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58 Articles

Good things to do

WELCOME | EDITORIAL Merry Christmas, dear APC readers! This issue officially goes on sale on Christmas day (subscribers get theirs a few days earlier, so, please consider subscribing), but I do hope you’re doing anything but reading the latest issue on Santa’s big day itself. Boxing Day, though, what a lovely opportunity to chill with your new collection of APC features, guides, reviews and opinions. We’ve put a bit of an emphasis on guides and projects in this issue. In fact, we usually do this for the couple of issues leading up to Christmas as well, hoping that it gives you some nice holiday projects to immerse yourself in. So let’s start with the fun stuff, and get on with some excellent retro gaming. Whether you’re a reader of some…

Good things to do

Exclusive downloads

Download these APC exclusives free from: www.apcmag.com/exclusives ASCOMP SECURE-PDF SECURITY TOOLBOX FOR PDF FILES INCLUDING ENCRYPTION AND SIGNING. The PDF format is used worldwide to distribute graphically processed documents. However, editing the documents is usually associated with high costs because good PDF editors are quite expensive. The cheaper alternatives on the other hand, lack the important functions to make PDFs secure, for example by encrypting, digitally signing or adding watermarks. Secure-PDF puts an end to this: Encrypt your own or other people’s PDF documents with up to 256 bit key strength (AES). Add a password to open it so that users can only view the encrypted document by entering the correct password. ASHAMPOO PHOTO OPTIMIZER 9 ENHANCE PHOTOS WITH A SINGLE CLICK. Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 9 offers automated editing for…

Exclusive downloads

US govt. fires a warning shot at Nvidia

NEWS Everything you need to know from the month in tech Nvidia’s penchant for redesigning its GPUs to get around US export restrictions has seemingly been directly called out by the US Commerce Secretary, with a warning that when such redesigns are created “I’m going to control it the very next day.” Since 2022, US chip sanctions have continued to make life somewhat difficult for manufacturers looking to export their products to certain countries, chief among them on the list being China. However, that hasn’t stopped Nvidia from attempting to work its way around the export bans by releasing products that circumvent the current restrictions, introducing slightly redesigned models produced exclusively for the Chinese market. It’s been an entertaining power play, but US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo appears to have…

US govt. fires a warning shot at Nvidia

The broadband battlefield

TECH BRIEF If someone had asked you early last year to predict the key figures in a hypothetical war between Russia and Ukraine, you probably wouldn’t have named Elon Musk. But as we’ve seen over the past 18 months, the mogul behind Tesla, SpaceX and now Twitter, has played a surprisingly pivotal role in the war thanks to Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite broadband network. “Starlink gives one person the ability to turn off a system that’s being used by a country that’s fighting for its self-defence.” First deployed in 2019, the Starlink network now has more than 4,000 satellites in orbit around the Earth, and the company continues to launch a couple of dozen or so on a weekly basis. Unlike previous attempts at satellite internet, what makes Starlink unique is…

The broadband battlefield

In the videogame industry, a game is either thriving or dead

OPINION | END USER The long-awaited trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 released in early December, and at the time of writing, in the days following its release, it has 103 million views. That’s an absolutely astounding number. Rockstar and its parent company Take-Two were aware, of course, that this trailer would do unbelievable numbers, and both are likely also aware that the billions invested in the game will probably be recouped within months of its projected 2025 release. It’s predicted that GTA 6 has a budget reaching $2 billion. For reference, GTA 5, released in 2013, had a budget of around $265 million, and has since made $7.7 billion. Crucially, that number continues to grow thanks to GTA Online and a handful of reissues. The videogame industry is a…

In the videogame industry, a game is either thriving or dead

AMD fires up AI arms race

OPINION | RANDOM ACCESS Three of 2023’s biggest consumers of AI GPUs: Microsoft, Meta and Open AI, have pledged to use AMD’s recently announced MI300X AI accelerator for future machine learning applications. The California-based microprocessor manufacturer announced at an investor press conference in December that it will be focusing on capturing some of Nvidia’s market share in the fast growing commercial AI arena for 2024. Nvidia announced plans to triple production of its $40,000 Hopper H100 GPUs following unrelenting demand for the hardware powering novel AI software like ChatGPT in 2023. With wait times of up to 52 weeks according to one Omdia report, it’s hardly surprising that Meta and Microsoft have already purchased AMD’s MI300X GPUs for various workloads and virtual machines. Microsoft even had a preview version of…

AMD fires up AI arms race

G-Sync vs FreeSync

OPINION | TECH TALK Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) displays were a hot topic when Nvidia revealed G-Sync in 2013. Tying monitor refreshes to the availability of new data from the GPU didn’t immediately catch on, in part because G-Sync required a new monitor and an Nvidia GPU. AMD announced its FreeSync standard in 2014, with the first solutions appearing in March 2015. Eight years later, there’s little doubt about which technology won out. G-Sync still exists, but the number of new ‘true’ G-Sync displays – as opposed to G-Sync Compatible options – has dwindled to almost nothing. For example, Nvidia lists just 23 G-Sync Ultimate monitors. Those are supposedly the best displays Nvidia and its partners offer, and most of these are several years out of date. If you want…

