The firm says hackers have obtained customer information by paying off employees. Read...

Back in March, one Twitter user leaked a new Windows 11 24H2 feature that tells you whether your PC hardware is powerful enough to handle demanding tasks like gaming and video editing. Now, that feature is being tested via Windows Insiders and will roll out to all regular Windows 11 24H2 users in the coming weeks, reports Windows Latest. This new feature can be found in the Settings app as a special FAQ section in the About page (accessible via Settings > System > About). In that FAQ area, you’ll see expandable questions like: “Am I running the latest version of the Windows OS? What is the latest Windows version?” “How does having 8-16 GB of RAM impact my PC’s performance? Can I run modern applications smoothly with this RAM capacity?” “What is a GPU? I don’t have a dedicated GPU, how does its absence impact gaming and graphical performance?” “Is my GPU sufficient for high-end gaming and video experience? How can having a dedicated GPU enhance my experience and productivity?” When you expand a question, Windows provides answers that are personalized to the very hardware in your system and will flat-out tell you if it’s sufficient or insufficient for various scenarios. They’re pretty generic, as you can tell, but the fact that they’re tweaked and customized for your PC makes this feature pretty useful potentially. Further reading: Windows 11’s May update has cool new features Read...

Ever stumbled across something so perfect that you can’t remember living without it? For me, it’s these frighteningly satisfying, OCD-fueling cable ties, and I’m a bit panicky because I’m running out.  I got hooked on cable management when building my first PC, which came with a baggie of those little plastic cable ties that need to be trimmed with scissors. I got a kick out of bundling my PC cables with those super-thin plastic ties, but something about them was a tad off—the plastic was too stiff, larger bundles were tough to tie together, and once secured, the plastic ties could only be snipped off, not readjusted.  Beautiful (at least I think so).Ben Patterson/Foundry Then I switched to fabric cable ties, but the first ones I chose were misfires. The strips were long enough to encompass larger bundles of cables, and the loop-and-hook fasteners allowed for adjustments and reuse. But you had to hold the end of the strip in place as you pulled it taught, making it easy for the fabric to slip before the fasteners could hold. Very frustrating.  Finally, I discovered these guys. These Velcro-style cable ties are just right—they’re long enough, they have sturdy hook-and-loop fasteners, and best of all, they’ve got a slot in the tail for threading the front end though. Just wrap, pull, and press, and your cables will be tied tight as ticks, and ready for readjustment if need be.  In the kitchen, in the dining room, everywhere!Ben Patterson/Foundry I use them everywhere now, and there’s practically no length of cable in our apartment that isn’t secured with a cable tie. They’re under our computer desks, wrapped in different configurations around monitor cables, speaker cables, ethernet cables, USB cables, power cables, all bundled and looped together. They’re in the living room, keeping all our A/V cables tied together and off the floor. In the dining room, they keep our smart speaker power cables tucked out of sight. And in our bedroom, the cable ties are taming our tangle of chargers.  Am I getting a tad obsessive about my cable ties? Perhaps, and that might explain my growing anxiety over my rapidly dwindling supply.  Fortunately, they’re cheap; the brand I’m getting (Nettbe) offers a pack of 60 for $7, or you can get some official Velcro ties if you don’t mind paying nearly double. Read...

Doom is here. Not that Doom ever really leaves us, even if all you have on your PC is a PDF reader. But more specifically, Doom: The Dark Ages is here and the breathless shooter classic has gotten a medieval makeover. And as Nvidia is wont to do with many major game releases, the company is slapping graphics on hardware and giving it away. MSI In a breathless promotional post (hey, I guess I can’t judge, I’m writing about it), Nvidia and its hardware partners showed off custom in-game skins, the freebie copy of Doom: The Dark Ages that you can get if you somehow manage to buy a new GeForce RTX 50-series card, and a bunch of customized designs plastered with the Doom Slayer’s obscured mug. Colorful Falcon Northwest has a Doom: The Dark Ages gaming PC, and so does MainGear, and so does Origin. MSI has a Doom: The Dark Ages gaming laptop. And Colorful has my personal pick for best of show: a colorful greenified RTX 5080 card. These are all one-of-a-kind, mind you. Nvidia’s post is a bit rambling, so here are the links to enter for a chance to win each of these custom designs. United States: Falcon Northwest Doom: The Dark Ages PC MainGear Doom: The Dark Ages PC Origin Doom: The Dark Ages PC MSI Doom: The Dark Ages gaming laptop France: Cybertek Doom: The Dark Ages PC To get that swanky RTX 5080 from Colorful, you’ll need to be in (deep breath) Australia, New Zealand, India, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines or Vietnam. To enter, you’ll need to track down Nvidia’s official regional channels on Twitter/X, Facebook, and Instagram. I’m not going to do that, but I wish you luck if you do. Read...

