Windows

War Thunder 1.83 "Masters of the Sea" introduces the British Royal Navy tech tree (in Closed Beta), but also brings in new German, Soviet, and American vessels. The naval forces of these three nations can now be played by everyone, but there is even more to this update, such as German helicopters, new planes, and new ground vehicles.

HP says it will be the smallest and lightest 14-inch business convertible with a quad-core processor and also the world's first with gigabit 4G LTE for its class. The convertible is set to directly supplant the Elitebook Folio 1040 G4 with many new features inspired by the successful 13.3-inch EliteBook x360 1030 G1.

The 13.3-inch Samsung Notebook Flash features a retro-looking keyboard, Gigabit WiFi connectivity, and has been optimized for the network of the South Korean carrier KT. Priced at the equivalent of US$715, this portable will probably not reach other markets, but this is something that remains to be seen.

Google Chrome users who run the browser on Qualcomm Snapdragon-driven Windows 10 ARM laptops are facing performance problems due to the fact that these machines have to emulate this piece of code. Qualcomm has confirmed that an ARM port of Chrome is in the making, but it might take almost a year until it becomes available.

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 is still competitive at the sub-US$400 price bracket. It was originally released with 6GB of GDDR5 memory. A change to its product page on its maker's website now suggests that there are GDDR5X versions of the card.

At first glance, the Dell XPS 15 9570 is a good choice for those who are looking for a powerful yet portable machine to use for music production. Sadly, a DPC latency issue makes it unsuitable for this task, but Frank Azor has just confirmed that the company is working on fixing this issue, so it should be patched soon.

The second installment of Red Dead Redemption has been announced as launching soon. However, this news is not great for PC gamers, as the game is thought to be only available for consoles. A recent listing by an e-tailer appears to have given some hopes that this may be wrong, then snatched it away again.

The newest Windows 10 update (1809, or October update) has been plagued with teething issues. Most recently, some users have documented one of them on Reddit. This bug results in the failure to bring up dialogs that prevent the loss of data through conflicts or duplication during transfer.

Even available for old-school coin-operated machines, Soulcalibur VI is now out for Windows PCs, as well as Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles. With a roster of returning fighters and newcomers, this title is set in the 16th century and aims to "uncover hidden truths" about the events of the first Soulcalibur game.

With a lighter and thinner design than the Alienware 13, the new Alienware m15 is the brand's most compact gaming notebook so far. Frank Azor has just confirmed that this new machine for gamers on the go will hit the market on October 25, just as expected. The starting price will be US$1,300, but high-end SKUs are expected to hit US$2,000.

Intel may be implementing in-silicon solutions against Spectre and meltdown attacks, but not all threat variants can be identified this way. MIT's DAWG solution can detect all variants plus similar speculative attacks, and it can easily be integrated in operating systems without serious performance hits.

Windows 10 19H1, an update already being tested out by some users, is now expected to contain new adaptations to the Spectre-patch problem. These fixes for the more severe Spectre variant 2 vulnerability can reduce performance by up to 30%. The solution is known as the Retpoline kernel.

Samsung has taken the covers off its successor to the Galaxy Book. The new Galaxy Book 2 also happens to be the rumored Windows on Snapdragon (WoS) device that Samsung has been said to be working on.

In a first-ever move, Frank Azor has just disclosed data related to the Dell and Alienware's gaming business and it is more than good. According to him, the gaming business that involves these two iconic brands is worth US$3 billion, which makes them the leaders of the market by a very large margin.

Fans of old-school first-person shooters like Doom, Wolfenstein, or Duke Nukem can enjoy the brand-new Project Warlock, a game that features 60 levels, 5 worlds, 72 enemy types, 38 upgradeable weapons, 8 unlockable spells, as well as perk-based character development. Priced at US$12, Project Warlock is a GOG exclusive title.

The latest Google Chrome browser comes with a new setting that allows its users to have a better control over the sign-in and sync features, the AV1 video streaming codec, as well as a rather large number of minor tweaks, fixes, and improvements. Chrome 70 is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

If everything works as planned, Winamp 5.8 will arrive tomorrow with a bunch of fixes in tow and — the best part of it all — without the paid options previously reserved to the users of the Pro version. However, this iconic piece of code should get a major update and mobile versions for iOS and Android devices in 2019.

Get ready to pony up at least $900 or $1000 USD for the latest Surface portables. Both the Surface Laptop 2 and Surface Pro 6 are launching in four different colors with many of them being exclusive to higher-end configurations. Unfortunately, the Surface Pro Type Cover must still be purchased separately at $130 USD a piece.

Microsoft executive Panos Panay has taken to Twitter to reveal a new color for the Surface Laptop 2: blush. The device already offers potential customers a range of colors to choose from, which includes platinum, burgundy, cobalt blue, and black. Unfortunately, unless you happen to be in China, then it’s unlikely you will get your hands on the pink product.

