PC Magazine - January 2017 PDF

DIGITAL EDITION
JANUARY 2017
CONTENTS
JANUARY 2017
COVER STORY
CAN MICROSOFT
REINVENT THE PC?
How laptops and desktops might evolve.
FEATURE STORY
A CONVERSATION WITH DR.

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON
The worlds favorite astrophysicist came
by PCMag Labs for a very geeky chat.
REVIEWS
CONSUMER
ELECTRONICS
Impossible I-1
Logitech Harmony
Elite
OnePlus 3T
HARDWARE
Asus Transformer
Mini (T102HA-D4- Impossible I-1
GR)
Oyen Digital
MiniPro 3.1 USB-C
Portable
Solid-State Drive
Asus ROG GT51
SOFTWARE
& APPS
Google Photos
(for iPhone)
Attenborough
Story of Life (for Asus Transformer Mini (T102HA-D4-GR)
iPad)
Attenborough Story of Life (for iPad)

WHATS NEW NOW
HOW DO YOU FEEL?

AFFECTIVAS AI CAN
TELL
Your mood can help with market
research or making your home
smarter.
NEXTEV AIMS TO
LEVERAGE FORMULA E
RACING TECH
Its aiming for the all-electric
crossover market.
GUESSING ATTACK
BYPASSES CREDIT
CARD SECURITY IN 6
SECONDS
And theres no magic-bullet fix.
TOP GEAR
What we love most this month:
cold-weather version.
OPINIONS
DAN COSTA
First Word The free and open
READER INPUT Internet actually
opens the door for
SASCHA SEGAN
Sorry Cord Cutters, DirecTV Is all sorts of
Now a Trap manipulators to
DOUG NEWCOMB roam free.
Delphi, Mobileye Are Fast-
Tracking Driverless Car Tech
TIM BAJARIN
What Silicon Valley Can Learn JOHN C. DVORAK
From the 2016 Election Last Word
DIGITAL LIFE
GET ORGANIZED
5 Ways to Email Better
HOW TO
How to Fix Windows PC
Problems Via a Restore Point
TIPS
12 Roku Tips for Streaming
Success.
PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION I SUBSCRIBE I JANUARY 2017

FIRST WORD
DAN COSTA
T
he National Security Agency can read
your email. Verizon knows where you are
at all times. Amazon is confident youre in
the market for a new printer. We know these
things about the weird world we live in, but few of
us ever stop to think about what they really mean.
Recently, a group of artists got together in New
York City to change that.
Apple doesnt have a retail store on Mulberry
Living in Street in New York City, but at a glance, you might
think it does. The Glass Room exhibit borrows
Glass heavily from the Apple Store design esthetic: white
Houses walls, white ceiling, white podium, and even
helpful inGenious staffers in matching white
hoodies (see the photo below). But nothing is for
sale in The Glass Room. Its a collection of an art
pieces designed to make you think of how youre
selling yourself, maybe without even knowing it.
The exhibit is curated by Tactical Technology
Collective along with The Mozilla Foundation,
maker of the Firefox browser. The subjects
addressed in the Glass Room are digital: online
privacy, location tracking, psychographic profiling,
the gamification of security, and so on. But the
pieces themselves are grounded in the real world;
you can see them, touch them, and in one case,
smell them. Here are a few that stood out to me.
Forgot Your Password? (Aram Bartholl):
Were so used to massive password hacks that we
barely even notice them. In fact, Yahoo! recently
disclosed that it had compromised at least 1 billion
more of its users passwords. Back in 2012,
LinkedIn held the record for the biggest password
hacka paltry 4.6 million. For this exhibit,
Bartholl printed all 4.6 million of those passwords
alphabetically and bound them into volumes. (I
looked for mine; it wasnt in there.)
Random Darknet Shopper (!Medien-
gruppe Bitnik): This artist collective created an
online shopping bot and gave it a budget of $100
in bitcoins. They set it loose on the Dark Web to
make random purchases and have them mailed to
the exhibition space. No drugs or pornography
arrived; just random stuff. A copy of Mastering
the Art of French Cooking, a Hungarian passport
photo, andfeatured item in the Glass Rooma
pair of fake Kanye West Nike Air Yeezy 2 sneakers.
Online Shopping Center (Sam Levigne):
Amazon does a great job of identifying what you
want to buy and getting it to your quickly. As a
logical (perhaps inevitable) next step, in 2014, the
company was granted a patent for predictive
shopping. Levignes art takes the concept even
further. As a Glass Room shopper, you strap on a
brainwave monitor and allow an algorithm to
determine what your brain looks like when youre
shopping. When Levigne first conducted this
experiment, he had his bot shop for him on
Amazon and Alibaba whenever his brain was in
the shopping state. I tried it, but so far, Amazon
hasnt sent me anything.
Not all the exhibits at the Glass Room are art.
Some are demos of real-world products and
services. The Texas Virtual BorderWatch, for
example, was a real-time camera system (live from
2008 to 2012) that let volunteers monitor the
United StatesMexico border from their homes
and alert authorities of infractions. Another, the
Its a collection Silver Mother ($299), is a monitoring solution for
of an art pieces seniors that gives medication reminders, tracks
designed to sleep, and gives front-door alerts. And then theres
make you think Churchix, a facial recognition system that enables
of how youre churches to track attendance automaticallya
selling yourself, whole new meaning for witnessing.
maybe without Finally, at the back of the room was a data
detox center. For those who were moved by the
even knowing it.
exhibit and wanted to make a change in their
digital lifestyle, experts at the counter explained
your options. Weve reviewed a lot of the tools
used to manage your privacy, including Signal,
Ghostery, TOR, and more.
If The Glass Room made anything clear, it is that
technology is the dominant force for change in the
world right now. It is affecting our jobs, our home
lives, our relationships, our environment, and even
our bodies. Im a big believer in technological
progress, but not all of these changes are for the
better. PC Magazine is committed to getting you
the tools, techniques, and information you need to
thrive in this new world.
Now, if youll excuse me, I need to go clear my
browsing history.
dan_costa@pcmag.com

READER INPUT
YOUR COMMENTS
I like to go back and look at older articles written

about upcoming trends in technology and in this
case, politics. Thanks, Sascha, for citing an article
you printed back in March. It was very insightful.
I dont want to sound like a shill for Martin Ford
but I found his book (Rise Of The Robots) very
interesting and alarming.
maverick909
I wonder if Sasha is afraid of getting fired if he

says anything positive about Trump. Seems like a
Trumps pretty scary situation for anyone not on the right
New Tech side I cant seem to find any positive articles on
Era tech sites, and considering Trump won, there
must be some people who think positive of him
but are just scared of the atmosphere of fear being
created by the left.
Adin
PCMags Sascha
Segan opined that the
Saschas reply:
U.S. governments
Honestly, I dont see this column as positive or
attitude towards a
negativeIm just trying to predict based on the
range of technologies
statements, positions, and advisers Ive seen.
will change in 2017,
and suggested what
Personally, I crawled out of both the Twitter and
consumers could do in
Facebook cesspools of ignorance and superficial
response. Heres how
nonsense years ago, have never looked back, and
readers responded.
am amazed at the extra time I now have for
consumption of real, substantive news and
information from several sourcesnot to mention
the joys of actually talking to and spending
quality time with friends and family members.
Thinkaboutit
If Twitter is struggling financially, it small print somewhere, but who
has to figure out a way to make ever reads that? Changing the login
money or shutter the service. No credentials without my explicit
government handouts. Same with all consent is in my opinion completely
green technology. If you want to buy unethical and criminal. I feel
a Tesla, fine, but anybody who can violated. Control over accounts that
afford one doesnt need a federal are able to login to my computer is
subsidy or tax break to cut the my responsibility.
price I have nothing against solar I find it alarming that Microsoft is
power, but I see no reason why I building a collection of login
should have a higher energy bill credentials to every Windows 10
simply because somebody wants a computer. If Microsoft gets hacked
less efficient way to generate or the authentication server gets
electricity. See you in four years and spoofed, everyones PC becomes free
we will see if the sky fell. entry Who can I complain to? Am I
Jeffrey Clinard just so out of touch that there is
nothing to really worry about?
Saschas reply: My argument about Robert Cook
Twitter is that being a semi-official
Y
organ of the government would give our particular example may
it a built-in global audience. That not be as bad as you think.
will help it survive, if not thrive, In virtually every password-
financially, as its audience wouldnt login situation, the site in question
entirely evaporate and it would does not have your password. You
attract advertisers and brands see this in forgot-password
trying to reach that audience. situations where they do not just
serve up the password on a platter;
rather, they make you prove your
READER QUESTION identity some other way (typically by
ownership of your email account)
Q
I have been a computer and send a reset link.
professional for over 30 What happens is that when you
years. This week, my create your password, it goes
Windows 10 machine changed my through a one-way encryption called
log-in from a local account to a a hash function. The same input
Microsoft account, without my always yields the same output, but
explicit knowledge or approval. you cant go the other way. When
Perhaps it was embedded in the you log in, the site hashes what you
typed and lets you in if it matches the saved hash.
An attacker who knows the precise hash function being used could create an
immense table of common passwords and their hashes, thereby creating a way to
decode at least some passwords. To prevent this, advanced hashing algorithms add a
bit of randomness called salt to their hashing systems.
Anyway, just because you log in to a Microsoft account does not mean Microsoft
controls that account. It should not have changed the nature of your account without
your knowledge. But Im not sure it did. Ive gone through the process recently,
attempting to troubleshoot a particular system that I had upgraded from earlier
Windows with a local account. I really did have to participate. Im pretty sure you did
agree to the change, without necessarily realizing it.
I hope my response has at least provided you some food for thought.
Neil J. Rubenking
Lead Analyst, Security, PCMag Digital Network
@neiljrubenking
?
Ask us a
question!
Have a question about a story in
PC Magazine, one of the products we
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product you own? Email us at
letters@pcmag.com and well
respond to your question here.
Questions may be edited slightly for
content and clarity.

WHATS NEW NOW
NEWS
How Do You Feel?

Affectivas AI Can Tell BY SOPHIA STUART
I
magine powering up your digital device and, after a HOW DOES THAT
MAKE YOU FEEL?
quick scan of your facial expression, having it Technology like
respond with, Hey there, whats going on?. Affectiva determines
Massachusetts-based Affectiva is working on this type your mood, which
could help with
of socio-emotive A.I., and PCMag met the companys everything from
director of market development, Jim Deal, at Unity3Ds market research to
Unite 2016 conference recently. smart homes.
Companies know that humans want to be liked, and
so they dont always tell the truth about a game, movie,
or other commercial product when asked. People might
say, Its great!, but theyre not actually going to hand Companies
over any cash to buy the next upgrade. But the company know that
takes them at their word and invests millions in humans want
development, only to have the product flop. Deal to be liked, and
became keenly aware of this problem during his time at so they dont
Microsoft and as founder of Airtight Games, his own always tell the
software company. truth about
Sometimes it was clear, during research trials, that
products.
feedback is skewed. Youre making games, theyre just
happy to be there, so they didnt want to be negative,
and we get a false reading, he said.
Unsurprisingly, companies want to cut to the truth.
Thats why Affectivas investors include not just the the
National Science Foundation and Kleiner Perkins
Caufield and Byers but also advertising giant WPP.
IN THE MOOD FOR

GAMES
Affectivas emotion-
recognition SDK is
being embedded
into games, so
gameplay can morph
to address a players
psychological
responses.
It has other uses, too. Affectivas emotion-recognition

SDK is being embedded into games (via a Unity3D
plugin and other platforms) and, as a result, gameplay
can morph to address a players psychological
responses. (Are you scared of snakes? Guess whats
slinking over the horizon to psych you out?) Hollywood
is also using it to tweak trailers to ensure sold-out
crowds on movies opening weekends.
Our CEO and co-founder, Dr. Rana el Kaliouby, always A FEEL FOR FEELINGS
had a deep interest in building emotionally aware Affectiva measures and
analyzes what is known
machines. After she got her PhD at Cambridge University, about human expression,
she did post-doc work with Dr. Rosalind Picard at MIT categorizing everything into
Media Lab and the two of them spun Affectiva out of emotions (sadness,
happiness, anxiety, joy, and
that, Deal explained. so on) to track not what we
Kaliouby is part of Dr. Picards Affective Computing say but how we really feel. i
movement, which got its start in the late 90s, Deal said. ne ni
Today, Affectivas tech creates classifiers, or face and

emotion algorithms, from an emotion data repository of almost 4.7 million
faces analyzed, and 50 billion emotion data points recorded.
This means Affectiva is constantly measuring and analyzing what is known
about human expression, categorizing everything into specific human emotions
(sadness, happiness, anxiety, joy, and so on) to track not what we say but how
we really feel about somethingthe limbic brain knee-jerk reaction as opposed
to the conditioned, socially moderated neural network output.
In a demo of the software, Deal walked in front of a large screen running
Affectiva in the background and positioned himself squarely in the cameras
machine-vision tracker. Instantly, his face was mapped by hundreds of tiny
white dots that scanned and moved as his expression changed, tracking 15
different muscular actions at 14 frames per second, and translating all the data
into pixels, to compare, contrast, and analyze against the database.
Why is this useful? Because what we say and what we do are two different
things, and machine intelligence needs to learn this to be predictively accurate.
The other reason companies like facial-expression
analytic A.I. is that its simple to use and doesnt require
gelling up the electrodes or plugging directly into your
brain (like the brain-machine interfaces at Hughes Already our
Laboratory and DARPA-funded work out of UCSD that devices are
weve reported on previously). trying to
So whats next for the company? The future goal of anticipate our
Affectiva is to continue to evolve software and devices needs in a way
that respond to humans with EQ [emotional quotient], were not
explained Deal, rather than just IQ, or rapid aware of, being
calculations. Already our devices are trying to anticipate
predictive in
our needs in a way were not aware of, being predictive
nature.
in nature. What were doing, using a simple webcam, is
getting real data to back up what people are saying
about how they really feel.
With companies like Affectiva, soon your digital
device wont just ask why you look sadit might also
suggest how to manage your moods. More helpful, the
future embodied A.I. devices, with Affectiva and other
such solutions, might zoom off to the kitchen to make
coffee, or at least instruct the IoT system to open the
blinds and let the sunshine in.

WHATS NEW NOW
NEWS
NextEV Aims to Leverage

Formula E Racing Tech BY DAVID CARDINAL
F
ormula racing has long been a laboratory for performance car
companies to push their research and development to the limit, on the
way to introducing it into their street-legal car models. Thats one
reason that cutting-edge Formula 1 has moved to hybrid engines from the
more fan-popular V-8s; hybrids are where the money is for companies such as
Mercedes and Renault, which drive much of the funding. Startup circuit
Formula E was founded in part to do the same thing for electric vehicle
development. Now, Chinese startup NextEV aims to take its learnings from
Formula E and turn them into a competitive all-electric mass-market
crossoveraiming squarely at Teslas Model X.
NextEV recently attracted attention when its Nio EP9
1,341 horsepower prototype supercar set an electric
vehicle record on Germanys Nrburgring track.
Perhaps just as impressive is that despite having a NextEV aims
massive motor and incredible top speed of 194 mph, the to take its
EP9 is designed for a 265-mile range. Given that learnings from
Formula E carswith a top speed of 140 mphcan run Formula E and
for only 30 minutes on a battery charge, thats quite a turn them into
step up. NextEV hopes to use what it earns from selling a competitive
six of its EP9 supercars to help fund the development of all-electric
its crossover.
mass-market
Once the crossover comes to market, NextEV expects
crossover.
it to compete with Tesla, BMW, and Audi by delivering
similar performance at a lower price. Thats easy to say
before youve started production, though as weve seen
with Tesla, initial cost and price estimates are often
optimistic. Formula E technology has come a long way
from when we first covered its launch in 2014, but each
team only needs a few cars for the season, so they can
each be hand-tuned.
Anyone who watches Formula E knows that
breakdowns and electrical failures are common. Thats
true even though each car has to run for only 30
minutes (the drivers switch cars in the middle of the
race, which is safer than trying to swap batteries). The
transition from there to supercar isnt huge. Most
supercars spend 99 percent of their time in a show
garage, and owners expect to have a team of mechanics
around. But to compete in the mass market, vehicles are
expected to remain on the road, and safe, for years.
Tesla has managed a unique feat in building itself,
over a period of years and several models, from an
unknown upstart to a respected, major manufacturer of
electric cars. Its not at all clear whether NextEV will be
able to accomplish the same thing. If it does, though, it
will be a huge and much-needed boost for the value of
Formula E.

