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53 Articles

If you’re anything like me (and I keep telling myself I am normal and typical…), then the summer and new year period is one where you combine doing nothing whatsoever, with the things you’ve been putting off all year and know you really must tackle sooner or later. Like giving your PC a once over to get it as fit as you will no doubt be personally after the party season! Starting with bloatware (my physical bloatware is another issue…). If you’ve just bought a new PC – and laptops are especially bad for this – then it’s almost certainly going to have stuff installed that is, at best, annoying, and at worst, a system hog. Straight to page 88, for you, then, dear reader. Our completely-unbloated Nate Drake has…

Exclusive downloads

Download these APC exclusives free from: www.apcmag.com/exclusives ASCOMP KEYCTRL CREATE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS. OPTIMISE WORKFLOWS! Ascomp KeyCtrl is the perfect tool for anyone looking to boost productivity and streamline daily tasks on Windows. While popular shortcuts like Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V are invaluable for copying and pasting, Ascomp KeyCtrl goes beyond the basics, allowing you to create customised keyboard shortcuts tailored to your specific needs. Imagine executing complex tasks with a simple key combination: automatically inserting frequently used text in your email client or Word, translating website content in real time, taking instant screenshots, or quickly opening your most-used folder in Windows Explorer. With Ascomp KeyCtrl, all this and more is possible. ASHAMPOO BURNING STUDIO 2025 POWERFUL BURNING SOFTWARE FOR FILES, MUSIC, AND MOVIES. Ashampoo Burning Studio 2025 provides a comprehensive solution…

Exclusive downloads

Intel launches new Arc B580 GPU

Everything you need to know from the month in tech Intel’s second-gen Battlemage graphics tech is official, it’s announced, it’s real and it’s here. Going by Intel’s claims, the actual architecture looks pretty great, too. It’s been updated to be more efficient, to deliver better utilisation and performance per graphics core and also sports improved ray tracing and AI performance. Indeed, dollar-for-dollar, it looks like Intel may now be able to match Nvidia for ray tracing performance. But what about the bad news? Well, the new B580 and its B570 sibling are fairly low end cards. Nvidia is only aiming at marginally beating the Nvidia RTX 4060 for now. As for key specs, the B580 is a 12GB card with a 192-bit bus, which gives it a much more powerful…

Intel launches new Arc B580 GPU

Microsoft makes funeral plans for Windows 10

Microsoft is busy making preparations for when Windows 10 reaches end of support in October 2025, including an option to keep paying for support for the first time. Windows 10 is still by far the most used version of Windows in the world, with six in ten active Windows installations still running Windows 10, according to the October 2024 data from Statcounter. That presents Microsoft with an enormous problem, with it looking increasingly likely that Windows 10 will still have a greater installed base than Windows 11 by the time the operating system is officially retired in less than a year’s time. “Windows 10 is still by far the most used version of Windows in the world, with six in ten active Windows installations still running Windows 10, according to…

Microsoft makes funeral plans for Windows 10

Valve is getting ready to disrupt the whole gaming space

It looks like a new “death of the console” crisis is looming. Sony and Nintendo are still selling bucketloads of consoles, mind you, but Valve has widescale disruption in its sights. Cast your mind back ten years ago when Valve unveiled Steam Machines, which were basically small form factor gaming PCs using a Linux-based OS to power a console-like version of Steam (then called “Big Picture Mode”). I loved the idea at the time, but few others did, and while some third-party companies like Alienware did their best to make their version of the Steam Machine happen, several factors stopped them from blossoming. Alienware co-founder Frank Azor told me in 2016 that part of the reason for the failure was that Windows 10 fixed all the gaming-centric problems that Windows…

Valve is getting ready to disrupt the whole gaming space

CPU gaming showdown: 9800X3D vs Core 9 285K

You can’t swing a GPU without The past month has been both exciting and underwhelming. Intel had a lot riding on Arrow Lake. The third iteration of Intel’s desktop CPU architecture, it got an upgrade from the Intel 7 process node used with Raptor Lake to TSMC’s N3B. AMD replied with the 3D V-Cache enabled 9800X3D, based on the Zen 5 architecture. From the sidelines, Arrow Lake sounded like the more impressive design. Multi-tile chips leveraging a variety of manufacturing nodes, with a renewed focus on efficiency? Sounds great. Toss in the new Lion Cove performance cores and Skymont efficiency cores, and it felt like Intel’s race to lose. Using stacked L3 cache has proven effective in boosting gaming performance, but otherwise, Zen 5 X3D didn’t sound that exciting. How…