G-Sync vs FreeSync

Intel’s next generation Battlemage graphics cards will benefit all gamers

OPINION | TWO BITS In case you hadn’t noticed, graphics cards are expensive. Apart from voting with your wallet or purse, what can be done about it? Nvidia and AMD aren’t charities. Their prices are high because they can get away with it. In the corporate world, altruism doesn’t extend far beyond the coffers of shareholders. The best hope for a reset of the gaming graphics card market is if Intel’s second-generation Battlemage architecture is a roaring success. Even if you never buy an Arc card, a competitive Intel will benefit all gamers. I’d love to see Nvidia and AMD get a kick up the butt. Not for any nefarious reason, but because it’ll force them to do more to fight for market share and be more competitive on price.…

Intel’s next generation Battlemage graphics cards will benefit all gamers

A genuine x86 killer?

OPINION | TRADE CHAT Arm versus x86 is a battle for the ages, but the idea of PCs powered by Arm processors is a notion that’s always just over the horizon. Just as commercially viable nuclear fusion is always 30 years away, Arm’s assimilation looms large, but never happens – until now. In the last few months, it’s become clear that Arm might be ready to take over the PC. The tipping point, when we look back years from now from our brain-embedded Arm PCs, will likely be 2024. That’s the year that Qualcomm’s exclusive deal with Microsoft to provide chips with the Arm-compatible version of Windows expires and we see just what the market is capable of. “The tipping point, when we look back years from now from our…

A genuine x86 killer?

OPINION | ONE MORE THING I only got into Lego a few years ago. I never grew up on it, with my fascinations covered by understanding how computers and networks worked. Sometimes this was incredibly frustrating – anyone who wrote programs for Windows 2 using the software development kit and the C compiler will remember the masochistic pleasure of writing your own WinMain() handler to dispatch windows messages around the various apps that were running. Then came the GUI programming languages from Borland, and Microsoft’s own Visual Basic. Suddenly the building block approach to creating solutions made sense. “Computing has somewhat gone off the rails. The tools really haven’t kept up with the needs of those who want to dabble, despite the best efforts of Microsoft.” In recent years, however,…

Facial recognition for bears

FUTURES We explore the trends and technologies that are set to shape the future Facial recognition is problematic for humans. When it works, it invades privacy and eases us into a surveillance state. When it doesn’t work, people have been falsely arrested by police. But that’s people. For bears, it’s all good – and facial recognition is now being used to help research, monitor and protect the animals using a neural network-based system called BearID. Melanie Clapham tracks grizzlies. Normally, that requires methodically examining photographs or physically tagging the animal, as the University of Victoria researcher’s work on grizzly behaviour requires being able to pinpoint a specific individual. But that’s not easy because bears have few distinctive markings – they’re all brown and fluffy – and can dramatically change appearance…

Facial recognition for bears

Find the best deals on new gear at getprice.com/au Premium laptops Apple MacBook Pro 16in (M3) STUNNING CREATIVE POWER A reasonable processor upgrade to device with an impressive screen and unparalleled battery life. The new M3 3nm processors is more efficient, so you’ll be able to run the same tasks as the M1 using half the power draw, which helps battery life. From $4,299, apple.com/au THE ALTERNATIVES ASUS VIVOBOOK PRO 16X OLED This 2023 update has some impressive features for the price and is a surprisingly powerful creative workstation with a stunning screen. $3,199, asus.com APPLE MACBOOK AIR The MacBook Air M2 looks like a standout to us. A powerful and quiet ultraportable with an unbeatable battery life and a great pro display. From $1,799 apple.com/au MICROSOFT SURFACE PRO 9…

Until very recently, the handheld gaming PC market was essentially just the Steam Deck, with not enough contenders to round out a Top 5 list. Now, they’re coming from all corners, and it’s not hard to understand why. The ability to play your favourite PC games wherever you are clearly appeals to a lot of buyers, but how do you make sure you get the best bang for your buck? By buying one of our picks below, of course. 5 AYANEO AIR 1S Go for the Ayaneo Air 1S because it’s incredibly portable, coming in at just 21.6mm thick and weighing only 450g. You needn’t worry about its inclusion in your luggage if you’re traveling long distances. Its size isn’t at the cost of power, thanks to the beefy AMD…

Nikon Z f From $3,499 | nikon.com.au Inspired by the Nikon FM2 camera, the Z f is a full-frame mirrorless camera that blends analogue design with Nikon’s acclaimed Z series performance. The 24.5MP camera boasts an Expeed 7 processor, 4K video (as well as 10-bit H.265), and eight-stop vibration-reduction image stabilisation. The processor enables subject detection so that the camera can automatically move its focus to follow the subject. The Z f is Nikon’s first full-frame Z camera with a fully rotatable touchscreen vari-angle monitor, and Touch FN means you can use your thumb to specify focus on the monitor while you compose your shot through the viewfinder. Thanks to Pixel Shift, you can blend up to 32 shots to create really high-res images, and there are Flat and Deep…

