If you want to record what’s on your screen, you probably know that you can use a Windows keyboard shortcut to launch the Snipping Tool in Windows 11. That’s Windows key + Shift + R and it’ll start recording the entire screen. But what if you want to record only a certain area? Until now, if using the Snipping Tool, you had to record the entire screen and then crop the clip afterwards with some light video editing. Now, the latest news is that Microsoft will soon make it possible to record a specific window instead of the entire desktop, which means you won’t have to crop the clip afterwards anymore. The new window-recording feature in Snipping Tool is currently available in the latest beta of Windows 11, according to Windows Latest. Microsoft hasn’t provided an exact release date for the general public, but it’s likely coming out in an update later this year or early next year. Read...

If you’re a Gmail user, you need to be particularly careful right now as criminals are currently targeting Gmail accounts. Hackers from a group called ShinyHunters were recently able to gain access to Google’s Salesforce database systems, reports Forbes. Google has confirmed the attacks and states that general data like customer and company names were leaked, but not passwords. The resulting data leak means that users of Google services—including Gmail and Google Cloud—are now at risk of falling victim to phishing attempts. How the phishing attacks work Initial reports of attempted attacks have already been seen on Reddit, which are likely related to the data leak. Users describe how alleged Google employees have contacted them by phone to inform them of a security breach in their accounts. In these scam attempts, attackers are trying to take over Gmail accounts by triggering alleged “account resets” and then intercepting passwords to subsequently lock out the account holders. Another attack method involves “dangling buckets” (i.e., outdated access addresses) to steal data from or inject malware into Google Cloud. Both methods are extremely dangerous and currently threaten Gmail and Google Cloud users in particular, around 2.5 billion people worldwide. In theory, companies are of particular interest to hackers, but private individuals can also easily be targeted. How to protect yourself To be on the safe side, you should ensure that your account is protected against unauthorized access. Google has provided the following security measures for this purpose: Use Google’s Security Checkup to automatically identify security vulnerabilities and get account security recommendations. Activate Google’s Advanced Protection Program to get an additional security barrier that blocks the download of potentially harmful files and restricts non-Google apps from accessing Gmail data. Use passkeys instead of passwords to stay better protected against hacking attacks and phishing attempts. Above all, you must remain vigilant. Be particularly skeptical if you’re contacted by alleged support staff who can’t confirm their identity. Google employees will never contact you by phone or email to reset a password or make other changes to your accounts. Further reading: Gmail’s AI summaries can be hijacked by scammers Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Fastest USB4 enclosure to date Solid, thermally excellent design Good-looking Cons Pricier than most Our Verdict I love this sexy-in-an-oddball-fashion enclosure. It’s the fastest USB4 enclosure I’ve tested so far, and with all the fins, there’s no chance of thermal throttling. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: TerraMaster D1 SSD Plus Retailer Price $109.99 View Deal TerraMaster $109.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices TerraMaster’s radiator-finned, all-aluminum D1 SSD Plus looks cool, and runs cool. It’s performance lends much credence to the theory that thermal design is important when it comes to high-speed external storage, or for that matter — high-speed storage in general. A lack of thermal throttling may or may not be why the D1 SSD Plus outperformed the competition, but given past experience with great thermal designs, I reckon it just might’ve factored in. Either way, it’s a fantastic, if pricey external USB4 enclosure. Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best external drives for comparison. What are the D1 SSD Plus’s features? The D1 SSD Plus is a striking-looking, all-aluminum enclosure featuring the 40GBps USB4 protocol, with a single M.2 NVMe slot inside with thermal compound strips included. It measures approximately 4.4-inches long, by 2.25-inches wide, by 1.25-inches thick/high. Weight is just shy of 9 ounces, which feels pretty hefty at the size. A two-piece clamshell, the halves of the silver enclosure are held together by two tabs and a single captive screw — a rather tiny screw, which makes it a good thing that it’s captive. On the other hand, the D1’s method for holding the M.2 NVMe SSD in the enclosure is an old-fashioned non-captive screw. That stands out when the trend in enclosures seems to favor captive plastic or rubber retention methods. The yin and yang? A screw is more secure and less likely to break, but it’s also more easily lost. I’ve sent any number of the little buggers scurrying across my hardwood