On Friday, Microsoft released the first build of Windows 11 26H1—and as suspected, you won’t need to worry about it. Microsoft released Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 28000 to the Canary Channel, the most experimental of the four Windows Insider channels. “With this build today, Windows Insiders in the Canary Channel will see the versioning updated under Settings > System > About (and winver) to Windows 11, version 26H1,” the company said in a blog post. In the announcement, Microsoft was fairly clear that Windows 11 26H1 won’t be something that consumers will have to worry about. “26H1 is not a feature update for version 25H2 and only includes platform changes to support specific silicon,” the blog post noted. “There is no action required from customers.” “[Windows 11] 25H2 remains the primary place for new features,” the post added. “Windows 11 continues to have an annual feature update cadence, with releases in the second half of the calendar year.” Microsoft’s statement is in line with what tipster Phantomofearth revealed little more than a week ago: that the Windows 11 26H1 release was specifically aimed at new silicon. The leaker claimed that the new silicon in question was the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite, which should ship in early 2026. Microsoft basically used the earlier Snapdragon X Elite as a test bed, rolling out new features on that platform first, then adding support for other Copilot+ processors like Intel’s Core Ultra 200 chips and the AMD Ryzen AI 300 processors. Although Microsoft could adjust course and launch a new feature or two on the Windows 11 26H1 channel, it looks like enthusiasts who want to try out and test new Windows features should remain on Windows 11 25H2 for now. You can double-check which version your PC is on by using the “winget” command within Windows. Again, the Canary Channel is purely experimental. “The builds we release to the Canary Channel represent the latest platform changes early in the development cycle and should not be seen as matched to any specific release of Windows,” Microsoft noted. “Features and experiences included in these builds may never get released as we try out different concepts and get feedback. Features may change over time, be removed, or replaced and never get released beyond Windows Insiders. Some of these features and experiences could show up in future Windows releases when they’re ready.” Read...

One of Microsoft’s unexpected success stories on the PC is Phone Link, the way in which you can monitor and use your Android phone while working on your PC. So it’s a shame that Microsoft is fracturing the app when it probably doesn’t need to. Microsoft is removing the Photos portion of Phone Link and handing it back to File Explorer. Is this a big deal? Yes and no. Windows Central and Windows Latest noticed the change Friday morning, but it has appeared on my Phone Link app, too: A notification that Phone Link is going away, and that you can now access your phone’s photos via the standard File Explorer application. Phone Link, once called the Your Phone app on a Windows PC, is now a cohesive experience within Windows for both Android phones and Apple iPhones (well, kind of.) A recent change to the Windows Start menu places a “phone companion” menu on the page, which is basically a subset and a shortcut to Phone Link. Phone Link puts all of your SMS messages, phone calls, photos, and Android apps on a single page, and can even navigate through the phone screen itself. Yes, mobile messaging has quietly migrated to iMessage and various Android apps like WhatsApp, but it’s still a unified vision of what’s taking place on your phone. And that’s handy, both for you and for Microsoft. I’ve used Phone Link’s Photos feature when my phone hasn’t quite synced with OneDrive and the Windows Photos app, when I need a photo from my phone to illustrate a story. I’ll still use Photos and even OneDrive to hunt down photos from years ago, but the fact that I can see the key features of my phone right on the display that I’m working on is quite handy. And let’s face it: File Explorer is a bit clunky in the best of times. The one feature that I don’t see in Phone Link that I see elsewhere on the PC is support for video, which is becoming more of a feature in our daily lives as people record short snippets of what they see around them. For that, I suppose it’s worth visiting File Explorer or the Windows Photos app, which remains my choice for archived photos and video. It does, however, feel (again) like Microsoft is making changes that no one asked for. Isn’t there a better way? Read...

