and sweeping strands of motion blur. Shooting on a corner will ensure that your rider occupies a dynamic position that would be impossible if the bike wasn’t moving, giving your shot a strong sense of motion. Spinning wheels and motion blur, meanwhile, can be captured using the method of panning. This technique requires you to track your subject from afar, match its speed, frame and focus on it accordingly, and press the shutter button – all in one…

One of the most useful and simplest ‘rules’ of photography is that every shot should have a subject. This is true whether you’re shooting a portrait or a landscape. Even abstract photos work be AFTER t h n they have a point of focus – something to draw the eye to a certain part of the image. Sure, all rules were meant to be broken, but having a subject to draw the eye can lead to a stronger shot. But what happens if there’s no subject in sight? We’ve surely all come across beautiful scenes or gorgeous moments of light that don’t have a point of interest, but we go ahead and shoot anyway. Like our starting photo here, the resulting image will probably be decent enough, but slightly bland.…

From $999, www.microsoft.com Microsoft Surface devices like the Surface Laptop Go have traditionally been super high-end laptops and tablets, aimed at providing the best Windows 10 experience. However starting with the Surface Go back in 2018, Microsoft started targeting students and everyday users, and this is the segment where arguably Surface is head and shoulders above anything else on the market. What we’re getting here is a 12.5-inch laptop packed with an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. That’s definitely not a high-end spec, but when you consider the low asking price, the gorgeous display and build quality on offer, the Surface Laptop Go is far better than any other laptop you’re going to find at this price range. Microsoft sent us the absolute top-end…

The camera core for the future Vera C. Rubin Observatory has snapped its first test photos, setting a new world record for the largest single shot by a giant digital camera. The imaging sensor array, which comprises the focal plane for Rubin’s SUV-sized digital camera, snapped the 3,200-megapixel images during recent tests at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California. SLAC stands for Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the facility’s original name. The photos are the largest single-shot pictures ever taken, and are so big that showing just one of them at full size would require 378 4K ultra-high-definition TVs. The resolution is so good that a golf ball would be visible from 25 kilometres away. The first images don’t show distant golf balls, however. The SLAC…

There are some moments you want to have recorded forever. A photo can’t capture the flapping of a bird’s wings, or the movement of a setting sun, or your toddler taking three attempts to blow out their birthday candles. And then, of course, sometimes you have something bigger in mind – that short film you always wanted to make, or that videographer business you’ve been thinking of starting. There’s been huge advancements in what consumer-grade cameras can do in recent years, and the quality of video recording on Sony’s latest camera is incredible. Filmmakers like Stephen Soderbergh and Sean Baker have made their films entirely on mobile devices; now you can go several steps better than that. A CAMERA FOR ALL SEASONS The Sony Alpha 7S III is an all-purpose…

Visualising power Just as a petrol- or diesel-powered car displays how much fuel is left in the tank, behind the steering wheel a screen shows what percentage of charge is left in the battery. This gauge will tell you how many miles you have left and will alert you with visual warnings when it is getting low. When you receive this alert, there is still enough time to drive to the nearest charging point. Digital dashboard The dashboard is filled with electronic technology that’s powered by the car’s battery. It includes five screens to display apps and other features that aid driving. The car can also be connected to a smartphone to display music apps and contacts for in-car calls. Videos and films can only be viewed when stationary. A…

$79, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, www.crashbandicoot.com It says a lot about Crash Bandicoot 4 that I’m now riddled with a seemingly incurable case of 90’s nostalgia. This canonical sequel to Naughty Dog’s original trilogy is nothing if not a romantic throwback to the platformers of that era, yet walks the line between homage and iteration with as much poise and confidence as our Bandicoot’s own death-defying acrobatics. In other words, yes, this is the Crash game you’ve been waiting over two decades to play, but it’s so much more than that too. Speaking of decades, you’d be wise to forget every Crash game to have come out since 1998, since Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time takes place directly after the events of Crash Bandicoot: Warped. There are…

$1,289, www.lenovo.com Lenovo’s ‘Flex’ series of laptops are affordable 2-in-1 convertible systems that offer claimed all-day battery life. That’s a simple and appealing proposition. In practice, it’s all a bit more complicated. You see, the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5, to give it its full name, is available in both 14-inch and 15-inch variants and with both AMD and Intel CPUs. And with various iterations of those CPUs. It’s all a bit baffling if you’re buying, but the specific model showcased here is the 15-inch Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 powered by Intel’s latest 10th Gen processors, in this case an Intel Core i3-1005G1 chip. Arguably, AMD’s laptop CPUs offer both better value and more performance right now. But given the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 remains pretty keenly priced and isn’t being…