CPU gaming showdown: 9800X3D vs Core 9 285K

The next big frontier for Nvidia

The latest whispers claim that Nvidia will put a new SoC into production in September 2025, and that it will be aimed at ‘high-end’ PCs. Of course, games are the one thing that Arm chips still struggle with. But if anyone can crack that conundrum, it’s Nvidia, right? Allegedly, Nvidia is plotting Arm chips engineered in partnership with MediaTek and fully custom in-house designs. It’s the version aimed at consumer PCs that will supposedly be pure Nvidia, while MediaTek will partner with Nvidia to create another Arm-based SoC for enterprise customers. The enterprise chip probably needs 5G connectivity built in, hence the MediaTek tie-up. MediaTek is one of very few outfits capable of building 5G into an SoC, but the consumer PC chip, probably for laptops, maybe for handhelds or…

The next big frontier for Nvidia

If you could choose one thing…

It was one of those three-pints-down discussions, when one of my friends turned and asked “what’s your most prized and useful piece of kit?” Sounds simple, but this is difficult to answer after one pint let alone three. Do you choose a random bit of hardware that you turn to on an almost daily basis? Or that bag of plug adapters and cables, just in case you need to charge your phone in some random car or airport lounge? Although I try to avoid plugging anything USB into an unknown source: who knows what evil handshaking might be going on down the cable? For some, it was their “go everywhere” computing device. Phones were disallowed, because everyone has one. So the voting included a Surface Pro laptop, an iPad Pro…

If you could choose one thing…

This month we dissect... ABOUT IFIXIT iFixit is a global community of tinkerers dedicated to helping people fix things through free online repair manuals and teardowns. iFixit believes that everyone has the right to maintain and repair their own products. To learn more, visit www.ifixit.com META QUEST 3S: MAJOR TECH SPECS • 120Hz LCD display, 1,832 by 1,920 resolution per eye • Fresnel lenses, 97 degree horizontal field of view, 20 pixels per degree • Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 SoC, Octa-core Kryo CPU (1 x 3.19 GHz, 4 x 2.8 GHz, 3 x 2.0 GHz) • Dual RGB passthrough cameras, 58-68mm IPD range (manually hardware adjustable, 3 fixed IPD settings), 6 DoF Inside-out via 4 integrated cameras • 8GB RAM, 128GB storage (256GB optional) • 2x Meta Quest Touch…

Find the best deals on new gear at getprice.com/au Premium laptops NEW Apple MacBook Pro M4 ONE OF THE BEST LAPTOPS THAT’S EVER BEEN MADE. This M4 update to the already brilliant MacBook Pro line is an easy recommendation, so the big question becomes do you choose the 14in version or 16in. But whatever you choose should last for years, and look great while it’s doing it. From $2,499, apple.com/au THE ALTERNATIVES ASUS ZENBOOK DUO A dual-screen laptop that uses a practical layout and excels at everyday use. The unique form factor is incredibly handy for those who need dual screens on the go. $3,999, asus.com APPLE MACBOOK AIR The MacBook Air M3 replaces the M2 model previously listed here. It’s a powerful and quiet ultraportable with an unbeatable battery…

MyFitnessPal vs Cronometer

MYFITNESSPAL $14.99 per month / $79.99 per year, www.myfitnesspal.comCRONOMETER $14.99 per month / $89.99 per year, www.cronometer.com Look, we get it, nutrition and fitness is a bit left field for APC – it’s not something we often cover. That said, it’s an integral part of all our lives, and the better we look after ourselves, the more time we can spend in good health with our loved ones, doing the things we enjoy (namely, tinkering with PCs). Staying inside of healthy weight ranges is one of the best and most effective ways of reducing the risk of all-cause mortality. It’s almost at the level of being a complete panacea in a lot of measures. The science has come a long way in recent years, so much so that we now…

MyFitnessPal vs Cronometer

EAT E-Glo II Now here’s something to make you glow on cold winter nights – the glorious sight of old school valves on European Audio Team’s E-Glo II. Stylish designed in black or silver, the E-Glo II is a dedicated phono stage that sits between your vinyl turntable and your hi-fi amplifier (or any other device that can handle a RCA phono input). Compatible with turntables fitted with either a Moving Magnet (MM) or Moving Coil (MC) cartridge, the E-Glo II adds up to 76 decibels of gain, amplifying the sound from the needle as it traces around your vinyl’s grooves, so they can be picked up and further amplified by your hi-fi. Weighing in at a hefty 5.3kg and and made from premium materials, there’s something rather lovely about…

APC is Australia’s oldest consumer technology magazine – having been consistently in print for over forty years, since our first issue way back in May 1980 – and we take that heritage and responsibility very seriously. While our focus is obviously on the personal computer the very definition of the PC has changed and shifted markedly since the early 1980s. As such, we touch on many other areas of tech, too, from smartphones and apps to peripherals, accessories, and beyond. We have two goals: to find the best modern tech and to help you make the most of it. Independent reviews Championing technology doesn’t mean we’re unrelenting yes-men and -women, however, and APC aims to be as objective as possible in all our coverage. That means identifying the best products…