WHATS NEW NOW
NEWS
Guessing Attack Bypasses

Credit Card Security in
6 Seconds BY MATTHEW HUMPHRIES
D
ecember is always a very busy time for banks and credit card
companies, as we all scramble to purchase presents in time for the
holidays. But its also a boon period for fraudsters who are trying to
steal those precious card details. And now it seems, they can guess hack a
credit card in mere seconds.
A team of researchers at Newcastle University discovered two weaknesses in
the way online transactions are verified using the Visa payment system. Neither
weakness is of much use alone, but when used together, an attacker can recover
a credit cards security information in as few as 6 seconds.
The two weaknesses being taking advantage of are as
follows:
1. Online payment systems do not detect multiple Guessing an

invalid payment requests if they are performed across expiration
multiple websites. They also allow up to 20 attempts date takes no
per card on each site. more than 60
2. Websites are not consistent in the checks they do, attempts, and
varying the card information requested. a CVV code
takes less than
Its possible to recover the expiration date, CVV
1,000
numerical code, and postal code associated with a card
attempts.
knowing only partial detailsfor example, the card
number and expiration date. The CCS2015 Toolkit
automatically accesses a number of website payment
systems and systematically removes the unknown
elements through brute-force failure and success until
all the card details are uncovered.
Guessing an expiration date takes no more than 60
attempts, and a CVV code takes less than 1,000
attempts. Spread over hundreds or thousands of
website payment systems, you can see why card details
dont stay hidden for very long.
The most worrying aspect of this attack is the fact the
payment system, and therefore banks, do not detect it is
happening. The attacker is creating a working stolen
card in a matter of seconds, meaning they can steal it,
use it, and discard it very quickly and before the owner
realizes it has been stolen.
The research team confirmed that only Visa is prone
to this form of attack. Mastercard detects the invalid
attempts after 10 failures, limiting its use to fraudsters.
Dr. Martin Emms, a co-author on the Newcastle
University research paper, says that when it comes to
solving this problem, Sadly, theres no magic bullet.
Until websites and Visa solve the problems with their
validation systems, its up to users to keep their cards
safe and react quickly to any suspicious behavior.

WHATS NEW NOW
TOP GEAR
What We Love Most

This Month BY STEPHANIE MLOT
180S BLUETOOTH WIRELESS EAR WARMERS

Freezing temperatures and snowy sidewalks shouldnt stop you from enjoying the great
outdoors. Whether youre walking the dog or running off that holiday ham, bundle up with
180s Bluetooth wireless ear warmers. Built-in speakers let you take phone calls and listen to
music hands-free. Grid fleece lining protects from wind and water for added comfort.
$69.99 180s.com
WHATS NEW NOW
TOP GEAR
What We Love Most

SEIRUS HEATTOUCH IGNITE MITT

With the Seirus HeatTouch Ignite gloves, heated insulation and windproof and waterproof
lining are covered in full-grain leather for a stylish and practical wintertime accessory. Just
push the button to activate the gloves for 6 hours (low), 4 hours (medium), or 2 hours (high).
A built-in heat panel helps keep your hands and fingers toastyas long as the battery lasts.
Available in mens or womens versions, in black or white.
$374.99 seirus.com
WHATS NEW NOW
TOP GEAR
What We Love Most

CELESTRON ELEMENTS THERMOCHARGE

Keep your core temperature up and your electronics charged with the ThermoCharge power
pack and hand warmer. The two-in-one device features a 4400 mAh rechargeable battery for
6 hours of continuous heat (104 to 113 degrees Fahrenheit). It also supports USB-powered
gadgets, so you can snap photos, call friends, and listen to music without a freeze-out.
Aluminum casing and silicone caps keep the power pack safe when not in use.
$34.95 celestron.com
WHATS NEW NOW
TOP GEAR
What We Love Most

PROFLEX HEATED INSOLES

Any cold-weather athlete can attest that warm are happy feet. ProFLEX heated insoles fit
into a ski boot, rain boot, or all-purpose boot to fight off frostbite. Built-in rechargeable
batteries promise at least 2,500 hours of useabout four winters worth. Each flexible insole
features three heat settings: standby (no heat), medium (100 degrees F), and high (111
degrees F). ProFLEX offers insoles in mens and womens sizes 3.5 to 14.
$184.99 heat.thermacell.com
WHATS NEW NOW
TOP GEAR
What We Love Most

WARM MOUSE
As if carpal tunnel werent bad enough, long hours in front of a computer, keyboard, and
mouse can also make it hard to keep your extremities warm. (Have you ever tried typing with
gloves on?) The Warm Mouse means never having to stick your hand into your pocket or
under your armpit to regain feeling in your fingers: What looks like a generic laser mouse is
actually a bundle of warmth. The only challenge is heating up your non-mousing hand.
$59.00 warmmouse.com

Sascha Sega COMMENTARY
Sorry Cord Cutters,

DirecTV Now Is a Trap
T
hanks to mysteriously escalating prices,
channels you dont want, and a lack of
competitive options, cable TV and
Internet companies are widely hated in the U.S.
Cord-cutting is supposed to save us from at
least some of that. But AT&Ts new DirecTV Now
plan just transplants the cable model into the
cord-cutter world. Its full of traps and pitfalls for Sascha Segan is the
consumers, the biggest of which may not become lead mobile analyst
obvious for another year or so. for PC Magazine. His
commentary has
DirecTV Now is basically a cable bundle also appeared on Fox
delivered through your Internet connection. News, CNBC, CNN, and
Youll see a lot about a $35 promotional rate for various radio stations
and newspapers
100 channels, but that rate will reset soon enough around the world.
to $60. Thats what Spectrum Cable here in New
York charges for a traditional bundle of 125
channels plus DVR service, which DirecTV Now
doesnt offer.
AT&Ts smallest bundle, which will in fact cost
$35, includes 60 channels. That will be a savings
over cable. But you cant get fewer than 60
channels, and in the great cable tradition, itll
probably include a lot of channels you dont want.
(When I wrote this, AT&T hadnt yet released a
full list.)
The company also reserves the right to hike
prices on that bundle whenever it wants. Because
the channel bundles are so big and a little weird
(for example, you need the 100-channel bundle
for BBC News) youll be dragged along into cost
negotiations for channels you dont care about.
This isnt entirely on the cable companies. Fox
Sascha Sega wants to make sure you cant get (popular) Fox
News without (less popular) FX and (what is it
even?) FXX. Cable companies negotiations over
the channels owned by Disney/ABC/ESPN are an
annual horror show. (ESPN alone usually costs an
average of $7 per month out of your cable bill.)
The whole struggle over content carriage fees is
a big part of why the cable TV pricing world is
such a mess, and why you cant get recent
network television on Netflix, which works really
hard to contain its costs. Cable companies build
these big bundles, make them opaque, and then
pack profit on top. What you actually pay for the
content you watch ends up hidden. Breaking the
bundles would be more market efficient and more
transparent to consumers. But cable companies
dont want that (as they need the opacity to hide
their profit margin) and content providers dont
want that (as they want to force channels most
people dont watch into the bundle.)
So expect DirecTV Now rates to hike regularly,
just like cable rates do. And remember, if youre
getting DirecTV Now over an ISP with a data cap,
as were seeing more and more often, your TV
watching will count towards the data cap. Thats
another hidden cost. Hooray for cable and its
business models!
It gets worse, though. For America.
THE FIRST REAL NET NEUTRALITY TEST

I know, net neutrality is boring. What if I just call
it crony corruption? Lets call net neutrality
regulations anti-corruption rules.
DirecTV Now is a real test of our anti-
corruption firewalls, in a way that T-Mobiles
Binge On and other carriers competing products
are not. Thats because its free for any video
channel or site to participate in Binge On. Yes, there are some technical
Sascha Sega requirements that make it easier for bigger sites to comply than smaller
sites. But DirecTV Now launches corruption into a new order of
magnitude.
For AT&T wireless subscribers, using DirecTV Now wont impact their
data caps. (And remember, AT&T subscribers who dont have DirecTV
satellite service cant get unlimited data.) Any other video provider that
wants to do this has to pay up, big time. DirecTV Now gets to do this for
free. Sling TV would need to write a big check to AT&T.
AT&T claims DirecTV is paying AT&T for this privilege. That is
transparently ridiculous. That is like if I move a $50 bill from my pants
pocket to my jacket pocket and claim that Im paying myself. The money
is going from AT&T to AT&T. Any other description is some silly Penn &
Teller, slight-of-hand nonsense.
Now we get to what I think of as the frog-in-the-pot factor in this kind
of corruption. Offering DirecTV Now for free doesnt immediately stall
or block any competitors. It looks like a good thing, where nobody elses
things are damaged.
The danger is that were now frogs in slowly warming pots. Free
DirecTV Now will entice a certain number of people away from other
services, which will damage those other services and reduce consumer
choice. It tilts the playing field. Other services may need to align with
other carriers, and then youll have a situation where if you want
DirecTV Now, you sign up with AT&T, but if you want PlayStation Vue,
you sign up with Verizon.
Then there will be one choice on each carrier, and, hey, remember
your cable bill? Yeah, its going to look like that. Welcome to the pot,
frogs. Hope you enjoy the water.
sascha_segan@pcmag.com

Doug Newcom COMMENTARY
How Delphi, Mobileye

Are Fast-Tracking
Driverless Car Tech
E
veryone wants to know when fully self-
driving cars will be ready for the road.
The companies developing the technology
usually give a timeline of several years to decades
away.
Automotive parts manufacturer Delphi and
Mobileye are no different, and during a media
roundtable this week in San Francisco, Delphis Car tech expert Doug
Newcomb has
VP of services, Glen DeVos, envisioned a long- written for Popular
term timeframe for the widespread use of the Mechanics, Road &
technology. He expects that fully autonomous Track, and other
publications, and is
driving will first be deployed on commercial the author of Car
vehicles, since businesses will be able to save on Audio for Dummies.
the expense of drivers and the downtime they
require.
At the same time, though, Delphi is partnering
with Mobileye, the dominant automotive camera
supplier, to fast-track self-driving technology
productionideally by 2019via a system the
partners call Centralized Sensing Localization
and Planning (CSLP).
CSLP uses an array of sensors to allow a vehicle
to know its location within 10 centimeters, even
without GPS connectivity. This helps a car
navigate complex intersections even when there
are no lane markings. It also identifies vehicles by
their basic shape, senses whether another car is
stationary or parked, and has what Delphi calls
semantic understanding to predict the path of
Doug Newcom other vehicles, so that a self-driving car can
behave more human-like in its driving behavior
and determine the best path forward.
A crucial aspect of the CSLP system is
circumventing what Delphi and Mobileye call the
map-heavy approach used by companies like
Google and many automakers. It allows a self-
driving vehicle to know its location but also its
surroundings, to achieve full autonomy. Instead,
Delphi and Mobileyes CSLP system will employ a
map-lite approach by leveraging a technology
Mobileye introduced at CES 2016 called Road
Experience Management (REM).
Autonomous vehicles that heavily rely on
detailed maps require a robust data connection to
constantly feed accurate mapping data to the car.
But the REM system uploads data in small bursts
that can be easily handled by the 4G LTE
connectivity already found in many vehicles.
Another benefit of REM technology is it can be
seamlessly integrated with existing vehicle
platforms, DeVos mentioned during the media
roundtable. But perhaps the primary advantage
of the REM technology is that it will essentially
take real-time pictures of roads.
Mapping software can be out of date due to
changes to the streets made after the maps were
created or temporary conditions such as road
construction. The CSLP system will not only
capture and take into account permanent
infrastructure ranging from intersections to road
signs but will also record construction and other
short-term changes to the roadway. And this data
can be crowdsourced among millions of cars
equipped with the system.
I had chance to see the CSLP system in action
on the streets of Mountain View, CA, near
Delphis Silicon Valley Labs, where its being
Doug Newcom tested (as well as in Pittsburgh and Singapore).
And I couldnt help compare the drive to one I
took just over a year ago in the same location in In many
one of Googles autonomous Lexus RX 350s. cases, owners
But unlike Google vehicles, one of which I simply prefer
spotted on the street during our drive, there are to use their
no noticeable sensors on the Delphi Audi unless smartphone
you look very closely. Compared to a self-driving or tablet.
Google Lexus, the Delphi Audi handled
situations such as lane closures and stopped
vehicles in adjacent lanes without hesitation,
although the Delphi test driver did have to take
over the controls twice: once when we needed to
speed up to make a right turn ahead of a city
bus, and again after we made the turn and got
stuck behind a garbage truck.
Regardless, I was very impressed with the
system, and was surprised to find out that it was
operating without the benefit of Mobileyes REM
technology. This means it will only get better,
and that self-driving cars could be available to
the public much sooner than we think.
doug_newcomb@pcmag.com

Tim Bajari COMMENTARY
What Silicon Valley Can Learn

From the 2016 Election
T
wo weeks before the election, I traveled
to Maine for a conference and drove
through Massachusetts and New
Hampshire on my way.
In Silicon Valley, which was mostly Clinton
country, Id seen very few signs or bumper
stickers promoting any candidates. But as I drove
through the northeast, plenty of Trump signs Tim Bajarin is the
were displayed on peoples lawns, fences, and car president of Creative
Strategies and a
bumpers. I did see a few Clinton signs, but Trump consultant, analyst,
signs dominated the landscape. In fact, as I was and futurist covering
driving up Highway 1 to Freeport, Maine, home of personal computers
and consumer
L.L. Bean, I drove past a group of about 18 people technology.
waving Trump signs to passersby.
This surprised me. Sitting in my Silicon Valley
office, I was pretty insulated from how the rest of
the country perceived both candidates. Like a lot
of us, we mostly trusted the media and pollsters
to guide our knowledge about how the election
was evolving.
As I spoke to people in Maine, Massachusetts,
and New Hampshirewhere, interestingly,
Clinton wonI saw more passion from Trump
followers. More important, when I asked why
they were voting for Trump, their anger against
the Washington elite was top of mind. As I flew
home, for the first time I thought to myself that
he had a better chance of winning the election
than I could have ever imagined.
Since Trumps victory, Ive seen all kinds of
Tim Bajari media reports on why he won and how in the
world the pollsters got this so wrong. While there
have been a lot of explanations, one key
observation from Dean Baquet, executive editor
of the New York Times, should also be a warning
for Silicon Valley and its view that the world
starts and ends with it.
Mr. Baquet praised his political team and other
Times journalists for agility and creativity,
citing articles about Mr. Trumps taxes and Mrs.
Clintons record in Libya. But in an interview in
his office, he said, If I have a mea culpa for
journalists and journalism, its that weve got to
do a much better job of being on the road, out in
the country, talking to different kinds of people
than the people we talk toespecially if you
happen to be a New York-based news
organizationand remind ourselves that New
York is not the real world, he said on Nov. 9.
Similarly, we need to remind ourselves that
Silicon Valley is not the real world. I grew up here
and have seen its amazing growth. But in some
ways, our research and the tech media focuses
largely on those in the know instead of the real
people who use our products.
I am reminded of something I saw at Xerox
PARC in the late 1990sa two-handed mouse. I
and many others just did not think this product
made sense, but the engineer who created said he
thought people might like it.
To be fair, globalization means Silicon Valley
tech is getting into the hands of people of all
generations and income levels. But we still often
create products that are too complicated and
difficult to use, many of which fall by the wayside.
Taking a hint from the New York Times editor,
as tech researchers and marketing professionals,
we need to get out more, really talk to the people
Tim Bajari who use our products, and gain greater insight
into what they want and what will work for them.
Here at Creative Strategies, we try and do this We need to get
often, which includes going to college campuses out more, really
and talking with students directly, or when talk to the peo-
possible, visiting different cities around the U.S. ple who use our
I really think Silicon Valley needs to get beyond products, and
its insular way of thinking, and the 2016 polling gain greater in-
failures only reinforce that. sight into what
they want.
tim_bajarin@pcmag.com

REVIEWS
CONSUMER ELECTRONICS
Impossible I-1
$229.00
L l l m m
A Modern Instant Camera With

