If you’ve held off playing Microsoft’s latest Flight Simulator game because of its crazy performance requirements, we have good news: Developer Asobo Studios has dramatically improved the game, allowing it to be played on an average gaming PC.Asobo doubled the frame rate and significantly reduced the memory requirements, making Flight Simulator accessible to even more gaming PCs. Specifically, the upcoming Update 5 allows a gaming PC with a Core i7-9700K and GeForce RTX 2060 Super to get a fa
With the announcement of Windows 11 last Thursday, the humble Trusted Platform Module (TPM) has gotten more attention than ever. Home users are suddenly interested in this esoteric security tech.Windows 11 will require a module, which could tempt savvy shoppers to buy a TPM 2.0 chip early, and slap it on their motherboard. The logic of such a move makes sense: You want to ensure existing hardware can make the jump to Windows 11. And with Windows being the dominant operating system, it’s not h
Most free password managers are only free up to a point. Typically, they restrict the number of passwords that can be saved or devices that can be synced for free users. Bitwarden bucks that trend, letting you save unlimited vault items and sync your vault across all your devices without spending a penny. There’s also a paid version that includes extra, but not trivial security features, which costs only $10 a year. There are some tradeoffs for that affordability—Bitdwarden isn’t as polished
If you’re still wondering just why your relatively recent computer may get abandoned by Windows 11, it’s likely because your CPU’s performance would take a nose dive when all of the security features in the new operating system are enabled.Microsoft kicked over a wasp’s nest of anger last week when it announced that Windows 11 would not support 7th-gen and older Intel CPUs, as well as AMD Ryzen 1000 CPUs and older.To add to the confusion, much of the “why” appeared to hinge on the requirement
There’s a lot of debate about how important faster RAM is for gaming, and whether it makes a noticeable difference beyond a certain point. One thing is certain, however: If you’re running standard 2,666MHz memory, you’re going to notice an upgrade to something like 3,200MHz or more. But you need to manually enable a feature called XMP to actually unlock that performance. Those higher speed RAM sticks don’t work as advertised right out of the box.That’s because high-performance RAM has to oper
Windows 11 Home will require a Microsoft account (MSA) at the beginning of the installation process, according to a source close to the company. Windows 11 users who want to use a local account from the beginning when setting up a new PC will be required to use or upgrade to Windows 10 Pro. It’s not a life sentence. Microsoft will allow the user to transition to a local account once the installation process has completed. Retail versions of Windows 11 Home will offer the same experience.Our s
Android TV suddenly has a better menu system than Roku, Fire TV, or Apple TV. https://www.techhive.com/article/3623828/the-nvidia-shield-tv-suddenly-has-the-best-menu-for-streaming.html#tk.rss_all
The Lian Li Lancool II earned near universal praise at its launch—at $90, it was an affordable, beautiful mesh case with good airflow. Now less than a year later, the company has unveiled the Lancool II’s apparent successor with a YouTube reveal on Monday, during its 2021 Digital Expo 2.0.The Lancool III takes much of the Lancool II’s formula and enhances it, with multiple small tweaks that are likely to add up to an even smoother building experience. Some are design changes that give the Lan
One of the unexpected new features that turned up in the first official Windows 11 beta build is Dynamic Refresh Rate, a way for your PC to boost the refresh rate above its normal 60Hz while inking. Sound familiar? Well, no—not if you’re a Surface owner. This DRR feature could signal that the long-anticipated Surface Pro 8 tablet is due this fall.It’s an entirely speculative argument, though the accumulation of circumstantial evidence increasingly indicates that it could be true. Here's how t
In this episode of The Full Nerd, Gordon Ung, Brad Chacos, Adam Patrick Murray are joined by PCWorld’s resident Windows guru Mark Hachman to delve deep into the newly announced Windows 11.Mark has spent endless hours tinkering with both leaked and official Windows 11 builds to discover everything you need to know about the operating system. First, we go over the hottest new features you need to know about, then shift gears to discuss more controversial subjects, like Windows 11’s strict TPM r