Apple M4 series

The Apple M4 series powers the iPad Pro along with the new Mac mini, iMac and MacBook Pro. Featuring what Apple calls “second-generation” 3nm core architecture, a faster neural engine and far more memory bandwidth, there’s much to admire. The plain M4 sits at the bottom and supports up to 32GB of unified memory (16GB is the new default). It provides 120GB/sec of bandwidth, a 17% jump on its predecessor. Perhaps more telling is that Apple claims that the M4 is up to 1.8x faster “in multithreaded performance” than the M1, and that the “performance core is the world’s fastest CPU core” in terms of single-threaded tasks. These hyperbolic claims aren’t unusual for Apple, but there’s good evidence to suggest they’re justified. In particular, take a look at the Geekbench…

Apple M4 series

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

PRICE $829 WEB amd.com The eternal battle for best processor goes on, and this month we test the latest salvo from AMD. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D is an out-and-out gaming processor, while Intel’s Core Ultra 200K series (codenamed Arrow Lake) are all-rounders. In particular, they’re the first x86 desktop CPUs to include a neural processing unit (NPU). So, in truth these are very different chips. AMD spends the cache AMD follows a similar approach to the 9800X3D as it did with the 7800X3D. It has the same 8-core/16-thread setup as the AMD Ryzen 7 9700X, but with an additional 64MB L3 cache to take the total to 96MB. In the first iteration of 3D V-Cache, as AMD calls it, the extra die was stacked on top of the main processing…

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

PRICE From $1,999 WEB apple.com/au Alongside new Mac mini and MacBook Pro models, Apple has updated its iconic all-in-one desktop. It’s not a major redesign, but it brings some welcome improvements over last year’s model – not just the latest M4 processor, but also a doubling of the starting RAM and a better webcam. The colour line-up has been updated too, with new shades of blue, green, orange, pink, purple and silver. As always, the defining feature of the iMac is its screen, and that remains as delightful as ever. At 24in it won’t dominate your desk, but it provides much more workspace than a laptop, and also works well for video streaming: I tried watching some of my favourite shows and movies on the iMac and was delighted by…

Apple iPad mini (2024)

PRICE From $1,799 WEB apple.com/au If you’re looking for a lightweight and compact tablet, the smart move might be to opt for the latest iPad mini. It’s not a revolutionary update over the sixth-generation model, released in 2021, but a few under-the-hood improvements make it an all-round superior tablet that’s well worth a look. The design still resembles a shrunken-down iPad Air, and since it comes with iPadOS 18 preinstalled, you get all the same software features as found on the latest iPad Air and Pro models. Those include the upgraded Calculator app and the Smart Script feature, which cleans up your handwriting in real time to make it more legible. Perhaps more significantly, it’s also in line to receive the full set of Apple Intelligence features – which the…

Apple iPad mini (2024)

Apple MacBook Pro M4

PRICE From $2,499 WEB apple.com/au Apple’s latest MacBook Pro looks and feels a lot like the 2023 model, and it comes in the same 14in and 16in formats as before. However, it brings several upgrades – including a nano-texture screen option, the new, faster M4 processor and improved battery life – that make it Apple’s most compelling high-end laptop yet. The MacBook Pro M4 looks identical to its predecessor, with an aluminium design that’s easy to carry yet feels rock solid. I continue to appreciate the front lip that makes the lid easy to open, and the Touch ID button for logging in quickly – although I really wish Apple would add Face ID at this point. Connectivity is improved over the M3 version, with the M4 offering three Thunderbolt…

Apple MacBook Pro M4

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura

PRICE $2,799 WEB lenovo.com The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura is a premium slim yet powerful laptop designed to appeal to creators over competitors like the MacBook Air. It features Intel’s new Core Ultra 7 258V CPU, backed up by 32GB LPDDR5x RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a delightful 15.3in 2.8K display – all in a thin laptop that weighs just 1.53kg. While IPS rather than OLED, the Aura’s display is a standout feature. The 2880 x 1800 resolution in a 15.3in form factor gives a very sharp image without being an overt drain on battery life, while the 120Hz refresh rate ensures smooth visuals when needed. The panel is rated for 100% DCI-P3 and sRGB color accuracy, and the 500-nit brightness means use outdoors is reasonably good. With a…

Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura

HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 (Intel)

PRICE $3,699 WEB hp.com The HP Omnibook Ultra is a more than capable laptop with a gorgeous aesthetic and enough processing power for day to day work, or even casual gaming. Our review machine has the new series 2 Intel Ultra 7 258V CPU, plus 32GB RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 14in OLED touchscreen display. Weighing only 1.34kg, the OmniBook Ultra makes for a brilliant premium laptop, capable of being folded flat on its back to double as a tablet,or standing on its own. The OmniBook is overly expensive at the full $3,699 RRP, though we have seen it on sale for under $2,999, which is slightly more palatable. The OmniBook Ultra Flip stands out thanks to a vibrant, bright 2880 x 1800, 120Hz OLED display and two uniquely…

HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 (Intel)

MSI MPG 491CQPX QD-OLED

PRICE $2,299 WEB msi.com With monitors growing in size and new panels now offering some very interesting choices, the new MSI MPG 491CQPX QD-OLED presents a very compelling option for extreme gaming. This is a 49-inch beast with stats to match its imposing size. It’s functionally quite similar to Samsung’s G9 Neo, which I’ve reviewed, but has the edge in a couple of appealing ways. Most pleasingly, it doesn’t force you to use a remote like the Samsung does, and the MSI’s OSD is one of the best I’ve ever used, being clean, sensibly arranged and well designed. The hero stat is the fast 240Hz refresh. MSI has a similar MPG 491CQP model that tops out at 144Hz, and this is largely similar to that model in most other respects.…

MSI MPG 491CQPX QD-OLED

LG UltraGear 39GS95QE

PRICE $2,489 WEB https://www.lg.com/au We’ve had some amazing monitors through our Labs in recent months, but a standout model was Asus’ amazing, $2,300, matte-finished OLED PG32UCDP gaming monitor. Having a reflection-free OLED screen is something we’ve been crying out for. Now, here’s LG with an 800R-curved, anti-glare, anti-reflection, 240Hz OLED rival. Could it be even better? LG makes its UltraGear monitors in three sizes, 34, 39 and 45-inches and we reviewed the middle one... which feels massive. Construction is simple, thanks to its three-part, tool-less design and the small-footprint base provides a solid base. Basic connectivity is covered at the rear: there are two HDMI 2.1 ports, DisplayPort 1.4, a two-port USB-A 3.0 hub and a 3.5mm audio jack. There are also some RGB flourishes but don’t expect to see…

LG UltraGear 39GS95QE

Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 3

PRICE $399 WEB au.turtlebeach.com Turtle Beach’s new Stealth 700 Gen 3 gaming headset addresses my main gripe with its predecessor – the lack of compatibility across consoles. Thankfully, the third-gen Stealth 700 is truly multi-platform, with one caveat: the headset is still offered in Xbox, PlayStation and PC models, and while every version supports its chosen platform and Bluetoothenabled devices, Series X and S support is exclusive to the Xbox version, which comes with an Xbox-specific USB dongle, as well as an additional USB dongle for everything else (including PlayStation). The Gen 3 headset will simply pair with whichever one happens to be switched on at any given time. Alternatively, there’s also a dedicated button on the right ear cup which lets you switch between dongle connections. That’s not the…

Turtle Beach Stealth 700 Gen 3

XPG Fusion 1600

PRICE $816 WEB www.xpg.com/au/xpg/pc-components-fusion Made in partnership with Delta Electronics, the impressive Fusion 1600 is XPG’s top offering. With the latest in transformer and transistor technology, the patented planar transformer and GaN FETs translate into extremely efficient switching and voltage conversion, giving this unit its 80 Plus and Cybernetics Titanium certifications. Such efficiency means less waste heat, so there’s a significant dearth of heatsinks inside the unit. It runs so cool that the 135mm double ball-bearing fan won’t even spin up until you’re pulling around 640W to 800W. The fan curve can be tweaked via XPG’s Prime app, along with monitoring voltages, temperature, and power draw. Though marketed at gamers, the high 1600W rating of this power supply means it’s really only for those seriously pushing power envelopes with overclocking…

XPG Fusion 1600

Teamgroup T-Create Expert DDR5-6000 CL30 2x16GB

PRICE $199 WEB teamgroupinc.com Thanks to steady price drops, upgrading to DDR5 RAM has been a smart move for some time now, though lower-latency kits remain hard to find. While the ideal frequency and timings depend on your needs, for AMD AM5 builds, 6000MHz CL30 offers a great mix of performance and price – though Intel users might benefit from higher frequencies. Teamgroup’s T-Create Expert DDR5 meets this demand with two-DIMM kits ranging from 32GB (two 16GB modules) to 96GB (two 48GB modules) and frequencies spanning 5600MHz to 7600MHz – and available in black or white. The 2x16GB kit we tested features CL30-36-36-76 timings, PC5-48000 bandwidth (delivering 48,000 MB/s), and runs at 1.35V. Targeted at creators rather than gamers, it skips flashy RGB LEDs to focus on stability and value…

Teamgroup T-Create Expert DDR5-6000 CL30 2x16GB

WinDirStat 2.0.3

NEEDS Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 WEB https://windirstat.net WinDirStat analyses your PC’s hard drive(s) to identify files and folders that are taking up a lot of space. You can then delete large and unnecessary items to free up valuable storage. Incredibly, this is the first major new version of the program for 19 years, though there have been incremental updates in that time. Since 2013, it’s been overtaken in popularity by WizTree (https://diskanalyzer.com/), but WinDirStat 2.0.3 should help redress the balance. It introduces lots of new features and improvements to make managing your drive space easier than ever. When you launch WinDirStat, you can choose to scan all local drives, specific drives or partitions, or individual folders. It can even scan online-storage services such as Google Drive, OneDrive and…

