TL;DR: Turn complex code into easy projects with Microsoft Visual Studio Pro 2022, now $27.97 (reg. $499) for life.  When you’re working on complex coding projects, having a powerful and reliable development tool makes all the difference. Visual Studio Professional 2022 is designed for developers who need to handle large projects and workloads without missing a beat. This 64-bit IDE is built to manage even the biggest projects, with support for multiple languages like .NET, C++, and more, making it a go-to for developers everywhere, and you can get a lifetime license for Windows for $27.97 (reg. $499) through December 15.  Visual Studio 2022 makes it easy to build cross-platform apps for mobile and desktop using .NET MAUI, while Blazor lets you create responsive web UIs in C#. You can even build, debug, and test your .NET and C++ apps on Linux. Features like hot reload let you make updates to your apps while they’re running, so you don’t have to pause your work. IntelliCode helps speed up your coding by predicting lines of code based on your writing style. And if you’re collaborating with a team, Live Share enables real-time editing and debugging, so you can work together no matter where everyone is. CodeLens gives you a deeper understanding of your code by showing things like recent changes and who’s been working on what so you can make smarter decisions.  December 15 at 11:59 p.m. PT is your last chance to get lifetime access to Microsoft Visual Studio Pro 2022 at the unbeatable price of just $27.97.   Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2022 for Windows Only $27.97 at PCWorld StackSocial prices subject to change. Read...

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Amazon Web Services has launched enhanced features for its S3, introducing managed Iceberg tables and real-time metadata for improved data handling. Read...

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Amazon Web Services unveils AI-driven enhancements to Amazon Q Developer, streamlining software development and boosting efficiency by up to 80%. Read...

Amazon Web Services has unveiled a new generation of its SageMaker platform, enhancing data access and AI capabilities for users like NatWest Group. Read...

Elastic has strengthened its partnership with Amazon Web Services, integrating generative AI services to enhance observability for users of Amazon Bedrock. Read...

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At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Palm vein scanning is surprisingly accurate—and easy Lots of extra access methods included Rechargeable battery included Cons Reliant on the awful Tuya Smart Life app Beastly interior escutcheon Very small keypad makes it easy to touch the wrong numbers Our Verdict As its name implies, this smart lock scans the veins in your hands instead of your fingerprint to unlock your door—and it works pretty well. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: TCL D1 Pro Palm Vein Smart Lock Retailer Price $199.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket You probably know TCL as the producer of lower-cost TVs, sound bars, and smart appliances, but the company has been creeping into the smart home space lately. And what a surprising entrée it is, featuring a smart lock that can be opened via a palm vein recognition system. Palm scanning used to be something you’d encounter only in a Mission: Impossible movie, but what was once sci-fi technology is becoming pedestrian today. The way it works is simple: Near-infrared light is beamed out from a scanner embedded in the lock, which hits the palm of your outstretched hand. (You don’t rest your hand on the scanner, you just hold it about 8 inches from the lock.) The scanner compares a map of the veins in your hand to the one you’ve added to its database. If they match, the door opens. Essentially it works like a fingerprint scanner, only you don’t need to touch anything—so, germophobes can rejoice. Scanning your palm is the obvious draw here, but the TCL D1 can also unlock with a PIN, NFC card, a smartphone app, or a physical key. Before we get to the palm vein scanner, let’s look at the lock hardware. There’s nothing overly out of the ordinary here, but it’s evident that TCL is new at the game, featuring a traditional design for both interior and exterior escutcheon, with the interior escutcheon considerably large in size: about 6.5 inches tall. Installation and setup Indicators on the exterior escutcheon mark wherre to place an NFC card and where to position your palm for scanning. When powered up, a numeric keypad also appears.Christopher Null/Foundry Installation isn’t complex, thanks to a robust printed manual, but there are some quirks in the process. First, when connecting the exterior escutcheon to the interior mounting plate, you’ll need to pick the correct set of bolts to complete the process. To do that, you’ll need to measure the thickness of your door (in millimeters) and select the corresponding bolt set. A single electrical cable connects the exterior escutcheon to the interior, and three screws connect the interior escutcheon to the mounting plate. This process is somewhat needlessly complicated because these screws come in two different sizes, so you’ll need to take additional care to use the correct ones in the correct places. Lastly, the screw hole at the bottom