Jim Vessella, a producer for Electronic Arts, has posted news on Reddit about Command & Conquer’s future. According to his post, the studio wants to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the game, which will be in 2020, by releasing some of the iconic PC classics in remastered form. EA also has a new C&C mobile game that is currently in pre-alpha stage.

New rumors emanating from Microsoft suggest that the Office software team want to take over Cortana's functions and place in the Windows OS. This would mean that Office could strongly inform its development in the future, converting the flagging virtual assistant into more of a productivity helpmeet - much like a certain animated paperclip.

Both IDC and Gartner revealed that Lenovo dominated the global PC market in the third quarter of the year, shipping around 16 million desktops, notebooks, and workstations out of a total of 67.4 million (according to IDC), and 67.2 million (Gartner) units sold worldwide during the given period.

The patch 0.62 brings a new 50v50 battle mode to Fortnite, namely Disco Domination, as well as a quad rocket launcher. In the new mode, players fight to capture dance floors and raise disco balls. The new patch also brings back the Port-a-Fortress, loot drop rate adjustments, and various fixes.

Only one week since its release, Forza Horizon 4 is already — according to Metacritic — the highest-rated Xbox exclusive title of this console generation while the franchise remains the best-seller in the racing category. During this first week, more than two million players have been driving in Forza Horizon 4's Britain.

Not long after halting the rollout of a Windows 10 feature update for the first time ever, Microsoft has finally announced that the cause of the user content removal bug — which affected only a few users who installed the update — has been isolated and a fix is rolling out to Windows Insider Program members.

In our HP Spectre x360 review, we found that GPU performance was very poor in games, where it often throttled down to 400 MHz, less than half of its rated clock speed. Thankfully, there is a solution that should prevent such throttling.

Today, Armored Warfare celebrates the third anniversary since it became available for all those interested across Europe and North America. To bring back some of those who lost interest and to make everyone happy, the developer decided to offer the IT-1 tier 5 premium tank destroyer for free. To get this vehicle, a battle won in any game mode is enough.

A notice has been published on Microsoft’s support site for Windows 10 stating that the rollout for the scheduled update for October 2018 (version 1809) has been paused. It seems a number of users have reported grave issues with the update, including considerable loss of data and even detrimental effects on a device’s battery life.

Panos Panay opened up on why the Surface Pro 6 and Surface Laptop 2 lack a USB Type-C port while the Surface Studio 2, Surface Go, and even the Surface Headphones have one such port. Panay insisted that USB Type-C will not be at the expense of the traditional USB Type-A port, which still is the connector of choice for most USB devices today. The Type-C connector will eventually make it into future devices but Microsoft is in no hurry to make it happen.

PCs that run on processors that are of the Skylake or later series are reportedly displaying obstructive messages in the course of their update to the October version of Windows 10. This is due to an older Intel Display Audio driver that may cause instability if still present when the machine has finished upgrading itself.

Microsoft has begun seeding the Windows 10 October 2018 Update in a staggered manner and one of the important aspects of this update is that it comes with the latest version of DirectX 12 that supports DirectX Raytracing (DXR) thereby, enabling the new NVIDIA GeForce RTX cards to perform their best in raytracing-enabled games. What this also means is that cards from other companies such as AMD will also be able to take advantage of this new API.

The Surface Pro 6 tablet is now available in black, as well as the usual platinum color option. Users can now choose among Intel's i5-8250U and i7-8550U ULV CPUs, 8 or 16 GB of RAM and 128 GB/ 256 GB/ 512 GB/ 1 TB PCIe NVMe storage capacities. The USB-C connector is still missing, but at least Microsoft lowered the prices for the high-end variants.

Fancy one of the new Surface devices from Microsoft, but can’t afford to drop the cash up front? Microsoft’s new All Access subscription plan will let you pay off your new Surface and bundled Office 365 subscription over 24 months.

Introduced last week, Vivaldi 2.0 is a major update that delivers essential features like Sync, Resizable Tab Tiling, and Floating Web Panels to this niche browser, as well as a fresh look with window background images and Start Page backgrounds. Vivaldi is now available for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Fewer people own traditional desktops and laptops this year compared to last year. The drop in users can be attributed to the rise of the concept of "Internet of Things" and the ever-increasing processing power of smartphones outright replacing PCs.

This past week saw a plethora of smartphone rumors overshadowed by the launch of the iPhone XS and XS Max. Laptops with 32 GB DDR4 RAM modules are now a thing and Microsoft will almost surely announce new Windows features and Surface products in the days to follow.

NVIDIA's share price could reach as much as US$400 thanks to new estimations by Evercore ICI. This company is pinning a lot of earning potential on the graphics giant due to its position in the emerging AI market. However, other analysts are not quite that optimistic.