PC Magazine
Microsoft Windows 11: A Radically Modernized Design
Many people thought there would never be a Windows 11—understandably, after Microsoft announced in 2015 that Windows 10 would be the operating system’s last version number.
10+ min |
November 2021
PC Magazine
Apple iPhone 13: A Battery-Life Beast
The Apple iPhone 13 is a battery-life beast, with far greater longevity than previous midrange smartphones.
10+ min |
November 2021
Fast Company
We're in Uncharted Territory
Nobody said it would be easy.
1 min |
November 2021
PC Magazine
TorGuard VPN: Affordable and Robust
REVIEWS/SOFTWARE&APPS
10+ min |
October 2021
PC Magazine
How to Deal With a Swollen Laptop Battery
Lithium-ion batteries pack an amazing punch for their size. They’re robust enough to run our laptops for hours on a single charge, they’re at the core of the latest smartphones, and they even serve as the power plant behind cutting-edge electric vehicles such as the Tesla line.
8 min |
October 2021
PC Magazine
HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY FROM THE INTERNET
It’s not just government spying; big-tech behemoths including Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have collected huge amounts of people’s data in order to serve up targeted ads—and then, there’s the personal data that’s scooped up in all the breaches and hacks.
10+ min |
October 2021
PC Magazine
Framework Laptop: True Modularity
REVIEWS/HARDWARE
10+ min |
October 2021
PC Magazine
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14: Blazing-Fast Gaming Machine
REVIEWS/HARDWARE
9 min |
October 2021
PC Magazine
Demand for SpaceX's Starlink Satellite Internet Pushes Wait Times to 2023
Demand for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite broadband system may push wait times into 2023.
1 min |
October 2021
PC Magazine
HAS A CYBERSTALKER TAKEN OVER YOUR LIFE? HERE'S HOW TO GET IT BACK
Picture this: You enter your house and find a stranger (or an enemy) sitting at your kitchen table chowing down on your leftover potato salad and reading your mail. You order him out, but before long, he’s back.
10+ min |
October 2021
PC Magazine
HP Instant Ink vs. HP Plus vs. HP Smart: Which Ink Program Saves You the Most?
When you buy and install an HP printer, the setup routine may ask you to make some choices depending on the printer model.
8 min |
October 2021
PC Magazine
Vilo Mesh: Very Affordable
REVIEWS/HARDWARE
6 min |
October 2021
PC Magazine
Polaroid Now+: A Terrific Tool
REVIEWS/CONSUMER ELECTRONICS
6 min |
October 2021
PC Magazine
You Don't Need Millions to Get Started in NFTs
When the Paper Cats project launches, it should be a continually affordable non-fungible token (NFT) avatar.
4 min |
October 2021
Newsweek
Trippy Treatments
Psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic mushrooms,” is undergoing clinical trials. It could be the biggest advance in treating depression since Prozac.
10+ min |
October 01, 2021
PC Magazine
Master Social Media Without Sacrificing Your Privacy
Some people have no filter. They’ll conduct the most personal phone conversations at maximum volume on the subway. Or they’ll regale perfect strangers with the excruciating details of their latest medical procedures. Most of us, though, have a better idea of how to maintain privacy for ourselves and our friends. But do you take the same attitude on social media? It’s easy to notice that you’re too loud on the phone in public, but it’s less easy to realize that your settings let any schmo read your social media posts. And yet protecting your privacy on social media is important, in more ways than you may realize.
10 min |
September 2021
PC Magazine
Hulu: A Top Streaming Choice
As the competition between video-streaming services intensifies, differentiation is ever-important. Hulu continues to offer both a strong on-demand streaming library and a robust live TV option. The service is an excellent option for watching popular TV shows, and we like its broad platform support, even if Hulu’s original series are hit-or-miss. On the live TV front, Hulu’s channel coverage is top-notch, and its DVR features compare well to the competition’s. Despite a few missteps, Hulu keeps its Editors’ Choice award, because no other service can quite match its combination of streaming content.
10+ min |
September 2021
PC Magazine
FASTEST MOBILE NETWORKS 2021
It’s T-Mobile’s year at last. T-Mobile’s new mid-band 5G network is the only nationwide 5G that’s markedly faster than 4G, earning the carrier its first-ever PCMag award for America’s fastest mobile network.
10+ min |
September 2021
PC Magazine
Corel PaintShop Pro: A Worthy Photoshop Alternative
Photoshop is a magnificent tool, but many of its users could do everything they need to in Corel’s photo-editing software, PaintShop Pro, without having to pay a monthly tribute to Adobe. PaintShop Pro supports layers and lets you edit both raster and vector image formats—something you’d need two of Adobe’s Creative Cloud apps to do.