of the interior escutcheon is set within a deep but narrow channel. You’ll need an especially small screwdriver to reach it; my standard screwdriver ended up chewing up some of the plastic surrounding the aforementioned channel. Power for the lock comes courtesy of a rechargeable 7800mAh battery (it charges via a USB-C port, but no adapter or cable is included). TCL doesn’t offer specifics regarding battery life except to say it will last “several months.” A USB-C port is available on the underside of the lock for use if the battery dies while you’re outside. TCL makes no claims as to ANSI or BHMA certifications, and it doesn’t cite an IP weatherproofing rating (although the company does say the lock is “waterproof”). You can learn all about ANSI and BHMA lock standards and the meanings of IP codes at the preceding links. The TCL D1 Pro Palm Vein Smart Lock has an oversized interior escutcheon, but it harbors a  7800mAh rechargeable battery, which is a welcome change from the more common disposable cells.Christopher Null/Foundry While opening the door via scanning your palm is the obvious draw here, the unit also allows for operation via numeric PINs, NFC cards (two fobs are included), or smartphone app. Lastly a physical keyhole is included, along with two keys. The unit supports a maximum of 50 PINs, 50 NFC cards, and 50 palm scans. You can configure all of this via the lock hardware itself by pressing the “set” button underneath the battery cover and entering key combinations on the touchscreen; in fact, you must do this to set the initial administrator PIN. It’s much easier, of course, to manage the lock and its users via mobile app. Onboarding the lock to the app isn’t the easiest process because the method for doing so isn’t well documented. I sort of stumbled upon it by accident; here are the details: First, put the lock into “network configuration” mode by pressing the “set” button, entering the admin password, and then pressing 5. Note that the lock can only be added to a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network. With this done, you can use the Smart Life app to connect to the lock. If you’re not familiar with Smart Life, the Internet of Things (IoT) developer Tuya Smart created it and licenses it to all manner of manufacturers in need of a tool their customers can use to manage their IoT products. Sadly, Smart Life has always been a decidedly rough app, and little has changed in recent months. If you’re not willing to muddle through a battery of poorly translated, confusing, and undocumented menus, this lock isn’t for you. Day-to-day use This illustration shows how the palm-reading function works.TCL That said, all the expected functions are present, they just aren’t the most streamlined. The Smart Life app features a large lock status button, front and center in the app: Long-press to unlock or re-lock. Below that you’ll find two logs:  one is a “door opening record” that memorializes all lock opening events, but no lock closing events or failed attempts at opening the lock, whether that’s with an incorrect PIN or an unrecognized palm scan. “Member management” is where you configure your users, assigning PINs, NFC cards, and palm vein scans to visitors. Users can be set to have permanent access or temporary, though this is both confusing and robust, with the ending date called “Invalid time.” You can’t set temporary access for certain times of the day unless you configure recurring access for various days of the week, so it’s not possible to, say, set up access for someone just for tomorrow from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. You can configure a temporary password to accomplish this—either one that offers “Custom” time restrictions that you set, or a “dynamic” password that can be used multiple times but only for the next 5 minutes. It’s altogether a little weird and needlessly complex, but it more or less gets the job done. In the Member management section, you’ll also find the ability to create something called a “Special password.” This isn’t well-documented, but the special password offers users the ability to set a PIN (or another access method) for use if they’re under duress. Using the special password sends a “hijack alarm” to the app which sends a push notification to the administrator. So, for example, if you use your left hand to open the lock, everything is fine, but if you scan your right hand, the lock still opens, but it also tells the administrator you’re in trouble. The Tuya Smart Life TCL relies on for programming and operating its lock is little rough around the edges.Christopher Null/Foundry All methods of opening the lock work well, and the lock mechanics are smooth and clean, though some operations are more seamless than others. NFC cards offer the quickest and most reliable means of access—this method never hiccupped once in my tests. After that comes palm vein scanning: The only complicated part of this operation is getting your hand at the right distance from the lock, though with even a few minutes of practice this soon becomes second nature. Note that you’ll also need to hold your hand in the same orientation as when you registered it: The lock can’t deal with a suddenly upturned palm. Overall, I was surprised at how accurate and easy it was to use my palm to open the lock; it was a more effective solution than many fingerprint