All-in-one coolers are all the rage these days because they bring liquid cooling tech to the masses without having to deal with, well, liquid. Take the NZXT Kraken 240mm, for example. It packs in a bunch of features in an easy-to-use size, complete with a bit of extra pizzazz with a 1.5-inch LCD screen on the head unit. Will Smith tested it out for the latest PCWorld video on YouTube. Will says that he loves the approachable price ($140 retail) and size of this Kraken variant, even if the small screen isn’t the flashiest on the market. It’s also probably not a go-to if you’re looking for that ultra-clean look for the interior of your PC, as it has a proprietary control cable dangling off the head. It’s not a deal-breaker in terms of aesthetics, but some won’t appreciate it. With a smaller radiator and less intense fans, this probably isn’t enough to cool the most ridiculous overclocked CPUs either—if you can afford a Threadripper, look elsewhere. That said, it’s great for someone looking for a starter liquid cooling setup or anyone who wants something easy to set up and go. Once you’ve installed the fans and gotten power to both them and the integrated pump, you’re ready to rock, with an impressive default “silent” profile on the NZXT Cam software. It’s probably not for someone who wants the most interoperability or customization, but it’s a good pick for for regular users. The same design comes with an RGB variant in black or white. For more of the latest PC hardware, be sure to subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube and join us every week for our podcast The Full Nerd. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Affordably priced 360-degree pan and 180-degree tilt will cover an entire room Smooth and reliable motion tracking Cons Requires continuous power (no battery option) Smart features locked behind an Arlo Secure subscription Our Verdict A strong budget buy for pet and child monitoring, the Essential Pan Tilt Indoor Camera offers wide coverage and solid performance at a price that makes this 2K model an easy pick. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Arlo Essential Pan Tilt Indoor (model VMC3073-100NAS) Retailer Price $49.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices The Arlo Essential line of home security cameras is meant to make the company’s tech more accessible, with budget-friendly cameras that are simple to install but still deliver the features most people actually use. The lineup already covers indoor, outdoor, and battery-powered models, and now there are pan-and-tilt options. The Essential Pan Tilt Indoor Camera is the newest member of that family, slotting in as an affordable way to get full-room coverage without stepping up to Arlo’s pricier Pro or Ultra gear. Note that this is an indoor-only camera; we reviewed the indoor/outdoor Arlo Essential Pan Tilt Camera on October 17. (Editor’s note: Yes, the very subtle difference in product names confuses us, too, which is why we also include the full product SKU above.) Design and features The Essential Pan Tilt Indoor Camera has a small, unassuming design that won’t stick out on a bookshelf or side table. The motorized head can sweep a full 360 degrees or tilt 180 to cover floor to ceiling. You can also save shortcut positions, so instead of swiping around the room every time, a tap takes you straight to points of interest; say a crib or the front door. Motion tracking is built in, so once it spots a person or pet, the camera will follow them until they leave the frame. The camera comes in two flavors: a budget HD version ($34.99) and the sharper 2K model ($49.99) reviewed here. The difference shouldn’t be dramatic at close range, but 2K’s extra pixels give you clearer edges and preserve more detail when you zoom in on a clip. That can mean recognizing a face more easily, catching the logo on a delivery driver’s shirt, or spotting what your pet has in its mouth. If pulling extra detail from the image matters to you, the 2K model is worth the modest $15 jump. Arlo’s camera pans 360 degrees and tilts 180 degrees with motion tracking to follow subjects as they move.Michael Ansaldo/Foundry Arlo rounds out the package with the kind of features you’d expect in a modern security cam. Dual-band Wi-Fi helps maintain a steady connection, a one-tap privacy mode disables both video and audio when you want downtime, and standard security perks like night vision, two-way audio, and an integrated siren are all built in. To unlock the camera’s smarter features, you’ll need an Arlo Secure subscription. The Plus plan costs $7.99/month when billed annually for a single camera or $17.99/month for unlimited cameras. If you pay month to month instead of annually, the rates are $9.99 and $19.99. Upgrading to Premium (about $24.99/month, billed annually) gives you 24/7 professional monitoring, emergency response, and cellular/battery backup so your Arlo Home Security System can stay online even if Wi-Fi fails (that service tier is probably not worthwhile if you only have Arlo cameras). With a paid plan, you also get AI alerts that detect people, vehicles, animals, or packages, animated preview notifications, and event captions, along with and more precise filtering to cut down on false alarms. Arlo offers a 30 day free trial with purchase of the camera. Setup and performance Getting the Essential Pan Tilt Indoor Camera up and running is about as painless as it gets. Plug it in, open the Arlo Secure app, add the device, and follow the prompts. The app walks you through connecting to Wi-Fi and pairing the camera in just a few minutes. The home screen shows a live preview of your camera feed, and tapping it gives you quick access to pan and tilt controls. They are responsive and the camera tracks smoothly, though it tends to glide past your stopping point. Because of that I found it easier to use custom positions for spots I wanted want to check often, like my front and patio doors. These are easy to set by nudging the camera with a joystick-style control in the app and saving the position for later. In everyday use, the camera works well for its price. Video streams smoothly and provides enough detail to make out faces across a room. The night vision feature adequately captures video in dimly lit hallways or bedrooms, though you won’t get the same clarity as with Arlo’s pricier models. The Arlo Secure app makes it easy to view the live feed, arm and disarm the camera, and set custom positions for the pan-and-tilt feature. Michael Ansaldo/Foundry Motion-detection tracking worked well in my testing and notifications were timely and accurate. Each one includes an AI-generated event caption describing the captured activity: instead of a vague “motion detected,” I’d get alerts like “Person detected at Home” or “Animal detected in room.” These were handy for triaging alerts quickly, but the captions are pretty basic. As an Arlo Secure subscriber, you can also enable Person Recognition, which identifies familiar faces and lets you know when specific people are seen. The feature isn’t turned on by default—you’ll find it in a separate settings menu marked with a “person” icon on the top left-hand side of the app—and you train it by adding photos from your phone’s camera roll or tagging people as they appear in clips. If you’re getting too many notifications, the app lets you define activity zones, so the camera only reacts to motion in the areas you care about. This helps cut down on unnecessary alerts. Detected events are easy to find in the Feed tab, which collects recordings in a simple timeline. From there, you can tap into a clip, scrub through motion events, or check animated previews–provided you’re on an Arlo Secure plan. Arlo also bakes in security modes. You can set the system to Arm Away, Arm Home, or Standby, depending on whether you want full coverage, selective coverage, or nothing armed at all. Automations let you take it further, allowing you to schedule the camera to arm when you leave the house, for example. Everything is straightforward and doesn’t require digging through menus. Should you buy the Arlo Essential Pan Tilt Indoor Camera? At less than 50 bucks, the Arlo Essential Pan Tilt Indoor Camera feels like an easy buy for anyone who wants to keep tabs on kids, pets, or general activity indoors. The 2K model is the better deal for the modest price bump, but either version should deliver solid performance for the money. If you don’t mind plugging it in and can live with Arlo’s subscription model, it’s one of the best budget-friendly indoor cameras you can pick up right now. This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best home security cameras. Read...