WinDirStat 2.0.3

DEVELOPER Canonical Ltd WEB https://ubuntu.com LICENCE Mainly GPL Twenty years ago, in October 2004, the very first stable release of Ubuntu (4.10) was made available to the public. It represented the fruits of the labour of Mark Shuttleworth and a small team of Debian developers. Since that time, with one exception, new releases of Ubuntu have been issued every six months. Version numbers correspond to the current year and month of release. This has culminated in the latest version (24.10). In true Ubuntu tradition, it bears the alliterative code name of an animal (this time, it’s Oracular Oriole). As one of the most popular Linux distros, Ubuntu supports a wide range of architectures. The AMD64 ISO is a rather weighty 6.7GB. This is around a 1GB increase over Ubuntu 24.10, which…

INTEGRATED GRAPHICS SHOOTOUT

Gaming laptops have grown in popularity over the years, but they’re often heavier and noisier than models that use integrated graphics. AMD and Intel have both released new mobile processors in recent months, with beefed-up GPUs that have taken over the budget sector of the graphics market. It’s telling that we haven’t seen much in the way of new budget mobile GPUs in the past few years. Nvidia still offers older Turing and Amperederived solutions in the MX550 and MX570, but without any of the RTX features, like DLSS and ray tracing. Those were both launched in March 2022, but if you only need that level of graphics performance, you might find that the latest iGPUs from AMD and Intel are sufficient. We collected three similarly configured laptops and put…

INTEGRATED GRAPHICS SHOOTOUT

A BRIEF HISTORY OF RAY TRACING

In 1525, the German painter and engraver Albrecht Dürer pioneered a new method for creating art. It involved using a grid and a piece of string to accurately trace the movement of light from 3D surfaces onto the 2D plane of a canvas. Dürer correctly recognised that light travels in straight lines, so the string could represent the path of light from the image to the observer’s eye. The artist could then make a series of marks on the picture to represent areas of high and low contrast. This was one of the first documented ‘ray tracing’ techniques, whereby an artist tried to realistically portray how light interacts with objects in different ways to produce an image. Light doesn’t behave this way in the natural world. In reality, photons emanate…

A BRIEF HISTORY OF
RAY TRACING

THE RACE FOR ADVANCED ENCRYPTION

In the introduction to his awesome treatise on the history of cryptography, The Code Book, Simon Singh likens the ongoing battle between those who seek to keep communications secret and the consequent efforts of others to expose them to an intellectual “arms race.” It’s easy to be smug about older ciphers, such as the Caesar cipher, which simply shifts each letter in the message three places, A becoming D, B becoming E, and so on. These kinds of monoalphabetic ciphers are so easy to crack, Edgar Allan Poe even used to run a column breaking enciphered messages sent in by readers of Alexander Weekly Messenger. The arrival of affordable computers in the ’60s didn’t initially herald a new wave of encryption. Secure cryptography was still the preserve of governments, though…

THE RACE FOR
ADVANCED
ENCRYPTION

NEVER MISS ANOTHER SOFTWARE UPDATE

WHAT YOU CAN DO • Detect and update all outdated software on your PC• Automatically install the latest versions of programs• Schedule software to update at a convenient time• Prevent software updates from failing to install• Download thousands of free tools without any junk• Get notified as soon as new versions are available Most of us are aware of the importance of keeping Windows up to date, to protect us against the latest security threats and fix newly identified bugs. This task is generally handled well by Windows Update, which means we don’t need to worry about installing updates ourselves (at least until Windows 10 support ends next October). The same applies to antivirus software, which quietly downloads new malware definitions in the background. Sadly, many of the other programs…

NEVER MISS ANOTHER SOFTWARE UPDATE

WHY YOU MUST USE TOR

In previous features, we’ve recommended a VPN to protect your privacy online. Alternatively you could use a browser like Brave. Both are reliable options, with benefits other than keeping you private, but if you want to be completely anonymous as you browse the web, you can’t beat Tor. Mention Tor to some people and they’ll react with concern, because it has an undeserved reputation for being used for shady purposes. While that’s not completely unfounded, the Tor Project (www.torproject.org), which maintains the Tor network and browser, is a legal, non-profit organisation. It’s funded by US federal agencies, private foundations and donors, and its aim is to prevent internet surveillance and censorship – not to enable illegal activities. Tor’s powerful protection against online trackers, hackers and snoopers lets you access websites…