readers I’ve tested. The most difficult means of accessing the lock is via the numeric keypad. This is because the pad is quite small and the numerals on the pad are too close together, which makes it a delicate operation to enter your PIN accurately. I appreciate that TCL is keeping the size of the exterior escutcheon down, but this comes at the price of some usability. The lock features a handful of configuration options, including auto-locking (settable from 5 to 900 seconds) and volume control for the voice confirmations the lock provides. A basic lockout function is included, suspending access to the lock for about a minute if five incorrect PINs or palm scans are received in a row. This feature is neither documented nor configurable. Also note that some settings in the Smart Life app—such as the ability to require a spoken password—might appear to work, but they don’t actually do anything if activated. Basic support for Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa are available, but this is all done via Smart Life. Should you buy a TCL D1 Pro Palm Vein Smart Lock? The TCL D1 Pro Palm Vein Smart Lock is not inexpensive with a $200 MSRP, but its price tag isn’t unreasonable when compared to fingerprint-scanning locks with smart functionality. Personally, however, I’m not sure I’d wholeheartedly recommend going all in on a home security product that’s reliant on Tuya’s Smart Life app. But if the concept of palm vein scanning particularly floats your boat and you don’t mind some rough edges, this lock is worth consideration. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Long battery life Lots of RAM and storage Vivid OLED screen Cons Low multithreaded CPU performance Glossy reflective screen No touch screen Our Verdict The Asus Vivobook S 14 combines Intel’s latest Lunar Lake CPU with lots of RAM and storage at a very reasonable price. It’s a nice machine, but Lunar Lake’s multithreaded performance will be a problem for some workloads — and this laptop’s design won’t draw any eyes. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today The Asus Vivobook S 14 is a 14-inch laptop with an Intel Lunar Lake CPU. It delivers serious all-day battery life — over 20 hours in our standard benchmark — with good day-to-day computing performance. At $1,199 with a generous 1 TB of storage and 32 GB of RAM and a beautiful OLED display, it’s a solid value if you’re looking for a long-lasting Intel-powered laptop. Further reading: Best laptops 2024: Premium, budget, gaming, 2-in-1s, and more Asus Vivobook S 14: Specs The Asus Vivobook S 14 (S5406) includes an Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) “Lunar Lake” processor. This CPU is more focused on long battery life, and it sacrifices some multithreaded CPU performance to get there. A machine like this one delivers good performance in day-to-day computing tasks, but if you’re looking for high top-end CPU performance for particularly CPU-hungry workloads and battery life isn’t a priority, it isn’t the right fit. This laptop combines that sparkling new Intel hardware with a generous 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB of solid-state storage. Thanks to Lunar Lake, this machine has a speedy NPU and surprisingly capable Intel Arc integrated graphics, too. Because it has Lunar Lake and a speedy NPU, this is a Copilot+ PC that will get all those new AI features Microsoft is delivering. (Unfortunately, those features aren’t present at launch and Microsoft will need to add them in a Windows Update. That update is supposedly coming very soon.) Model number: S5406SA-DH76 CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 258V Memory: 32 GB LPDDR5X RAM Graphics/GPU: Intel Arc 140V NPU: Intel AI Boost (47 TOPS) Display: 1920×1200 OLED display Storage: 1 TB PCIe Gen 4.0 SSD Webcam: 1080p webcam with physical shutter Connectivity: 2x Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C), 2x USB Type-A (USB 3.2 Gen 1), 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x combo audio jack, 1x microSD card reader Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: IR camera for Windows Hello facial recognition Battery capacity: 75 Watt-hours Dimensions: 12.22 x 8.74 x 0.63 inches Weight: 2.87 pounds MSRP: $1,199 as tested If you’re looking for a 14-inch laptop with lots of battery life and good software compatibility — no potential issues, as with an ARM-powered Qualcomm Snapdragon X-powered laptop — the Asus Vivobook S 14 is a solid choice. Asus Vivobook S 14: Design and build quality IDG / Chris Hoffman The Asus Vivobook S 14 is a 14-inch laptop that feels solid, with no weird flexing. The base of the laptop around the keyboard feels pleasantly metallic. The lid is nice and lightweight — it’s easy to open and adjust with one hand. The lid material does seem to quickly pick up finger smudges, though. At 2.87 pounds and 0.63 inches thick, it’s very much a modern “ultraportable” style laptop. Coming in the aptly named “neutral black” color scheme, this machine has a lot of black metal and plastic with some smooth curves. There’s nothing about the design that truly stands out, though: When Matthew S. Smith reviewed the Asus Vivobook S 15 earlier this year, he called that laptop’s similar design “bland.” People certainly won’t seek out this design, but it works perfectly well. While there’s not a lot of color in the design — just a lot of black — the laptop makes up for this a bit by providing a color backlight for the keyboard. You can change the color from Settings > Personalization > Dynamic Lighting. Asus Vivobook S 14: Keyboard and trackpad IDG / Chris Hoffman The Asus Vivobook S 14 includes a full-size “chiclet-style” keyboard with 1.7mm of key travel. That’s a decent amount: This keyboard doesn’t feel shallow, and it doesn’t feel mushy. I could quickly get up to speed typing on it. It’s not as snappy as the keyboard on some higher-end business laptops like ThinkPads, but it’s a solid keyboard without any questionable design decisions. Naturally, this Lunar Lake-powered system has a keyboard with a Copilot key for launching Microsoft’s AI chatbot. Expect to see that key on nearly every Windows laptop going forward. The keyboard also has backlighting – and, unlike many PCs of this type, it offers a choice of color for the backlight. You aren’t just limited to plain white backlighting: The default is a blue backlight. (It’s only one zone, though, so you’re choosing one color of lighting for the entire keyboard.) The trackpad is a good size – not too big and not too small. And it’s in a good position, too, centered right below the keyboard. It works well, accurately tracking both finger movements and multi-finger gestures. The surface is a little bit rubbery, though, and doesn’t feel quite as premium as the glass trackpads on other laptops I’ve used. While the click action feels good, this isn’t a haptic trackpad like the trackpad found in Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 7. A haptic trackpad feels much nicer, but they’re still not found on most laptops. Asus Vivobook S 14: Display and speakers IDG / Chris Hoffman The Asus Vivobook S 14 has a 14-inch 1920×1200 OLED display with a 60Hz refresh rate and 600 nits of peak brightness. It’s a good-looking display, and it’s nice to have an OLED for the vivid colors. It’s plenty bright, too. Still, it’s not the best display you’re going to find out there. You can find displays with higher resolutions and higher refresh rates. The main thing that bothered me was just how glossy the display was, like so many OLED displays are. There are a lot of reflections here when sunlight hits the screen. This is also not a touchscreen laptop. If you want a touch screen on your laptop, you’ll need to look elsewhere. Overall, though, it’s still a nice display. If you’re coming from an older laptop without an OLED display, you’ll likely be pleased – unless your priority is using it outdoors or in other sunny areas, in which case you may want to look for a laptop with a matte display — or at least a glossy display with better antireflective properties. The speakers are solid for a laptop of this size. They’re not the loudest speakers I’ve heard in a laptop of this size, but they can get up to a good volume. The audio is clear. They’re plenty capable, and better than what I’d expect on a laptop in this price range. The biggest problem is the usual one: There’s just never enough bass in a laptop speaker setup, is there? Asus Vivobook S 14: Webcam, microphone, biometrics The Asus Vivobook S 14 includes a front-facing camera with a 1080p resolution and a physical shutter right above the display. I always like seeing a physical shutter switch. The webcam itself is okay but not great. It’s a serviceable webcam and you’ll certainly be able to attend online meetings with it. But it doesn’t deliver as clear an image as many of the webcams I’ve used on more business-focused laptops lately. That’s no surprise as this is being marketed a bit more as a budget laptop. Since this is a Copilot+ PC, you also get access to the AI-powered Windows Studio Effects with tools like background blur and fake eye contact. The microphone is also okay but not great. It did a great job of picking up my voice and filtering out background noise from the room, even when I was near some medium-volume fans. But the audio quality wasn’t quite as crisp as I’ve heard from some more professional-focused laptops. This isn’t really that bad. Many people will be thrilled Asus has chosen to deliver 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage even if it means delivering a middle-of-the-road webcam and microphone. This laptop includes an IR camera for facial recognition with Windows Hello. As with other modern laptops, it did a good job of signing me into Windows in a variety of lighting conditions. Asus Vivobook S 14: Connectivity IDG / Chris Hoffman The Asus Vivobook S 14 delivers a decent selection of ports. On the left side, it’s got an HDMI 2.1 out port, two Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C) ports, a microSD card reader, and a combo audio jack for a headset. On the right side, you’ll see two USB Type-A (USB 3.2 Gen 1) ports. It’s a reasonable setup, but bear in mind that this laptop charges via USB-C, so one of those USB Type-C ports will be used while charging. Also, there’s one slightly odd design choice: The charging cable plugs in on the left side, while the charging status light is on the right side of the laptop. Still, that’s no big deal. The port selection likely won’t be a problem for your needs. And, if you need more ports than this, you can always pick up a dongle. This laptop also offers great wireless connectivity thanks to Lunar Lake. This hardware is capable of both Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. Asus Vivobook S 14: Performance The Asus Vivobook S 14 performed well in day-to-day use, delivering plenty of battery life as well as speedy performance in web browsers and desktop productivity applications. Well, it mostly performed well: In one case, the Asus Vivobook S 14 slowed to a crawl, with application launches taking long amounts of time, network requests dragging on, and web pages freezing. The Task Manager revealed the culprit: The preinstalled McAfee antivirus package was suspiciously using 12 percent and 15 percent CPU during this time and not dropping below that. After a reboot, the problem went away. (PCWorld also found some performance issues with this program in our review of McAfee). Anyway, this could be a one-off glitch and you can avoid it by simply uninstalling McAfee and using another antivirus program. As always, though we ran the Asus Vivobook S 14 through our standard benchmarks to see how it performs. IDG / Chris Hoffman First, we run PCMark 10 to get an idea of overall system performance. The Asus Vivo Book S 14 delivered an overall PCMark 10 score of 7197, right up there with the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 — which is powered by the same Intel Core Ultra 7 258V “Lunar Lake” CPU. IDG / Chris Hoffman After that, we run Cinebench R20. This is a heavily multithreaded benchmark that focuses on overall CPU performance. It’s a quick benchmark, so cooling under extended workloads isn’t a factor. But, since it’s heavily multithreaded, CPUs with more cores have a huge advantage. These Lunar Lake CPUs only have eight cores — four performance cores and four efficiency cores. While their strength is battery life, their weakness is multithreaded CPU performance. With Cinebench R20 multi-thread score of 4115, this laptop is right in line with other Lunar Lake CPUs — but much slower than AMD Ryzen AI 300 and Intel Meteor Lake chips in this workload. (Of course, this machine’s battery life is much longer than machines with those CPUs!) IDG / Chris Hoffman We also run an encode with Handbrake. This is another heavily multithreaded benchmark, but it runs over an extended period. This demands the laptop’s cooling kick in, and many laptops will throttle and slow down under load. The Asus Vivobook S 14 completed the encode process in 1332 seconds — that’s just over 22 minutes. This is a multithreaded CPU benchmark, so Lunar Lake is behind those other machines once again. IDG / Chris Hoffman Next, we run a graphical benchmark. This isn’t a gaming laptop, but it’s still good to check how the GPU performs. We run 3Dmark Time Spy, a graphical benchmark that focuses on GPU performance. With a 3DMark Time Spy score of 4,209, Lunar Lake’s Intel Arc integrated graphics deliver surprisingly good gaming performance — for integrated graphics. You’d have to look for discrete graphics hardware — like the Nvidia RTX 4060-powered laptop in the comparison here — to get something better at 3D performance. Overall, the Asus Vivobook S 14 delivers solid day-to-day performance with surprisingly good GPU speed, too. It falls behind in heavily multithreaded CPU performance, but that’s not representative of most real-world use cases. And it makes up for that in battery life. Asus Vivobook S 14: Battery life The Asus Vivobook S 14 packs a 75 Watt-hour battery. Lunar Lake is focused on long battery life — like you’ll find in a Qualcomm Snapdragon X-powered laptop like the Surface Laptop or even better — so we’d expect to see much longer battery life. As on other Lunar Lake-powered laptops we’ve tested recently, Lunar Lake delivered long-lasting all-day battery life. IDG / Chris Hoffman To benchmark the battery life, we play a 4K copy of Tears of Steel on repeat on Windows 11 with airplane mode enabled until the laptop suspends itself. We set the screen to 250 nits of brightness for our battery benchmarks. This is a best-case scenario for any laptop since local video playback is so efficient, and real battery life in day-to-day use is always going to be less than this. It’s also worth noting that the Asus Vivobook S 14’s OLED display has a bit of an advantage, as OLED screens use less power to display the black bars around the video. The Asus Vivobook S 14 ran for an average of 1,287 minutes before suspending itself. That’s nearly 21 and a half hours. Real-world battery life is shorter than this, but the machine delivered all-day battery life, letting me work from it for as long as I wanted without worrying about finding a power outlet. The 16-inch Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 did outlast the Asus Vivobook S 14 by a few hours in our benchmarks. While their batteries are about the same size, it’s possible the AMOLED screen in that more expensive Samsung laptop has lower power usage, resulting in longer battery life. Asus Vivobook S 14: Conclusion The Asus Vivobook S 14 is a nice 14-inch Lunar Lake laptop at a good price. It has solid build quality, an OLED screen, 32 GB of RAM, and 1 TB of storage for a $1,199 retail price. That’s hard to argue with, especially if you catch it for a few hundred dollars off on sale. If you’re looking for a 14-inch laptop with lots of battery life and good software compatibility — no potential issues, as with an ARM-powered Qualcomm Snapdragon X-powered laptop — it’s a solid choice. Read...