Advanced Tech
T
he Impossible I-1 is the first new camera in years to use classic
Polaroid 600 film. That it comes from Impossible, the company
responsible for saving the format, is no surprise. But some of its
features are head-turning: Its an analog instant camera that can be controlled
with a smartphone, and its lens is ringed by a series of LED lights that act as
both frame counter and flash. Its a solid camera that will appeal to those
committed to the Polaroid format, but it has some room for refinement. Our
Editors Choice remains the Lomography LomoInstant Wide, which uses a
different, less expensive film format made by Impossible rival Fujifilm.
DESIGN Impossible I-1
The I-1 features a sturdy plastic build with a matte- PROS Numerous film
black finish and yellow highlights. In fact, it matches types available.
one of my favorite Impossible films (the Third Man Supports autofocus
and autoexposure.
Records yellow-and-black duochrome) quite well. It has Wide-angle prime
a large base, necessary to accommodate the Polaroid lens. Manual exposure
600 film format, and a trapezoidal prism that directs via smartphone
connection. Built-in
light from the lens. The camera is noticeably smaller LED ring flash. Classic
than older 600 models, at 5.7 by 4.3 by 4.3 inches Polaroid format.
(HWD) and 15.5 ounces. CONS Battery drains
The I-1s lens is a wider angle than older Polaroids, a when not in use. Pop-
nod to a generation of smartphone photographers who up viewfinder takes
some getting used to.
believe a 28mm (full-frame equivalent) angle of view to Film is very expensive.
be standard. Its a complex design that uses different Color film needs
lenses to capture images at different distances while improvement.
Autoexposure can be
maintaining a constant field of view. This approach has tricky. Noisy focus
advantagesits wonderful to have an autofocusing motor. Flash doesnt
instant camera that can lock focus from 11.8 inches work when power is
low.
(0.3-meter) to infinity. But the action of the gears
putting the right lens in front of the leaf shutter is
obnoxiously noisy, a drawback for using the camera in
social situations.
The included viewfinder attaches to the top of the
camera magnetically and folds down when not in use. It
consists of two pieces of glassthe rear element
you put up to your eye and a front
element about an inch ahead of it.
Parallax can be an issue when
framing shots using a finder of this
type; if you dont have the two pieces
lined up properly, your shot wont be
what you expect. Theres a dot in
the rear element and a circle
imprinted on the front to aid
you. Center the dot in the circle,
and youre good to go for
framing.
Id prefer a more standard add-on optical viewfinder, like the type typically
available for wide-angle rangefinder lenses, but the magnetic mounting system
used by the I-1 precludes using a standard shoe mount viewfinder. Impossible
states that more accessories are coming that use its magnetic connection, but
none have been officially announced at this time.
The lens is surrounded by LEDs that serve a few different purposes. Primary
is a ring flash. Youll certainly need a flash when shooting indoors or in low
lightthe close focus lens is an f/7 at its widest, and the infinity lens is about
f/9. The LED ring has 12 total lights: Eight fire when youre photographing
subjects at a distance, and four are diffused for softer output and fire when
youre focusing close.
In a departure from classic Polaroid cameras, which are powered by batteries
inside the film packs themselves, the I-1 is powered by an internal rechargeable
battery. Its not removable, so you need to plug the camera into a USB wall
adapter to charge it. Impossible claims you can get 120 shots or about three
days worth of casual use from a full charge.
The three-day claim is an issue, though. Even when youre not using the
camera, the battery drains slowly, so you need to be mindful to top the I-1 off
before you take it out shooting. This is in stark contrast to classic Polaroid
models, which are ready to go at any moment. In my testing I found that a fully
charged I-1 is completely dead within a week of sitting on a shelf.
Its easy enough to check the level of charge. Just press the shutter button
when the camera is turned off, and the lights around the lens will light up to tell
you how much power is available. At least four of the seven lights must be lit for
the flash to work. For indoor shots, you definitely need the flash, and it can
provide fill for backlit subjects outdoors. Not having it available when the
battery is low is a problem.
AN LED HALO
A ring of LEDs line
the lens of the
Impossible I-1, acting
both as a flash and
as a battery life
indicator.
FILM
The camera works with Impossible 600 film (which includes an internal
battery, unused here) and I-1 film, which is a little less expensive as it omits the
battery thats needed to power legacy Polaroid cameras. But film isnt cheapan
eight-shot pack of I-1 film sells for $19.99, making the cost of each press of the
shutter about $2.50. (You can cut the cost to $2.38 per image by buying film
packs in quantities of three.)
Thats a steep price to pay for an image. The Instax Wide format used by the
LomoInstant Wide and Fujifilm Instax Wide 300 costs between $0.75 and
$1.09 per image, depending on how much you buy at a time. Currently, though,
Instax Wide is sold only in a color format. With the I-1, you have the option of
using black-and-white film, a big plus for photographers with an artistic bent.
Impossibles color has some serious room for improvement. Even though a
new emulsion was introduced this year, washed-out colors and the need to
block the film from light as it develops are both real issues. You dont have to
keep the film in the dark for the full 20-to-30-minute development time
(though its not a bad idea to do so), but the first few minutes are crucial.
To help you better shield images, a long plastic filmImpossible calls it a frog
tongueis built into the camera. It completely covers the image after its ejected
from the camera. I carry an empty film box with me when in the field, and do
my best to maneuver the image into it without letting the sun hit it, but its a
tricky process. The lip of the frog tongue curls
around the bottom of the image frame. Once
you pull it away the black sheet quickly
retracts into the camera. If youre not careful
you can end up bending the film, and if that
happens early in the development process, it
can damage the image. Now, this isnt always a
bad thingsometimes happy accidents make for
stunning results.
The Generation 2.0 Black-and-White is a lot
better. You dont have to protect it from light as it
develops, so you can watch the image emerge. It has
strong contrast and detail and fully develops in about
15 minutes. When I first shot with the film last year, I noticed
that a sepia tint developed after the photos had spent about a week
in storage, but that didnt happen with the black-and-white film that
Impossible provided with the I-1.
Limited edition films based on the black-and-white
stock that deliver different results are also available.
The aforementioned Third Man Records edition is
black-and-yellow, for example, and orange- and red- Its an analog
tinted duochromes were available when we reviewed instant camera
the I-1. Since they are based on the black-and-white that can be
film, you dont have to shield them from light, and controlled with
images emerge quickly. You can also get film with a smartphone,
different color frames around the images, and opt for a and its lens is
circular frame if you arent a fan of the square look. ringed by a
series of LED
BLUETOOTH CONNECTIVITY
lights.
The I-1 doesnt give you a lot of control over images in
its normal operating mode. You can choose whether the
flash fires and dial in a bit of negative or positive
exposure compensation, but thats it.
But pairing it with your Android or iOS device via
Bluetooth and downloading the I-1 Camera app opens
up a world of control possibilities. You can manually set
focus, aperture, shutter speed, and flash power. An
exposure guide lets you know whether your image is
going to be underexposed or overexposed based on the
I-1s ambient meter, but youll want to hand-meter the
scene (either using something like the Lumu or your
phones camera in conjunction with a metering app) for
the best results. Impossible film is rated at ISO 640.
POSSIBLITIES
Pairing the
Impossible I-1 with
your Android or iOS
device via Bluetooth
and downloading the
I-1 Camera app opens
up a world of control
features.
A PICTURE IS
WORTH... A LOT
The cost of each
photo is about $2.50.
You can cut the cost
to $2.38 per image if
you buy film packs in
quantities of three.
But thats an
expensive image.
Manual control is a big plus for shooting images that stand apart from
traditional snapshots. Event photographers can combine a long exposure and
the flash to both freeze a crisp image of wedding guests on the dance floor and
surround them with blur, for examplejust as you would with an SLR with full
manual control.
Note that only manual focus is available when working in manual mode via
Bluetooth. I would have liked autofocus enabled, as estimating the distance
between camera and subject is an unnecessary pain.
Other creative functions are available via the app, including a basic self-timer
option, a noise trigger (think of it as a Clapper for your camera), and two types
of light paintingone that shoots a long exposure and lets you use your phones
LED flash to paint in white light, and another that uses the phones screen to
paint in different colors.
A scanner setting digitizes your finished images using the phones camera.
You can shoot at a skewed angle to avoid glare, and the app eliminates
distortion; you just need to identify each corner of the the photo. I opted to scan
images for this review using a flatbed scanner. I used an empty film cartridge as
a film holder, so the physical image doesnt touch the scanner glass itself. That
eliminates the distracting Newtons Rings effect that you can get when photos
come in direct contact with the scanner glass.
CONCLUSIONS
I had really high hopes for the Impossible I-1. The company is doing an
admirable job at a task that some dubbed impossiblekeeping Polaroid film
alive in the 21st century. And its attacked that task in an ambitious manner, not
only reverse-engineering a complex chemical process but also developing new
hardware to use the film. The I-1 is a solid first effort, but like the companys
first attempts at mass producing instant film, theres some room for
improvement.
Image quality is strong, with a wide-angle lens thats
sharper than youll get with most eBay Polaroid 600
models, and the ability to control exposure manually via
your smartphone is an excellent feature for creative Image quality
photographers. And I absolutely adore the quality of the is strong, with
black-and-white and duochrome films. Black-and-white a wide-angle
is currently available only in the small Instax Mini lens thats
format, and no one else has toned duochrome instant sharper than
film available. Its likely only a matter of time before the youll get with
black-and-white Instax Mini film is also sold in the most eBay
larger Wide format.
Polaroid 600
But the color stock still has a long way to go to match
models.
the quality of Instax film. And other issues with the
camera cant be ignored, most notably the battery.
Given the cost to shoot, the I-1 is a camera that you will
likely want to grab to capture an image or two and then
put away until the next moment you want to preserve in
a physical, tactile format. But with a battery that holds a
charge only for up to a week, youll need to plan your
instant photography carefully. That kills the spontaneity
of the instant film format. I have faith that Impossibles
color film will get better. And the ability to charge the
I-1 via USB does help ameliorate the battery issue.
Despite it not having as wide a variety of film types
available, were leaving our Editors Choice with the
Lomography LomoInstant Wide, which is much more
economical to use and costs less up front.
JIM FISHER

REVIEWS
Touch-Screen Remote and

Hub Make a Perfect Couple
Logitechs Harmony line has been one of the Logitech
biggest names in universal remotes for years, Harmony Elite
and it gets more and more advanced. The $298
latest and most powerful iteration is the L L L l m

EDITORS
CHOICE
Harmony Elite, a bundle that combines the
Harmony Hub and the Harmony 950 touch-screen
universal remote, replacing the Harmony Ultimate
Home package that came before it. Its extensively
programmable and can control both home
entertainment and smart-home devices. The package is
expensive, but its still far less than youd pay for a
custom control system installation. For its power and
versatility, the Harmony Elite earns our Editors Choice.
HARMONY HUB Logitech
The Harmony automation hub has remained largely Harmony Elite
unchanged since it launched as the Harmony Home PROS Tons of
Hub. Its a glossy black puck measuring 1.0 by 4.9 by supported home
entertainment and
4.2 inches (HWD), about the size of a Roku Premiere+. home automation
Its a wide-angle IR transmitter, so you can simply place devices. App control.
it in front of your TV or in your media console. CONS Expensive.
Two 3.5mm ports on the back panel let you connect Alexa skill is very
the two included IR receivers, small plastic lumps on limited.
long wires that you can set in front of any device the
Hub cant reach (handy if you put the Hub in a cabinet
and still want to control your TV). The Hub gets power
from a micro USB port on the back with the included
cable and wall adapter. The back also holds a pairing/ YOURE IN
CONTROL
reset button. The Logitech
Harmony Elite remote
REMOTE is a sleek, 7.4-inch
black wand with a
The remote is the star of the show. 2.5-inch touch screen
Its a sleek, 7.4-inch black wand built into the top half.
with a 2.5-inch touch screen
built into the top half. The bright,
colorful screen displays Devices
and Activities in two separate lists by
default, which lets you drill down into
different sets of controls based on the
active device or the activity running. The
screen also provides access to a Settings
menu, though the vast majority of adjustments
must be made through the Harmony app.
The touch screen provides access to the bulk of
the systems functions and settings, but the remote
still has a welcome handful of physical buttons for
common activities. Theres a prominent direction pad
flanked by volume and channel rockers on the left and
right, with playback controls directly above them. Menu
and four color buttons sit below the pad, with a set of
four home automation buttons and a dimmer rocker
beneath them.
Two charging contacts sit on the bottom of the
remote, around a micro USB port covered by a rubber
door. The contacts keep the remote charged when it sits
in the included cradle. The micro USB port is used to The remote is
update the remotes firmware and sync it if you want to extensively
use the Windows or Mac Harmony software instead of programmable
the Android or iOS apps; you need the wired connection and can
for firmware updates, but everything else can be set up control both
on the apps. home
entertainment
SETUP
and smart-
Setup is fairly easy, but getting all of your devices and
home devices.
activities acting the exact way you want them to can be a
tedious process. To start, plug in the Harmony Hub and
install the Harmony app on your mobile device. The app
walks you through connecting the Hub to your Wi-Fi
network and creating a free Harmony account to
manage your settings. After that, the app helps you
connect the remote and make sure its
working with the Hub.
You can program your devices
into the remote at any point after
you set up the Hub. Enter the
brand and model of your TV, media
streamer, Blu-ray player, or game system
and it will go on the list of devices the remote THE HANDY
knows to control. TVs and other IR-controlled HARMONY HUB
The Harmony Hub is a
electronics will work automatically, but you might need glossy black puck
to take one or two extra steps for non-IR electronics; measuring 1.0 by 4.9
when I added my PlayStation 4 to the remote, for by 4.2 inches (HWD),
about the size of a
instance, the app directed me to go into the PS4 and Roku Premiere+.
add the remote as a Bluetooth keyboard.
Home automation devices are added through their
own menu on the app, which lets you select from a
variety of smart home systems, including LIFX, Lutron,
Nest, Philips Hue, and SmartThings. Device support
isnt quite as diverse as it with the Wink Hub 2, but
youll find most big-name brands and products.
THE GOLDEN
TOUCH
The Logitech
Harmony Elite
remote lets you
control your home
entertainment
system but also a
number of smart
home devices. Its
touch screen
changes menus
depending upon use.
Once your devices are set up, you can control them individually by tapping on
the remotes touch screen or on the app. The buttons on the remote directly
control the active device, and the touch screen (and app) expand to offer
additional options, such as numbers and inputs. I got the remote to control my
TV and PS4 flawlessly, and I could switch between them in the Devices menu.
ACTIVITIES, AUTOMATION, AND ALEXA

A big automation draw here are Activities, remote-control macros you set up in
the app that activate and configure multiple devices at once. For example, a
Watch TV Activity can turn on the TV and cable box, change the input to the
cable box, and set the remote to control it.
The home automation buttons on the remote are similarly simple to use. You
configure the four buttons to activate specific devices or perform specific tasks
through the app. It took about a minute to set a button on the remote to switch
my Philips Hue White Ambient lights among four different scenes with a short
tap and to turn them all off with a long tap. That said, you can assign only one
function to each button, so you need to pick and choose wisely.
The Harmony now works with Amazons Alexa voice assistant, so if you have
an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot, you can trigger activities with voice commands.
Unfortunately, Alexas Harmony skill can only start or stop activities. You can
turn your TV on and set the right input by talking, but after that you need the
remote or your smartphone to actually control anything. There are no TV or
playback controls, so you cant use Alexa to pause playback or adjust the volume
on the fly. Its frustratingly limited, and I gave up on using the feature after a
few tries. It would be much more useful if it could trigger simple commands and
activities. Logitech plans to expand the Alexa skill in the future to allow more
direct control of your devices with voice commands.
CONCLUSIONS
The Logitech Harmony Elite is the most full-featured remote control you can
get without paying for a custom system, which tend to cost a lot more. Its still
expensive, but you get a powerful remote control and automation hub combo
that can take over both your home entertainment system and your smart home
devices. The bulk of the price is for the powerful touch-screen remote, so you
can save some money by buying just the Harmony Hub ($100) or the Harmony
Hub with a button-only remote in the Harmony Companion bundle ($150). For
features and polish, though, the Harmony Elite is Logitechs flagship remote
and our Editors Choice.
WILL GREENWALD