$199, www.alcatelmobile.com The Alcatel 3L (2020) is right down at the cheapest of the cheap phones level, and really that colors everything else we’re going to say about the phone – many of us will be perfectly happy to make some compromises on performance, photo quality and battery life if it means spending less. In 2020 it’s perhaps more important to weigh a phone up against its price rather than any of its competitors. The Alcatel 3L (2020) is of course a long way behind the Galaxy Note 20 and even the OnePlus Nord in terms of build and screen quality, camera capabilities, raw speed, and everything else, but at the same time it costs a whole lot less. It’s the low price that’s really the main selling point of…

A new look Widgets, which in iOS 13 appear when you swipe right from the Home screen, can now be added to the Home screen itself and appear at the top, above app icons. New in iOS 14 are Smart Stacks. These are widgets that appear automatically depending on how you use your iPhone. So, for example, if you usually check Twitter when you first pick up your iPhone in the morning, your Twitter client will appear in a Smart Stack. A WIDGETS Widgets, which you previously had to swipe to see, can now be viewed on your Home screen and appear above the grid of app icons. B SMART STACKS Smart Stacks are “intelligently curated” widgets that display automatically on the Home screen according to the time of day.…

One of the benefits of going with an Android phone for your daily driver is that you’ve got an almost limitless number of ways to customise it. While iOS remains mostly locked down in terms of how you can tweak its look and feel – even after iOS 14’s changes – Android lets you plot a pixel-by-pixel remake of your device, if you want. From simply changing the wallpaper to installing a completely different launcher, you’ve got plenty of options – and it can make you feel like you’ve gone out and bought a brand new phone, without any of the associated costs. Whether you’re an Android veteran or a complete newbie when it comes to Google’s mobile operating system, we’ll guide you through some of the best customisation options…

Exactly what was the first Linux distribution (distro) depends very much on your definition. H. J. Lu’s ‘Boot-root’ floppies certainly provided a minimal working Linux environment, but these were more comparable to a primitive live CD than an actual distro. An early attempt called MCC (Manchester Computing Centre) Interim (because it was never intended to be a final product) Linux first appeared in February 1992. It fitted on five 3.5-inch floppies, provided some classic Linux utilities and was quite luxurious in that LILO (LInux LOader) could be installed to the MBR natively. Previous Linux efforts involved manually writing some bytes to the boot sector. MCC didn’t include the X Window System, but it could be added by the user later. The MCC ideology was, in a way, similar to that…

You can find pretty much anything you like on the internet, provided you know where to look [stop looking at the internet and finish this feature -Ed], eg if you were looking for old Linux distros, then one of your first ports of call needs to be ibiblio.org (http://bit.ly/ HistoricLinux). Getting these (particularly the very old distros) to work in a virtual machine is sometimes tricky, primarily because the emulated hardware that the hypervisor provides isn’t understood by the primitive kernels of the 90s. IDE CD-ROMS weren’t supported by Linux until much later on, so unless you can figure out some way of emulating a SCSI CD-ROM drive then old CD images are more or less useless. However, as we’ll see later, other more determined people have done a lot…

Move Windows 10 license I have three licenses attached to three computers. One is an OEM laptop. The other two are Pro licenses I purchased. It’s time to upgrade one of the Pro machines, which will be a full rebuild, making the jump from an Intel 6700K to AMD. How do I transfer the license? Thanks. Painflame TechLife responds: The key is to link your Pro license to your Microsoft account as a digital license. Open “Settings > Update & Security > Activation” on the PC you’re replacing and check the activation status – if it simply says “Windows is activated with a digital license” you should see a prompt for “Add an account” – click this and follow the prompts to link it to your Microsoft account. Once done,…

REQUIRES iPadOS 13.4 or later, trackpad compatible with multi–finger gestures YOU WILL LEARN How to control your iPad with a trackpad IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes In recent years, Apple has increasingly been extending the abilities of the iPad so it can offer a real alternative to a MacBook laptop that you can use for getting serious work done. The latest move in this direction is the ability to use an external trackpad with an iPad, which was introduced with iPadOS 13.4 in March. A trackpad connected to your iPad works just as it would when connected to a Mac, with a series of click controls and gestures that allow you to sit the iPad on a desk and control it without touching the screen – pretty much like a…

There is another new wireless standard you might have heard of: WiGig, a.k.a. 802.11ad/ay. WiGig is not the same as Wi-Fi 6. Instead it’s an ultra-high bandwidth (up to 40gbps) wireless protocol than operates at a very high spectrum band (60GHz). This gives it incredible speed, but also limits its range to same-room tasks, since it will bounce off walls rather than pass through them. WiGig is being looked at as a solution for things like wireless VR headsets and displays, which need the kind of high-bandwidth, low-latency speeds that WiGig can supply. It’s used by the VIVE headset wireless adapter, for example, though the wireless Oculus Quest 2 uses a proprietary solution.…