Whether you’re self-employed or just gung-ho about work, it’s high time you prioritized your professional life and got a proper professional laptop. And if you can get a great laptop that’s also on sale, even better, right? Well, this Lenovo ThinkPad E16 G2 is down to $900 on Amazon with a solid 31% discount off its $1,299 MSRP. That’s a massive savings of $400 for a killer business machine. Nice! View this Amazon deal You won’t be wasting any money on this laptop because the guts are pretty friggin’ great. It’s running on a Ryzen 7 7735HS processor with 8 cores, plus a considerable 32GB of fast DDR5 RAM. That’s a chunky config that’s capable of powering through work tasks, juggling multiple apps and tabs, and even playing some games and editing video thanks to the integrated Radeon 680M graphics. The 1TB SSD with Windows 11 Pro grants access to all the advanced OS features you need. And you’ll love using this laptop thanks to its comfortable 16-inch IPS display at 1920×1200 resolution, providing ample screen real estate for spreadsheets, side-by-side apps, and streaming video. It supports Windows Hello via the 1080p IR webcam and the fingerprint reader, the Kensington lock is there for extra anti-theft security, and the backlit keyboard is nice for working in the dark. Connectivity is fine with double USB-C, double USB-A, HDMI, LAN, and 3.5mm audio. The Lenovo ThinkPad E16 G2 is an absolute steal at this price, so take advantage of this discount before it’s gone! Save $400 on this decked-out high-performance business laptopBuy now on Amazon Read...

I love Black Friday, but there’s no reason to wait out the rest of the month if you spot a killer deal ahead of time—and yes, there are plenty of amazing discounts going on already. For example, this 43-inch 4K TV is only $199.99 right now, down from $369.99 with a 46% discount. That’s a stellar price for a modestly large TV that can deliver 4K visuals. With features like HDR10 and Dolby Digital Plus, this display promises clear images, bright colors, and an overall vibrant picture. View this Amazon deal Amazon’s Fire TV 4-Series runs on Fire TV OS, the company’s own operating system that’s tailor-made for streaming content. You get easy access to your favorite platforms—including Prime Video, Disney+, and Netflix—and you can watch live TV, stream music, play video games, and more. Included is a 6-month MGM+ subscription (valued at about $50), granting access to thousands of Hollywood movies and original series. With four HDMI ports (one supporting eARC/ARC), USB-A, Ethernet, 3.5mm audio, and an IR emitter, this TV is decked out with all the connections you need for external devices like gaming consoles. Another nice inclusion is the Fire TV Alexa Voice Remote, where you can just press a button and ask Alexa to find and play content for you. Use the same button to issue voice commands for all your other Alexa-compatible devices around the house. Lastly, it has a 300×300 VESA mount if you intend to hang it on your wall, but you’ll need to buy a separate mounting bracket for that. If you do, make sure it’s able to handle this TV’s full weight of 15.5 pounds. Save 46% on this excellent 43-inch 4K Fire TV with extra goodiesBuy now on Amazon Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Highly automated and effective data removal Extremely easy to use Transparent removal tracking and progress Strong privacy standards Cons Verification of data removals is limited Ultimate plans are expensive Our Verdict Incogni’s automated data removal service expertly leverages privacy laws to compel data brokers to delete your personal information across hundreds of sites. The service is easy to use, secure, and effective at large-scale data deletion, though users must extend some level of faith in its confirmation process and pay a premium for the full feature set. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today 1 month$15.98/month12 months$95 ($7.99.mo)See all plans & pricing at Incogni Incogni in brief: Data removal sites: 420+, plus an additional 2,000+ custom removals Data removed information: Yes, for every site Identity monitoring: No Free version available: No Cost: $15.98 per month, or $95 for one year Most people are unaware of just how much of their data is out on the web available for anyone to buy and sell. Most of this is done by data-aggregator and data-broker websites which hoover up as much info as possible about as many people as possible. They then match this data to each individual to create personal profiles that are then packaged and sold online. There are so many of these data-broker sites now that it’s nearly impossible to remove your data from each on your own. As a result, a number of personal data-removal services have cropped up to help customers with this process. Incogni, from the famous VPN Surfshark, is probably the most famous and popular data-removal service—at the time of this writing it has processed over 245 million removal requests It makes the entire process of removing your data from these sites easy and effective. All requests are automated and the service even continually sends new requests to make sure your data never reappears in the future. What are Incogni’s features and services? Incogni is a personal data-removal service that delivers in an easy and automated format. Using its database of more than 420 data-broker websites, it sends removal requests on your behalf and requests that your data be added to suppression lists so it doesn’t reappear, and follows up every 60 to 90 days for as long as you’re subscribed. The service takes advantage of privacy laws in both the U.S. and EU to force data brokers into compliance. It leverages these legal frameworks in a really clever way too—the removal of your personal data is not only a request, but actually a compulsory legal requirement. All of the removal requests and their progress can be found under the Dashboard in your Incogni account on its website. Each request is shown as “In progress” or “Completed” based on whether the data broker has processed and confirmed the removal. Incogni shows detailed information relating to each removal request