REVIEWS
OnePlus 3: A Solid Choice

for an Unlocked Phone
W
ell, that was fast! The OnePlus 3T, available OnePlus 3T
in 64GB ($439) and 128GB ($479 models, $479.00
has arrived to replaced the OnePlus 3 L L L l m
($399), which was just released this summer. With the
3T, you get the very latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 821
processor complemented by 6GB of RAM, making the
phone one of the fastest weve tested. Camera
performance has improved with a higher megapixel
front sensor, the already excellent battery life is even
longer, and the software remains highly customizable.
If you have a OnePlus 3, youll probably want to hold
onto it, but if youre in the market for a new unlocked
phone, the OnePlus 3T is a solid alternative to the ZTE
Axon 7 and a much more affordable option than the
Google Pixel XL.
DESIGN, DISPLAY, AND FEATURES OnePlus 3T
Put the OnePlus 3T next to the OnePlus 3, and you PROS Relatively
wont be able to tell the difference. The two phones are affordable. Fast
physically identical, sharing the same metal unibody performance.
Attractive metal
build and same button and port placement. They can unibody. Solid front
even use the same cases and accessories (including the and rear camera. 10-
OnePlus Loop VR headset), and both phones are plushour battery life.
Clean UI and highly
available in gray or gold, though the gray 3T is slightly customizable
darker (pictured below). software. Larger
The two phones are 6.0 by 2.9 by 0.3 inches (HWD), storage model
available. Dual SIM
and both weigh 5.6 ounces, putting the 3T in the same cards.
size and weight class as phablet-size metal slabs
CONS Same screen
including the Pixel XL (6.1 by 3.0 by 0.3 inches, 5.9 resolution as the
ounces) and the Axon 7 (6.0 by 2.9 by 0.3 inches, 6.2 OnePlus 3 and less
ounces). I find it a bit too wide and tall to reach sharp than the
competition. Lacks
everything with my thumb, so its difficult to use the waterproofing and
phone with one hand, especially since theres no option expandable storage.
to resize the screen.
CONNECTION
OPTIONS
A 3.5mm audio jack,
USB-C port, and
speaker grille can all
be found on the
bottom of the
OnePlus 3.
As mentioned, the ports and buttons are the same as

those on the OnePlus 3. On the right panel is a dual SIM
card slot with a power button below it. The bottom has
a 3.5mm headphone jack, a USB-C port, and a fairly
loud bottom-firing speaker. The left edge houses a
handy alert slider, letting you quickly and easily switch
between Ring, Silent, and Do Not Disturb modes.
The display is a 5.5-inch 1,920-by-1,080 Optic
AMOLED panel, the same resolution as the previous
generation phones with the same pixel density
(401ppi). That means the Quad HD panels on the Axon You get the
7 (538ppi) and Pixel XL (534ppi) are both significantly latest
sharper. Its a pity that given this phones higher price, Snapdragon 821
OnePlus chose not to bump up display resolution. processor and
That said, the screen is nothing to scoff at. Maximum 6GB of RAM,
brightness has been ramped up and color calibration making the
improved. Colors are accurate but also vivid when using phone one of
the default sRGB mode, and customization options are
the fastest
available to make color temperature warmer or cooler.
weve tested.
Outdoor visibility is excellent thanks to the combination
of high maximum brightness and a polarizing layer
between the screen and the protective pane of Gorilla
Glass 4. Viewing angles are similarly excellent. Using
the OnePlus 3T side-by-side with the Pixel XL, I never
noticed the difference in display resolution. The one ON DISPLAY
exception is that when youre using a VR headset, youll A 1080p Optic
AMOLED display has
notice more pixelation on the 3T. increased brightness
On the lip below the display is a fingerprint scanner and a polarizing layer
that doubles as a capacitive home button with back and for greater visibility.
recent buttons on either side. You can enable various

programmable functions (launching the
camera, opening a previously used app,
bringing up voice assistant, and so on) for
each button with either a long press or a
double tap. Other customization options
include swapping the order of the buttons
or turning them off entirely in favor of the
on-screen navigation bar.
Despite its rich array of features, the
OnePlus 3T isnt protected from
submersion in water. And while neither
the Pixel XL nor the Axon 7 offer this
feature, its becoming more common on
flagship phones and would have been a
nice addition.
BUTTONS AND
CONTROLS
On the left side of
the OnePlus 3 youll
find an alert slider for
controlling
notification access,
along with a volume
rocker. The right side
(shown here) has a
dual SIM card slot
and a power button.
NETWORK PERFORMANCE AND CONNECTIVITY

As an unlocked phone supporting LTE bands 1/2/4/5/7/12/17/30, the OnePlus
3T shares the same network compatibility as its predecessor and will work with
GSM carriers such as AT&T and T-Mobile without any trouble. But unlike the
Pixel XL, the OnePlus 3T has no support for CDMA carriers, including Sprint
and Verizon. The X12 modem is also limited to the same Category 6 LTE speeds
as the OnePlus 3, so in our testing it proved to be slower than the Pixel XL,
which can support speeds up to Category 12 (once that kind of coverage exists).
That said, network speeds were still good when we tested the phone on AT&T in
midtown Manhattan, averaging 15Mbps down. Other connectivity protocols
include dual-band Wi-Fi, NFC, and Bluetooth 4.2.
The phone also supports two SIM cards, allowing you to make calls using two
separate phone numbersa handy feature for work or travel and one thats
fairly uncommon in the U.S. Unfortunately, the second SIM slot isnt also
compatible with microSD cards, which would arguably be more useful for most
people.
Call quality was great in our tests. Transmissions come across with clear and
audible tones, and strong noise cancellation blots out most background noise.
Earpiece and speakerphone volume are quite loud and can be used to carry on a
conversation in a noisy environment.
PROCESSOR AND BATTERY

The OnePlus 3T is powered by the very latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 821
processor clocked at 2.35GHz and has 6GB RAM and UFS 2.0 flash storage
under the hood. All of this makes for one of the fastest phones weve tested. The
3T scored an impressive 159,144 on AnTuTu, which measures overall system
performance. It beats the Snapdragon
820-powered OnePlus 3 by a significant
amount (141,429), as well as the Axon 7
(141,989). On Geekbench, the 3T has
excellent single-core and multi-core
scores (1881/4276), outperforming the
Pixel XL (1661/4146), though not by
very much.
Unsurprisingly, real-world use is buttery
smooth. Launching apps and multitasking is so
quick it feels almost instantaneous, and during
testing, I was never able to put the phone under
enough strain to make it stutter. Gaming
performance is also excellent. Games like GTA San
Andreas and Asphalt 8 run without any hint of STAYING ALIVE
Battery life is top-notch,
latency or dropped frames. and the OnePlus 3s
Battery life is stellar thanks to the large 3,400mAh proprietary Dash
cell combined with a relatively undemanding Charger allows the
phone to be charged to
display. The phone outlasted our 10-hour test video full in less than an hour.
in which we stream full-screen video over LTE while
set to maximum brightness. At the end of the test,
we still had 5 percent charge remaining. That gives the OnePlus 3T one of the
longest runtimes among the phones weve tested, matching the Samsung Galaxy
S7 Edge and handily beating the Pixel XL (6 hours, 43 minutes) and the Axon 7
(6 hours) by several hours. Enabling the Battery Saver feature will also improve
runtime by turning off vibration, location services, and most background data.
And the proprietary Dash Charger allows the phone to be charged to full in less
than an hour.
CAMERA AND VIDEO

The 3T has matching 16-megapixel cameras on the front and the back, but the
one on the rear also supports optical image stabilization (OIS) and 4K video
recording. Generally, the camera performance of the rear sensor hasnt changed
significantly from the OnePlus 3. Its still a fast, crisp shooter outdoors and in
other well-lit settings. Theres no noise to be found in pictures taken outside,
the camera app is quick to launch, and autofocus is fast and accurate.
I was able to
take some
exceptionally
crisp selfies
and video, and
auto exposure
adjusted well
to lighting
conditions.
That said, low-light shooting is still not exceptional.
While the 3T manages a respectable level of clarity in
darker settings, a shootout with the Pixel XL
emphasizes its shortcomings. With a 1.12-micron pixel
size, the 3T simply cant gather as much light as the
larger 1.55-micron pixels on the Pixel XL. That means
despite the lack of OIS, the Pixel XL can take clearer,
less grainy, and better-lit photos when snapping in Auto
HDR mode
The rear sensor is capable of recording video in 4K at
30fps. Its smooth and fairly stable, but in a testament
to Googles impressive software optimization, the Pixel
XL was more stable during testing despite offering only
electronic image stabilization.
The quality of the front-facing camera is top notch.
Thanks to its high megapixel count, I was able to take
some exceptionally crisp selfies and video, and auto
exposure adjusted well to account for lighting
conditions indoors and outdoors.
The Pixel XL has a better and more reliable sensor, at
least with regard to its rear camera and video recording.
The 3T can hold its own in daylight shots, though, and
it has more options to fine tune photos with manual
controls. You can tweak ISO, white balance, focus,
shutter speed, and other settings. You can also shoot in
Raw for higher quality images.
SOFTWARE A THIN SKIN
The lightweight
The OnePlus 3T comes running Android 6.0.1 OxygenOS skin runs
Marshmallow with its OxygenOS skin. Its a bit on top of Android 6.0.1
disappointing that the phone doesnt have Nougat yet, (Marshmallow) and
offers excellent
but OnePlus has promised it will be coming by the end customization
of the year. OxygenOS live up to its name by being a options.
lightweight skin with a look that should be immediately
familiar Nexus users. App icons havent changed, nor
has the notification shade, or app drawer. The only
immediately distinguishable difference is that when you
swipe left from the home screen you get Shelf, OnePlus
custom home screen. Shelf shows you your favorite
apps, most frequent contacts, and recent photos, also
giving you the option of adding additional widgets.
But what really sets apart OxygenOS are its
customization options. It offers a built-in manager for
themes, custom app icon support, rearrangeable
buttons, and different accents and colors for the
Settings menu and status bar, including a spiffy-looking
dark theme. You can also lock individual apps and
require a password or fingerprint verification to unlock
them, useful for sensitive selfies. Gesture support is also
on board, allowing you to double tap to wake, draw on
the screen to open the flashlight and use a three finger
swipe to take a screenshot.
Bloatware is minimal. Swiftkey is integrated as one of
the available keyboards (the other is Googles), but the
phone asks permission before enabling either. Aside
from that, it has a File Manager, Weather app, and The OnePlus
Voice Recorder, all of which I found useful. Out of a 3T is the
total of 128GB of storage, 13GB is occupied by the OS most
and UI, leaving you with 115GB free. Its an ample expensive
amount of space, making up for the lack of expandable phone the
storage. company has
ever made,
CONCLUSIONS
but its also
OnePlus has come a long way since the invite-only days
the fastest.
of the OnePlus One and OnePlus 2. The OnePlus 3T is
the most expensive phone the company has ever made,
but its also the fastest. The smooth performance
combined with long-lasting battery life, an improved
front camera, and clean and customizable UI make it an
excellent choice. But depending on storage capacity, the
ZTE Axon 7 costs less and offers largely similar
performance with a higher-resolution screen,
thundering front-facing speakers, and high-quality
audio.
The Google Pixel XL retains its Editors Choice status
for its excellent camera, unbeatable voice assistant,
24/7 live support, and a guarantee of reliable Android
updates. But if some of those aspects arent important
to you, then the 3T could be a compelling option,
costing nearly half as much with slightly better
performance and a much longer battery life.
AJAY KUMAR

REVIEWS
HARDWARE
This Hybrid Is an Ideal

Second PC
The Asus Transformer Mini (T102HA-D4-GR) Asus
is an entry-level detachable-hybrid Windows Transformer Mini
(T102HA-D4-GR)
tablet that comes with useful accessories,
$379.00
including a keyboard cover and a pressure-
EDITORS L L L l m
CHOICE
sensitive stylus, that cost extra with some
other tablets. It doesnt have the most powerful
processor, but it still gets full marks on usability, screen
quality, local storage, and battery life. Its an ideal
second PC to have around the house when you simply
want to watch Netflix in bed or quickly edit Office
documents while traveling light.
DESIGN AND FEATURES Asus
The Transformer Mini T102HA has a magnesium- Transformer Mini
(T102HA-D4-GR)
aluminum alloy and glass body, which feels more
premium than plastic-clad tablets such as the HP PROS Compact and
light. Comes with
Pavilion x2 and the Dell Venue 8 Pro 3000 Series. The keyboard cover and
matte-silver color of the back panel matches the gray stylus. USB 3.0 port.
keyboard cover, though a bright-orange cover is an Fingerprint reader
works with Windows
option too. The system measures 0.5 by 10.2 by 6.7 Hello. Highly
inches (HWD), so its compact frame wont be too bulky adjustable kickstand.
to stow in a small bag or to carry around the house. It CONS No USB-C port.
weighs 1.18 pounds alone and 1.75 pounds with the Quirky keyboard.
keyboard cover connected. A fabric loop is built into the Occasionally finicky
touchpad.
keyboard cover, so you can clip the included stylus to
the tablet.
The chiclet-style keys have good travel, but theyre HYBRID HERO
tiny (like those on a mid-2000s netbook) and close The T102HAs
keyboard cover uses a
together, and some are oddly shaped (the right Shift key pogo plug connector
is tiny and the Fn key is oddly placed by the arrow to carry its signals to
keys); this makes touch typing less accurate than on the the tablet, and a two-
stage magnetic latch
Surface 3 or on larger tablets. Its good for occasional tilts the non-backlit
text entry, but I wouldnt want to type a novel keyboard up.
manuscript on it. The one-piece touchpad works fine for
the most part, but theres a bit of lag when you first
touch it.
Like the Surface 3 and its pricier stablemate, the Microsoft Surface Pro 4, the
T102HA has a kickstand that swings out of the back panel. It can stop at a wide
range of angles, from straight up to an almost horizontal lean. The kickstand is
a rather thin panel of metal, but you cant knock the usability when youre
watching a video or typing a document into the included copy of Microsoft
Office Mobile (which comprises Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote).
The 10.1-inch screen has a 1,280-by-800 resolution, which is common for
10-inch or smaller tablets: The Lenovo IdeaPad Miix 310, the InFocus Q Tablet,
and the Nextbook Flexx 9 all have 1,280-by-800 screens. The aspect ratio is
16:10, which means that 720p and 1080p videos will have to be scaled down
and letterboxed. The screen is bright, rated at 400 nits, so you can easily see
images in a well-lit room. Colors pop, too, making Netflix or YouTube videos
look good. The stereo speakers on the sides of the tablet body are loud and
clear; they should fill a medium-size room with music or movie audio.
The included stylus is pressure sensitive, so you can draw lines with varied
thicknesses in apps that support the functionality. There are two programmable
buttons on the side of the stylus, but no eraser or top shortcut button for
invoking OneNote. Because the stylus is more responsive than the touchpad,
you may want to keep it handy.
Connectivity options are very good for a model in this price range. On the top
of the tablet is a microSD card reader, and on the left are a headset jack, a micro
HDMI port, a micro USB port for the charger, and a full-size USB 3.0 port for
connecting memory sticks, hard drives, and so on. It has no USB-C port, which
isnt quite a deal breaker, though it would give the T102HA a measure of future
proofing. You can use a phone charger to provide power, but it will take a while
if the charger is rated for low wattage. Wireless connections
are handled via 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1, an
improvement over older tablets that only offer
802.11g or n.
HANDWRITING
INPUT
A stylus pen comes
with the tablet. Use
it with Windows
programs such as
Sticky Notes,
Sketchpad, Fresh
Paint, OneNote, and
Screen Sketch.
A round fingerprint sensor on the back panel looks and functions similarly to
the Touch ID button on Apple iPhones and the new Apple MacBook Pro; its
mainly for logging in with Windows Hello. Reaching around the tablet to
activate it is a little awkward, but I got used to it quickly.
The T102HA has 4GB of RAM and 128GB of eMMC flash storage onboard.
Thats much better than inexpensive tablets such as the Nextbook Flexx 9 (1GB
RAM, 32GB storage) or the InFocus Q Tablet (2GB RAM, 32GB storage). Most
tablets in this category have only 2GB of memory; youre better set for
multitasking with 4GB. I was able to run Word Mobile along with seven tabs in
Edge, with two of them playing 1080p HD videos in Netflix and YouTube.
Opening more tabs than that started to make things sluggish while the new
pages loaded, though performance returned to normal once they were up, and
both streams ran without stutter in the background. The T102HA is covered by
a one-year warranty.
PERFORMANCE
The T102HA is equipped with a quad-core Intel Atom x5-Z8350 processor with
integrated Intel HD Graphics 400. It returned a decent score of 1,463 points on
the PCMark 8 Work Conventional general-performance test, lagging the Asus
Transformer Book T100HA (1,698) but matching other competitors including
the HP Pavilion x2, the Lenovo IdeaPad Miix 310, and the Dell Venue 8 Pro.
The Nextbook Flexx 9 and the RCA Cambio W1162 came in about 100 points
behind the T102HA.
MAGIC TOUCH
A round fingerprint
sensor on the back
panel looks and
functions similarly to
the Touch ID button
on Apple iPhones
and the new Apple
MacBook Pro.
The system was at least able to run all three of our multimedia tests. It took 11
minutes 55 seconds to complete the Handbrake test and 17:32 on Photoshop,
and it returned a score of 97 points on CineBench. None of these tablets would
be suitable for multimedia power users who stress out about project deadlines,
but they can handle quick edits: say, reducing red eye or changing a picture
from color to black and white. Given the single-digit frame rates we saw on the
Heaven and Valley tests, 3D gaming is pretty much a no-go on this or any other
budget tablet.
Battery life, on the other hand, was exceptional. The T102HA lasted 14 hours
14 minutes on our rundown test, one of the longest times weve seen. The
Lenovo IdeaPad Miix 310 beat it by more than 2 hours (16:26), but the third-
place finishers (the Asus Transformer Book T100HA and the HP Pavilion x2)
made it only to 10 and a half hours. The other tablets lasted around 7 hours.
CONCLUSION
Its no speed demon, but the Asus Transformer Mini (T102HA-D4-GR) is an
inexpensive alternative to Microsoft Surface Pro tablets, considering that you
get a keyboard cover without having to shell out an additional $129. The
T102HA might cost more than the Transformer Book T100HA, but you also get
almost 4 more hours of battery life, better wireless connectivity, and a stylus.
Sometimes you need a lightweight tablet that can run all the Windows
programs youre used to, and you dont want to make too many compromises
just to come in at a bargain-basement price. The Transformer Book T100HA is
a bit closer to a traditional laptop, but the Transformer Mini is more portable in
its tablet mode and still has strong connectivity options, a nice display, all the
necessary accessories, and that extraordinary battery life. It replaces the
Transformer Book T100HA as our latest Editors Choice for entry-level
detachable-hybrid tablets.
JOEL SANTO DOMINGO