floors. Solution? I’ve learned to be much more careful and do the work on a soft towel or blanket which will capture it before it escapes. How much does the D1 SSD Plus cost? Alas, you won’t find the D1 SSD Plus in or anywhere near the bargain bin. At $110 it’s one of the pricier enclosures I’ve tested, certainly more expensive than the competing Ugreen CM850 shown in the charts. But given the specs, the all-aluminum design, and the decidedly superior performance, I can’t help but consider the extra moola worthwhile. How fast is the D1 SSD Plus? Short answer: very. Given that I populated the the Ugreen CM850 with the same, extremely fast Samsung 9100 Pro SSD, I wasn’t expecting the D1 SSD Plus to spank it in our real-world copies as it did. I ran those tests more than the usual number of times to verify the results. Lack of thermal throttling? Again, could be. The Adata SE920 comes pre-populated and is thrown into the mix to show that positive things can happen when you roll your own external storage with a very fast SSD. The synthetic benchmarks were exceptionally close between the TerraMaster and Ugreen, with the Adata very close behind. It’s the fins, baby! There’s not a lot of difference between the three drives in CrystalDiskMark 8’s sequential throughput tests. But the D1 did triumph. Longer bars are better. The CrystalDiskMark 8 4K results were nearly equal between all three competitors. Indeed, NVMe technology is so much faster than even 40Gbps, or even 80Gbps USB4/5 and Thunderbolt 4/5, that it tends to bump right up against those transfer protocols’ ceilings. These numbers are very close, with no “Who’s the fastest?” conclusion to be drawn. Longer bars are better But the D1 SSD Plus sustained throughput so well that it gained a decisive advantage in our real-world transfers. To the point that I’m beginning to wonder exactly how much thermal throttling goes on with your average vanilla enclosure. After all the OWC 1M2 with its similarly finned design is also faster than most generic enclosures. Note that Windows 11 242H seems to have flatlined transfer speeds, at least with our new testbed, so these transfer tests are closer than they used to be. As such, they’re no longer a true indication of potential performance. Also, you may notice that the Xcopy (Command prompt) tests are significantly faster and far closer to what the synthetic benchmarks say are possible. Microsoft seems to have optimized these for NVMe while leaving Explorer outdated. The D1 won most or the 48GB transfer tests, but it was close. Shorter bars are better. Here’s where the difference between the D1 SSD Plus and the Ugreen CM850 really showed up — the aforementioned spanking. Note that the SE920 was only 2TB whereas the Samsung 9100 Pro used in the others was 4TB. This might’ve worked against the Adata SE920 in such a long copy, but other 2TB SSDs have turned in far faster times. The 450GB write was a major win for the D1. Keep in mind that the Ugreen had the same Samsung 9100 Pro inside. Shorter bars are better. All told, the D1 SSD Plus outperformed the competition. Sometimes marginally, sometimes substantially. If you want the fasted USB4 enclosure I’ve tested, this is it. It’s the fins, baby! Should you buy the D1 SSD plus? Personally, I find the D1 SSD Plus attractive, but the look might not strike everyone the same way. That said, it is fast as all get-out and there’s absolutely zero chance that you will ever overheat the SSD inside. Worth the money? I say yea. How we test Drive tests currently utilize Windows 11 24H2, 64-bit running off of a PCIe 4.0 Samsung 990 Pro in an Asus Z890-Creator WiFi (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard. The CPU is a Core Ultra i5 225 feeding/fed by two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of memory total). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 are integrated and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. SSDs involved in the test are mounted in a HighPoint 7604A 16x PCIe 5.0 adapter card. We run the CrystalDiskMark 8, AS SSD 2, and ATTO 4 synthetic benchmarks to find the storage device’s potential performance, then a series of 48GB and 450GB transfers tests using Windows Explorer drag and drop to show what you’ll see under Window, as well as the far faster Xcopy to show what’s possible. The 48GB transfer tests utilize an USFMount RAM disk taking up 58GB of the 64GB of total memory. The 450GB file is transferred from another SSD on the HighPoint card. Each test is performed on a newly NTFS-formatted and TRIM’d drive so the results are optimal. Note that in normal use, as a drive fills up, performance may decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching, as well as other factors. This can be less of a factor with the current crop of SSDs with far faster late-generation NAND. Caveat: The performance numbers shown apply only to the drive we were shipped and to the capacity tested. SSD performance can and will vary by capacity due to more or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes across and the amount of NAND available for secondary caching. Vendors also occasionally swap components. If you ever notice a large discrepancy between the performance you experience and that which we report, by all means, let us know. Read...