Notion vs Todoist

NOTION | APPS Windows; macOS; Android; iOS, or any web browser. PRICE Free license for individual use; AI-powered features cost US$10/mo after set number of uses TODOIST | APPS Windows; macOS; Linux (Ubuntu 20.04+); Android; iOS; Apple Watch, or any web browser. PRICE Free license for individual use; individual Pro account costs US$5/mo or US$48/yr. With modern life refusing to slow down, it’s now almost impossible to manage your life on paper, never mind in your own head. Juggling personal and professional projects, all with competing deadlines demanding you give them priority, requires third-party help, and there are a raft of cloud-based services offering to help everyone from individuals to corporations manage themselves better. We’ve focused on two services that offer usable free tiers for individuals, and our remit was…

Notion vs Todoist

THIS ISSUE 33 Apple iMac (M3) 34 Allied Stinger A 35 Fitbit Charge 6 36 Thermaltake TH240 V2 Ultra 37 Team Group Xtreem DDR5 48GB 8200 38 Qnap TVS-h674T NAS 39 Synology Cloud services 42 Meta Quest 3 44 Lenovo Legion Go 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…

Apple iMac (M3)

PRICE From $2,199 WEB apple.com/au The colourful 24-inch iMac from Apple had a major update back in 2021, when the sleek all-in-one PC was fitted out with the first Apple silicone processors. So this 2023 refresh is a much more conservative upgrade that adds a bit of processing power and modern interface specs to an already exceptional all-in-one. The new iMac features the same two or four port configurations as its predecessor, with the former starting at $2,199. This is a pretty compelling starting price when you consider you’re getting a 23.5-inch Retina display with a 4.5K resolution, a powerful 8-core M3 CPU and all the peripherals needed to get up and running, included in that price. If you look online for a 24 inch 4K screen with professional colour…

Apple iMac (M3)

Allied Stinger-A

LABS PRICE $2,399 WEB alliedgamingpc.com.au The market for pre-built gaming PCs can be a bit overwhelming for those who care less about what’s under the hood, and more about the games themselves, particularly if you’re on a budget. If you are after a new gaming PC, Allied is a well-established and growing Australian-based PC maker that should definitely not be overlooked. For review we have Allied’s Stinger-A gaming PC. It arrives double-boxed with a dedicated set of accessories and easy to follow setup instructions. The accessories include a Shuriken mouse, backpack, large stickers and a lanyard. The PC itself has a lot of internal air pillows to protect against damage during transit. At a glance, it’s obvious this is a well built and attractive gaming PC. It’s a compact white…

Allied Stinger-A

Fitbit Charge 6

PRICE $259.95 WEB fitbit.com/global/au/home The Charge range from Fitbit has maintained its dominance in the fitness wearable space thanks to a great balance of features, battery life and cost. At $259.95 this fitness tracker is one of the best value offerings you can get, featuring advanced heart rate, connected-GPS and blood oxygen tracking to give you easy-to-understand data on your workout intensity, cardio fitness and your daily exercise readiness score. “The new Charge 6 builds on this solid foundation by harnessing Google AI algorithms to improve the heart rate tracking by up to 60% in particular exercises.” All this information helps you work out the most efficient times, durations and intensity of workouts to ensure you’re working efficiently. The new Charge 6 builds on this solid foundation by harnessing Google…

Fitbit Charge 6

Thermaltake TH240 V2 Ultra

PRICE $239 WEB www.thermaltake.com.au If you’re reading this, the chances are you’re aware that the latest CPUs can get pretty hot. It’s more important than ever to invest in a good cooler. Not just to keep your CPU running at acceptable temperatures, but to keep clock speeds at their highest levels too. Thermaltake’s TH series coolers cover all price points. While the hottest chips like the i9 14900K or nearly-as-hot Ryzen 9 7950X3D require a 360mm cooler, those with less demanding chips shouldn’t have to give up the premium features and aesthetics that go with such coolers. Thermaltake’s TH240 V2 Ultra ARGB cooler is a good example. It comes with an integrated 2.1-in LCD and it’s well priced at $239. It’s a premium cooler for mainstream CPUs. As a modern…

Thermaltake TH240 V2 Ultra

Teamgroup T-Force Xtreem DDR5-8200 2x24GB

PRICE $629 WEB www.teamgroupinc.com DDR5 memory speeds continue to climb upwards. Nowadays, some four-slot Z790 refresh motherboards are capable of supporting 8000MHz+, and even AMD’s Ryzen 7000-series CPUs are capable of such speeds with the latest BIOS updates. One of the fastest memory kits on the market comes from Teamgroup. Its T-Force Xtreem DDR5 memory is available in speeds of 7600MHz, 8000MHz and 8200MHz. All speeds are available in either 2x16GB kit or 2x24GB capacities. We’ve got the 2x24GB 8200MHz kit on hand for review. It comes with 38-49-49-84 timings at 1.4V. At $629, this is a memory kit that’s predominantly aimed at enthusiasts and overclockers. If your PC includes anything less than a high end CPU, motherboard and graphics card, you’ll be better served with slower and cheaper memory.…