REVIEWS
HARDWARE
A Fast, Reliable SSD at a

Surprising Price
Some users are looking for advanced security Oyen Digital
features or ruggedized drives to take into the MiniPro 3.1
USB-C Portable
field, but many are simply looking for a Solid-State Drive
reliable and fast device to store their data for $299.00
EDITORS
CHOICE
travel. The Oyen Digital MiniPro 3.1 USB-C L L L l h
Portable Solid-State Drive (1TB, $299) does exactly that
with its sleek design and fast data transfer speeds. Its
also one of the most affordable 1TB drives around,
offering a combination of speed and value thats hard to
beat. Factor in the inclusion of two types of cables and
no weak spot in testing, and the MiniPro 3.1 earns our
Editors Choice.
DESIGN AND FEATURES Oyen Digital
Although it isnt isnt especially small or visually unique, MiniPro 3.1
USB-C Portable
the MiniPro 3.1 is sleek and looks professional. The Solid-State Drive
sides are grooved, and the top has a slightly raised
PROS Very good
middle section, both for style, and the bottom has four value. Fast data
rubber feet to prevent sliding. The all-aluminum case transfer speeds over
(ours is black, but it also comes in silver) measures 0.77 USB-C and USB 3.1.
Includes cables for
by 4.9 by 3.2 inches (HWD) and weighs 10 ounces. Its connecting to USB-C
not the most portable drive weve tested at that size and and USB 3.0 ports.
weight, but it can still be easily tossed into a bag or Sleek aluminum build.
slipped into a larger pocket. The SanDisk Extreme 900 CONS Lacks any extra
Portable SSD, a similarly quick drive, measures 0.7 by features.
5.25 by 3.25 inches and weighs 5.7 ounces, while the

G-Technology G-Drive slim SSD USB-C is super thin,
but otherwise in the same ballpark at 0.39 by 5.08 by
3.23 inches and 4.48 ounces. The Adata SE730 External
SSD is even more portable, at just 0.4 by 1.7 by 2.8
inches and 1.3 ounces.
The MiniPro 3.1 features an on-off switch, which is
related to the optional DC port you can use to power the
drive. The adapter is not included, though, so we used
the system only on USB-C power. We tested the BACK TO BASICS
The MiniPro 3.1
1-terabyte-capacity version of this drive; in reality, you doesnt offer many
actually get roughly 950GB of storage in practice once frills, but it does
the drive is up and running. The MiniPro 3.1 drive is deliver fast transfer
speeds, plenty of
also available in 256GB ($119), 512GB ($179) and 2TB storage, and a solid
($729) capacities. metal build at a nearly
There are no extras beyond USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 unmatched price.
support with the MiniPro 3.1its not billed as a

rugged or security-focused drive but as a nicely
built option at an attractive price point. Its
formatted for exFAT out of the box, meaning
you can switch it between a Mac and a
Windows PC without having to reformat the
drive. The drive comes with both a USB-C
toUSB-C cable and a USB-CtoUSB 3.0
cable. It is covered by a limited three-year warranty.
PERFORMANCE
As an SSD, the MiniPro 3.1 offers
data transfers speeds that are
inherently faster than those of hard
drives, and it also stacked up well against other
SSDs. On the Blackmagic disk speed test over
USB 3.0, its write speed was 400MBps and its
read speed was 427MBps. Thats very similar to
the SanDisk Extreme 900, which achieved
417MBps write and 425MBps read. The G-Drive
slim SSD was a good bit slower when writing
(290MBps) but hung around the same score when
reading (427MBps), while the VisionTek USB Pocket SSD
was even more lopsided in that direction (138MBps write and 421MBps read).
The MiniPro 3.1 also performed quite well on our file transfer test, which
measures how quickly a drive can copy a 1.22GB file. It transferred the file in
4.8 seconds over USB 3.0 and in 4.4 seconds over USB-Cthe SSD itself is fast
enough that the interface has an almost negligible effect. The G-Drive took 13
seconds to transfer the same file, and the SanDisk Extreme 900 was again very
close at 5 seconds via USB 3.0 and 4 seconds via USB-C. Overall, the drive is on
the faster side of comparable SSDs, with no particular weak area.
The MiniPro also represents an excellent value. At $299, it comes in at 29
cents per gigabyte. That undercuts the G-Drives 38 cents per gigabytewhich
is already a good dealand the SanDisk Extreme 900s 42 cents per gigabyte.
The Samsung Portable SSD T3 offers twice as much storage, but its a much
pricier proposition at $849.99 and 42 cents per gigabyte.
CONCLUSION
The Oyen Digital MiniPro 3.1 USB-C Portable Solid-State Drive is a fast, sturdy,
and no-fuss SSD. Its also one of the most affordable options out there, which
really raises its appeal despite its lack of any noteworthy extras. If you simply
want somewhere to store the files you need on hand at work, home, or on the
road, its tough to beat the speed and value of the MiniPro, which earns an
Editors Choice.
MATTHEW BUZZI

REVIEWS
HARDWARE
Asus ROG GT51

$4,999.00
L L L l m
Fast Gaming Rig Costs Less

Than Youd Think
The Asus ROG GT51 combines a powerful aesthetic with equally
strong internal components, resulting in a distinctive looking and
high-performing gaming desktop. Design-wise, it may not be
everyones cup of tea, but its definitely a conversation pieceif you
EDITORS
CHOICE
want your rig to look like the gaming system it is, itll probably work
for you. With dual Pascal graphics cards, a ton of RAM, and a useful array of
ports and storage, the GT51 is able to run any modern game at maximum
settings with ease, even in 4K. For those buying without budget constraints, the
Falcon Northwest Talon (2016) is our Editors Choice gaming desktop for its
superior power (making it even more future proof) and gorgeous paint job, but
the Asus ROG GT51 earns an Editors Choice of its own for its extremely fast
performance at roughly half the price.
DESIGN AND FEATURES Asus ROG GT51
Theres no question that the GT51 is made to be seen, PROS Very fast
with a bold design that makes it look as though your performance. Capable
games are being powered by Megatron. This is of 60fps 4K gaming.
Reasonable price for
particularly evident in the front: A bronze, turbine-style the power. Eye-
air intake at the bottom dominates the panel, with a catching chassis.
color-changing ring of light that gives it the appearance CONS Bold design
of a living, thinking machine. could be divisive.
Two red light strips run vertically up the panel,
evoking the distinct look of Battlestar Galactica
Cylons. A window on the left side panel lets you see into
the surprisingly low-key interior. Both the interior and
front lighting are customizable, with eight million color
options. Some circuit patterns on top of the case further
suggest robots, as does the hexagonal mesh over the
side window.
TRANSFORM AND
ROLL OUT!
Theres no question
that the GT51 is
intended to be seen,
with a bold, robotic
design that makes it
look as though your
games are being
powered by Megatron.
The angular design has a lot in common with that of

the ROG laptop line. If you like one, youll probably like
the other, but theres no question that it screams
gamingwhich you may not want. The Talon is much
more understated, and the Maingear Rush X99 Super
Stock looks like a work of art in comparison. The design
of the more expensive Digital Storm Velox, on the other
hand, is underwhelming.
The GT51 will take up a serious chunk of your desk
real estate. It measures 23.11 by 10.31 by 22.99 inches
(HWD), which is a little larger than the sizable X99
Super Stock (21.4 by 8.8 by 22.6 inches) and a fair The angular
amount bigger than the Talon (17.5 by 8.2 by 19 inches). design has a lot
If youd like something that saves more space (and in common
money), the Acer Predator G1-710-70001, our midrange with that of
Editors Choice, measures only 16.46 by 4.33 by 13.70 the ROG laptop
inches. The GT51 also ships with a basic but satisfying line. If you like
mechanical keyboard and a mouse with adjustable one, youll
sensitivity settings.
probably like
Prebuilt with no options you can customize when
the other.
ordering, the GT51 isnt really geared toward DIY work.
The interior is oddly difficult to access, requiring the
removal of three extra-long screws and then tugging
harder than should be necessary to open the side panel
door. Theres a little room for additions inside, but for
the most part, its already complete. The GT51 has no
open memory slots, since the configuration includes
four 16GB DIMMs for 64GB total, but it does have
plenty of room for additional storage, thanks to five
open drive bays (a total of six drives can fit). As is, the
machine comes with 1TB of hard drive storage and 1
additional terabyte via two 512GB NVMe solid-state
drives (SSDs) in a RAID Level 0 array.
ITS ALIVE!
The turbines lighting
slowly shifts colors
and becomes
particularly dramatic
in overclock mode.
The ROG GT51 is loaded with port options. The front panel holds three USB
3.0 ports, a USB-C port, microphone and headphone jacks, and buttons for
Power and Overlock (more on that later). The back panel includes six more USB
3.0 ports and two USB 2.0 ports, as well as an Ethernet jack and audio out.
Between the two graphics cards are three DisplayPort and two HDMI outputs.
That many USB and video ports, plus the graphics power, make this system
ideal for plugging in a VR headset. The desktop also boasts 802.11ac Wi-Fi and
Bluetooth 4.1. Asus supports the GT51 with a one-year warranty.
PERFORMANCE
With an Intel Core i7-6700K processor thats overclocked out of the box from
4.2GHz to 4.6GHz, 64GB of memory, and dual Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080
graphics cards, the GT51 is a powerhouse. Its more than sufficient for VR
gaming, easily clearing the recommended specs. (A VR-capable machine need
not be quite so expensive, though). The CPUs, in addition to the one-click
overclock activation through the button on the front, are aged 40 hours by Asus
and fine-tuned, which in theory leads to better-than-stock performance. (We
kept the overclock active for testing, since most users looking for the best out of
their system will likely keep it on when gaming.)
The GT51 scored well across the board, earning 3,392 points on the PCMark 8
Work Conventional productivity test. This falls into the lower end of the same
range as the Talon (3,433) and the X99 Super Stock (3,412), though the
CybertronPC Titanium (4,350) and the Maingear F131 X99 Super Stock (3,977)
saw even more success on this test. The GT51 fell a bit further behind on the
multimedia tests, but they are more expensive PCs, and the GT51s scores were
still plenty fastits suitable for any day-to-day tasks or processor-intensive
projects regardless.
CONNECTIVITY
GALORE
The front panel holds
three USB 3.0 ports,
a USB-C port,
microphone and
headphone jacks,
and buttons for
Power and Overlock.
Since gamers are the main target for the GT51, the 3DMark and Heaven and
Valley tests are the best ways to measure it. On 3DMark Cloud Gate and Fire
Strike Extreme, it scored 36,479 points and 15,964 points, respectively. Those
scores blow away those of most other systemsas they should, given the dual
GTX 1080sand only other super-expensive desktops are in the same ballpark
or better. The Talon scored 39,259 and 19,013 on these tests, while the X99
Super Stock scored 60,308 and 18,484. These both beat the ROG by a fairly
sizable margin. The Acer Predator G1 ($2,299.99) scored somewhat close on
Cloud Gate at 30,584 but fell way behind on the Fire Strike Extreme test at
9,263, which demonstrates the gap in power with a single-card desktop.
The same goes for the gaming results: On Heaven and Valley at 1,920-by-
1,080 resolution with the graphics set to Ultra, the GT51 averaged 210 frames
per second (fps) and 139fps, respectively. Turning the resolution up to 4K
caused frame rates to drop, but they remained playable at 60fps and 74fps.
These scores were reflected in my anecdotal testing with Doom: At 4K and
maximum settings, the GT51 was able to maintain 60fps constantly during
gameplay, not even dipping slightly during hectic combat sections. The Predator
G1 held around 30fps on these tests at 4K, which is pretty solid, but more
demanding games will require you to turn down some settings since its just
over the threshold, unlike the ROG.
CONCLUSION
When youre paying this much for a high-end gaming desktop, the performance
offered by the Asus ROG GT51 is exactly what youd hope for. It doesnt quite
reach the heights of the more extreme Maingear Rush X99 Super Stock or the
Falcon Northwest Talonboth of which are nearly double the price of the
GT51but it is more than sufficient to run anything currently on the market at
maximum settings. The Talon is still the top premium gaming desktop weve
tested, but not everyone can justify spending quite that much. The GT51 is a
ready-made powerhouse that will keep you playing for years to come, and at
half the price of the Talon, that makes it worthy of an Editors Choice.
MATTHEW BUZZI

REVIEWS
SOFTWARE
Better Editing and Search

in New Google Photos
W
ith a recent update, Google has greatly Google Photos
improved its Google Photos iPhone app. (for iPhone)
Already impressive thanks to excellent face Free
detection and (more or less) limitless storage, the app L L L l m
now includes smarter photo-editing features and

improved search. It outperforms Apples first-party
Photos app in some waysbut those who are serious
about iPhonography should check out our Editors
Choices in this category: Flickr, Instagram, and (for
those who want to really go to town with imaging
creativity) PicsArt.
PRICING AND BACKUP Google Photos
Google Photos is available as a free download in the (for iPhone)
iTunes App Store. You just need to sign into a Google PROS Effectively
account to get started, and you can easily switch among unlimited storage for
your pictures. New
multiple accountsa claim that iCloud cant make. smart photo-editing
The central Photos page displays all your recent tools powered by
snaps, and it has a fast-scrolling button to help you find Googles machine
learning. Creative and
your pictures quickly. If you have hundreds or sharing tools.
thousands of photos, youll really appreciate this Supports Live Photos.
button. You can also pinch to shrink and enlarge groups Face and object
detection. Search.
of photos. A hidden drawer on the left opens to reveal
the rest of the apps features. CONS Lacks some
advanced editing
Google Photos biggest selling point by far is its tools. Inconsistent
promise of unlimited photo backups. These images are search results.
stored in Google Drive and synced among all your Bottomless storage
limited to lower-res
enrolled devices; theyre available in the Web version of photos. No social
Google Photos, too. The catch is that Google doesnt photo-sharing
actually back up original photos that are larger than 16 component.
megapixels. Instead, it uploads a high-quality

