Windows

The two-year old Surface Pro 5 offers essentially the same display experience as the latest Surface Pro 7 down to colors, contrast, brightness, response times, and more.

At a measured brightness of 868 nits on the center of the screen, the UBook Pro is nearly 90 percent brighter than even the Surface Pro 6. It's not everyday that a cheaper Chinese clone offers something better than the "proper" authentic version.

AMD may have new depths of Raven Ridge to share with us soon. The evidence for this has just surfaced on Geekbench 4 for Windows, in the form of a laptop listed as powered by a chipset called the "Athlon Gold 3150U". This 2-core, 4-thread apparent APU has posted indifferent scores.

Lenovo now offers better GPU options and for the first time, an OLED display in its 15-inch workstation. Nvidia's Quadro RTX 5000 offers a level of performance that is usually exclusive to 17-inch models.

Brave, a Chromium-based browser designed around user privacy and anonymity, has finally released version 1.0 after four years in development. The browser has a unique method for upending the traditional ad-revenue basis of websites built around blockchain technologies and anonymity.

Carrying around a hefty laptop can prove tiresome if you are often on the move. However, many lightweight laptops are underpowered and struggle in office tasks, which is where the Acer TravelMate X514 steps in. Acer has designed the laptop to be simultaneously lightweight and powerful while retaining features that many businesses may find attractive too. It is not all rosy, though.

The concept of expensive laptops with little performance is not new, but buyers have mostly received high-quality components and a special design in return so far. Although the latter is in Porsche Design's name, the manufacturer doesn't take it very seriously when it comes to the high-quality hardware.

Microsoft has let it be known that checking for updates on Windows 10 PCs that run the stable-channel 1903 version may result in the ability to download its successor, 1909. This November 2019 replacement for that build can also now be accessed by business users and server maintainers.

With the ConceptD series, Acer has launched a completely new product lineup. The premium white multimedia system tries to appeal to creators of digital multimedia content. However, as our review shows, it comes with a few drawbacks.

NVIDIA is offering a free copy of the latest Call of Duty PC game with every purchase of an RTX graphics card, desktop or notebook. However, this deal's window is shrinking: it is only available until November 18, 2019. The GPUs must be bought from nvidia.com or its official partners for the promotion to apply.

The slim and light Acer Swift 7 SF714-52T scores with an IPS touchscreen display, 16 GB of working memory (dual-channel mode) and silent operation. This is accompanied by a good battery life and two Thunderbolt-3 ports. For the whole package, you have to put almost 2000 Euros (~$2226) on the table.

Samsung is now rolling a new software update out to the Galaxy A70s. The OTA package adds the ability to use Link to Windows, as well as USB type C headphones. It also contains general stability upgrades and the October 2019 security patches.

The slim and light Portégé X30-F scores points with long battery life, a bright, contrast-rich display and two Thunderbolt 3 ports. Our configuration variant lacks an LTE modem.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) has conferred a number of CES 2020 Awards on some OEMs ahead of this event. They include OnePlus, LG and Acer, who have won recognition for their latest flagship devices, (or, in some cases, upcoming releases) in various categories. The actual show will run from January 7, 2020 in Las Vegas as usual.

We often complain about smaller laptops failing to keep their processors cool enough to maintain peak clock speeds, so a 17-inch laptop should have a large enough footprint to do so, right? Well, the HP Envy 17-ce1002ng may be a 17-inch machine, but it cannot make use of the full potential of its Comet Lake processor, although it does a better job with its NVIDIA GeForce MX250 graphics card. What is the fuss about Comet Lake, then?

You don't always have to pay 2,000 Euros (~$2,213) or more for laptops with a graphics card specialized in applications. With the ThinkPad P53s and Nvidia's Quadro P520 GPU, Lenovo shows that it can be cheaper.

HP is having something of a pre-Black Friday sales event in which US$100 or more is taken off many up-to-date PCs from the Envy, Spectre or Omen laptop series. Examples include the Omen 17t and 15T Spectre x360. This promotion also includes HP Chromebooks, Envy desktops and photo printers.