including when it was processed and completed, plus what data was removed. Sam Singleton You can click on the drop-down next to each request to see more detailed information including the data removed and a summary of the data-broker site itself. Each request comes with a unique ID and shows the last time it was updated and the average resolution time for the request as well. Incogni will follow-up with additional removal requests periodically to ensure your data doesn’t reappear on that site in the future. If you opt for the Ultimate or Family Ultimate plans, you’ll also gain access to Incogni’s Custom Removals feature. With this tool you can manually add your own data broker or public search sites not covered by the service’s automatic removals. When I reached out to Incogni about this tool, a representative assured me that each individual Custom Removal request is personally handled by an Incogni agent. As far as I know, there is no other service on the market that gives its customers the same individualized attention. That alone should be applauded. Incogni’s Custom removals are easy to set up and each request receives individualized attention. Incogni Custom removals can also cover sites outside of data brokers and traditional public search sites. This includes business and company information sites, legal resources, limited court record sites, and more. Not everything can be removed, but Incogni will give it a try if it can. As you are allowing Incogni to handle a lot of highly personal data, you want to make sure your data is in safe hands. According to its privacy policy, Incogni only shares your personal data to process a removal request with each data broker.  It does not sell, nor ever has sold, the personal data of customers. It complies with all personal rights according to U.S. and EU data protection laws. Customer data is only retained for a maximum of 12 months after you cancel the service. Finally, Incogni underwent a third-party security audit by Deloitte in August 2025 and the firm gave it a successful third-party assurance rating. These all lead me to believe that Incogni is doing its part to maintain the integrity of the vast user data it’s privy to. How much does Incogni cost? Incogni offers four subscription tiers: Standard, Unlimited, Family, and Family Unlimited. Each tier is offered in either a monthly plan or annual plan.  The Standard and Family plans are nearly identical, as are the Unlimited and Family Unlimited. Opting for the “family” versions of each provides the same service for up to five members on a single plan. The Standard plan is offered for $15.98 per month or $95 annually (at $7.99 per month), which is a 50 percent discount. With the Standard plan you get access to automated removal requests for over 420 data broker sites, up to three different emails, phone numbers, and addresses per person, plus recurring removals as long as your subscription lasts. The Ultimate plan is $29.98 per month or $179 annually (at $14.99 per month). If you opt for the Ultimate plan, you’ll get everything from the Standard plan plus unlimited custom removal requests for over 2,000 additional sites, plus live phone support. While the monthly price does seem expensive, the annual plans are much more affordable. Additionally, while data brokers have between 30 and 45 days to respond to a removal request, Incogni will continue to finish up any outstanding removals even if your subscription runs out.  Incogni also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on all plans, which is even more incentive to give it a try if you’re curious. Incogni: Getting started You can add up to three emails, addresses, and phone numbers to your Incogni profile. Incogni Getting started with Incogni is pretty straightforward. After sign-up you can create your account and begin entering your personal data. This includes emails, addresses, phone numbers, and names or aliases you may be associated with, plus your birth date.  The service allows each user to enter up to three emails, phone numbers, and home addresses—each email needs to be verified though. I would recommend that everyone take advantage of this and fill up these extra data points, even if you haven’t used these old addresses or numbers in a long time. Old data has a funny way of following you around years or even decades later. After you enter in this information, Incogni will ask you to grant it the power to make requests on your behalf and away you go. Incogni will take over at this point and begin automatically sending out removal requests to known data-broker sites. You can see each request and its progress on the dashboard. The number of requests will balloon quickly. Just on my first day alone Incogni had sent out 585 requests, and each time I reloaded the page more and more were marked as completed. I received a few emails such as this directly from data brokers confirming my data was removed.Sam Singleton Once the requests begin, you may receive some emails from data brokers themselves verifying that they have removed your data from their sites. For me personally, I only received two or three over the course of a few weeks. The vast majority of these verification emails are sent directly to Incogni so you won’t be spammed. How are Incogni’s results over time? From day one Incogni was showing results. This honestly surprised me as data brokers have a month or more to respond to data removal requests. Additionally, Incogni itself shows the “Average resolution time” for each data broker under the Requests tab and most of them have averages in the two to three week range. Still, after just 24 hours I already had multiple pages of completed removals. Flash forward to a month later and I now have 743 requests sent, 662 removals completed, and 81 still in progress.  The Incogni Dashboard shows a graph displaying requests, time saved, and suppression list entries. Sam Singleton A neat little addition that Incogni includes on the dashboard is the amount of “Time saved” which is based on an estimate of how long it would take to submit each request manually. In just this short amount of time it claims to have saved me over 496 hours—which amounts to an insane amount of overtime I’d have had to put in just to do this myself. Another useful thing that Incogni does is request not only that your data be removed, but also a request to suppress your data. This means that a data broker has agreed to never re-collect any of your personal information in the future.  