(compressed) image that is, to most peoples eyes,
indistinguishable from the original. To store
uncompressed images, you have to pay for additional
storage. That may affect those who shoot with a D-SLR,
but for iPhone photos, it isnt an issue, since iPhone
cameras top out at 12 megapixels.
SIZE MATTERS
Google Photos offers
unlimited photo
backups, but it
compresses image
files that are larger
than 16 megapixels.
Note that you can now view Apples combination-photo-and-video Live
Photos in Google Photos. When you view a Live Photo on Google Drive, you see
only a video, however; the image component is lost. We had no trouble
uploading and viewing a test Live Photo in the app, however, even though we
were uploading only the compressed version of the photo. And it did not appear
to affect the almost bottomless storage provided by Google Photos for
compressed images.
Apple has a similar scheme, but you have to pay after you fill up iClouds
stingy free 5GB with images: A terabyte of space from Apple costs $9.99 per
month. Flickr also offers automatic photo backup and an entire terabyte of free
storage, which is more than enough for the average userenough, indeed, for
200,000 regular iPhone photos. Flickrs free terabyte includes any photo of up
to 200MB in size.
Google Drive, by comparison, has only 15GB available for free users and offers
a terabyte of storage for $9.99 per month. Dropbox offers photo backup, with
only 2GB of free storage, and OneDrive does the same, with 5GB for free. Many
online backup services throw in automatic backup of photos in their apps, too.
That said, no service weve found offers unrestricted unlimited storage for free.
When local storage becomes an issue, you can free up space on your device by
deleting the local copies of photos already uploaded to the cloud. Its a smart
feature that leverages Googles bottomless backup policy to help users. Note,
however, that if youve opted to back up only compressed versions of photos,
the uncompressed ones are deleted in this process. Apple offers a good solution
to the local storage issue by letting you keep lower-res images on the phone
while storing the full deals up in the cloud.
MAKE ROOM
When you need more
local storage, you can
free up space on your
device by deleting
the local copies of
photos already
uploaded to the
cloud.
GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH ON YOUR PHONE
Google Photos uses a gridded, chronologically ordered
view to swipe through all your pictures. You can pinch
to zoom and reorder the grid as you see fit. Search is, Google does a
however, the preferred way to explore your photos. great job of
When you tap the magnifying glass, the apps shows detecting
you a list of every face detected. You can hide these instances of
entries (more on that later) or give them a name for the same
easy reference. Google does a great job of detecting person, even
instances of the same person, even over the course of over the
decades, but you can combine entries if the search giant
course of
makes a mistake. You also can tap Recent Places to see
decades.
photos grouped by location.
Some people may not be comfortable having Google
in their photos, fearing that the company might use the
information for ad targeting. Note that the Google
Photos app says that only you can see the name
information associated with images, which, while
comforting, doesnt allay all concerns.
You can enter any term you like into the Google
Photos search box, and were happy to say that the apps
search abilities have improved. Searching for dog in
our test account returns
mostly dogs, with only one
or two other four-legged
mammals. The search is
still not accurate enough
to find a specific image
and doesnt do well with
complex search terms
such as orange jacket.
But it does a good job
with broad terms that
can help winnow
down the number of
images for you to
consider.
SMART PHOTO EDITING
Google Photos has been revamped with new photo
editing tools, smartly arrayed in expandable sliders.
You can, for example, move the Color slider or click to Two new
open it and see all of its constituent options. Two new sliders, Deep
sliders, Deep Blue and Skin Tone, show off Googles Blue and
machine-learning technology. The first lets you edit just Skin Tone,
the blue portions of the image, isolating changes made show off
to the blue intensity from the rest of the image. Its a Googles
great way to make the sky or sea pop without machine-
discoloring other objects in the frame. The Skin Tone
learning
slider does the same thing for human skin in an image.
technology.
It is especially useful for rebalancing faces after youve
increased the color saturation of the rest of the image.
We are happy to say that this feature works with a
variety of skin tones.
Google Photos also offers premade filters for
photos and movies, including an Auto button,
which makes what the app deems to be the best
adjustments. Its light on advanced editing and
effects, lacking tilt-shift and bokeh tools, for
example. The app lets you save your changes to a
new image, but thats tricky to pull off. Adobe
Photoshop Express and Apples photo apps
handle this much better. Google Photos also lacks
an equivalent to the artistic effects of Prisma.
The apps Movies and Animations features have
more editing options than you might expect, but
fine-grained editing isnt an option. Movies, for
example, can have different music and styles, but
the transitions and the time that images appear on
screen cannot be edited. Strangely, when we tried
exporting the looping GIF-like animations the app
created, they appeared as still images in the Apple
Photos app and when exported to Twitter on an
iPhone 6. Exported animations worked in other
places on the iPhone, but we had no issues when
exporting these animations on an Android device.
CREATIONS, BOTH ON-DEMAND AND AUTOMATIC
From just about anywhere in the app, you can create new albums, animations,
collages, or movies. A new Shared Album option lets you share photos with
others while inviting them to contribute their own pictures. But Google Photos
offers no thriving photo-sharing social community, like those you get with apps
such as Flickr, Instagram, and PicsArt. These networks are handy for finding
kindred-spirit iPhone photographers and liking, commenting on, and following
their work.
If you like the idea of animations, collages, movies, and so on, but dont know
where to start, dont worry: The Google Photos Assistant will do it for you.
Periodically, you receive alerts that the Assistant has produced another
masterpiece. Sometimes its an animation, sometimes a collage, sometimes an
artistically edited and filtered photo. New options let you suppress certain
people from appearing in these creations.
The Assistant doesnt just do its job willy-nilly, either. For example, photos
from the same time period are grouped into collages, and photos taken in
sequence are made into animations. There are also specific movie types, such as
Lullaby, which groups together photos of sleeping newborns and sets them to
soothing music. The app does this by watching for a spike in baby photos and
then selects only the ones in which the child is sleeping. Similar smart movies
will be launching in coming months, including holiday-themed varieties that are
said to trigger only when the app determines you actually celebrate the holidays.
Thats keen, but we wish there was an option to request some of these movie
types on demand, rather than waiting for the
Assistant to decide to make them.
Apple recently introduced similar features in iOS
10, such as face-tagging and automatically
constructed Moments in the Photos app. Theres
even a search option. In general, though, Apples
offerings are disappointing. The search field, for
example, pulls up only predefined categories,
including bewildering ones such as Bathroom.
(For the record, Max has 54 photos that fall into
this category.) Face detection in Apple Photos
isnt nearly as robust as in Google Photos, and
the generated Moments albums cannot be
edited. Apple clearly needs to step up its game
if it wants to contend with Google in this area.
CONCLUSION
Were impressed with Google Photos and how it has
improved since launch. The Search feature is greatly
improved, though it still falls short of the accuracy of
Google Image Search on the Web. New editing tools let
you add subtle flourishes or dramatic effects, and the
machine learning enhanced tools are impressive. Throw
infinite storage in as well, and its a leading photo app.
But its also in need of some tweaks. Other apps offer
more and more powerful editing options, as well as
more flexible storage plans. We heartily endorse Google
Photos, but consider it more of a companion app to
Editors Choice winners Flickr, Instagram, and PicsArt.
MAX EDDY, MICHAEL MUCHMORE

REVIEWS
SOFTWARE
Free Attenborough App

Educates Beautifully
Legendary British naturalist and broadcaster Attenborough
Sir David Attenborough turned 90 this year. Story of Life
(for iPad)
In honor of this milestone, the BBC has
Free
released Attenborough Story of Life, a free
EDITORS L L L l h
CHOICE
iPad app that lets you stream more than 1,000
clips from his many excellent nature documentaries.
For the sheer variety of fascinating, free nature clips
from all over the world narrated by this amazing
documentarian, Attenborough earns an Editors Choice
for educational iPad apps.
Heres a little background on the man himself: As a Attenborough
BBC administrator responsible for programming from Story of Life
(for iPad)
1965 to 1973, he commissioned a number of
groundbreaking shows, most notably Monty Pythons PROS Narration by
famed documentarian
Flying Circus. But he realized that his real love was in Sir David
making documentaries. In the years since, Attenborough. More
Attenborough has narrated more than 40 such BBC than 1,000 video clips.
Easily searchable.
nature programs, including Life on Earth, Planet Free.
Earth, and Blue Planet. He has gone on many field
CONS Brief ads daily
expeditions and narrated accounts of the animals and on startup.
people he encountered.
The Attenborough app is available in both iOS and
Android versions. I tested it using an iPad Air 2, taking
advantage of the tablets relatively large screen to
display the gorgeous videos.
SHARING NATURE
Post a link for a video
clip to Facebook or
Twitter, or email it.
The link takes you to a
BBC Earth page for
the app, from which
anyone can view the
clip for free.
DESIGN AND FEATURES

The home screen shows a picture of Attenborough and
the title of the app. When opening the app for the first
time on a given day, you have to sit through a
20-second ad, but after that, the clips run ad-free. The
first section you encounter shows clipsnarrated by
Attenborough, as are all the clips that I viewedof each
of the African Big Five animals: elephant, lion, rhino,
leopard, and cape buffalo.
You can access additional featured videos by swiping
your screen from left to right. By swiping upward, you
reach a page titled All Clips, and you can view a double
layer of thumbnails by swiping the screen carousel-style. I can see myself
This is fine for browsing smorgasbord-style, but for a going back to
more focused view, use the Search function. Activate it by Attenborough
touching the magnifying-glass icon at the screens upper again and again
right corner. This calls up an alphabetical list of topics, whenever I
from Africatapping it shows thumbnails for 35 want to deepen
entriesto Adlie penguin, which still offers a generous my appre-
seven entries. ciation of the
Another way to navigate in this thumbnail section is by natural world.
tapping the Explore button (its icon is concentric circles)
at the left-hand edge of the screen. This brings up a wheel
that fills the screen; run your finger around the wheels
edge to see different topics. These include such choices as
Coastal, Forest, Urban, Favourites, Traveling, Playing,
Mating, Plants, Reptiles, and Fish. Tapping on a subject
brings up thumbnails showing related content.
TESTING AND EVALUATION

In testing the app, I viewed several dozen of the videos.
Most were beautifully filmed, and all were well narrated.
Many showed some seldom-filmed phenomenonsay, a
night view of a pride of lions taking down a young
elephant, the first filming of a rare species, or a peculiar
characteristic of a species. For example, female gibbons
are occasionally unfaithful to their mates, which may
actually be a protective measure, because a male gibbon
might be hesitant to attack a young gibbon if theres a
chance he might be the father.
Many of the apps I download dont hold my interest.
Once Im done testing them, I put them down forever.
But I can see myself going back to Attenborough again
and again whenever I want to deepen my appreciation of
the natural world or when I need an escape from the
stresses of life.
The app has good social media integration. Each videos launch screen has a
Share icon in its upper right corner. From here, you can send a link to the video
via Messenger, email, Twitter, or Facebook. You can also save to the Notes app.
The link goes to the apps Web page on BBC Earth, and you launch the video by
clicking on a Play button on the pages lower right corner. Recipients have to sit
through a brief ad before the video starts.
Unlike the Ken Burns iPad app, which shows clips from many of that
filmmakers documentaries, Attenborough is totally free, the only price being
watching a brief ad on startup once per day. With Ken Burns, only the first of
nine sections is free; you have to pay $9.99 to unlock the rest of the app. To see
the full Attenborough documentaries from which most of the clips are taken,
however, you would have to buy the shows on DVD or Blu-ray, or via download
or streaming (as is also the case with the Ken Burns documentaries), or wait for
them to air on BBC America. The Attenborough clips are very self-contained,
though. I dont feel like Im missing
anything by not seeing the full
documentaries, as I did when
watching the Ken Burns clips.
CONCLUSION
The Attenborough Story of Life
iPad app is a magnificent tribute
to Sir David Attenborough, who
has narrated numerous wildlife
documentaries on location in a
career spanning more than six
decades. Featuring more than
1,000 clips narrated by
Attenborough, the app showcases the wonder and diversity of life on Earth. This
easily searchable app streamed video well over several Wi-Fi connections, with
no hangs or glitches. Its a clear Editors Choice for educational iPad apps.
TONY HOFFMAN

FEATURES
BYMATTHEW BUZZI
T
he growth in computing power and battery life
of phones and tablets have left traditional PCs
and desktops searching for an identity as their
roles diminish, filled by these increasingly powerful PC sales
mobile machines. This has challenged manufacturers, continue to
forcing them to reexamine the form, functionality, and decline, so
overall purpose of desktops in particular. If even a perhaps a
tablet can perform the everyday services that once natural
required the power of larger systems, do desktops even conclusion is
have a place in the market? to write off the
Indeed, PC sales in general continue to decline, so category as a
perhaps a natural conclusion is to write off the category whole.
as a whole. Longer product lifespans, increased
reliability, and a higher performance floor have reduced
the need for users to buy computers frequently, as has
the fact that more tasks than ever can be completed on
the always-on-hand phone or tablet.
PC SALES DIP
Gartners numbers
tip a 5.7 percent
drop in worldwide PC
shipments from the
same time in October
of 2015.
NEW DIRECTIONS FOR PCS

But this leads manufacturers down a reasonable line of
thinking: Specialize desktops to capitalize on their size
and power advantage, aiming at specific tasks and
audiences to give these traditional systems a reason to
stick around. They may not reach the raw sales numbers
in terms of units moved compared to the golden age of
PC buying, but the business is there.
MICROSOFT
SURFACE LINE
The Surface Studios
use of touch
technology willfor
now, at leastmost
set the Studio apart
from the iMac.
This points to an additional problem for Windows

machines; Apple claimed skilled creators
photographers, graphic designers, artists, engineers,
and animatorsearly on, by making its hardware
Many creative
appealing to them. Even if theyre a niche compared
with the average consumer, many creative occupations
users require
and users require big-screened, lightning-fast systems
big-screened,
for artistic and data-crunching work. Particularly, the lightning-fast
combination of design and performance in the first systems for
Intel-based iMac in 2006 cornered the market on artistic and
professional and home-office use, giving Apple desktops data-
a slice of the market but leaving less of it for Windows crunching
systems. Surrendering that demographic to Apple and work.
making it synonymous with creative types is not a
winning strategy for keeping PCs afloat.
While Im fairly that confident Microsoft and the big
PC manufacturers were and are acutely aware of this
situation, theyve only just begun to respond. Windows
systems have long been seen as stodgy and business-
facing, but thats a trend that has been reversing itself
over the last few years, at least in the laptop space.
Microsofts Surface line is a big part of that trend more
recently, but the other mainstream manufacturers have
made increasingly slim, sleek, and generally attractive
systems as well. Despite the addition of some pretty
impressive all-in-ones, non-Apple desktops are still
waiting for their savior.
INNOVATIVE APPLE?
Apple could be accused of stagnation under Tim Cook, and while Im not so
quick to blame the man himself, you can make a case that weve mostly seen
iterative upgrades through his reign. As such, the Cupertino giants control of
the personal computer space is waning, with no real innovations to the product
line compounded by decelerating sales.
The MacBook Pro line is notoriously slow to update, and for the most part,
the once-revolutionary iMac has merely decreased thickness and increased
screen resolution for several generations. Apple has drawn a clear line between
its touch-based mobile operating system, iOS, and its computer OS, macOS,
and as of now has shown no intention to combine the two. They might work
together, share a payment system, and take advantage of top-notch integrated
software, but the company clearly sees them as two separate platforms.
The new MacBook Pros touch bar is perhaps a step in that direction, but if
anything, it feels like a statement of intent to relegate touch functionality to a
corner of the experience. By contrast, those sleek Windows all-in-ones do often
incorporate touch control, although it adds relatively little to their capabilities.
MICROSOFT SURFACE STUDIO

Enter the Surface Studio. Its use of touch technology willfor now, at least
most set the Studio apart from the iMac. This stunning 28-inch desktop does
not simply include a touch screen but embraces it as a core part of its design.
Not only does it look gorgeous, with an all-aluminum body and the worlds
thinnest display (inspiration was undeniably drawn from the iMac itself), but it
goes right for the jugular in terms of audience.
I was in attendance when Microsoft Corporate VP of
Devices Panos Panay debuted the system (take a look at
my hands-on report, below). He especially wowed the
crowd with this big reveal: The Studios arm is a flexible The Studios
hinge, allowing you to fold it down nearly flat to serve as arm is a flexible
a natural drawing surface. In this way, the touch screen hinge, allowing
calls out to designers and artists, offering not only you to fold it
something that is inherently cool but is also a product down nearly
thats genuinely useful for their work. The Surface flat to serve as
Studio is an elegant combination of the discrete parts a natural
needed for digital creation. drawing
As such, it serves as your large high-res monitor, surface.
powerful processor, and digital canvas all in one, which
has advantages. For one, you dont have to buy multiple
devices to do the same job, and you may in fact end up
saving money despite the Surface Studios high price. At
$2,999 for the main SKU, its obviously not cheap. But a
fast desktop and drawing tablet could approach that
price as welland youd also have to buy a monitor.
Regardless, the Surface Studio is a remarkable
achievement in engineering and could very well be the
innovation needed to revitalize the market. Apples
comparative lack of imagination is surprising (and
disheartening for longtime users, to be sure), and it
might just lose the company a large chunk of the
creative market. Its easy to see the appeal of the
Studiobeing tied in to the Apple ecosystem is the most
concrete reason for artists to stay, but with the
hardware advantage rapidly switching Microsofts way,
an ecosystem switch is not an insurmountable obstacle.
THE BIG REVEAL
Microsoft Corporate
VP of Devices Panos
Panay debuted the
Surface Studio in
November 2016.
Microsoft also made a very savvy move in its presentation and marketing:
Kids and young teens were featured heavily in the presentation. PCMags
Sascha Segan has written about this appeal to the young ones in greater detail,
but children were shown a lot in the tied-in Windows 10 Creators Update
portion of the show. Microsoft is not only aiming its premium desktop and
entire operating system at creatives, but the company is also including tools and
software meant for children. Theyll feel welcomed by Windows from an early
age and wont associate digital creation only with Apple. Its a very smart
strategy and key in linking the present to the future.
It remains to be seen whether the Studio will truly spark a sales turnaround
and light a fire for the PC market. This isnt entirely wishful thinking, though:
The Surface Pro line had a measurable impact on the PC space. Two-in-ones
have consistently shown the best growth in PC sales even as overall numbers
have declined, and thats largely due to the appeal and success of Microsofts
device. Other manufacturers have followed suit, putting out sleek convertibles
and detachables of their own. Products such as the Lenovo Yoga 900S, Acer
Aspire Switch 11 V, and HP Spectre x360 15t occupy different parts of the two-
in-one spectrum in terms of price and functionality, but they aim for the
appealing combination of portability, touch, and power.
Like Google with its Pixel phones, Microsoftthe major operating system
creatorcan also provide hardware to serve as a footprint, paving the way for a
new wave of technology by example and setting the ideal picture of how
hardware can work with software. So Microsoft would benefit even if its desktop
were gaining competitors, because more users would be embracing its software
platform.
The Surface Studio may succeed as the Surface Pro did before it, with the
right execution. And its descendants would be adopted by a whole new
generation of users, becoming the
seamless, single-product
workstation for the huge, business-
driving swath of artists, graphic
designers, modelers, animators,
architects, and game designers.
Were looking forward to seeing
how it shakes out.
FEATURES
HANDS ON WITH THE