Teamgroup T-Force Xtreem DDR5-8200 2x24GB

QNAP TVS-h674T NAS

PRICE $3,849 WEB www.qnap.com QNAP’s TVS-h674T fulfils the NAS-based promise of Thunderbolt 4 connectivity. It’s aimed at creators and small studios who want multiple users to be able to upload, edit and share UHD video across a network without relying on the traditional bane of multiple, expensive, shared, single-connection, tethered hard drives. There are six, tool-less, lockable and hotswappable, 3.5-inch drive bays (included screws are needed for 2.5-inch SSDs). There are also two M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 slots for fast NVMe drives that can be used for super-fast storage or SSD caching. For the latter, they can be optimised for virtualisation and database applications (Random I/O) or file serving and media streaming (All I/O). “QNAP states that using six, 22TB drives provides a maximum 110TB of formatted storage capacity but…

QNAP TVS-h674T NAS

Synology C2 Cloud

PRICE Varies per component WEB https://c2.synology.com Whether you’re a long-term Synology NAS user or a novice, you might not know about Synology’s (mostly) premium C2 cloud services. At the basic level there’s C2 Password which can secure personal ID, payment and bank details and act as a password manager for individuals (free) or entire organisations (US$5 annually for six users or US$200 annually per ten users). The resulting data vaults can be used personally or shared and all can be synchronised across multiple devices. It can also provision secure file transfers and use one-time passwords with them. A Chrome extension enables easy access on the web and everything is secured via 256-bit AES encryption that’s controlled by you. C2 Backup is something of a missing link for Synology. Any proper…

Synology C2 Cloud

PRICE $949 (128GB), $1,199 (512GB) WEB meta.com Apple’s Vision Pro has reset expectations of what a mixed reality headset can be, but two big things stand in its way: a likely price of $3,500 and uncertainty over its release date in Australia. Until now, your best mixed reality bet was the Meta Quest 2 – but the Meta Quest 3 improves on it in just about every way. For a start, the visor is a drastic 40% slimmer than its predecessor, which makes the Quest 3 far more comfortable to wear. While I can’t claim that I ever forgot I was wearing a headset on my face, I did feel a noticeable difference from the top-heavy Quest 2. Thanks to the slimmer design, Meta ditched the spacer for users like…

Lenovo Legion Go

PRICE $1,299 WEB lenovo.com The Lenovo Legion Go is an all-in-one handheld PC, aimed primarily at gamers. So why, you might ask, is it basking in a two-page review within APC? The answer is that it has enough versatility to also serve as a general-purpose computing companion. It’s not the only such system out there. Asus released its ROG Ally earlier this year and the Steam Deck remains a great choice if all you want to do is play games from your Steam library. Where the Go stands apart is that this is a slick and well-engineered device that I can imagine someone choosing to bring with them on a business trip rather than a laptop. Big is beautiful The Legion Go is a sizeable thing, measuring 299mm from end…

Lenovo Legion Go

FastStone Image Viewer 7.8

WEB www.marticliment.com/wingetui NEEDS Windows 10 or 11 FastStone Image Viewer is one of our favourite free tools for browsing photos on your PC, with lots of useful features and support for a wide range of image formats. This latest version expands that list to include the AVIF format (which offers higher compression rates than JPEG) and adds new options that make the program even easier to use. One of the most notable changes is the addition of a ‘Search by Name’ box to the toolbar that appears above FastStone Image Viewer’s thumbnail browser (which shows all the images stored in the selected folder). This helps you quickly find a picture or video by typing a few letters of the file name, rather than sorting items by name to locate it…

FastStone Image Viewer 7.8

WEB www.hwinfo.com/download NEEDS Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 This powerful free tool for monitoring the hardware inside your computer has been updated to provide even more information. HWiNFO now includes Intel’s PresentMon technology (see screenshot), which measures the frame rate and power usage of your graphics card, and is particularly useful for gamers who require optimum performance from their machines. It also offers improved monitoring of the fan speed in Asus laptops and the sensors in MSI motherboards. The Sensor column has been expanded so you can view the full name of each component. Additionally, the developer has fixed a bug that could cause the program to crash on CPUs with more than 64 cores. HWiNFO’s long list of technical data can seem intimidating at first, but hovering your…

WEB www.grc.com/validrive.htm NEEDS Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 ‘Fake’ USB sticks, which don’t offer anywhere near as much storage as they claim, have flooded online marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay. These devices typically have capacities of 64GB rather than the one or two terabytes they promise, which means any files you save above that amount will not be stored. ValiDrive exposes fraudulent USB drives by performing a quick check of the device’s declared storage space, and verifying whether it can successfully store data in every sector. Validated sectors are shown as green blocks (see screenshot), while those with no storage are indicated in red. The tool can also detect read and write access errors, in case your memory stick has become corrupted – or already was when you…

Should I pay for?

“The screen-capture element of the program is quite simple, with one-click options for capturing images and videos, but we found the Snagit Editor annoying. ” Snagit 2024 WEB www.techsmith.com/store/snagit PRICE $106.84 Free trial period: 15 days NEEDS Windows 10 or 11, or macOS Snagit was one of the first tools for taking screenshots, dating all the way back to 1990. Over the years, it’s added plenty of features, but has also significantly increased in price and no longer offers a free version. With a download size of over 510MB and a slow installation process, Snagit 2024 feels bloated from the off, and you need to register with developer TechSmith just for the 15-day free trial. The screen-capture element of the program is quite simple, with one-click options for capturing images…

Should I pay for?