As of the time of writing, I have 102 suppression list entries, meaning that I’ll never have to worry about those sites collecting my data again. This is, at least, in theory. While I can dig into the requests page and see which brokers are suppressing my data, I would need to individually reach out to each to confirm this. Something that I, and most other people don’t have the time to do. It should be noted that while Incogni does not verify that your data has been removed on private data broker sites, it does verify removals on public search sites. In fact, this is the inherent problem with Incogni’s service: As most removal confirmations are sent to Incogni, you have to trust that the data it claims it removed has actually been removed. Of course, Incogni isn’t the only personal data-removal service that has this problem—it’s inherent to the entire industry.  To Incogni’s credit, they do this on purpose so that you aren’t spammed with hundreds, or even thousands, of removal confirmation emails. Out of curiosity, I visited a few public search sites at random from the list of those confirmed to be removed by Incogni just to check if my data was truly wiped.  All except one, Spokeo, had indeed removed any trace of me from their website. Spokeo still had a profile on me, but due to it being behind a paywall I wasn’t able to verify what data it had. This isn’t exactly an issue with Incogni’s service, rather these public search sites that don’t agree to suppression often re-add profiles over time.  Incogni tries to keep these recurrences to a minimum by periodically resubmitting new removal requests. And indeed, a new pending request by Incogni was already underway for Spokeo when I checked. Incogni occassionally asks you to verify records it found that may be associated with you in order to further enhance its services. Sam Singleton At the top of the Incogni Dashboard, I occasionally found a red banner indicating that Incogni found additional records that might belong to me. When I clicked on the banner, it took me to a “Verify your record” screen where I was asked to double-check some possible aliases that Incogni had identified as potential matches.  Most of these were only tangentially related to me—same first name, similar ages, etc. Some of them were obviously not me with completely different info that left me baffled as to why they would be potential matches.  When I questioned Incogni about this they said that the record verification tool is constantly learning and improving upon itself. As it’s still relatively new, it may produce results that seem puzzling. They assured me that over time—and with enough user input—the tool would become much more precise. So for now, users have an incentive to sort through the head-scratchers in order to improve the algorithm and receive more accurate results in the future. What data does Incogni remove? Incogni checks for personal data on both public search sites as well as private data brokers. As mentioned previously, this list currently totals over 420 sites.  The type of information that Incogni sends removal requests for include any current or former names, physical addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers associated with you. The more information you provide to Incogni, the more effective it is at removing all of your data. This is why it’s always a good idea to fill in all available physical address, email, and phone number slots allowed on your profile in Incogni.  For public search sites, Incogni checks for your information first, then sends a removal request. Once the removal has been confirmed, Incogni verifies the removal and provides you with all of the information removed. As for private data brokers, the process is a little trickier. These companies have the ability to stock up a lot more data on an individual user and generally keep their practices (and clients) hidden. Consequently, it’s next to impossible for Incogni to verify your data with these sites. Instead, it takes a shotgun approach by sending out mass removal requests to all the private data brokers it tracks, requesting that your data be removed. It doesn’t check that your data has been removed; it just marks the status as “Completed” when the broker confirms the removal. While this might seem unreliable, most of these data brokers are located in the U.S. or EU where there are massive fines for mishandling removal requests thanks to laws such as the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act). Therefore, it’s safe to assume that these removal confirmation responses that Incogni receives are true. Is Incogni worth it? Yes, Incogni is absolutely worth using for anyone who values their privacy. Keeping personal info off the internet is an important step in combating identity theft, scammers, harassment, and more. Incogni automates the entire process making it dead simple to use—it’s as easy as just setting and forgetting. It can be hard to justify another monthly (or yearly) subscription in today’s world, but the payoff in privacy with Incogni can be huge. I do wish that there was a way to see removal confirmations from each site rather than just trusting Incogni that it received them on your behalf. Still, that’s a minor gripe and if you put in the legwork you can probably verify this yourself. Overall, the service works quickly and efficiently to remove and suppress data brokers from collecting and selling your personal information. When it comes to data-removal services, Incogni is the one to beat. Editor’s note: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and performance improvements over time, this review is subject to change in order to accurately reflect the current state of the service. Any changes to text or our final review verdict will be noted at the top of this article. Read...