MICROSOFT
SURFACE
STUDIO
At first glance, the Surface Studio is a stunner,
featuring what Microsoft claims is the worlds thinnest
LCD screen. The all-aluminum body is sleekthe
inspiration from the Apple iMac is undeniableand Yes, its
comprises a 28-inch screen with aluminum legs and a pricey, but
small base that holds most of the components and many the same
ports: audio, SD, Mini DP, Ethernet, and USB 3.0. people who
At $2,999 for the main SKU, the Studio is very currently use
expensive. But its a high-quality device whose target an iMac could
market is creative professionals; one of those pros, a make even
comic artist, was on stage and in the demo room after better use of
the unveiling of the Surface Studio to explain its the Studio.
benefits. So yes, its pricey, but the same people who
currently use an iMac could make even better use of the
Studio. Furthermore, one expensive all-in-one device
may end up saving you money, since you wont have to
buy multiple products (drawing tablet, PC, and display)
to do the same job.
In theory, the Studio merges a powerful artists work
PC with digital drawing tools. Even my admittedly
unartistic hands (that became all the more clear after
watching the comic artist) could tell that this is a tool
that dedicated professionals will see as worth its hefty
price tag. Its also conceivable that a design studio or
architectural firm will purchase these devices for
employees, mitigating the price.
CREATIVE TIME
An all-in-one device
may save you money,
since you wont
have to buy multiple
products (drawing
tablet, PC, and
display) to do the
same job.
The touch-screen display has a PixelSense resolution of 4,500 by 3,000,
which includes 63 percent more pixels than a 4K television. The 5K 2015 iMac,
for comparison, features a resolution of 5,210 by 2,880. Up close, the quality of
the Studio screen really shines, with an incredibly crisp, vibrant, and responsive
picture thats clearly suited to the creative types Microsoft is targeting. The 3:2
ratio with 192ppi furthers this aim, with one inch on the screen representing
one inch in real life, as Microsoft devices lead Panos Panay demonstrated by
holding up a sheet of paper to the screen during the press conference.
Not using 16:9 might make it a little more difficult for the video editors out
there, but the benefits for drawing and modeling, where the Studio really seems
focused, are clear. It leans back easily and folds down very smoothlya pretty
seamless transition from an upright setup to a format more akin to a physical
studio. This should help artists imagine and create designs, and its pretty
evident that drawing, sketching, and shading on this screen will be intuitive and
useful.
The huge screen feels like a great canvassome sketching software was pulled
up for demoand I also got to try out the Surface Dial. This $99 product
(which, unlike the Surface Pen, does not come included) is placed on the screen
and gives you really intuitive and intriguing physical control over a digital
interface. A radial wheel appears around the Dial when you place it on the
screen; twist to peruse and select options. This includes simple tasks like
volume and copy, but it can be used for more, such as a color wheel for on-the-
fly adjustments. The Dial also works with any Surface devices from the Pro 3
and beyond, which is good news for anyone interested in the Dial and other
Surface hardware who cant quite afford the Studio.
The inclusion of a Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M
graphics processor strikes me as a little strange, given
that its part of the mobile line and not a desktop card,
but theres not much space for a full-size card given the This machines
thin screen and small base. That said, Nvidia 10-series features and
Pascal cards are available in laptops and desktops, high-quality
providing more power than ever before so this is design offer
technically already behind the curve before its some clear
available. It should provide the power needed for most, advantages that
as the 980M is a strong card, and it will be helped by a are currently
Core i7 processor and 32GB of memory, but I did see unmatched by
some slowdown while zoomed in on and rotating a other hardware.
detailed object. A GTX 1080 would probably be
overboard for a portion of users, but a 1070 or 1060
would make this a nearly unbeatable (though even more
expensive) desktop. The line has to be drawn
somewhere in terms of price, and the system may have
been in development before those additions were
plausible.
The Surface Studio is truly exciting and innovative,
and although professional artists are a niche, relatively
speaking, this machines features and high-quality
design offer some clear advantages that are currently
unmatched by other hardware.
MATTHEW BUZZI

FEATURES
BY EVAN DASHEVSKY
W
eve had some big names drop in for a chat
on PCMags streaming interview series,
The Convo, including best-selling authors,
government officials, CEOs, scientists, and former
astronauts. No one had managed to attract a live studio
audience consisting of the busy PCMag staff until Dr.
Neil deGrasse Tysonastrophysicist and Frederick P.
Rose Director of the Hayden Planetariumstopped by.
Dr. Tyson came to talk about his new book, Welcome
to the Universe, but the conversation quickly veered off
in many geeky directions. And we mean geeky as a
compliment. Heres a partial transcript of our
conversation (edited for clarity and brevity).
Evan Dashevsky: Dr. Tyson, what is the origin or

the big bang of this book?
Neil deGrasse Tyson: I have two coauthors: J. Richard
Gott III and Michael Strauss. The three of us taught this
class, and we took you from Earth to the outer reaches
of the universe and back.
So many books today, youll get an introduction to a
field, and it could be a mile wide, but still really only an ASTROPHYSICS
inch deep. What [we] decided here is to make that same AND BEYOND
Our interview with Dr.
mile-wide book, but also make it a mile deep. So Tyson quickly veered
wherever you are in the book, you can go deep and learn off into many geeky
not only what it is we know to be true in the universe and entertaining
directions.
but how we arrived at that knowledge as well.
Dare I say, weve got math in this. There are places
where we need an equation to show you how we got this
number. You could skim over it if you choose.
Or if you say, Wait, how did they really figure that
out? Its all there.
I want to talk about rockets. Now, rockets go

up. They explode every so often. It seems like
its not the best way to get to low orbitor is
it? I mean, its 2016. Is there any better way to
get up there?
No. Next question. You got another question? [laughs]
By the way, they explode because they carry a lot of
energy in them, and we want to control that explosion
in the form of a throttled rocket or the solid rockets.
We ignite them, and they just go until they shut off.
Thats using chemical energy, the energy contained in
molecules.
Weve been doing that since Goddard, a century ago.
Its a little embarrassing. Goddard said, Wow. In a
hundred years Ill bet youll have some other kind
Well, no, actually, were doing the same damn thing you
did with your liquid-fuel rocket in the woods of
Massachusetts. It would nice to have matter-antimatter
drives, but what we really want is a warp drive. Lets
just be honest with one another. The warp drive.
What makes the warp drive so important is we can now get to places in the
solar system within a human lifetime, so 10 years here, five years there, 15 years
there. The nearest stars, however, at those speeds, would take 50 to 100,000
years, so thats incompatible with human physiology. Thats just the nearest
stars. Forget crossing the galaxy or visiting other galaxies.
What you really need is some new understanding of the fabric of space and
time that allows you to take shortcuts through that fabric or to surf the warps in
ways that you can travel many, many times faster than the speed of light.
Without that, were just kind of hopelessly imprisoned on this speck of dirt we
call Earth.
Were living in hyper-partisan times. Whats happening with

science in the political discussions of today?
So, Ive said this many times. Ill say it again. The good thing about science is
that its true whether or not you believe in it. Now, I should sharpen that. Thats
the catchphrase, but really, the methods and tools of science when invoked,
what role they serve, is they find what is truly independent of who it is thats
doing the finding. If you get a result and I say, Well, I dont know if thats true
or not. In fact, I think youre wrong. I then design some experiment more clever
than yours and I get an answer that agrees with it! Oh, my gosh. Then someone
else from another country using a different power source, using a different bias
gets the same result. We have found an emergent scientific truth, and when you
find those, they are not later shown to be false. We can build on them, but when
something is experimentally verified persistently that is a new emergent truth.
If you are in denial of that in a free country, sure. Go ahead. I dont even have
an issue with that. A free country means freedom of speech, freedom of thought.
But if now you have a position of power over others, then youre taking your
belief system, which is not based in objective truth, and applying it to others
who dont share your belief systemthat is a recipe for disaster. Its the
beginning of the end of an informed democracy. We have a democracy that
protects our freedom of thought, and one way to do that is to make sure if you
have thoughts that are not based in objective reality, you dont have the power
to force them on others who dont agree with you.
Earlier this year you had a Twitter beef with a fully grown adult
celebrity about whether the Earth was actually round or not. I
guess my question to you is, is the Internet making us dumber?
First of all, normally I dont chase after people who say
things like, the Earth is flat. The reason I did, in that
case, is because this is B.o.B., the rapper. He had in his
Twitter-stream statements that the Earth is flat. We have found
Normally, I wouldnt pay attention, except in his Twitter an emergent
stream he claimed he was invoking laws of physics to scientific
calculate this. truth, and
Well, if youre going to say that, then that called me when you find
out. I was happy in the corner. So I come out of my den, those, they are
my cave, and I say, Here are the laws of physics, and not later
heres why you got it wrong. I did that, but then that got shown to be
noticed, and then I got pulled onto Larry Wilmore [The false.
Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore] and did a mic drop.
My only mic drop. Google Tyson mic drop. It goes
straight to my rebuttal to B.o.B. on Larry Wilmore.
I only did it because he was invoking science as his
defender, and I didnt want his huge following to think
that he was thinking rationally about this. I ended this
exchange by saying, again, I dont care what you
believe, but because you have more than 2 million
Twitter followers, theres a certain accountability to
those who have that much influence over others. That
accountabilityas an educator, I should think you
should anchor those kinds of statements in objective
realities and keep other thoughts that derive from your
belief systems to yourself.
We have a new President-elect coming in. As someone who pushes
for science research and funding, what do you expect of the Trump
administration?
Again, I understand how people can think of me as one whos pushing an
agenda or being an advocate. I dont think of myself that way. Im not telling
you to do anything. I will analyze your decision or your thoughts, and if you say,
Oh, we dont need science, or whatever, Ill say, Well, the history of civilization
If you care about your health, your wealth, and your security, the history of
civilization argues differently, and then Id give examples of it, and then Id go
home. Im not going to keep beating you on the head. As an educator, though...
there are people who elected the representatives into positions of power. You
can go running after the elected representative and beat them on the head, but
theyre representing a base of people who voted for them. I have never felt
comfortable talking to members of Congress unless theyre my representative.
Im not comfortable doing that.
In a democracy, Im an educator. I will talk to your electorate and say, Youre
thinking what? Have you considered this other fact, how this plugs in? Have
you considered these causes and effects? Upon doing so, then I go home. If they
value it theyll vote that way. If they dont value it or dont care that is their
expression of a vote in a free society. Right, so then the next administration, the
Trump administration, theres no details on anything. Forget sciencetheres
just no detail, so its hard to comment where that would go or what
consequences it would have. The day we do learn, Id be happy to offer
comments on something thats real.
Lets talk about STEAM. Thats when you have
STEM and then you add the A for the arts into
it. What do you think is the proper mix in 2016
of arts and science in education?
STEM, of course, became a very strong movement. It
had a great acronym. Science, technology, engineering,
and math. Just to remind people if you didnt otherwise
know, the value of those four fields is incalculable in its
role in driving the growth in an economy. If everyone
cares about money, and the economy, and economic
health, you cannot detach yourself from what role those
four branches, that science literacy, plays in this.
Innovations in those fields will be the engines of
tomorrows economy, and to the extent that you do not
know that or invest that way is to the detriment of your Its a noble
economic health going forward. effort to say,
Now, the arts are always the whipping boy of budgets. Lets put the A
Oh, we ran out of money. No room for arts, no money in STEM so we
for arts and theyre getting cut. Its a noble effort to can carry it
say, Lets put the A in STEM so we can carry it along, along, but you
but you have to be careful about that Theres plenty of have to be
art thats completely self-driven, if you want to go top careful about
40. I dont know if thats the art were talking about that.
here.My sense that I think were talking about fine arts.
Yes, music, but just as a general appreciation for it
and what role it can play in your creativity. Thats how I
see it happening, because there are plenty of jobs and
economic stability for people who are graphic artists,
who are architects, or this sort of thing.
Designers, set designers. There are jobs out there.
Thats not the issue. Were talking about whats going to
grow an economy. What I want is art to make a case for
itself without claiming that it has to be in STEM, for
STEM to do what it has to do. History shows thats just
simply false.
What fictional show or movie do you think gets
space science the most correct?
Well, my two favorite sci-fi movies had good science
advisors, and theyre also interesting movies. There are Armageddon
some movies that maybe werent as fun. Maybe they was an
took their science more seriously than necessary to tell a entertaining
really good story, but Deep Impact from the 1990s, 96, movie, but it
97. That portrayed an asteroid impact. That came out violated more
within a year of Armageddon. Now, Armageddon was laws of physics
an entertaining movie, but it violated more laws of per minute than
physics per minute than any other movie ever made. It any other movie
had a lot of stars in it, and it was entertaining. ever made.
Deep Impact was, I think, a better written movie in

terms of how convincing the story lines were, and the
relationships. Also, most of Earths surface is water. If
youre going to be an asteroid, youre probably going to
hit water, rather than in Armageddon where a piece of
the asteroid must have had GPS locators of Manhattan
monuments. Because one decapitated the Chrysler
building. One went into Grand Central Terminal, hit the
clock in the middle of Grand Central Terminal. Dont
get me started.
Anyhow, another one is our Carl Sagan story,
Contact. That is surely how we would all behave with
all the various factions, and the fringe groups, and the
governments. Thats surely how we would behave if in The theories,
fact we made contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. I the hypotheses
thought that was an interesting scientific as well as hold that there
psychological explanation, exploration on who and what could be
we are. infinite
universes
Whats your confidence level that were living embedded
in a simulation? within this
I think theres a path of reasoning that makes it pretty multiverse.
compelling. For example, as we get better at
programming our computers, and as computers get
faster and smarter, and as we approach AI, what is to
stop us from writing a computer game that itself has
characters that control their own destiny with a kind of
free will? Well, if we do that perfectly enough with all
the interactions of all the characters, whos to say that
we are not those characters playing out our lives in this
world that is itself the simulation of someone who
programmed this universe in their parents basement?
Some acne teenager, but way smarter than any of us,
creates our universe. Heres where the reasoning
becomes compelling.
If you create an accurate enough representation of
life, and that life has what it calls free will, and thats all
a simulation, whats to prevent that life from
programming their computers to make a simulation
within themselves, and then its simulations all the way
down. So in that world, theres one real universe, but all
the other universes that are created are simulations.
Now you ask, What are the chances we are in the one
real universe rather than in one of the uncountable
simulations within the simulations within the
simulations?
Lets talk about the Many Worlds theory. Thats one of the zanier
theories out there. Is there any experiment that could ever be done
to verify it?
Theres the formal Many Worlds hypothesis to explain quantum physics. Is that
what youre talking about? Or are you talking about the multiverse?
Maybe Im talking about the multiverse. That means that

everything thats possible to happen can happen, right?
If you look at the tenets of relatively and quantum physics, where they both
have to meet in a kind of shotgun marriage in the early universe, you have
people such as string theorists, who are top people working on this, and theyre
struggling. Im backseat to that, watching where that heads. But one of the
outcomes of this exploration is the idea that our universe is not just alone and
sitting by itself, but that it could be part of a multiverse.
In a multiverse, we are just one pocket expanding. We can poke it, observe it,
and we come up with all our laws of physics that apply in our observable
universe, but there could be other universes. In those other universes, according
to these models, they would have slightly different laws of physics in them,
which would make them difficult to visit. If you step across the membrane, all
the laws of physics that kept your molecules together in this universe might
explode them apart in another universe, so I would be cautious. Dont be the
first out of the box for that one.
The theories, the hypotheses hold that there could be infinite universes
embedded within this multiverse. If thats the case, then every outcome is
possible. There could be another universe where you and I are having this
conversation, and, I dont know, Im Norwegian or something. Its otherwise
identical, right?
Does that mean that every movie thats ever
happened has actually happened, in theory, in
a universe somewhere?
Well, no. Some movies create their own universe within
them, like The Lego Movie. Is there a universe where
Legos are alive? Maybe. There are other universes
where they make a movie where one Lego is slightly
different in that movie. Thats how you should think
about it. Not that there are live Legos running around.
Is there a universe where the multiverse

doesnt exist?
If the multiverse is what spawns universes, then the
answer is no. But heres a thought. It might too early in
the morning to have these kinds of thoughts. I like the
fact that if you look at what we have to come to
understand about the universe, where you go back
enough centuries, Earth was sort of unique and alone of
its kind in the universe, and everyone imagined the
whole universe revolved around us. Then we found out,
Oh, Earth is just one of seven other planets. Just get
over that number, okay? Plutos gone.
So among planets, were not unique. I mean there are
other planets. How about the sun? No, theres 100
billion other suns in our galaxy. How about the galaxy?
No, theres a 100 billion galaxies. Well, how about the
universe? Well, we went for 70 years thinking its the
only universe. The multiverse is philosophically natural,
given this trajectory of learning that the universe never
makes anything in ones. Perhaps not even itself. Well, if
thats the case then maybe the multiverse is one of
multiple multiverses.
The multiverse could be part of a metaverse itself,
comprised of infinite multiverseseach having infinite
universes.
Are we getting another season of Cosmos?
Well, Ive got top producers working on this. I think we
all want one, and its a matter of, can we get everybody
together? Get the band back together. It was a huge,
creative collaboration with set designers, musicians,
and writers. Ann Druyan, who co-wrote along with
Steve Soter, not only this most recent Cosmos but the
first one that had Carl Sagan as well. You put all this
together, you want to make sure you have the right
mixture and combination of people. We should know
soon, I think, if anything is green-lit, but one shouldnt
announce until somethings green-litbecause anything
can happen.
WELCOME TO
THE UNIVERSE
Dr. Tysons new
book is based on
an introductory
astronomy course
that he and coauthors
Michael A. Strauss,
and J. Richard Gott
taught together at
Princeton.