WHY YOU MUST USE TOR

From the front lines of the Australian PC market Intel continues its stroll down struggle street with the big news that CEO Pat Gelsinger has stepped down. While the press release makes it sound like he left of his own accord, with so much pressure on Intel to turn things around and Gelsinger’s transformative vision for Intel still in the works, Intel finds itself in financially dire straits. The fact that Gelsinger stepped out immediately and was simultaneously removed from the board of directors, with no known health or family issues that might otherwise explain the immediacy of the move, suggests he was forced out rather than of his own accord. He’s being replaced by two temporary appointments, David Zinsner and Michelle Johnston Holthaus as interim Co-CEOs. Zinsner, previously chief…

CPL ONLINE INFINITY 7 $1,559 tinyurl.com/APC541CPL Keeping prices low these days unfortunately means using two generation old hardware to get the job done. The Ryzen 5600 was solid back in the day is today still acceptable especially when paired with the RTX 4060, though will hamper anything faster. This combination means for gaming 1080p is the limit of what this system can run well with latest games. A particularly nice aspect of this build is the dual SSD storage with 500GB and 1TB SSDs included we’ve more storage at this price point than with other systems. The 750W PSU is generous here too and offers quite a bit of headroom for future upgrade choices. A system with above average value that’s eager for future upgrades. CPU AMD Ryzen 5 5600;…

Budget. A perfect balance between price and performance. Well folks, there we have it: two whole new generations of processors, and well, we’re still recommending the last generation across the majority of our builds. It’s a little bit wild out there right now. What’s the big holdup, then? Why aren’t we jumping ship to Intel and AMD’s latest and greatest? Simply put, it’s all a matter of price. Right now, both Team Blue’s 14th gen and Team Red’s 7000 series have been hit with a serious RRP hammer; the numbers don’t lie, and we’ve seen price drops of well over $100 in some cases over the last few months. This is, of course, intended to try and shift the remaining stock out of Intel and AMD’s warehouses, yet bizarrely, given…

The problem solvers

Transfer legacy apps What is currently considered the best (and easiest) way to migrate programs, settings, and so on to a new PC? I built my last machine back in 2009. Through the years, it has updated from Windows 7 to Windows 11 (with some effort), but has reached its limits. I have some legacy programs that currently work fine, but trying to re-install may not be possible due to the fact that they were supplied on diskettes. Ideally, I’d like to build a brand new machine and clone my existing unit – is that possible? Happy to pay for software. David Sollish APC Responds: While it might be technically possible to clone your old hard drive and transfer it to your new PC, that will be fraught with difficulties,…

The problem solvers

Instant expert: Photopea

If you want to edit and enhance your photos, you don’t need to install a weighty app – you can do it right in your web browser. One way is to use Adobe’s online version of Photoshop (tinyurl.com/APC541photo), but this requires a full-price Photoshop subscription, making it uneconomical for casual use. A great alternative is Photopea (photopea.com). This browser-based image editor offers a versatile, professional-grade editing environment with support for a wide range of file formats – and its interface will be immediately familiar to anyone who’s used Photoshop or other serious image-editing software in the past. Best of all, if you don’t mind seeing a few ads, you can use all its built-in features free. Here’s everything you need to know to make the most of this powerful online…

Instant expert: Photopea

Remove bloatware from Windows

YOU’LL NEED • CCleaner Optional, download it from www.ccleaner.com • A stable internet connection APC readers will know that nothing quite compares to the glee of firing up a brand new laptop or computer for the first time. Unfortunately, your excitement can easily be dampened by the presence of ‘bloatware’. This is software that usually comes bundled with Windows, and provides no significant value to the user. Common culprits included third-party antivirus and media software. As Windows veterans know, these programs may offer a free trial, and even work unobtrusively for a short period of time. However, at the end of the trial period, users are usually plagued with pop-ups encouraging them to register and/or subscribe. Bloatware, by definition, is software that is unnecessary to the smooth running of the…

Remove bloatware from Windows

Secret settings and best extensions CHROME Disable the ‘Search with Google Lens’ feature Google has now integrated its AI-powered tool Google Lens with Chrome. This lets you search for information about content on a web page – including text, images and videos – without typing anything. Instead you use Google Lens to capture a screenshot of selected content, and it displays ‘visual matches’ from across the web in the browser’s sidebar. It’s potentially useful but Google’s implementation of the feature seems heavy-handed. A ‘Search with Google Lens’ option now appears in Chrome’s address bar, its main (three-dot) menu, the right-click menu and even in the ‘Find on page’ box (1 in our screenshot below) that opens when you press the Ctrl+F keyboard shortcut. You’ll probably find all this annoying if…