Graphics card prices are dropping. Wow, that’s something I haven’t been able to say in a long time. Unfortunately, it’s only for those of you in Europe, as Nvidia makes a slight cut to some of the latest RTX 50-series desktop graphics cards in the region. Notably, prices in the US (where unpredictable tariffs are putting a damper on anything with chips in it) remain unchanged. VideoCardz noticed the price drop, specifically for the RTX 5090, 5080, and 5070. The top-of-the-line RTX 5090 gets the biggest drop, from €2,329 to €2,099, just a hair under 10 percent. The RTX 5080 goes from €1,169 to €1,059, while the RTX 5070 drops from €649 to €589. The RTX 5070 Ti, 5060, and 5060 Ti are not getting any price drops at the moment. Note that the prices are for Nvidia’s Founders Edition cards, though a small amount of cards from other manufacturers should be available at that “base” price with no extras. Why the price drop? Since Nvidia changed the European prices without ceremony, there’s no official word. But VideoCardz notes that the 9 to 10 percent drop roughly follows the rise of the Euro currency versus the US dollar over the last six months, a 12 percent gain for the former. That would explain why US prices are unchanged, despite high demand across the board for Nvidia’s graphics cards. For the sake of comparison, €2,099 is $2449 at today’s exchange rates, and the US price of the RTX 5090 Founder’s Edition is still allegedly $2,000, so Europe’s general higher prices (accounting for factors like Value Added Tax, among others) seem to be holding. That being the case, this is less of an actual price cut and more of an adjustment to match the economic realities of the weakening US dollar. Read...

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I’m a PC, not a Mac. I’ll take Windows over macOS any day and I’ve been this way for years. But after reviewing a lot of Arm laptops with Snapdragon X chips this past year, I’ve noticed a big problem: if you want an Arm laptop, MacBooks are much more compelling. While Apple lowers prices on its high-end laptops, PC makers are pricing down by cutting corners. In other words, the PC industry is failing to compete properly in the Arm laptop market, with Microsoft’s Surface laptop lineup as the perfect example of it all—and we deserve better than this. Arm PCs vs. Arm MacBooks: Let’s compare I love Windows and I love PCs. But when it comes to Arm laptops, you lose a lot of the PC’s advantages—like upgradeable hardware, near-perfect backwards compatibility, a huge library of PC games, etc. Arm laptops fail to deliver on those fronts, and if those are your highest priorities, then you’re better off with an Intel or AMD laptop. Moreover, Arm-based Windows laptops with Qualcomm Snapdragon chips are failing to deliver the price points I’d hoped for at launch. (More on that in a moment.) Meanwhile, Arm-based MacBooks are becoming shockingly more affordable. Apple MacBook Air M1 (2020)IDG Right now, in mid-August 2025 as we head into back-to-school season, you can get an M1 MacBook Air for $599 from Walmart, down from $650 retail. Sure, it only has 8GB of RAM, and sure, it was originally released in 2020. But it’s still a high-quality machine—not cheap, not plasticky, and not a lower-end screen just to reach that price point. It was top-of-the-line when it released in 2020. Similarly, you can grab a current-gen M4 MacBook Air for $799 from Best Buy, down from $999 retail. Asus Vivobook S 15 (2024)IDG / Matthew Smith For comparison, how much is a high-end Snapdragon X Elite laptop? The Asus Vivobook S 15 retails for $1,299 and still costs about a grand on sale. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x retails for $1,199 and sometimes discounts down to $900. The base model of Microsoft’s 13-inch Surface Laptop 7 retailed for $999 and went as low as $750 on sale. Personally, I would rather have a Windows laptop on the go. But I’d also have a hard time convincing anyone who’s neutral into buying a Qualcomm Snapdragon X-powered laptop over a MacBook, especially once we started comparing prices. The Surface Laptop shows what’s wrong Snapdragon X laptops are meant for people who prefer Windows over macOS while on the go, and I’m one of those people. I’m actually typing up this article on a Windows Arm laptop right now! But you can’t buy my favorite machine anymore. It’s been discontinued. When Microsoft released its initial line of Copilot+ PCs running Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips in 2024, I knew I had to buy one—I’m a professional PC reviewer, after all. At release, Microsoft offered a 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7 with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for $999, meeting the M4 MacBook Air’s retail price. In the months following release, I saw Surface Laptop 7s on sale for around $800, with further drops later on. So far, so good. Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 (2024)Mark Hachman / IDG But now, more than a year later, Microsoft has discontinued the $999 Surface Laptop. That particular line now starts at $1,199—that’s $200 more expensive than the M4 MacBook Air at its retail price. To compensate, Microsoft released a cheaper line of 13-inch Surface Laptops… but these are lower-end PCs with worse screens, lower-resolution webcams, no facial recognition hardware, and other corner-cutting decisions. And they still start at $899. That’s the problem: while Apple’s strategy involves shipping older premium products, Microsoft’s strategy involves releasing worse products with corners cut. Why would someone who doesn’t love Windows choose to buy a lower-end Surface Laptop or spend up on a higher-end Surface Laptop when the MacBook Air exists? And at $599 or $799, it’s a flat-out better value if you don’t depend on Windows. Microsoft Surface Laptop 13 (2025)Mattias Inghe / Foundry It pains me to say that because I love my Surface Laptop 7. It’s a great machine for productivity and browsing with long battery life. But you can’t buy the one I have anymore—you’ll be buying something worse, or paying hundreds more to get something similar. Microsoft gave up on competing in the critical $999 laptop market. New Arm laptops struggle to compete At CES 2025, Qualcomm said its new Snapdragon X chips would pave the way for $600 laptops. But those lower-end Snapdragon chips perform surprisingly close to Apple’s 2020-era M1 hardware—the one that powers those $599 MacBooks—in many benchmarks. And when Lenovo released the comparatively inexpensive Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x with that chip, launching at a $749 price point with a dim display and tinny speakers, I was disappointed. Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x (2025)IDG / Chris Hoffman Let me reiterate: a “budget MacBook” is an older premium model that now has a lower price, while a “budget Windows Arm laptop” is a new machine with corners cut. It’s a huge difference in philosophy, and it makes PC laptops feel lower end. When MacBooks are beating you on price and performance, you know something has gone wrong. Of course, these Arm laptops running Windows do go on sale from time to time. As I write this, you can get that Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x for $449 at Best Buy, which is a serious value. But, at release, comparing the $749 PC to the $649 MacBook, the winner for people who aren’t committed to Windows is clear: it’s the MacBook. Windows Arm laptops are in a weird spot There are so many good reasons to buy a PC instead of a Mac! But most of those reasons will push you towards Intel or AMD laptops, not these Snapdragon-powered Arm laptops. If I were buying a laptop today and prioritizing battery life, I’d probably go for an Intel Lunar Lake-powered machine. You get full compatibility with Windows apps—including games, many of which run pretty well on the integrated GPU with no compatibility hiccups—along with excellent battery life. And if I wanted a gaming laptop or more CPU performance in general, I’d have so many other good options. Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 (2025)Chris Hoffman / IDG Windows Arm laptops, on the other hand, just aren’t compelling right now. You’d have to find one at a rock-bottom sale price to make it worthwhile. (And with those sales becoming more common, it’s a sign that they aren’t selling as well as PC makers hoped they would.) All of this could change in the coming years. Windows PCs with Arm processors may have a long and bright future ahead of them, especially when other manufacturers—like Nvidia, perhaps—start making Arm chips for them. But in a world where Apple keeps getting the MacBook’s price lower without compromising on specs or experience, PC manufacturers will have to do better to stand out. One thing’s for sure: Microsoft’s push to brand these as “Copilot+ PCs” and sell the platform based on a handful of nebulous AI features has failed. Instead of AI, Microsoft should have championed battery life—especially now that you don’t even need Arm for AI features. Are tariffs to blame? I’ve been making a lot of price comparisons, which might seem unfair given the elephant in the room: US tariffs. Manufacturers generally avoid commenting (at least on the record) on how tariffs are affecting their pricing strategies, so I generally don’t ask. But when Microsoft axes its $999 laptop and replaces it with a worse version with lower-end hardware, it’s easy to suspect that something is going on behind the scenes. And when we hear about $600 Windows Arm laptops in January but they never materialize after tariffs come into play, I have to assume tariffs are a factor. And yet, Apple’s MacBook can be had for $599 to $649 at Walmart, complete with a premium build quality and good display. When I review a new Arm PC laptop that delivers similar performance with a worse build quality at a higher price point, I really don’t know what to say. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Matte display is bright and easy to see Build feels great Good everyday battery life and performance Cons Expensive for what you get Thermal throttles Lags behind competition Our Verdict I had high hopes for the Intel ThinkPad T14s Gen 6, but its performance is held back by poor cooling and significantly reduced battery life. It might have been worth recommending if it weren’t nearly twice the price of the Snapdragon model. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 Retailer Price Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Qualcomm really shook things up in 2024 when it introduced its Snapdragon X Elite chips alongside Windows for ARM. The promise was performance and efficiency. While that performance was occasionally hard to see because of compatibility issues, the efficiency made itself apparent when I tested the Snapdragon-powered Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 and saw it run for almost 24 hours in our battery test. When I saw that Lenovo was introducing an Intel version, the potential was exciting: more consistent performance and compatibility alongside that amazing battery life. Unfortunately, potential is hard to realize, and the Intel-powered ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 struggled. It may be faster, but it ran as long, and somehow it earned an almost doubled price tag. When competitors like the HP EliteBook X G1a and Asus Vivobook S 14 offer more for less, the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 ends up feeling like it has very little merit. Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Specs CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 258V Memory: 32GB LPDDR5x Graphics/GPU: Intel Arc 140V Display: 14-inch 1200p IPS, Anti-glare Storage: 512GB PCIe Gen4 SSD Webcam: 5MP + IR Connectivity: 2x Thunderbolt 4 / USB4, 2x USB-A 5Gbps, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x 3.5mm combo audio, 1x Kensington Nano  Networking: WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: Windows Hello fingerprint, facial recognition Battery capacity: 58 watt-hours Dimensions: 12.3 x 8.6 x 0.66 inches Weight: 2.79 pounds MSRP: $3,079 as-tested ($3,079 base) At the time of writing, Lenovo only lists a pair of different configurations for the Intel-powered ThinkPad T14s Gen 6. Our test configuration actually isn’t among them, as it features just 512GB of storage while the available models both include 1TB PCIe Gen 5 SSDs. If it were configured with 1TB of storage, the unit tested here would cost $3,079 and otherwise have all the above specifications. Lenovo also offers a $3,429 model with a largely similar configuration except it bumps up to an Intel Core Ultra 7 268V chip while swapping out the display for a touchscreen model with a far lower color gamut and lower brightness. While these are the configurations available now, Lenovo appears to have more planned. A product specification reference sheet mentions 10 different CPU options, memory ranging from 16GB to 64GB, additional IPS displays and a sharper OLED display, and even an alternate gray color.  Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Design and build quality IDG / Mark Knapp Familiarity is the name of the game for this version of the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6. It bears the same name as the model I tested late last year for a reason — almost nothing has changed externally (or internally for that matter), save a crucial CPU switch. This model comes in the same blacked out, coated aluminum chassis that’s become such a staple of the ThinkPad line. Like its Snapdragon-powered counterpart, this model weighs little at just 2.79 pounds. It’s not as thin as can be, but it’s still compact and feels fairly sturdy, exhibiting a good deal less flex in the display than some thin-and-light laptops. It stands with two small rubber feet at the front and a wide rubber foot at the back. These should provide more than adequate clearance for air to reach the single intake fan on the underside of the laptop, which is tucked away underneath a small section of grille. The rest of the base is otherwise flat, solid, and unadorned.  The top surface of the keyboard deck is a little busier. It features the ThinkPad logo engraved into one corner. Speaker grilles flank either side of the keyboard, with the right grille a little smaller than the left as the power button cuts into its space. That power button also doubles as a fingerprint scanner.  