Alienware is a hot brand for gamers, whether we’re talking about laptops, desktops, or monitors. But that hotness comes with a price! So when you see a great discount on a great piece of equipment, it’s worth jumping on—especially with tariffs threatening future price hikes. And right now, the Alienware AW2725DM gaming monitor is $220 on Amazon for the first time ever. The best price before this was $255! What’s not to love about this display? It has the gaming sweet spot resolution of 2560×1440 on a beautiful and color-accurate IPS panel, with a wide viewing angle and a fast 180Hz refresh rate. The 27-inch diagonal works well as either a primary or secondary display, and it has a 1ms response time plus support for Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync. Connecting this monitor to your laptop or PC won’t be a problem as it comes with two HDMI ports and a DisplayPort for wide compatibility. The two USB-A ports along the bottom edge are also useful for hooking up your keyboard and mouse (or whatever other peripherals). Alienware gear doesn’t usually fit into the “affordable” category, but this one does. Snagging this 27-inch 1440p 180Hz monitor for $220 almost feels like Black Friday come early. But if this particular model isn’t the right one for you, check out these other great monitors we’ve tested. Get this 27-inch 1440p 180Hz Alienware monitor for $220Buy now at Amazon Read...

Is your desk feeling overcrowded? Your laptop is taking up more space than you’d prefer? Not to mention it’s aging out, slowing down, and struggling to handle your everyday tasks? Maybe what you need is a decently specced mini PC that won’t break the bank to replace it. Right now, this Bosgame E2 mini PC is only $190 on Amazon. That’s a dirt cheap deal considering what you get in the machine. It was already a pretty good grab at its original $240 price tag, but the extra $50 off almost makes it worthy of an impulse buy. Even if you have a solid main PC, you could set this up as a home media server or something. (Sign up for a free Prime trial to score this Prime-exclusive deal price.) For less than $200, you’re getting a PC that fits in your hand. You can tuck it away under a monitor and still have easy access to its many ports, or use the built-in VESA mount to attach it to the backside of a monitor and put it way out of sight. As small as it is, it supports triple monitor output (dual 4K@60Hz via HDMI plus 1080p@60Hz via USB-C video) along with four USB-A ports, a LAN port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. Under the hood, it’s equipped with an adequate AMD Ryzen 5 3550H processor and a surprising-for-the-price 16GB of RAM, a 512GB M.2 SSD with Windows 11 Pro pre-loaded, and Radeon Vega 8 integrated graphics for mild gaming. What takes this one step further, though, is that you can manually upgrade the memory to 64GB and storage to 4TB, so it’ll last and you won’t have to toss it in a year. All in all, this is a brilliant budget buy that’s cheap even for a market that’s already quite affordable. Get the Bosgame E2 for just $190 on Amazon while this special Prime deal lasts. And remember, if you don’t have Prime, you can still get it with a free 30-day Prime trial. Get this decently specced mini PC for dirt cheap right nowBuy now at Amazon Read...

If you’re into trying out new AI tools, you’ll dig this– the latest Windows 11 24H2 update brings some cool upgrades to the Photos app. Microsoft added AI-powered editing that makes touching up your pics super easy. One standout feature is the “Restyle Image” option. It lets you apply different artistic styles to your photos. For example, transforming your photos into lovely watercolor paintings. This feature really opens up a whole world of possibilities. In the following sections, we’ll show you how to use each of them step-by-step: 1. Opening the photo viewer First, open Windows Photo View. You can do this by searching for it in the Start menu or by double-clicking a JPEG or PNG file in File Explorer. IDG 2. Open photo The photo will appear in a single view. Here, you can use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard to browse through other images in the same folder. Use the zoom slider at the bottom of the window to zoom in and out of individual pictures. IDG 3. Switch to edit mode To enter edit mode, click the “Edit” button at the top of the Photos app. Copilot+ PCs will have an “AI” button on the far right of the toolbar, which offers AI-powered editing tools that will restyle your photo or remove unwanted elements from the background. IDG 4. Using the AI function When you click on the AI feature for the first time, a prompt will guide you through the process. You’ll need to sign in with your Microsoft account to use it, though. If you don’t have a Microsoft account, the prompt will offer an option to create one. 5. Change style In edit mode, you’ll find loads of various design options on the right-hand side of the window. Choose from styles like “Watercolor” or describe your own style. Moving the creativity slider (as illustrated in the below photo) to the right results in more dramatic changes while sliding it to the left keeps the edits more subtle. IDG 6. More options Click on the “Redesign ALl” option to see additional choices like “Background Only” and “Foreground Only.” This lets you apply the new style to just the background or the main subject. Once you’re all set with your changes, click the “Save” button to save the edited photo. IDG 7. Remove distracting areas On PCs running Windows 11 24H2, the Photos app includes advanced AI capabilities, which allow you to remove distracting elements and have the background seamlessly filled in. To use this feature, open the image as described in step one. Let’s use the picture of the knife below as an example. To remove the unwanted light reflection on the upper blade, switch to edit mode by clicking the “Edit” button, then select the brush icon to access the “Generative Erase” feature. A new window will pop up, displaying your image on the left and the “Generative Erase” options on the right. Adjust the brush size and choose whether to apply those changes automatically. Brush over the area you want to remove, and the AI will intelligently fill in the space to match the background. IDG If you want more control, you can disable the “Auto Apply” option. This allows you to select multiple areas to erase before applying the changes. Read...

