NZCity NewsLinks -

All Links

6 Nov 2024

Search

'He changed my life': Stars remember Quincy Jones
Oprah Winfrey, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and Barack Obama lead the tributes to the music legend.

Why you shouldn’t buy a laptop based purely on its specs
When buying a laptop, we tend to think there’s no stronger indication about how it’s going to perform than its specs sheet. We put so much emphasis on it in our quest to find the fastest, most efficient, and graphically superior product to suit our needs. But in doing so it’s easy to make a common blunder: To spend a lot of money on a laptop with specs that look great, only to have the device fail to live up to expectations. I see it all the time in my role as a laptop reviewer. But what’s more, I often see big differences in performance among laptops with the same specs. So…why aren’t specs the best hint to performance? And how can you really tell if a laptop is going to perform well? Further reading: Best laptops 2024: Premium, budget, gaming, 2-in-1s, and more Why can laptop performance vary so much? A lot of factors come into play to vary performance — even among laptops with the same specs. A couple important factors are variations in the CPU and GPU wattages and differences in the laptop size and thickness (design). To talk to the first point and take GPU wattages as an example, laptops with discrete video cards often have different TGPs, or total graphics power settings. These wattages vary because OEMs like Nvidia and AMD allow laptop manufacturers to set them anywhere within a defined range. For example, a Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics card can be set at TGPs anywhere between 40W to 140W. The fact that manufacturers can do this is generally a good thing in that it gives them a lot of wiggle room to find the right power setting for a particular laptop model — one that suits the laptop’s type, power supply, display, battery, and cooling hardware. A higher TGP is generally better as it allows your laptop’s GPU to work at higher clock speeds, which equals faster performance. In two gaming laptops with the same video card, the one with the higher TGP will quite often produce higher average frames-per-second in games compared with the other. That’s a bit of a generalization, but you get the gist. To confuse the situation, lower-tier graphics cards with high wattages can sometimes outperform higher-tier graphics cards with low ones. In Nvidia GPUs, the Dynamic Boost setting can also make a difference. If this is switched on, it adds extra power to the graphics card for some tasks, which can again skew performance results among models further. How does laptop size have an impact on performance? The impact of a laptop’s size and thickness on performance has to do with thermal headroom, or how much internal space the laptop has to keep thermals in check to prevent throttling (the slowing down of processing tasks). It’s often the case that larger laptops have more space for cooling hardware and therefore heat dissipation than smaller ones — that is, they can fit more fans, air vents, and cooling chambers, or else just have larger components with a higher capacity to cool. This can allow them to reach higher clock speeds and stay operating at those speeds for longer than smaller, thinner laptops. In smaller laptops, designing and implementing efficient thermal systems requires extensive research and development and careful selection of each part to prevent overheating. Often hardware must be slimmed down or meticulously designed to fit. Larger laptops can often prevent throttling better than smaller laptops. IDG / Matthew Smith In our PCWorld reviews several tests give us an indication of a laptop’s performance capabilities. In our gaming laptops, for example, the 3DMark Time Spy benchmark and the games benchmarks indicate how well a laptop will handle intensive graphics tasks. Additionally, an encoding test we designed in-house using the free HandBrake utility provides a glimpse of how well a laptop can prevent throttling. In this task, large laptops often fare better than smaller laptops with the same specs. Further reading: Best gaming laptops 2024: What to look for and highest-rated models A quick comparison of the performance results from our 14-inch Acer Nitro 14 and 16-inch Acer Nitro V16, shows size-related performance differences playing out. Although these two laptops have matching AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 GPUs, the larger Acer Nitro V16 is the clear winner of the two, outperforming its smaller sibling in both the Shadow of the Tomb Raider game benchmark and PCWorld HandBrake test (see below). So how can you tell if a laptop will perform well? Despite what I said about wattage and size, you can never quite tell how a laptop will perform until it’s been properly tested. It’s for that reason I urge you to read our PCWorld laptop reviews where you can find the results of our extensive performance testing, before pulling the trigger and pressing purchase on a laptop. Our reviewers have done all the hard lifting for you, meticulously testing the performance of the both the CPU and GPU. You can also find performance comparisons with other laptops to make choosing between different brands a lot easier when it’s time to decide. Happy laptop hunting!