Manage your iCloud Drive

IT WILL TAKE 20 mins YOU WILL LEARN How to efficiently store files in the cloud and ensure they’re available everywhere YOU’LL NEED Mac, preferably with macOS 15 or later, and iCloud set up For years, we’ve become accustomed to using iCloud Drive. Aside from being a great way of backing up your files and making them available across all of your devices, it provides more storage space for you to play around with and, since it’s baked into macOS, it pretty much works seamlessly. So much so that most of the time you’re not even aware you’re using it. But that’s not to say you won’t benefit from better management of the service and it’s worth learning a little more about what makes iCloud Drive tick. Here we’re going…

Manage your iCloud Drive

Easy de-archiving

The Linux distro is home to a large number of compression utilities, each with its own myriad subcommands and options. Remembering them all is a Herculean challenge, even for veterans. What complicates the situation further is that no single tool is equipped to handle all of the many different file formats, such as TAR, BZ2, GZIP, GZ, TAR.GZ, RAR and so on. Released under the GPLv3 licence, Patool is a portable archive file manager written in Python. You no longer have to rely on separate commands or remember their myriad options, as Patool supports just about all archive and compression formats. Even better, it uses sane and generic command options such as extract and create to respectively decompress an archive or to make one from the supplied set of files.…

Easy de-archiving

Phone & tablet tips

ANDROID & iOS Apply different themes to WhatsApp chats WhatsApp has added the option to customise your chats with colourful themes. Previously, you could change the default theme for all WhatsApp conversations, but the new feature lets you apply different themes to chats with specific people and groups. To pick a theme, tap the three-dot menu icon in the top-right corner of a chat and select ‘Chat theme’. Choose a theme from the eight available options (see screenshot 1 below) to change the message-bubble colour and wallpaper for the current conversation. Swipe left or right to see previews of each theme, and use the brightness control in the bottom-right to lighten or darken the design. Press the green tick button (see screenshot 2 ) to apply your chosen theme, then…

Phone & tablet tips

Get live updates with the YouTube API

YOU’LL NEED • Pi Pico W• Breadboard• I2C LCD display• 4x F2M jumper wires• Code: https://bit.ly/lxf322code Are you a budding YouTuber and want to keep an eye on your subscriber numbers? We’ve got just the thing. We’re making a Pi Pico W-powered subscriber counter using a low-cost LCD screen. It updates every hour with the latest subscriber numbers. We’re also learning about the YouTube API. First log in to the Google Cloud Console (https://console.cloud.google.com/welcome), then click on the project selector drop-down. In the new window, click on New Project. In the next window, give the project a name. Now click Create. Next we need to enable API access for the project. In the left-hand menu, click on APIs & Services > Library. In the search bar, search for YouTube Data…

Get live updates with the YouTube API

MechWarrior 5: Clans

The games we play PRICE $73.50 PLATFORM PC, PS4/5, XB1/S/X WEB MW5CLANS.COM MechWarrior is back and going harder than ever with a completely standalone game confusingly titled MechWarrior 5: Clans, some five years after MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. It’s the classic campaign of mech-tweaking and smashing enemies, but Clans is a bold game that improves on the classic sim-lite action of MechWarrior by adding a more modern, story-driven framing. That setting matters more than before. MechWarrior 5: Clans does something quite new for the series: it attempts to give you the kind of story found in the BattleTech books and novels, which have kept mech-heads invested in this world of space nobility and war machines for decades. The campaign follows a group of newly-proven teen MechWarriors, all of whom are artificially…

MechWarrior 5: Clans

PRICE $26.50 PLATFORM PC, Mac WEB tinyurl.com/APC541judero “Weirdness” can often feel like an affectation. Judero could have only been made by Talha Kaya and Jack King-Spooner, two independent developers who crafted a vision of the Scottish Borders entirely out of action figures and modelling clay. Judero is a game with the kind of rough edges and pleasant surprises that could only come from an artistic vision, and it’s one that will continue to stick with me. Judero casts you as the titular Judero: a rough-hewn warrior-priest clearly crafted out of Milliput and a GI Joe action figure. Judero uses real, physical models for its digital assets: full-on stop motion in its cutscenes while the gameplay uses sprites in 3D environments like the original Doom. The music is also a real…

FUNERALOPOLIS: LAST DAYS

PRICE Free PLATFORM PC WEB bit.ly/FuneralLastDays REFLECTING ON HORROR This weird game begins on the periphery of your oppressive, Brutalist city, but gradually inches closer to home as you tune into your radio and peep out the window at the other tower blocks. When was the last time you saw the sun? What’s all this chatter about a mysterious substance discovered in a local mine? Why is the church taking people from that tower block in the middle of the night? There’s a tangible, tight-knit atmosphere to the game’s small yet richly detailed environments, which comprise your apartment and office, and the dingy hallway where the other residents occasionally gather. You’re the overseer of the complex, by the way, so it makes sense that the residents knock on your door,…