Welcome to The Full Nerd newsletter—your weekly dose of hardware talk from the enthusiasts at PCWorld. Missed the controversial topics on our YouTube show or hot news from across the web? You’re in the right place. Want this newsletter to come directly to your inbox? Sign up on our website!  I like owning things. The recent AMD driver kerfuffle has me wondering what that really means these days. I’m old enough to remember when buying a physical item meant you had it for life. It would run as advertised until it could no longer—perhaps a part would break, a motor would burn out. Even then, things were mechanical enough that you could open them up and tinker, in an effort to fix them. Now with so much software required to make hardware perform intended function, that line has become blurry. We depend on companies to keep products functional. We are expected to trust that a company will support a product for a reasonable amount of time. AMD’s confused messaging around driver support for RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 graphics cards shook that trust. At first, it seemed that GPUs just three years old were already getting the axe—Team Red would no longer provide updated drivers for new game optimizations. Then, after this stance was seemingly confirmed by AMD statements to the press (causing more furor), AMD finally issued a clarification via a blog post. The drivers would branch, but baseline support for first- and second-generation RDNA wouldn’t end yet. The Full Nerd crew and I discuss the whole episode in more depth in the show, including the nuances of the situation. The reputation of AMD Radeon’s division obviously plays a role in all this, as does the current environment of GPU prices and availability. But even with the resolution of this PR hiccup, the fundamental issue remains. Chromebook lifespans have improved, but that’s only for newer models. Own an older one and it’s likely EOL now. That sucks.IDG / Matthew Smith Companies can now kill their products at any time—even when you have them in your hands. Once software support gets dropped, it’s over. I have a drawer full of phones that Google and Apple no longer provide security patches for. Older Chromebooks got a similarly raw deal. You can argue that you can still technically use these products, and sure, that’s true. But in today’s environment, a lack of security patches is asking for a headache. No driver support for new games means you won’t get to play them. Etc. I’m grateful that people donate their time to alternative software, like LineageOS and Linux, to help keep perfectly usable hardware still chugging along. (I’m about to try this to breathe new life into a beloved, now-unsupported Chromebook.) But that doesn’t change the fact that we’re at the mercy of companies’ willingness to maintain a product or even whole product line. And I hate that. I’m willing to sign up for software-as-service. I think of it as renting tools. But my hardware? I bought it for its known properties. I bought it for its specific features. I bought it so it would keep doing what I needed it for. If it stops working because the software is gone, what did I actually own, then? In this episode of The Full Nerd  In this episode of The Full Nerd, Adam Patrick Murray, Brad Chacos, Alaina Yee, and Will Smith hash out their feelings about the weekend’s RDNA 1 and 2 driver support debacle and how many Windows PC games run Linux now. On the AMD front, Brad pulls out what he thinks AMD meant to say, but can’t. Meanwhile, I get fussy about chart interpretations and headlines. Not hatin’ on Linux, just the implied takeaway in the coverage. Oh, and I get to show everyone my latest fashion acquisition. Is it fashionable? No. Am I pleased that I had a good reason to own AMD-branded socks? Kind of yes. (Very yes.)(Full disclosure: The socks were a gift from one Adam Patrick Murray. I have a whole collection of various tech-branded ones from him, possibly because I’ve talked about buying socks during Black Friday so often over the years.) Willis Lai / Foundry Missed our live show? Subscribe now to The Full Nerd Network YouTube channel, and activate notifications. We also answer viewer questions in real-time! Don’t miss out on our NEW shows too—you can catch episodes of Dual Boot Diaries and The Full Nerd: Extra Edition now! And if you need more hardware talk during the rest of the week, come join our Discord community—it’s full of cool, laid-back nerds.  This week’s stirring nerd news Might have to start handling memory with this much care, given how expensive it is to replace any that goes bad or dies.IDG Thanks to the AMD Radeon hullabaloo, everything else feels relatively quiet—despite being noteworthy. AMD CPUs helped the company hit new records, for starters. And I got pretty invested in not one, but two different robot vacuum stories. Also, I realized I’ve failed to adequately sound the alarm when giving buying advice in the last week or so. Some component prices already hurt, and it got bad so fast. (Hopefully you don’t need more memory any time soon.) Proving a point: In stark contrast to the Radeon side of things, AMD’s Ryzen CPUs remain steady, propelling Team Red to loftier and loftier heights—desktop CPU share has climbed almost 10 percentage points since 2024, according to CEO Dr. Lisa Su. This is some bull$*(%: Not the engineering to bring the robot vacuum back online, but the manufacturer’s decision to remotely brick the device. (Also, this is why we use guest networks for IoT devices.) Filed under “Asked if they could, not if they should”: Look, I’m just as guilty of doing things just to see if it’s possible. I still snort-laughed about squeezing an operating system so small, it becomes unusable. Science + efficiency = I click: Humans creating better ways to deal (and reuse) the materials they create? Sounds good to me. How far the Internet’s come: From data dropouts that cause typos to memes that load in bare seconds. (Can’t say we’ve used the improvements for best impact, but that’s a thought for another day.) Venus’s mysteries will remain so to us for a while longer.Planet Volumes / Unsplash Enjoy your privacy, fair Venus: The loss of the last remaining satellite is sad for us. I’m telling myself a planet named for the goddess of love probably needs a break from prying eyes for a bit, though. I really want to know about the 5% of humans who failed: Were they distracted during Butter Bench? Was their native language different than how the benchmark was administered? Did they just not care? And yes, I did feel kind of bad about this robo vacuum’s internal meltdown. We’ve all been there, buddy. I needed this 15 years ago: A black & white mode for Google Maps to eke out that much more battery life from a dying phone? Better late than never, I guess. (Though it’s not officially real yet.) Ouch, that hurt faster than expected: Memory prices have shot up abruptly—and it’s not just DDR4 affected. If you need more RAM right now, gird yourself for as much as 100 percent (or more) price increases. I don’t think Black Friday will save us from this. I have a secret—I’m apparently one of the lone people who likes the “fall back” to Standard Time in the U.S. The early dark evenings make stew and soups feel perfect. (Definitely come share your favorite recipes with me in The Full Nerd Discord’s #food-chat channel.) Catch you all next week! ~Alaina This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld. Read...

