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Showing posts from September, 2019

HP’s Spectre x360 13 seems like an improvement in almost every way

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HP’s Spectre x360 13 has undergone a fairly drastic makeover for 2019. It’s still very much a Spectre: the premium 2-in-1 has glossy edges, a cleverly placed power button, and one USB-C port embedded into its two diagonally cut corners. But HP has cut away a lot of the excess from the old design, making its latest version smaller. Still, somehow, it feels bigger when you use it. And this model’s trackpad ditches Synaptics trackpad drivers in favor of Windows Precision drivers,  like HP’s Envy lineup did earlier this year . That effect is achieved in part by its significantly trimmed-down top and bottom bezels, giving it a 90 percent screen-to-body ratio. The top bezel is 5.8mm thick, seemingly too thin to fit a webcam. But HP has engineered the world’s smallest Windows Hello-enabled IR webcam for that bezel. It’s 2.2mm thick, and while that’s impressive, I’m skeptical that such a small camera will yield good picture quality. The chassis is 23mm shallower than last year’s model,

Apple Maps is looking better than ever, but it still has a long way to go

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Earlier this summer, Apple announced a host of changes to its Maps app as part of the upcoming iOS 13 update. Now that  the new operating system is finally here , the tech giant is beginning to gradually roll out those changes in the US. It started with California and Texas, and, as of this week, now includes the US Northeast. Some of the new features are on par with what Google Maps offers, while others still lag behind. For example, Apple Maps offers detailed transit directions in just 10 major cities now and 17 countries, which, while incredibly useful, pales in comparison to Google, which has  transit directions  in thousands of cities and towns around the world. There’s a new feature called “Look Around” that lets you — you guessed it! — look around a real-world location. It’s basically like Google’s Street View, but again, less comprehensive. Another new feature allows you to share your real-time ETA with friends. And it’s now easier to group together favorite spots and fr

Halide’s latest update makes switching lenses on the iPhone 11 Pro more intuitive

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Halide has  released a massive iOS update  that offers extended support for the multi-lens camera systems on the  iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro . The most important new feature is the “Tactile Lens Switcher,” which lets you switch between the three lenses of the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max at will. This feature can be summoned by long-pressing the camera switcher next to the shutter button, then releasing when you hover over your desired lens. This lens switcher offers few quality-of-life tweaks that put it ahead of  Apple’s native solution . For one, unlike Apple’s on-screen overlays in the Camera app, Halide’s options don’t obscure the viewfinder. Instead, the dial is accessible in the corner of your screen so you won’t get thrown off trying to keep your subject in the frame. Speaking of framing, another useful addition is “Lens Guides,” which appear in the viewfinder when you’re switching between lenses to indicate how the crop of each lens differs. Halide says that t

GeForce Experience: how to download, record gameplay and update your drivers

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Nvidia GeForce Experience is an incredibly powerful (and convenient) piece of software – and you likely already have it installed on your computer. This is because the GeForce Experience is usually installed when you first download drivers for your  Nvidia graphics card .  However, this piece of software has evolved so much over the last few years, both in its general user interface and in the scope of what it can do. Whether you just want a frame rate counter in the top left corner of your screen, a place to download new drivers when they come out or just  record your gameplay,  GeForce Experience can do it all.  Because of the many things this software can do, it can be hard to get to grips with everything you can do with it. So, we went ahead and put together a little guide for you, so you know exactly how you can utilize this software best and to your advantage. We'll even help you figure out where to download it if your drivers didn't come with it. One thing

Welcome to TechRadar's PC Gaming Week 2019

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It's finally time to kick off the fifth – yes,  fifth ! – annual PC Gaming Week at TechRadar. This is the TechRadar Computing Team's favorite time of year, a time in which we get to celebrate the joys and explore the depths of arguably the most powerful and versatile gaming platform of all time. This time around, we've rounded up a fine selection of analyses, interviews, opinions, how-to guides and features both old and new for all kinds of PC gamers. Whether you've been gaming on computers since the days of baud modem-powered multi-user dungeons, or you have no idea what we just said (but can clean house in Fortnite), we've got some excellent reads for you. We’ll be updating this page daily as new articles are published, just so you don't miss a thing. Keep coming back throughout the week for fresh, new pieces and looks at gems from the TechRadar archives that you may have missed last time around. OK, enough with this loading screen, let's get

Windows 10 problems are ruining Microsoft’s reputation – and the damage can’t be understated

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Microsoft dreams of a future where its cloud empire dominates – in the computing and business world, as well as game-streaming – and subscription revenue pours in at such a gushing rate that the accountants can barely keep track of the ever-spiralling-upward numbers. But, the software giant’s current slumbers are more likely to be dogged by nightmares rather than any sweet dreams of a heavenly cloud-based future. Microsoft’s sleep is probably haunted by visions of poisonous little bugs skittering in the shadows, clustering around the occasional hulking queen of a showstopper that threatens to shred user files in her chitinous mandibles. Yes, we’re talking about  Windows 10 , which in recent times has been plagued by an alarming amount of bugs. This started with the infamous  October 2018 Update  and a doozy of a file deletion faux pas along with a raft of other ‘ small but serious ’ gremlins that  caused the upgrade to actually be put on ice  for over a month (an unprecedent