PRICE Free (IAP, $36.99 a year or $5.99 a month) WEB binaryformations.com | NEEDS macOS 11.1 or later, iOS/iPadOS 14 or later Under My Roof is a household property database that’s free to download, but limited to indexing 10 items. You can remove this limitation with a yearly or monthly subscription (if you cancel, you can still access inventory you’ve already added). It’s available for Mac, iPad and iPhone, with your details syncing over iCloud and a single subscription covering the app on all platforms. “Usefully, you can also include pictures of the purchase receipt and/or warranty information, and attach documents such as electronic instruction manuals.” As you’d expect, you can index your household possessions, recording information such as make, model, price, condition, quantity, location and more. You can add…

DEVELOPER The Tails Project WEB tails.net LICENCE GNU GPLv3 Tails (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) is a Debian-based security-focused Linux distro. Although its creators are keen to stress that there’s no such thing as complete anonymity online, Tails can come very close if used properly. Tails is a live OS designed to be booted from a DVD or USB stick. This means it runs entirely in RAM, which in theory means there’s no digital footprint left on the machine once you’ve finished using it. Upon shutdown, the OS even overwrites most of the used RAM data to prevent it being recovered through a cold boot attack. Naturally, this works both ways, in that you also can’t save any downloaded files, bookmarks or Wi-Fi password in live mode, which is why…

Intel 14900K vs AMD 7950X3D

If you’re building the ultimate gaming rig, you’ll want to know the answer to this question: What is the best gaming processor you can buy? Is it the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D or the Intel Core i7 14900K? We’re here to answer that question. Both processors have their strengths and weaknesses, and both go about things in different ways. The 14900K goes for the brute force approach, offering clock speeds as high as 6.0GHz. Other things being equal, a higher clock speed means higher performance. The problem with the 14900K is that it runs hot and requires a lot of power when presented with a full load. AMD’s flagship incorporates stacked V-Cache, offering 128MB of on-chip level 3 cache compared to the 14900K’s 32MB. That means more data can be…

Intel 14900K vs AMD 7950X3D

A Vision to Behold:The Story of Electronic Displays

Part 3 of 8: War and Peace The new decade is barely six weeks old when Australian scientist Professor (later Sir) Mark Oliphant is involved in development of one of the greatest inventions of the war, the cavity magnetron. It revolutionises radar, thanks to its production of 10cm radio-waves and delivers a quantum-change in radar-image resolution. TV engineer Alan Blumlein and others take the cavity magnetron and by 1942, indicator lines and points on a cathode-ray tube begin to display terrain and map-like images from the air. What’s more, while Blumlein’s contribution in British television went ‘lights-out’ for the duration of the war, television itself would still have one more vital ‘defensive’ role to play. The Battle of the Beams Even early in the war, radio played a role well…

A Vision to Behold:The Story of Electronic Displays

HOW YOU’RE MOST LIKELY TO BE HACKED / SCAMMED / INFECTED IN 2024

It might be a while since you last experienced a major malware attack – but the threat hasn’t gone away. Cybersecurity specialist SonicWall reports that there were more than 5.5 billion malware attacks recorded in 2022. And simply keeping your security software up to date may not keep you safe: cloud solutions provider Mimecast found that more than 90% of successful hacking attacks are now enabled not by traditional malware, but by someone unwittingly clicking on a phishing email. If you want to minimise your risks, you need to recognise the biggest threats, and know how to avoid them – whether that’s via your computer, your mobile devices, your website or your smart devices. Your computer If it seems like the days of major virus outbreaks are behind us, that’s…

HOW YOU’RE MOST LIKELY TO BE HACKED / SCAMMED / INFECTED IN 2024

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR BUSINESS IN 2024

On p58 we look at the ways in which home networks and personal devices are most likely to be attacked in 2024. But what about businesses? You might assume that cybercriminals would focus their attentions on the biggest organisations – after all, those are the ones best able to afford huge ransoms. In fact, smaller companies can and do get attacked all the time. “Regardless of the size of the business,” said Matt Cooke, strategist at cybersecurity specialist Proofpoint, “if they have a bank account, or sensitive information to steal, they are very much at risk.” Proofpoint’s researchers have found that 72% of organisations with fewer than 500 employees have dealt with a material loss of sensitive information within the past 12 months. Indeed, small and medium-sized businesses are prime…

HOW TO PROTECT YOUR BUSINESS IN 2024

Never pay for PC repairs

When something goes wrong with your PC, it’s natural to panic and start frantically scouring the web for advice. But the information you find online is often unhelpful and confusing, which might lead you to consider paying for professional technical support. Thankfully, it’s possible to fix most Windows problems for free, using tools built into the operating system. But unless you have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Windows registry and Command Prompt, that’s often easier said than done, which is where FixWin (tinyurl.com/APC528fixwin) proves invaluable. This brilliant free PC-repair program provides dozens of solutions to common computer woes. Created by the webmaster of PC-help site The Windows Club (www.thewindowsclub.com), it performs complex commands and tweaks with one click and lets you run Windows’ own troubleshooters – which Microsoft plans to…