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CPUs and GPUs are old news. These days, the cutting edge is all about NPUs, and hardware manufacturers are talking up NPU performance. The NPU is a computer component designed to accelerate AI tasks in a power-efficient manner, paving the way for new Windows desktop applications with powerful AI features. That’s the plan, anyway. All PCs will eventually have NPUs, but at the moment only some laptops have them. Here’s everything you need to know about NPUs and why they’re such a hot topic in the computer industry right now. What is an NPU? NPU stands for neural processing unit. It’s a special kind of processor that’s optimized for AI and machine learning tasks. The name comes from the fact that AI models use neural networks. A neural network is, in layman’s terms, a vast mesh of interconnected nodes that pass information between them. (The whole idea was modeled after the way our own human brains work.) An NPU isn’t a separate device that you buy and plug in (as you would with a GPU, for example). Instead, an NPU is “packaged” as part of a modern processor platform — like Intel’s Core Ultra, AMD’s Ryzen AI, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus. These platforms have a CPU along with an integrated GPU and NPU. NPU vs. CPU vs. GPU: What’s the difference? Explained For many years now, computers have been running tasks on either the central processing unit (CPU) or graphics processing unit (GPU.) That’s still how it works on AI PCs (i.e., computers with NPUs). The CPU runs most of the tasks on the computer. But the GPU, despite its name, isn’t just for graphics and gaming tasks. The GPU is actually just optimized for a different type of computing task, which is why GPUs have been critical for non-gaming endeavors like mining cryptocurrency and running local AI models with high performance. In fact, GPUs are very good at such AI tasks — but GPUs are awfully power-hungry. That’s where NPUs come into play. An NPU is faster than a CPU at computing AI tasks, but not as fast when compared to a GPU. The trade-off is that an NPU uses far less power than a GPU when computing those same AI tasks. Plus, while the NPU handles AI-related tasks, the CPU and GPU are both freed up to handle their own respective tasks, boosting overall system performance. Why use an NPU instead of a CPU or GPU? If you’re running AI image generation software like Stable Diffusion (or some other AI model) on your PC’s hardware and you need maximum performance, a GPU is going to be your best bet. That’s why Nvidia advertises its GPUs as “premium AI” hardware over NPUs. But there are times when you want to run AI features that might be too taxing for a regular CPU but don’t necessarily need the top-tier power of a GPU. Or maybe you’re on a laptop and you want to take advantage of AI features but don’t want the GPU to drain your battery down. With an NPU, a laptop can perform local (on-device) AI tasks without producing a lot of heat and without expending inordinate battery life — and it can perform those AI tasks without taking up CPU and GPU resources from whatever else your PC might be doing. And even if you aren’t interested in AI per se, you can still take advantage of NPUs for other uses. At CES 2024, HP showed off game-streaming software that uses the NPU for video-streaming tasks, freeing up the GPU to run the game itself. By using the NPU’s extra computing power, the streaming software doesn’t take up any GPU resources… and it’s much faster than using the CPU for the same type of task. But what can Windows PC software do with an NPU, really? With an AI PC, the NPU can be used by both the operating system and the apps that reside on the system. For example, if you have laptop with Intel Meteor Lake hardware, the built-in NPU will let you run Windows Studio Effects, which are AI-powered webcam effects that provide features like background blur and forced eye contact in any application that uses your webcam. Microsoft Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs — the first wave of which were powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon X chips — have their own AI-powered features that use the NPUs built into that platform. For example, the Windows Recall feature will require an NPU. Related: What is a Copilot+ PC? Explained Earlier this year, AMD and Intel processors gained access to Copilot+ features that were previously exclusive to Qualcomm PCs — but only AMD and Intel PCs that have the new AMD Ryzen AI 300 series and Intel Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake) processors. And those are just the features built into Windows; app developers will also be able to use the NPU in a variety of ways. Don’t be surprised to see plug-ins for Audacity and GIMP that offer AI-powered audio and photo editing that’s powered by a computer’s NPU. The possibilities are endless, but it’s still early days for the hardware so it’ll be a while before its full potential is realized. Why do I need an NPU if my PC can already run AI software? Most current applications that