The display has a wide hinge that holds the display firmly in place. There’s an extra lip built onto the display lid for opening the laptop up, but the hinge is just firm enough and the base of the laptop just light enough that one-handed doesn’t work out. The little lip at the top of the display has the webcam and IR system for Windows Hello facial recognition built into it, and there’s a hardware camera shutter as well. When slid into place, this covers the camera with a bit of plastic that has a red dot on it, so it’s easy to see when the camera is covered and disabled. The lid of the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 also features little adornment, but it includes a ThinkPad logo in one corner with a red, illuminated dot in the “i” of “ThinkPad,” and a silver Lenovo badge along one edge. Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Keyboard, trackpad IDG / Mark Knapp Like its Snapdragon-counterpart, the keyboard on this laptop is good but not excellent. The keys aren’t firmly stabilized, so they can wiggle at the edges, leading to a mushier feel that stands in the way of consistency. They still benefit from a slight contour and good spacing, making it all the easier to feel them out and remain centered for quick touch-typing, but I struggled to go much beyond 100 words per minute without seeing my typing accuracy sink as I dealt with missed taps.  Beyond typing, there are positive aspects to the keyboard. Its white backlights effectively illuminate both the primary and secondary legends on the keys. The function row has distinctly grouped clusters, so you can readily feel out the keys you want instead of having to peek down at the keyboard. And because these function keys are compact, Lenovo was able to squeeze in Home, End, Insert, and Delete into an additional cluster at the top-right corner of the keyboard. The arrow keys are also compact and offset. While their size can make them feel a little cramped, the offset makes it easier to access them and helps avoid mistaken presses, as they don’t take up space that would otherwise have belonged to the right Shift key.  The trackpad is wonderfully smooth and respectably wide. The physical buttons for use with the TrackPoint nib cut into the touchpad’s vertical space, but they provide a useful role if you prefer the nib for navigation. Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Display, audio IDG / Mark Knapp You don’t get the most gorgeous, vivid display in the world from the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6, but you get an almost ideal screen for productivity. I measured it reaching exactly the 500-nit brightness level advertised. Combine that brightness with the incredible anti-glare finish, and you’ve got a display that’s easy to see even in some pretty heinous conditions.  The screen isn’t crazy sharp, but 1920×1200 on a 14-inch screen still provides clarity even for tiny text. The strong contrast, which I measured at 1,900:1 also helps with clarity. Though color may not be as precious for productivity, this display achieved 100 percent coverage of the sRGB color space and has a reasonable degree of accuracy, so you shouldn’t run into issues of web content not appearing as intended.  The speakers put out a good bit of volume, more than enough to listen to speech in videos in a quiet room. But the audio sounds a little resonant in the chassis at full volume. The speakers sound a bit cleaner at 50 percent volume, and the audio is still loud enough at this level.  This ultimately isn’t a great entertainment package, but the combination of serviceable speakers and a high-visibility display offer excellent utility. The screen isn’t crazy sharp, but 1920×1200 on a 14-inch screen still provides clarity even for tiny text. Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Webcam, microphone, biometrics IDG / Mark Knapp As tested, the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 comes with a 5MP webcam that also supports Windows Hello facial recognition. This is a quick and convenient way of logging in. The camera can also play some extra security roles, serving to dim the display if you look away or lock the system if you walk away through Windows settings. The camera itself is good, offering a sharp picture with natural exposure even in slightly dimmer environments.  The microphones come together nicely with the camera, offering clear vocals when recording. They don’t pick up too much echo and they do a decent job eliminating background noise.  Beyond the camera, the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 includes a fingerprint scanner built into the power button. This works with Windows Hello, but Synaptics’s software also allows you to set whether it will provide authentication “through all security levels.” Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Connectivity IDG / Mark Knapp Like the Snapdragon model, this Intel-powered system has respectable connectivity. It’s essentially the same with two USB-C ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a 3.5mm combo jack on the left of the laptop and two USB-A ports and a lock slot on the right. The only difference is that the USB-C ports here support Thunderbolt 4 while the other model supported USB4 (though both protocols offer 40Gbps speeds) The laptop offers Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, and both have proven quick-to-connect and stable in my testing.  Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Performance This version of the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 has a lot of promise for general users worried about the limitations of the ARM-based model. The Intel-powered version supports x86-coded software natively, and that can mean better performance than the other system when it relies on translation. That said, neither version of the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 is alone in the market. The HP EliteBook X G1a offers a similarly professional-oriented system and has a competitive price at $2,749 as tested. And there’s no ignoring the consumer-focused models out there that don’t come with the same kind of prosumer premiums. This lets models that can compete on performance come in at considerably lower prices, like the $1,199 Asus VivoBook S 14 and $1,499 MSI Summit 13 AI + Evo.  IDG / Mark Knapp Overall performance is solid. The ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 lines up nicely against its competition here, with about the performance I’d expect out of a high-end, thin-and-light laptop. Hitting 5,000 points in PCMark 10 is generally a good sign for everyday performance, and higher scores only suggest faster, snappier experiences and a bit more muscle for workloads like photo and video editing and design work. Much higher scores in 8000s and 9000s tend to be the exclusive domain of powerful workstations and gaming laptops, not models running efficient processors like these.  While overall performance was good, it’s not too surprising to see the ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 lagging behind in brute force. Our HandBrake encoding test works the system hard, and the longer the test goes, the more heat builds up, and the slower the system gets. Very few thin-and-lights can zip through this test, but with strong thermal management and a decent processor, they can do a decent job. The ThinkPad has neither here. Its processor is neither extremely fast nor is its modest cooling system very robust. As a result, we see the ThinkPad get the worst result here, and the cooling seems the culprit. The ThinkPad uses a low-power processor that didn’t have much chance keeping pace with the HP EliteBook’s high-power processor (the tides turn in battery life, though). But The Asus VivoBook and MSI Summit both use the same processor as the ThinkPad. Their leads here show the benefit of better thermals. IDG / Mark Knapp The performance gap is further borne out in Cinebench. Earlier versions of Cinebench ran quick CPU tasks, and that let the ThinkPad actually come close to the VivoBook in single- and multi-core performance, and it even saw the ThinkPad consistently beating the Summit in those tests. But Cinebench R23 pushed it harder and hotter, and its ability to keep pace sank it back behind the Vivobook. With Cinebench R24 running the test for a minimum of 10-minute, heat is guaranteed, and the ThinkPad’s weaker cooling continues to drag it behind. Interestingly, it’s in Cinebench that we also see the difference between native x86 and ARM translation, as the Intel-based ThinkPad outperforms the Qualcomm-based in Cinebench R15, R20, and R23. But the tides turn in Cinebench R24, which can run on ARM natively. There, the Qualcomm-powered ThinkPad took the lead in multi-core performance, even if the Intel model still had superior single-core speeds.  That single-core performance is also Intel’s strength. All three Intel machines led with 122-123 points in single-core performance in Cinebench R24. So even though the HP EliteBook’s powerful AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 sped away in multi-core performance, it may not promise better responsiveness in everyday tasks.  IDG / Mark Knapp The graphics performance of all of these systems is middling. While you can do some light 3D work or gaming on the integrated graphics these come with, the performance is still night and day between all of these systems and a laptop running even a low-tier discrete GPU like the RTX 4050. At least the ThinkPad regains some ground on the EliteBook thanks to its more capable Intel Arc 140V graphics and on the MSI Summit, presumably because it’s managing power to the CPU and iGPU better. Still, the VivoBook’s performance lead (yet again) can’t be ignored.  Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Battery life When I tested the Qualcomm-powered ThinkPad T14s Gen 6, I was amazed to see it offer the best battery life I’d ever seen from a laptop. It ran for almost 24 hours. That was almost enough to make up for its performance deficits. So the prospect of having almost the same machine but running on an Intel chip with broader compatibility sounded great. Alas, the Snapdragon chipset was key to the efficiency. IDG / Mark Knapp In our video playback test, the Intel-powered ThinkPad doesn’t even come close to the Snapdragon model. It’s still a very worthy machine, reaching over 19 hours of runtime in our test. And in day-to-day use, it also proved capable of lasting through the workday. It also proved more efficient than the HP EliteBook, which fell just short of 11 hours. Unfortunately, the Asus VivoBook and MSI Summit that have posed so much trouble for the ThinkPad in performance also pose a threat in longevity, as both lasted just over 21 hours. It’s not that they’re more efficient, though. The Vivobook has a larger 75Wh battery and the Summit has a 70-watt hour battery.   Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Conclusion The ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 ends up in an awkward position where 1. If you care about the quality of the hardware, you’re better off elsewhere. 2. You care about the performance, you’re better off elsewhere. 3. You care about the battery life, you’re better off elsewhere. Or 4. If you care about all of those things, you’re better off elsewhere. Plenty of machines beat it in more than one respect there. The Asus VivoBook S 14 may not be as well built, for instance, but it has the lead in performance and battery life (plus an OLED display for what it’s worth). Meanwhile, the HP EliteBook XG1a may lag behind in battery life, but it has a nice build, great display, and largely superior performance.  And all of the laptops I’ve compared here have the advantage of being much cheaper — including the EliteBook. At over $3,000 for this configuration, this ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 has an undeniably premium tacked on. Some of that may be chalked up to enterprise features, but if you’re not in desperate need of those, it’s hard to see the worth, especially next to these rivals. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this ThinkPad get some massive discounts (the Snapdragon model has, as have plenty of other Lenovo laptops), but unless and until it does, it’s going to be hard to recommend for much more than its useful matte display. Read...

This week, two officials from the Office of the Auditor-General spoke with the Governance and Administration Committee about the Long Term Plans made by local government. Read...

Samoans head to the polls on 29 August. Read...

Normally, automatic software updates are a good thing. They keep you running the latest versions of software, including essential security and stability updates, often necessary for everything from tiny apps to Windows. But there are some good reasons why you might want to avoid these, as exemplified by Windows updates. Now it appears Microsoft has removed automatic app updates from the Microsoft Store. Previously, you could disable automatic updates for Windows apps and games in the Microsoft store by diving into the Settings menu. But as German site Deskmodder (spotted by PCMag) notes, this menu now restricts you to a maximum delay of 5 weeks, after which Windows Update presumably installs updates again whether you want them or not. Security and stability are the obvious reasons for this mandatory change, but I can’t help but worry about some fairly obvious malicious applications here, if you’ll pardon the pun. We’ve seen companies buy up popular browser extensions only to fill them with adware, and apps have been hijacked to spread viruses, trojans, and other bad stuff before. Having an integration with the Microsoft Store and Windows Update (and by extension, Microsoft Defender) would seem to bring in a lot of extra security you don’t get from a manual download or an update system fully integrated into the app itself. But these integrated systems, while more secure in general, aren’t perfect either. The security of an “app store” setup has been circumvented many times. And beyond that… maybe you just don’t want an app to update because it’s changed in ways you don’t like, or it’s broken some particular feature. I’ve got plenty of installers for old, outdated versions of programs squirreled away on my PC for exactly that reason. Read...

Drivers and staff will stop work for the annual general meeting of the Rail and Maritime Transport Union. Read...