Never pay for PC repairs

RETRO EMULATION

We’re sure everyone reading this has at least one fond memory of computing in a past era. Maybe it was playing the classic platform game Crash Bandicoot on the original PlayStation, or was it discovering the SAY() and TRANSLATE$() functions in Amiga Basic? Perhaps it was even reverse engineering a printer driver for a PDP-11 microcomputer. Whatever your rose-tinted memories of bygone computing eras, it’s fun to indulge them. There are thousands of open-source emulators and tools to help us on this trip into nostalgic reverie. Retro gaming isn’t new – the first version of MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) appeared in 1996 and enabled PC users to relive hours in the arcade. MAME is better than ever and can now play over 7,000 titles. For the ultimate experience,…

RETRO EMULATION

From the front lines of the Australian PC market The technology restrictions on top-tier AI processors that America recently imposed on China was expected to cause a bit of a stir in the GPU market, with the likes of Nvidia’s RTX 4090 caught up in the ban. The result was that available stocks of RTX 4090s would be shipped in volume to China from current global stocks, while they are still able to saturate sales there and take advantage of higher prices due to demand from those getting in before the ban was enforced. While word is that indeed happened, it doesn’t seem to have had a very drastic effect so far on local stocks here in Australia. While at some stores all SKUs of the RTX 4090 have sold…

CENTRECOM KARUZA GOBLK $1,699tinyurl.com/APC528gob As far as value goes, it doesn’t get much better than this. Housing the best budget CPU from last year gets us off to a good start, especially as it’s paired with a roomy 32GB of RAM for extra system longevity. The star of the show is the RTX 4070 which at this price point is great to see and will easily drive any game at 1440p at high refresh rates. The amount of storage is also decent at 1TB. Potentially the weakest part of the system is the H610-based motherboard which gets by with enough of the basic connectivity options but nothing else. Overall a very good value system for gamers on a budget. CPU Intel 12th Gen Core i5-12400F; COOLER Thermaltake UX100 ARGB; MOTHERBOARD…

Budget. A perfect balance between price and performance. The term ‘budget’ used in this sense is to depict our lowest value build, yet all of our blueprint builds have a so-called budget. Thankfully for us, this is virtual, and we can play around with said so-called budget as much as we like. What happens next is a balanced selection of equivalent components to fit each build, and this lower-tier machine is the most money-conscious of the bunch. Despite this, it still offers modern parts, with good performance and plenty of room for upgrades down the line. “We are getting rid of the former Micro-ATX motherboard for a larger, more compatible board, the ASRock Z690 Phantom Gaming 4/D5.” The main captain of the ship, the Core i5-12400F, has dropped by $10,…

The problem solvers

Overclocking conflict I reinstalled my old RX 570 graphics card in a rig for my brother, and wanted to give him a free speed boost as an extra present. While I can overclock the memory to 1,750 MHz with MSI Afterburner, if I install AMD’s Adrenaline on to the system, it’ll crash – black screen, followed by the PC freezing. However, if I raise the voltage controller memory setting in Adrenaline before applying the change in Afterburner, it works okay. Why is it doing this? No voltage settings are required when it’s just MSI Afterburner installed. Phil Strader APC Responds: This sounds like a classic software conflict where one application (Adrenaline) overwrites the changes of another (Afterburner), resulting in the problems you’ve experienced. Ultimately, Adrenaline is optimised for AMD cards,…

The problem solvers

Make Windows better

WINDOWS 11 Swap what your function keys do Pressing the F1 to F12 function keys on laptops each perform two tasks. Which one it carries out depends on whether you hold down the Fn key at the same time. For example, pressing F5 mutes/unmutes audio, while pressing Fn+F5 refreshes a web page. If you want to reverse this, so pressing F5 refreshes web pages and documents, you’ll need to change a setting in your BIOS. You can access your BIOS when booting your laptop, though how you do so depends on your particular device – so have a look in the manual. Often pressing F10 or F12 repeatedly works. If not, try Delete or Esc. What you need to do in the BIOS also varies, but in general click the…

Make Windows better

Make Office better

MICROSOFT WORD & LIBREOFFICE WRITER Align numbers in lists by the full stop When you make numbered lists, Word aligns them to the left. This means that the full stop gets pushed out when you move from 9. to 10. in the list ( 1 in our screenshot below). If you don’t like this style, change the number so they’re aligned by the position of the full stops instead. Create your list then select it by clicking any of the numbers. Next, click the Home tab at the top, and in the Paragraph section click the dropdown arrow next to the Numbering icon 2. Click ‘Define New Number Format…’ to open the settings menu. Change the ‘Alignment:’ dropdown menu from Left to Right 3. Click OK. Your numbered list will…

Make Office better

EDGE Recover lost favourites and fill forms faster In the past year, we’ve frequently complained about Microsoft stuffing Edge with unnecessary features, so we’re pleased that version 117 (released in September) removes some of this junk. The ‘deprecated’ tools include Maths Solver, Picture Dictionary, Citations and Kids Mode, and their removal makes the browser less cluttered and quicker to navigate. The two new features in Edge 117 are genuinely useful additions. One is called Microsoft Edge Sync Favourites Recovery, and lets you recover ‘favourites’ (Microsoft’s name for bookmarks) that you’ve accidentally deleted. Provided you have Sync enabled in the browser, and are signed into your Microsoft account, you can now restore deleted favourites from the past 14 days. To do so, click the Favourites button on Edge’s toolbar (this looks…