have AI features — including Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot — don’t utilize an NPU yet. Instead, they run their AI models on faraway cloud servers. That’s why you can run things like Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Adobe Firefly, and other AI solutions on any device, whether an old Windows PC, a Chromebook, a Mac, an Android phone, or something else. Adobe But it’s expensive for those services to run their AI models on the cloud. Microsoft spends a lot of money churning through Copilot AI tasks in data centers, for example. Companies would love to offload those AI tasks to your local PC and reduce their own cloud computing expenses. Of course, it’s not just about cost savings. You also benefit from the ability to run computationally heavy AI tasks on your local device. For example, those AI features will still work even when you’re offline, and you can keep your data private instead of uploading it all to cloud servers all the time. (That’s a big deal for companies, too, who want to maintain control over their own business data for privacy and security reasons.) Further reading: I tried running AI chatbots locally on my laptop — and they kinda suck Which NPUs are available and how powerful are they? Intel NPU performance is measured in TOPS, which stands for trillion operations per second. To give you a sense of what that means, a low-end NPU might only be able to handle 10 TOPS whereas PCs that qualify for Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC branding must handle at least 40 TOPS. As of fall 2024, the following NPUs are available: Intel Core Ultra Series 1 (Meteor Lake): Intel’s first-generation Core Ultra NPU can deliver up to 11 TOPS. It’s too slow for Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC features, but it does work with Windows Studio Effects and some third-party applications. This same NPU is found in newer “Arrow Lake” Intel gaming laptops, as well. Intel Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake): Intel’s Lunar Lake chips will include an NPU with up to 48 TOPS of performance, exceeding Copilot+ PC requirements. AMD Ryzen Pro 7000 and 8000 Series: AMD first delivered NPUs on PCs before Intel did, but the NPUs in Ryzen 7000 series processors are too slow for Copilot+ PC features, with up to 12 and 16 TOPS of performance. AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series: The NPUs in the latest AMD Ryzen AI 300 series processors can deliver up to 50 TOPS of performance, more than enough for Copilot+ PCs. Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus: Qualcomm’s Arm-based hardware includes a Qualcomm Hexagon NPU that’s capable of up to 45 TOPS. It’s worth noting that NPUs aren’t just on PCs. Apple’s Neural Engine hardware was one of the first big splashy NPUs to get marketing attention. Google’s Tensor platform for Pixel devices also includes an NPU, while Samsung Galaxy phones have NPUs, too. Bottom line: Should you get a PC with an NPU right now or wait? Honestly, it’s risky being on the bleeding edge. If you went out of your way to get a Meteor Lake laptop in hopes of future-proofing your PC for AI features, you actually got burned when Microsoft later announced that Meteor Lake NPUs were too slow for Copilot+ PC features. (Intel disagreed, pointing out that you still get all the features those laptops originally shipped with.) The silver lining to that? Copilot+ PC features aren’t that interesting yet. And most of the biggest AI tools — ChatGPT, Adobe Firefly, etc. — don’t even use NPUs at all. Still, if I were buying a new laptop, I’d want to get an NPU if possible. You don’t actually have to go out of your way to get one; it’s just something that comes included with modern hardware platforms. And those modern processor platforms have other big features, like big battery life gains. On the other hand, those fast NPUs are only on the latest laptops right now, and you can often find great deals on older laptops that are nearly as fast as the latest models. If you spot a previous-generation laptop that’s heavily discounted, it may not make sense to shell out tons more cash just for an NPU, especially if you don’t have any AI tools you plan to run. As of this writing, most big AI tools still run in the cloud — or at least offer that as an option — so you’ll be able to run them on any Windows laptop, Chromebook, or even Android tablets and iPads. For desktops, the NPU situation is different. Intel’s desktop CPUs don’t have NPUs yet. You could hunt down an AMD desktop chip with a Ryzen AI NPU, but AMD’s Ryzen 7000 and 8000 series chips don’t support Copilot+ PC features anyway. So, if you’re putting together a desktop PC, set aside the NPU for now. It just isn’t that important yet. Looking for a PC with a high-performance NPU? Consider Arm-based Windows laptops like the Surface Laptop 7 and AMD Ryzen AI 300 series laptops like the Asus ProArt PX13, as well as Intel Core Ultra Series 2 laptops like the Asus Zenbook S 14. Further reading: Why can’t my $3000 gaming PC run Copilot+ features? Come on, Microsoft! Read...