9 things you realize when you first start using a VPN
Modern VPNs are designed for everyone, from first-time novices to IT professionals. Not only can just about anyone benefit from using a VPN, but they also come with a few not so obvious upsides—and one or two downsides. You may be about to use a VPN for the first time or just have questions about why certain things occur while connected to one. If so, welcome. I’m here to walk you through the most common things you’re likely to encounter while using a VPN. Let’s get started. If you’re on the hunt for a new VPN, check out my list of the best VPNs to make sure you maximize the upsides. Getting connected to a VPN is very easy A VPN might come across as intimidating to the uninitiated—after all, Virtual Private Network sounds like something straight out of the IT department. But VPNs are actually very easy to use. Millions of non-tech people use them every day and if they can figure it out, so can you. Our favorite VPN Overall ExpressVPN Read our review Most VPN providers understand the trepidation that new users have and they’ve designed the apps to be as intuitive as possible. Top services such as ExpressVPN and AVG Secure VPN allow you to quickly connect with just one click. If you don’t want to worry about scrolling through a long list of servers either, almost every VPN has a “Quick connect” option that will choose for you. Simply start up the VPN, click “Quick connect” and you’ll instantly be enjoying a secure, private connection. It’s as easy as that. Options, options galore VPNs such as NordVPN come with a plethora of options to tweak.Sam Singleton While getting up and running with a VPN is the main goal, there is so much more you can explore in the app as well. Almost every VPN comes with at least a few configurable settings. Some even come with a head-spinning number of options that you can play around tweaking with for hours. Power users or tinkerers can optimize connections with everything from kill switches to protocols, split tunneling to multi hop connections, and more. If that sounds like a bunch of technospeak to you, don’t worry. We have plenty of VPN explainer articles, guides, and how-tos here at PCWorld for you to learn from. Start with our guide to the 5 VPN features you need to start using today. You can also find a lot of additional information on a VPN provider’s webpage. Streaming services have different content based on your location Connecting to a VPN server in a different country or region may allow you to watch different content. Due to various copyright and distribution restrictions, some streaming services only allow certain content to be shown in certain areas. Using a VPN, such as any of my top picks for best VPN for streaming, is a great way to access region-locked content. This works well if you’re traveling as well. If you’re abroad and want to catch up on a show from back home, just set your server location to your home country then connect, and voilà—sit back, grab some snacks, and enjoy your unlocked content. Prices while online shopping may change We all love the convenience of online shopping. Not only does it allow us to find just about everything we need, but we can even compare prices across retailers with ease. What you may not know is that retailers often set different prices across different countries, or even times of day, for the same items or services—sometimes drastically so. You may notice that when connected to a VPN the prices for items will be suspiciously different than when disconnected. Savvy shoppers can absolutely use this to their advantage to save money while shopping online. Plus, with a VPN, you get the added benefit of a more secure transaction. Speeds may decrease (or increase!) Something that you’ll inevitably notice when you start using a VPN is that your internet speeds will decrease. Sorry, but it’s just the nature of the game when it comes to VPNs. By encrypting all of your traffic and then rerouting it through a remote server, your ping is bound to increase. Depending on the VPN you use and the specific server, you may also run into server load issues that can potentially slow down your connection as well. For those who are looking to stream or game with a VPN, it’s imperative that you choose a fast VPN in order to minimize performance issues. On the flip side, and if you’re lucky, you may notice that your internet speeds actually increase while connected to a VPN. If this is you, the likely culprit is your ISP, who may have been throttling your home internet connection for some reason—congratulations, you’ve finally found a way to stick it to your ISP. Further reading: How to test your VPN speed Websites may still know who you are VPNs are really good at anonymizing and obscuring your traffic from your ISP, but they aren’t so great at hiding your data from websites. This is because websites, particularly those that you log into, are going to track your activity with cookies. Cookies are storage files that remember how you interact with a website. This is how the site knows what you add to your cart, what articles you click on, and other site preferences. It doesn’t matter what IP address or server you log in from with a VPN, the website will still be able to recognize the cookies on your device and track you from there. This is why it’s so important to regularly clear the cookies on your devices. You’ll run into more CAPTCHAs ninefotostudio / Shutterstock.com One of the most annoying things on the internet nowadays are those “prove you’re not a robot” tests. Well, guess what? Using a VPN is going to result in you taking even more of those. They’re called CAPTCHAs, and are designed to protect services and websites from being overrun with bots. Because a VPN server often hosts many users at the same time, traffic from these servers is frequently flagged as being potential bots. And while, sure, these CAPTCHA tests are annoying, they are also mercifully easy to pass. It’s a small price to pay for the added privacy and security you’re getting with a VPN connection. You’ll probably run into less ads A great ad-blocking Vpn NordVPN Read our review Now this is going to depend a lot on your VPN. If it comes with a built-in ad- and tracker-blocking feature then you should notice less ads while browsing. Services like NordVPN and Surfshark are just some of the VPNs offering powerful ad-blocking tools that help keep those pesky pop-ups at bay. It might not be possible to completely block out ads while browsing, but a VPN with these features turned on can dramatically reduce their occurrence. When you connect to a VPN server, you are using a new IP address, meaning many websites won’t recognize you. So essentially just by connecting, you are already mitigating the instances of targeted ads. As I mentioned earlier though, a website can still serve up targeted ads if you don’t take extra precautions such as wiping cookies regularly or using private browsing. Sometimes, websites just don’t like VPNs While using a VPN is a great way to keep your browsing private and get around certain internet blocks, you’ll just have to accept that some websites refuse to work for VPN users. Not every site will allow traffic coming from a VPN, and some actively block known VPN server IP addresses. This is an unfortunate truth that you’ll have to accept when using a VPN. If you still want to access the site while using a VPN you could try out connecting to different servers. If that doesn’t work then you could use the split-tunneling feature to omit that specific site or app while keeping everything else protected. Finally, if all else fails you might just need to accept that accessing that site requires turning off your VPN for a bit.