Tag your music to perfection

IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes YOU WILL LEARN How to tag audio files automatically and manually YOU’LL NEED Mp3tag ($39.99), macOS 10.14 or later If you’ve ever felt frustrated by the way your music collection is displayed in the Music app or by your media server, Mp3tag can help. The app makes it easy to track down the correct tags for files – from artist, album and track names to composers – along with suitable artwork, such as album covers or photos of the artist. This info is then embedded into your files in the form of ‘metadata’ that can be displayed in your music player, not just for show but to aid navigation. Tags and artwork can be manually added, or you can instruct Mp3tag to search major online…

Tag your music to perfection

Get your life organised!

Contrary to what some Twitter (sorry, X) threads would have you believe, getting up at 5am and taking cold showers is not the only path to a productive day or week. In fact, simply making a note of all the tasks to be completed for a day or week can lead to being more productive – provided you do the work and complete the tasks. Released under the BSD licence, Calcurse is a text-based organiser that features an Ncurses-driven interface. You can use the tool to keep track of important events such as birthdays and anniversaries, and also schedule appointments and everyday tasks. The default interface provides a list of all appointments for the week, as well as all your tasks in your to-do list. The notification system additionally informs…

Get your life organised!

Phone & tablet tips

ANDROID Delete 2FA verification codes automatically One of the main downsides to using two-factor authentication (2FA) for your online accounts is that your text-messaging app becomes cluttered with verification codes. Also called one-time passwords or passcodes (OTPs), these are sent to your phone by the website or app you’re trying to sign into, and expire once you enter them or after a set time. Google’s Messages app for Android (tinyurl.com/APC5282FA) lets you prevent your SMS inbox from getting clogged up with expired OTPs by deleting these messages automatically after 24 hours. Tap your profile picture in the top-right corner of the Messages app and choose ‘Messages settings’. Select ‘Message organisation’ and switch on ‘Auto-delete OTPs after 24 hrs’. If you don’t see those options, the auto-delete feature may not be…

Phone & tablet tips

Create a Pi Pico USB camera trigger

YOU’LL NEED • Pi Pico• PIR sensor (obstacle sensor)• Breadboard• Jumper wires to connect Pico to PIR• Android device• Pico-to-Android cable• Code: tinyurl. com/APC528USB We’ve all got a spare smartphone lurking in a drawer. Some of these devices will gather dust and then get recycled. But what if we could reuse them? In this project, we’re reusing an old phone with a Raspberry Pi Pico-powered camera trigger. Using a PIR (passive infrared) sensor, we will detect movement and use that to trigger the camera to take a photo. The Pi Pico is running CircuitPython and is acting as an emulated USB keyboard. Trigger the sensor, and the ‘keyboard’ presses Enter and takes a photo. Pick a Pico There’s a plethora of Pico-compatible boards on the market. There are boards from…

Create a Pi Pico USB camera trigger

Cities: Skylines II

The games we play PRICE $69.95 PLATFORM PC, PS5, XBS/X WEB tinyurl.com/APC528cs2 Cities: Skylines II is much bigger than the original, but unfortunately it’s not better – at least not yet. As in the first game, you begin with a small square of land on a giant slice of map. You start laying down roads, zoning for residential, commercial, and industrial areas, and watch as little bitty homes and businesses begin to spring up. Then the delicate dance begins as you try to balance budgets and costs while expanding from a small town to a booming city to a mega-metropolis filled with towering skyscrapers, airports and harbours, and thousands of simulated citizens. There are some big early game improvements over the original Skylines, like the ability to import electricity from…

Cities: Skylines II

PRICE $59.95 PLATFORM PC, PS4/5, XBS/X WEB tinyurl.com/APC528pd3 Compared to Payday 2, Payday 3 dials everything back down to zero and could easily be mistaken for a reboot. Most of the original crew return from the previous games, but seem to have forgotten where Payday 2 left off. Payday 3’s eight-mission storyline is so serious and straightforward that it was hard to believe I was playing the sequel to a game where a character swaps bodies with the President of the United States after breaking into an ancient bunker beneath the White House. While playing Payday 3, I was retroactively sold on Payday 2 and disappointed by the sequel’s reluctance to embrace its predecessor’s absurdity. Despite having loads of weaponry and skills to handle waves of enemies, stealth runs in…

FRASIER FANTASY

GAMES PRICE Free PLATFORM PC, browser WEB tinyurl.com/APC528ff Frasier is back. Yes, in a new TV series, but also in this fan game, which takes the neurotic radio shrink and drops him into a turn-based JRPG. It does sort of make sense – but is it actually worth playing, beyond the gag of its mere existence? To cut to the chase: yes. This is one of the best fan games I’ve played. The setup is that Frasier is hosting one of his dinner parties, but there’s a to-do list before he is finally ready. He needs his crotchety dad Martin, and his dog Eddie, out of his apartment; he needs his grape scissors back from his brother Niles; and he has to host his radio show down at the station.…