10+ min |
September 2021
PC Magazine
Clean Up Apple Messages to Free Up Space
My family and I love to share pictures and videos in an Apple Messages group text. Since COVID-19 struck, we’ve mostly shared pics and videos of dogs, babies, food, snow, hiking, and the 20-plus bananas I accidentally bought in an online grocery order.
5 min |
September 2021
PC Magazine
Sony ZV-E10: A Camera for Vloggers
A year after introducing its first camera for vloggers—the fixed-lens ZV-1—Sony is bringing the concept to an interchangeable lens platform. The ZV-E10 is built around the same sensor as the stills-focused Sony a6100 but is made just for video.
10+ min |
September 2021
PC Magazine
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 (2021): A Superlative Aspirational System
We won’t try to keep you in suspense. When we reviewed last year’s model, we called the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon the best laptop in the world—though we later decided it shared that title with the Dell XPS 13 OLED—and it hasn’t done anything in its latest revision to change that state of affairs. The X1 Carbon Gen 9 catches up with the Dell and other elite ultraportables by moving to an 11th Generation Intel “Tiger Lake” Core processor and a slightly taller 16:10 rather than 16:9 screen aspect ratio. Its premium price and lack of an SD card slot still knock half a star off what would otherwise be a perfect five-star rating, but it effortlessly collects yet another Editors’ Choice award as the most desirable executive notebook on Earth.
7 min |
September 2021
PC Magazine
Samsung Galaxy Buds2: Good ANC for the Price
Since introducing the Galaxy Buds in 2019, Samsung has iterated on the formula with the Galaxy Buds Live and the Galaxy Buds Pro. The company now has an official successor, the aptly named Galaxy Buds2. The biggest change here is the addition of active noise cancellation (ANC), and it’s quite good for the price ($149.99). The earphones also deliver a powerful, notably bass-forward sound with enough brightness to keep things balanced.
6 min |
September 2021
PC Magazine
HP Laptop 14-dq2020nr: A Limited Budget Laptop
You probably know that HP’s Pavilion brand is for consumer PCs priced and positioned below its upscale Envy and Spectre lines. But Pavilion is only the second-lowest rung on HP’s notebook-PC ladder. Its budget laptops have no brand at all, just a generic family name: “HP Laptop.”
7 min |
September 2021
PC Magazine
AMD Ryzen 5 5600G: A Superb Value-Focused Option
As a six-core, 12-thread processor with great integrated graphics, the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G is the CPU that 2021 has been waiting for. A strong successor to older, budget-friendly, gaming-focused CPUs such as the AMD Ryzen 5 3400G, it puts up some of the fastest game frame rates to date from an integrated graphics processor (IGP). Cheaper than the IGP-less Ryzen 5 5600X ($299) and layered in with the highly capable Radeon RX Vega 7 graphics engine, the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G is a serious threat to Intel’s competing Intel Core i5-11600K on CPU grunt and really puts the hammer down once you factor in its gaming results and Radeon Software compatibility. Whether you’re an esports hopeful aiming to get a gaming PC built for cheap or just want a solid IGP-equipped processor to drive low-lift daily computing, the Ryzen 5 5600G is a stellar 7nm AMD desktop processor. With yet another Editors’ Choice award win, AMD’s going to need a bigger trophy case.
8 min |
September 2021
PC Magazine
Bitdefender Premium VPN: Affordable, Clean Design
A VPN protects your privacy by routing your traffic through an encrypted connection to a remote server, blinding your ISP to your activities and making you harder to track online.
10+ min |
August 2021
PC Magazine
Hands on With macOS Monterey: Improvements Abound
WHAT'S NEW NOW/APPLE
8 min |
August 2021
PC Magazine
Chegg: Unique Online Learning
Chegg is an online learning service and app that offers students help in a few ways.
8 min |
August 2021
PC Magazine
How to Manage Your Google Privacy Settings
A privacy policy is meant to be a contract between you and a company—big tech companies in particular—that ensures these companies are keeping your data safe. One company that has an enormous amount of your data, from email and photos to videos to documents, is Google.
10+ min |
August 2021
PC Magazine
WILL THE BATTLE FOR CPU SUPREMACY PUSH THE RIVALS TOGETHER?
For years, neither company has been able to claim absolute victory. But as Amazon, Apple, Google, and other tech giants design and manufacture their own processors, will AMD and Intel circle their wagons?
10+ min |