FUNERALOPOLIS: LAST DAYS

PRICE Free PLATFORM PC WEB final-girl-games.itch.io/vile AN APTLY NAMED PC INVESTIGATION GAME. Rooting around in someone’s computer/phone’ has become a genre unto itself, with even the most innocent examples making you feel like you’re invading someone’s privacy. That thought never occurred to me as I explored the contents of Vile’s PC, as there are secrets here that need to be brought to the light. As you click on .exe files and emails and visit the websites frequently haunted by the owner, it quickly becomes clear that he’s a piece of shit. He’s obsessed with a (fictional) actress named Candy Corpse who has starred in several extreme horror films, and he posts on a fan forum dominated by creepy stalker talk. This is a story that only gets darker as you…

Starship Troopers: Extermination

PRICE $74.99 PLATFORM PC, PS5, XBS/X WEB tinyurl.com/APC541troop Compared to the seemingly similar Helldivers 2, Starship Troopers: Extermination is a surgically precise slapstick comedy. Extermination is a much broader, weirder, rougher affair. Extermination’s main event is its 16-player cooperative missions, in which four squads of four players work together to withstand the arachnid menace for the glory of the Federation. If the idea of building a base with 15 strangers sounds either tedious or intimidating to you, in my experience with Extermination it is neither. Bases are fully kitted out within minutes, as players work efficiently together to erect walls, place reinforced bunkers, situate ammo dumps, and station manned and automated gun turrets. Once the base is constructed (or in some missions, while the base is under construction) the arachnids…

Starship Troopers: Extermination

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

PRICE $109.95 PLATFORM PC, PS4/5, XBS/X WEB www.callofduty.com/au/en/blackops6 At some point when I wasn’t watching, Call of Duty’s campaign became a bad stealth game. Gone are the perspectives of the faceless soldiers, replaced with characters who look and feel like they came from a Netflix Original movie. When Black Ops 6’s campaign occasionally channels the bombastic scope of its predecessors, it rocks, but all too often it’s bogged down in tedious espionage. I don’t accept that the largest videogame franchise on the planet, especially with such a rich history of incredible single-player campaigns, should be so thoroughly mediocre. Call of Duty used to at least have an engaging perspective, putting you in the hot seat of the turning-point battles of the near-modern world, but Black Ops 6 offers nothing like…

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6

PRICE Free PLATFORM PC, browser WEB kultisti.itch.io/raide CHOO CHOO CHOOSE THIS PUZZLE GAME. Raide is a game of intimate, tactile puzzling and unravelling secrets. If there is a big idea – some mechanic that sets it apart from the other train-based puzzle games – I haven’t found it. The rules of the game are simple: you’re laying track segments between distant points, to connect houses together. In each level, you’re given a pile of track bits, and you must use every piece in the puzzle, even if a simpler solution presents itself. These rules are soon embellished with track-splitters and broken track, and I had a challenging, engrossing time playing through the main story this evening. It’s engrossing not just because of the clever-yet-fair puzzles, but because this is a…

Old games, new perspectives RELEASE October 23, 2013 DEVELOPER Grinding Gear Games PUBLISHER Grinding Gear Games LINK pathofexile.com I thought I was prepared for Path of Exile after spending the last year knee-deep in Diablo IV, but it turns out I’m still not strong enough. No matter how many times I’ve tried to get into it I can never seem to spend more than a handful of hours lost in its maze of mechanics. That’s not to say it’s a bad game by any means; I just don’t think Path of Exile is for me. This attempt was the most successful and I’ll admit that it made me appreciate the kind of action RPG Grinding Gear Games is going for with Path of Exile. Compared to Diablo, Path of Exile…

Sony PlayStation: the game changer

Inspirational stories from computing’s long-distant past In December 1994, it was becoming clear where gaming was heading: straight down the road to the third dimension. Although 3D games had been around for a while – DOS titles Wolfenstein 3D and Doom being the most notable – one play of Ridge Racer was all it took to convince larger numbers of gamers that 3D was the future. Ridge Racer was a launch title for Sony’s PlayStation, a console that had made its debut in Japan. As history will attest, this machine forever changed the course of the videogame industry by successfully smashing the long-held Nintendo-Sega duopoly. It drove forward with fresh thinking and a determination to turn the industry on its head. In short, the PlayStation was a game changer. It…

Sony PlayStation: the game changer

Create a portable file vault

It’s that time of year when many of my colleagues are ‘abuzz’ about the latest iPhone, and the slightly different specifications it has to the previous model. Not me, though – I’ve sworn my allegiance to Android, and the last time I was abuzz was when a dozy bee landed on my pillow. I’ve been buying Motorola phones for the past 10 years, because they offer a decent set of features for an affordable price. My current handset, the Moto G84, has a mighty 256GB of storage, which is more than enough for testing apps for my day job. Its predecessor – the Moto G50 – still works fine, but the battery life isn’t great so it’s been relegated to my gadget-graveyard drawer. I came across the old phone the…

Create a portable file vault

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