TIPS & HOW TOS
GET ORGANIZED
5 Ways to Email Better BY JILL DUFFY
P
lenty of philosophies and methodologies exist for using email more
efficiently. They are foundational for limiting distraction and being
more productive. But you also need to know what tools are at your
disposal to get to that more productive place.
Email service providers and third-party app developers have invented some
exceptional tools that make email much more efficient. There are five that I
think have the greatest effect and are most widely applicable.
WRITE BETTER
Writing unnecessarily long or unclear emails is a waste
of time for you and your recipient. The recipient may
not have time to read them, waste time rereading them Email service
to try to make sense of them, or have to reply to you for providers and
clarification. app developers
Two apps work hard to help you write better emails, have invented
because they focus directly on the writing itself: exceptional
Grammarly and Crystal. tools that
Grammarly is a plug-in that works something like a make email
spell checker to analyze grammar and make intelligent
much more
suggestions about how to tighten your language, write
efficient.
clearly, and fix common mistakes. It has a remarkable
ability to spot ESL errors, in particular.
Crystal is also a plug-in, and it nudges you to tailor
the language of your email to appeal to the recipient.
First, Crystal finds your recipients onlinetheir Twitter
BETTER GRAMMAR
accounts, Facebook pages, and so forthand looks at Grammarly helps you
how they use and respond to language. Are they concise tighten your
and direct? Or do they tend to get caught up in lengthy language, write
clearly, and fix
discussions? Based on the results, Crystal then guides mistakes.
your writing.
If you are not a strong writer, Crystals very clear prompts may genuinely help
you find words to write what you want to say. Thats a valuable proposition, but
there is something about it that it rubs me the wrong way. Theres an unstated
premise that you are tailoring your language to get something out of the other
person, and I find that manipulative. It might not bother you, and it might even
be exactly what you are looking for. Theres no denying that Crystal is good at
what it does.
TURN EMAILS INTO TASKS

Your inbox is not your to-do list, but you probably still get tasks assigned to you
by email. The fix is to set up a connected app to efficiently move those tasks to a
more appropriate place.
Rather than manually typing a new task for yourself in whatever to-do or
reminder app you use, you can connect the app directly to your email account or
set up email forwarding, and with one or two clicks, move that email into its
proper place.
A few apps that support the ability to move emails to tasks, either through
direct connection or email forward, are Wunderlist, Evernote Plus and
Premium, Todoist Premium, Boxer, and Newton Mail.
UNDO SEND
Weve all hit Send prematurely; maybe we overlooked a typo, left out some
information, or didnt stop to reconsider an email written in the heat of the
moment. You dont have to live with regret or the inefficiency of having to write
a second email, though. You just need to be able to undo send.
MAKING A LIST...
One app that helps you turn
your emails into tasks is
Wunderlist; you can also
share your to-do lists and
add comments to tasks.
Undo send is different from recalling a message. With
undo send, the message is never sent. Basically, your
email holds the message for something like 10 to 30
seconds, during which time you can change your mind. With
Gmail has an Undo Send function (in Settings > Schedule
General) that every Gmail user should enable. Newton Send, as long
Mail, which is full of rich features for email on mobile as the
devices, also has one that works on any email account it message
supports, including Microsoft Exchange and iMap hasnt gone
accounts. Other email providers offer it, too. out yet, you
can still edit
SCHEDULE SEND
it, too.
Right now is not always the appropriate time to send
an email. Thats when Schedule Send comes in handy.
This email feature lets you pick a time in the future
when your message will be delivered. Outlook,
Boomerang for Gmail, and Newton Mail all have it.
With Schedule Send, as long as the message hasnt
gone out yet, you can still edit it, too. So it covers some
of the same ground as the Undo Send feature.
SNOOZE
Im not a fan of the Inbox Zero philosophytrying to
keep your unread message count at nothing. It takes too
much time to manage and doesnt address peoples real
email needs, psychologically or technically. I am a fan of
snoozing, though, which gets at the same idea of
keeping the number of messages in your inbox
minimized at any given time.
Snoozing does nothing more than hide a message
from your inbox for a time. How long? You decide. The
effect is you can focus on important messages without
being distracted by less important ones. Those less
important messages will resurface at a time when its
better for you to deal with them. Outlook (where its
called schedule), Airmail, Sparkmail, and Newton
Mail all have a snooze button.

TIPS & HOW TOS
HOW TO
How to Fix Windows PC

Problems Via a
Restore Point BY LANCE WHITNEY
W
indows is acting funky. Maybe youve installed a new application or
driver or other piece of software thats wreaking havoc with your
system. Perhaps Windows is crashing or blue screening, and you
have no idea why. But dont worry. All is not lost, at least not if you have a
system restore point waiting to act as a white knight.
A restore point is essentially a snapshot of Windows at any given time. You
can create restore points on a regular basis. Then if Windows goes kersplat, you
can bring it back in time to that restore point, before the problem occurred.
The beauty of a restore point is that it restores your Windows system and
settings to a previous state, but by default, it wont mess around with your
documents and personal files. So any changes youve made to your personal
files since you created the restore point remain intact.
Windows automatically creates a restore point at key moments, such as when
you install certain software programs and drivers or when you apply Windows
updates. But you should manually create these points yourself on a regular
basis, perhaps a couple of times a month, to ensure that your system can be
restored to a recent state in the event of a mishap.
The Restore Point feature is available in Windows 10, Windows 8.1, and
Windows 7 and essentially works the same way in all three versions.
In Windows 10 or Windows 8.1, right-click on the Start button and select

Control Panel from the pop-up menu. In Windows 7, left-click on the
Start button and click on Control Panel from the right pane. In Control
Panel, type the phrase restore point in the search field in the upper-
right corner. The Restore Point feature should appear among the
search results. Click Create a restore point.
The System Properties window appears

with the System Protection tab as active,
showing you your drive partitions and their
current status. Click the drive for which
you want to create a restore point and
then click the Create button.
In the Create a Restore Point window,
type a name for the restore point.
Click Create. The current date and
time are automatically added to the
name. Windows should then tell you
that the restore point was created
successfully. Click the Close button.
Now, lets travel into the future after a

calamity befalls Windows. Open Control
Panel, type restore point in the search
field, and click on the link to Create a
restore point to bring you to the System
Protection tab. Click on the drive or
partition on which you created the
restore point. Then click on the System
Restore button.
At the Restore system files and

settings screen, Windows explains
what System Restore does.
Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 also
ask if you wish to Undo System
Restore, meaning undo the last
system restore if you feel it did not
fix the problem in Windows. Your
other option is to browse all restore
points. Lets click on Choose a
different restore point to view
them all with the intention of
restoring one of them. In Windows
10, 8.1, or 7, click the Next button at
this point.
The next window shows you the
system restore points for the
drive you selected. Select a
specific restore point. Then click
on the button to Scan for
affected programs.
Windows scans for any programs added

since the last restore point in order to
delete them and looks for any that were
removed in order to restore them. It also
scans for any programs and drivers that
might be restored but may not work
correctly and might need to be
reinstalled. Note the results if Windows
finds anything. After the scan
completes, close the current window to
return to the previous System Restore
window.
Make sure the restore point you

want to use is selected, and click
Next.
At the next screen, confirm the restore point you wish to apply, then
click Finish.
Windows tells you that System Restore cannot be interrupted. Click Yes
to continue.
Windows starts to bring your

system back to the restore
point you selected and reboots,
telling you that your files and
settings are being restored.
Log back into Windows. You should receive a message telling you that
System Restore completed successfully.
You may now need to reinstall any applications, drivers, or other software
that were removed. Youll also want to play around in Windows to see if the
problem that prompted you to restore it has been eliminated.

TIPS & HOW TOS
TIPS
12 Roku Tips for

Streaming Success BY CHANDRA STEELE
W
hether youre a cord cutter or not, youre probably going to want a
streaming device for your TV, and Roku remains more popular
than Apple TV, Google Chromecast, and the Amazon Fire TV Stick,
according to Parks Associates. Weve put together 17 ways for you to get more
out of your streaming device.
1. HIDDEN CHANNELS
Not all available Roku channels are listed in the Roku
Channel Store. To find the secret ones, check out the
Roku Guide online. Clink the link you want, then Add Among
Channel, and youll be taken to a Roku account page. streaming
Log in, add the code for the channel, and youre set. devices, Roku is
more popular
2. STREAM YOUR OWN STUFF than Apple TV,
Though Roku has a ton of different channels and things Google Chrome-
to watch, youll probably still want to access your locally cast, and the
stored content on your TV. Sign up for Plex ($4.99 per Amazon Fire TV
month, $39.99 per year, or $149.99 for a lifetime) and Stick.
you can. Plex organizes your scattered content and lets
you watch it from tablets, TVs, phones, and more; you
can also share it with friends and family. Sign up for the
service, then download the Plex app. In the Roku app,
go to Preferences > Connect Plex account, and follow
the instructions to verify the PIN code to connect the
app with your Plex account.
WHATS ON, ROKU?
Your Roku can let you
3. MOVIE-STAR QUALITY know when a movie or
You can control the quality of your Netflix streaming on show is coming to a
your Roku, whether you want to see things more clearly channel or when your
favorite actor or
or you need to stay within a data cap. Log in to Netflixs director has
website, then go to Your Account > Playback Settings. something new to
offer.
4. FEWER CLICKS
As great as the Roku is, navigating from the remote
could use some help. Download the Roku app
(available for iOS, Android, and Windows) and get
the benefit of a keyboard, easy searching, and
streaming on your phone or tablet. Screen mirroring
is available on:
Roku 4: Model 4400 (software v5.6 and above)

Roku 3: Model 4200, 4230 (software v5.6 and
above)
Roku 2: Model 4210 (software v5.6 and above)
Roku Streaming Stick: Model 3500, 3600 (software
v5.6 and above)
Roku TV: Currently on most Roku TVs. (Other Roku
TVs will receive the Screen Mirroring feature in a
future software update)- (software v6.2 and above)
5. SAVE THAT SCREEN

Maybe you paused whatever you were watching and walked out of the room. Or
you slept through streaming, and now the Roku logo is just bouncing around
like the flying toasters of the new millennium. Give yourself something nice to
look at with Rokus screensavers. Select Screensavers & Apps from your Roku
and you can get an art gallery viewing, hang out by a crackling fire, or keep an
eye on the weather.
6. BIG GAME
So its not an Xbox One or a PS4, but your Roku is still in the game. Go to
Games, and you can race to save an emperors daughter in Chop Chop Runner,
go retro with Pac-Man, or test your smarts with Jeopardy. A motion controller
for gaming is built into the remote that comes with the Roku 4 or Roku 3.
7. YOUVE GOT OPTIONS

Roku displays your channels in the order in which you added themunless you
select Options (visible on the upper right) using the asterisk key from the Home
screen and reorder them so that your most frequently watched channels are at
the top.
8. FEED ME
If youre waiting to watch your favorite movie, but it hasnt come to a Roku
channel yet, you dont have to search for it every day. Your Roku can let you
know when a movie or show is coming to a channel or when your favorite actor
or director has something new to offer. Go to the main menu, select My Feed,
and then search movies. Select the movie, show, actor, or director you want to
follow and when something new becomes available, the details on where and
how to watch will appear in the Watch It section under the menu.
9. CAST YOUR VOTE

Maybe youve passed on Googles Chromecast for the Roku, but you dont have
to pass on casting YouTube videos from your mobile screen to your TV. Go to
the YouTube channel on Roku > Settings > Pair Device. Youll see a string of
numbers to enter. On your mobile device, open a browser window, go to
youtube.com/pair, and enter the code. Now when youre in the YouTube app on
the mobile device you paired, you can send the video to your TV screen by
clicking the cast icon (just make sure both devices are on the same Wi-Fi
network).
10. IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD

Cutting the cord doesnt have to mean cutting yourself off from televised local
news. The NewsOn Roku channel gives access to local news broadcasts from
outlets nationwide. If youre just looking for the weather report, then you can
get it with the Weather Underground channel.
WHEN YOU KNOW WHAT

YOU WANT
If youre looking for
something specific, instead
of scrolling through the
offerings of every Roku
channel, you can search
across lots of them.
11. SAY WHAT?
If you missed those last few lines, theres a quick way to
catch up. Set up instant replay by going to Settings >
Captions > Instant Replay. When you hit the Instant Cutting the
Replay button on the remote, you also get the text on cord? The
the screen. NewsOn Roku
channel gives
12. UNIVERSAL SEARCH access to
Theres no such thing as too much content unless local news
youre looking for something specific. Instead of broadcasts
scrolling through the offerings of each Roku channel,
from outlets
you can search across lots of them. Click on the
nationwide.
magnifying glass in Roku-level search, and youll get
results for over 100 channels, whether you have them or
not. Search by title, actor, or director to see a
comprehensive list.

LAST WORD
JOHN C. DVORAK
D
uring the age of early idealism, the
Internet was imagined as a great creation
that would free the worlds oppressed
people and lead to a grand utopian future. All the
worlds information would be available at the
touch of a button, greater participation in
government would be easy, and so on.
This hasnt happened, nor will it. Instead, the
American Internet-using public dove into a closed
The False systemFacebook, where the machine feeds them
Promises filtered crap in an echo chamber of their own
creation. Those who venture beyond the bubble
of the quickly retreat into Facebook, where they feel safe.
Internet. Currently, Facebook wants to make a play for
China and has reportedly developed a tool that will
allow for content censorship. In other words, it
wont pass along information the Chinese
government doesnt want spread.
But China is just the tip of the censorship
iceberg. Here in the United States, there is no
government censorship, because its not necessary.
Sketchy do-gooder operations censor all sorts of
websites and opinion writers.
The original censor was Net Nanny, which was
designed to keep your kids from seeing porn. That
evolved into blacklists to minimize the shipping of
spam. Now we have a phenomenon called fake
news, which propagates the notion that some
websites are making up stories and should be
blacklisted as fake news sites.
This is funny to me, as I recall Jayson Blair of
The New York Times making up accounts and
running them as fact in the paper of record until
he was caught. Janet Cooke at The Washington
Post is another great story about a real news
reporter making things up.
But this is not really about fake news. Its about
a consolidated effort to censor everything except
government-approved positions and viewpoints.
And to be honest, the free and uncensored
Internet actually opens the door for manipulators
to roam free. When you hear reports about how
ISIS recruits terrorists online using a range of
propaganda mechanisms, they are not kidding.
This is what happens if you do not clamp down
on the Net. The Chinese have a clue; a lot of
countries do. And they are not going to let open
subversive activity take down their regimes in the
name of free speech.
The future of the Internet is grim. It will consist
of Facebook and its own censorship police with an
agenda. Also, youll have approved, probably
licensed, blogs, podcasts, and news outlets that
have to follow rules such as those imposed by the
FCC on broadcasting.
Youll have the closed social networks such as
LinkedIn, Twitter, and others, and endless
e-commerce sites and hubs selling you stuff that
you probably do not need, led by Amazon. In a
decade, when the new closed and censored Net is
in full swing, ask yourself, What did you expect?
john_dvorak@pcmag.com

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