FRASIER FANTASY

GAMES PRICE Free PLATFORM PC, Mac, Linux, browser WEB tinyurl.com/APC528mr Mr Platformer takes a very strange turn, but for most of its runtime it’s just a good platform game, with a simplicity that’s refreshing in an era of Metroidvanias and platforming roguelikes. With its low-res art and short, challenging stages, it plays like Mario if it was demade for the ZX Spectrum. Each stage is themed around a platforming facet, be it Pitfall!-style vine swinging, Mario-esque swimming, or hunting keys in an underground environment, but every time you reach the final stage, there’s a curious horror vibe – and then you’re thrown back to the start of the world map. Things are different now, however. Completed stages have been wiped from the map, replaced with others. And when you beat…

RoboCop: Rogue City

GAMES PRICE $73.50 PLATFORM PC, PS5, XBS/X WEB www.robocop-roguecity.com/en RoboCop: Rogue City’s combat feels like straight up murder: I totally lost it when I punched someone for the first time and RoboCop’s fist flew out with the force of a particle accelerator, instantly atomising their skull. There is a tremendous sense of physicality in Rogue City. You can pick up enemies by the neck and fling them against walls so hard that chunks of rubble will rain down on their ragdolled corpses. Bullets scatter reams of paper and turn clutter into hurricanes of plastic and metal. Environments are littered with a comical number of explosives, too, that behave in hilariously different ways. Yes, Rogue City has a skill tree system, and it’s way too bloated. My advice: get the first…

RoboCop: Rogue City

Star Trek: Infinite

GAMES PRICE $42.95 PLATFORM PC, MAC WEB tinyurl.com/APC528sti As you may have be aware Infinite is very much built on the chassis of Stellaris, with some appropriately Star Trek twists. Consider it the Napoleon: Total War to Stellaris’ Empire: Total War – a more focused, narrative spin off from a larger and more sprawling game. The game is set firmly in the Next Generation/Deep Space Nine era and portrays the Federation, Klingons, Romulans and Cardassians as four superpowers locked in constant competition. It’s not unlike joining a Stellaris game a third of the way in. Here’s the good news: Star Trek Infinite expresses the Federation fantasy far better than Stellaris ever did. You can genuinely expand by diplomacy here, buttering up minor species and inviting them, one by one. The…

Star Trek: Infinite

GAMES PRICE Free PLATFORM PC WEB bit.ly/TestMojiken I love a good timeloop, and Test Test Test’s will take some doing to unravel. It’s a cryptic, real-time adventure game in which you have 15 minutes to prepare your files for an important work meeting. Fail to retrieve all three files and you’ll be fired – with a bullet to the head. But the moment the bullet lands, time reverts to 11:45. Armed with a little more knowledge each time you reset, can you solve the mysteries of your ominous work environment, find that elusive third folder, and finally please your shadowy bosses? Puzzles begin simply, as you decipher an anagram on a note and try to get somewhere by a specific time, but before long you’re thinking outside the box –…

GAME CHANGER RELEASE December 7, 1997 DEVELOPER id Software, Nightdive PUBLISHER Bethesda LINK bethesda.net Quake II has a fascinating legacy. Released only eighteen months after Quake in December 1997, it was quickly celebrated as the best game ever made. And I mean the best. A technological marvel, it offered a far more focused adventure than the original’s dimension-hopping escapades, with a distinctive setting and consistent enemy design. It even had something id co-founder John Carmack had previously dismissed as superfluous to a good shooter – a plot. Over time, however, Quake II’s reputation has diminished. The following year, its narrative ambitions were superseded by Half-Life, which told a better story in a more interesting fashion. More recently, critics have pointed out that its shooting experience is flatter and more sluggish…

Unearthing games that never were

If anyone can be called a connoisseur of videogames, it’s Frank Gasking. One of his favourites is Deadlock for the Commodore 64. “When you look at the game and its level of detail, it’s one of the best-looking titles ever seen on the computer thanks to the artwork of Robin Levy,” Gasking told us. “It was made a few years before Super Metroid came out on the SNES and it’s almost like the team from that game had seen Deadlock running. Of course, they hadn’t.” There’s a strong reason why he’s so convinced that the team behind one of Nintendo’s most iconic games couldn’t have drawn inspiration from Deadlock. The latter game was never actually released. Like so many titles over the years, it was put in limbo, with the…

Unearthing games that never were

MICROSOFT ROLLS OUT WINDOWS XP UGLY SWEATER IRONIC MERCH TO KEEP YOU WARM AFTER THE AI APOCALYPSE. While in Australia you’re more likely to want a human-sized water cooler than what the Yankee Doodle’s call a sweater, Microsoft has a running gag for its Northern Hemisphere brethren of releasing a Windows-themed ugly sweater for the festive season. This year’s edition features the bland hillside background of the popular Windows XP OS. While we’re not sure the default background was the crucial ingredient in that operating system, at least this ugly-jumper will be able to keep you warm when Copilot has reached the later stages of the AI apocalypse. USER CREATES RAM FROM AMD 3D V-CACHE IT’S ONLY 32MB BUT CLOSE TO FIVE-TIMES FASTER THAN DDR5. In a purely academic pursuit,…

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