Ho ho ho, is it Christmas already? In Battlefield 6, the snow is falling on the brand new Manhattan map Empire State, jingle bells are blaring from the speakers and it feels like a nice flashback to The Division. It was snowing in New York there too — and it was utilized in a smart way. In Battlefield‘s version, we can anticipate enemy movements better because we can see footprints in the snow. And there is an ice axe. I wonder if we can use it to climb up the icy Brooklyn Bridge? Or what has DICE come up with here? We’ll find out from 9 December, but Season 1 is already in full swing! Here are 10 pro tips for staying at the top of the leaderboard in Battlefield 6 . Like Bruce Willis, we’re celebrating Christmas in the Big Apple this year with Battlefield 6 and DICE is promising a whole host of new gameplay features. Cold and heat are set to play a major role..Foundry 10 pro tips for Battlefield 6 Season 1 Glistening HDR sunshine and the royal blue pool invite you to relax in this magnificent villa neighbourhood. It’s just a shame that Bradley armoured personnel carriers are already starting to blow down the palm trees and redecorate the roofs. Foundry The Golden State Eastwood map is reminiscent of Beverly Hills: finely manicured gardens, huge mansions, the main house of which is connected to guest houses on the left and right and really big. The vehicle fleet includes 2 helicopters, 3 tanks, 3 troop transporters and 12 golf carts. Pro Tip 1: Golf carts are the ultimate tank killers The Hollywood map introduces golf carts, which are amazingly efficient. Because they have four seats: One drives, one shoots forwards, at the back two soldiers can hedge to the sides or repair the vehicle with a soldering iron. It’s not armored and offers no protection, but it’s pretty fast. We can really speed around with it. If an Apache chases us, the two squad members in the back each unpack their rocket launchers and try their luck with the unguided rockets. This works even better with the FIM 92 Stinger, which fires heat-guided missiles. Experienced squads even transform their golf cart into a real tank killer: if we speed towards a Leopard battle tank or M1 Abrams M4 from the side, the machine gunner usually needs a few seconds to aim at us. Meanwhile, we already land the first RPG hit. If we now race past the tank at full speed, the two soldiers behind can also fire a rocket. Three RPG hits will blow up any armored vehicle and score a lot of points. A tank kill like this earns 400 XP. Pro Tip 2: The new Traverser APC is a mobile fortress with 3 MG guns and perfect for capturing flags The Traverser Mark 2 is the new APC (Armoured Personal Carrier) and has some of the best armour in all of Battlefield. It is significantly faster than a main battle tank, but also needs three direct RPG hits. The driver and three passengers are also protected by thick armoured glass. You can kill the driver with a sniper, but assault rifles have little effect. As the Traverser has a remote-controlled machine gun turret, which the Gunner operates from the safe protection of the armored SUV, machine gunners are much better protected than in the Bradley or main battle tank. As two additional gunners with mini-guns can also cover the flanks on the left and right, there is currently no better vehicle in Battlefield 6 for capturing and guarding flags. We simply smash through the walls of the large main villa and can use the three MG guns to provide 360-degree cover. Pro Tip 3: Season 1 brings Smart Rockets that can be steered around corners with the mouse Golden Eastwood should make everyone happy who longs for larger city maps: The villas are arranged along a long street and are each separated by golf courses, tennis courts or smaller hills. Foundry Golden State Eastwood is one of the largest maps in Battlefield 6 and winds its way through a complete residential area on the outskirts of Los Angeles, including tennis courts, a golf course and plenty of pools. There is a mountain range at the edges, helicopter pilots can hide from the many RPG units here, because rockets are zooming towards us from virtually every balcony on Eastwood and the skybox is relatively low. So we can’t avoid the high ground. However, we can fly low and use the new Smart Rockets – laser-guided missiles that we can aim with the mouse. This also works behind houses or mountain ranges. DICE has probably added this function because helicopter pilots have complained about the very limited types of attack. With Apaches, for example, you had to dive to launch in order to land missile hits. An Apache is not really a dive bomber and the low overflights make it difficult to defend the helicopter from the many RPG units everywhere. Los Angeles will most likely be the Battle Royale map, and we’re looking forward to it: Battlefield 6 needs more variety in architecture, colour palette and how terrain is used. Foundry Pro Tip 4: The new DMR Mini Scout is surprisingly effective against helicopters The new DMR will come as quite a surprise to some: It can be used to pluck helicopters out of the sky with just a few hits. Foundry Quite exciting: the new DMR Sniper Mini Scout is surprisingly efficient against helicopters: three direct hits and the Black Hawk crashes. Apart from that, it is optimized for quick-scoping, i.e. aiming is particularly fast and we don’t have to leave the scope when reloading. A surprising bonus from DICE, because the BF6 maps are heaven for snipers anyway. There’s no need to make it any easier for snipers. Tip 5: The Traverser APC serves as a mobile spawn point for the whole squad The new APC (Armoured Personal Carrier) can be upgraded to a mobile command station. This allows us to capture points more quickly. Extremely practical, because the Traverser can withstand 3 RPGs or several frontal hits with a tank. Foundry The new Traverser APC is not only heavily armored, DICE has also come up with a number of upgrade paths. For example, we can install a medbay, i.e. a mobile infirmary. This is extremely exciting because it not only replenishes the health of all soldiers in the MRAP relatively quickly, but also in our immediate vicinity. If other units use our armored troop carrier as cover, for example to fend off an enemy assault on a flag, their health is continuously replenished. Not as fast as if they were in the vehicle, but it works. Pro tip 6: The B flag at the golf course has enough space to capture it quickly with a helicopter Right at the starting point, the best helicopter pilot in the squad should grab the Black Hawk and fly it to the B flag at the golf course. The Eastwood map is quite densely built up overall, so helicopter pilots must be able to fly very low. However, the B flag is too far away for the enemy squad at the beginning, so you can take it quite easily with a short landing. One of the squad should definitely pack the Stinger, as the only danger is from the enemy Tiger helicopter on the Pax Armata side. A landed Black Hawk is sitting on a platter and cannot shoot down any Flairs. Pro tip 7: Golf carts are the new C4 buggies and brilliant for Battlefield moments Although golf carts offer no protection, they are very maneuverable. With good timing, for example, we can race over a hill, grab the C4, jump out – press the button and boom goes the Leopard.Foundry In our Battlefield 6 guide, we already mentioned that the Traverser Mark 2 is one of the biggest threats to infantry. It is significantly more maneuverable and faster than a main battle tank, but has similar firepower and almost as strong armor. Accordingly, DICE has built in the ultimate counter: the C4 golf cart. The ingenious thing about it is that C4 only activates when we press the button. So we can stick C4 packs to the front, shoot over a hill, fly towards a tank, jump out and only then press the button to turn every armored vehicle into a wall of fire. Ideally, we should crash into the rear of the Traverser, as this is where it is least heavily armored. Pro Tip 8: Fly like in Top Gun Maverick: fighter jets win dogfights with rollovers There’s that iconic scene in Top Gun Maverick where Tom Cruise brakes his F18E Super Hornet in mid-air, pulls the bird up and sits behind his opponent with a rollover. We can also do this in Battlefield 6 by braking and firing the afterburner at the same time – this is called Thrust Vectoring. We can use this to fly very tight turns, for example to keep a flag point under fire for a longer period of time. And also to win dogfights. However, the whole thing also has a disadvantage, because this maneuver puts the entire width of the jet in the air for a short time – for experienced RPG gunners, this means we offer a maximum attack surface. Pro tip 9: Whoever fires their flares first loses This pro tip isn’t the most polite, but this is Battlefield after all. As soon as we lock on to an enemy fighter jet or helicopter, it receives a missile warning. Most pilots fire their flares straight away. So if we wait until they fire their flares and then send the missile on its way, the enemy has no time to react. Pro tip 10: Did someone say C4 drone? Okay, we still have one slightly dirty trick: up to four C4 packets can be placed on the drone. That’s pretty nasty when we use them to crash into the flag point on the Hollywood map in the villa. These have enough explosive power to cause the upper floor to collapse. Depending on how many opponents are guarding this point, several squads can be eliminated with one attack. Incidentally, this also works wonderfully when the enemy uses the new Traverser APC as a mobile fortress: simply land on the roof while driving, press the button – BOOM. Read...

Nash Rawiller has genuine chances in the three Five Diamonds day features at Rosehill on Saturday, and he believes the least known could be the most exciting. Read...