The Acer Aspire 5 A515-43-R057 is an affordable AMD Ryzen laptop, which should offer great value for money on paper. However, the performance of its AMD Ryzen 5 3500U leaves a lot to be desired.

A promo video from MSI has seemingly shown off AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper 3990X by accident. The clip was focusing on the manufacturer’s Creator TRX40 board that is capable of supporting the new 3rd Gen Threadrippers. However, a system clue has apparently given away the fact that it was not a Threadripper 3960X or 3970X behind the scenes.

Dynabook's 13.3-inch business laptop pleases with a bright, contrast-rich IPS display, an NVMe SSD and long battery life.

Acer considers the Acer Predator Helios 300 one of its entry-level gaming laptops, except that it starts at US$1,199.99. While its Intel Core i7-9750H processor and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GPU can handle triple-A 1080p gaming, the new Helios 300 falls short of the performance that its competitors offer. Worse still, its battery life leaves plenty to be desired.

A security researcher discovered the first worm to take advantage of the BlueKeep in older versions of Windows exploit disclosed earlier this year. Machine running Windows 7 and below have a critical security flaw that can allow attackers full access. This attack installed a Monero cryptocurrency miner without tripping any flags other than high CPU usage. Considering the number of organizations and government agencies that still rely on legacy Windows machines, BlueKeep could turn out to be a much larger threat than many realize.

Microsoft isn't giving up on ARM for Windows. Much like the semi-custom Ryzen processors for the Surface Laptop 3 series, the new 13-inch Surface Pro X tablet will use a custom SQ1 processor developed by Qualcomm.

Although the launch date of the next Dragon Age game is not set in stone yet, BioWare has recently published a teaser on Twitter that labels December 4 as "Dragon 4ge Day" so at least some kind of Dragon Age 4-related official announcement is definitely in the pipeline. Sadly, this highly-anticipated title might launch in 2022.

Microsoft has posted something for consumers to think about prior to their Black Friday shopping this year. It includes some details on its Surface deals for that period, including up to US$230 off the new Pro 7. There is also a link to the even earlier "X019" event, in which seasonal Xbox hardware promotions may be unveiled.

Many pages from the Diablo 4 artwork book have been posted online, giving fans an idea of what they can expect from the game when it finally gets released. Vile-looking characters such as the Goatman Abomination and Drowned Raider feature alongside a terrifying battleground, a gory sacrifice, and the possible reveal of a new Prime Evil.

Seven years since the release of Diablo III, Blizzard has officially announced Diablo IV at BlizzCon. Unfortunately, however, Blizzard hasn’t announced an official release date with the title still anywhere from 12 to 24 months away although the first game play trailer has been released to whet gamers' appetites.

The HP Pavilion Gaming 15 displays all current games smoothly on its matte 15.6-inch screen (FHD, IPS). The memory configuration is good as well: 16 GB of RAM (dual-channel mode), NVMe SSD, HDD.

The latest update, labeled 2.9.1705.31, is now available with multiple enhancements to the Vivaldi Menu, the ability to set global default preferences for requests based on sound, geolocation, camera, microphone, motion sensors, Bluetooth devices, and pop-ups, as well as multiple tweaks and fixes.

The Your Phone app in Windows 10 has acted to effectively mimic iPhone syncing on Mac, but for Android devices. It has also allowed users with these devices to mirror their phone screens on PCs via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). However, this has come to an end in the latest Insiders' build.

The Lenovo ThinkPad L590 is a solid business laptop at just under $1,000, but it is not without its problems. The 15.6-inch laptop appears to offer plenty on paper, with Lenovo including a quad-core Core i5 Whiskey Lake CPU, 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of NVMe storage. However, its cooling system holds the device back, hampering its CPU performance.

In addition to the iconic Kamov Ka-50 single-seat attack helicopter — surnamed "Black Shark" — War Thunder 1.93 comes with the first three Swedish planes, a new Abrams tank, the first Italian helicopter, a new location, the first rank V ship in the game, as well as the usual pack of minor tweaks and fixes.

The Lenovo IdeaPad C340-15IWL is equipped with a Core i5-8265U processor, a GeForce MX230 graphics core and dual-channel RAM. The IPS touchscreen display supports the Lenovo Active Pen 2.