Enlarge / You’ll need an NVMe SSD to use DirectStorage on Windows. (credit: Getty Images) PC games can now use DirectStorage, a DirectX 12 Ultimate API that Ms announced in 2020. The feature is supposed to bring faster loading times and improved textures and draw distances. The Xbox Series X/S already uses DirectStorage , and in […]
Enlarge / A minimalist view of the Firefox web browser. (credit: Firefox) Mozilla has released the latest version of Firefox, Firefox 95, for Windows and macOS. It’s available now for all users on both platforms. The Firefox team says the new macOS version reduces CPU usage during event processing and that power usage is reduced […]
Dell’s XPS 15 9510. [credit: Andrew Cunningham ] Most people buying a laptop these days will get by just fine with a 13- or 14-inch thin-and-light PC like the Dell XPS 13 or Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon. These laptops have reasonably powerful processors and integrated graphics that are good enough for an external monitor or […]
Enlarge (credit: Clipchamp) Microsoft hasn’t updated its old Windows Movie Maker software since 2012, and it hasn’t even offered the old version for download since 2017, leaving Windows users to fend for themselves when it comes to beginner-friendly editing and sharing of video clips. That situation will hopefully change thanks to Microsoft’s acquisition of Clipchamp, […]
Enlarge / The updated iCloud for Windows and new iCloud Passwords app. (We’ve blacked out some private information here, obviously.) (credit: Samuel Axon) Apple has released a new version of iCloud for Windows, numbered 12.5. The update adds the ability to access and manage passwords saved in iCloud from a Windows machine, a feature users […]
Parallels Desktop 17 running Windows on a Mac. [credit: Parallels ] Parallels Desktop 17 has arrived with support for macOS Monterey and Windows 11. Further, the popular virtualization software for Macs is now a universal binary, making deployment a little less complicated for many IT professionals. Note that you can only run ARM versions of […]
Enlarge / Forget bendable mobile phones, we’re holding out for working mobile phone plushies. (credit: Carol Yepes via Getty Images ) The WireGuard VPN project announced a major milestone for its Windows users today—an all-new, kernel-mode implementation of the VPN protocol called WireGuardNT. The new implementation allows for massively improved throughput upon 10Gbps LAN connections—and […]
Enlarge The world woke up on Tuesday to two new vulnerabilities—one in Windows and the other in Linux—that allow hackers with a toehold in a vulnerable system to bypass OS security restrictions and access sensitive resources. As operating systems and applications become harder to hack, successful attacks typically require two or more vulnerabilities. One vulnerability […]
Enlarge (credit: Getty Images) An emergency patch Microsoft issued on Tuesday fails to fully fix a critical security vulnerability in all supported versions of Windows that allows attackers to take control of infected systems and run code of their choice, researchers said. The threat, colloquially known as PrintNightmare, stems from bugs in the Windows print […]
Enlarge / Dell has released a patch for a set of vulnerabilities that left as many as 30 million devices exposed. (credit: Artur Widak | Getty Images) Researchers have known for years about security issues with the foundational computer code known as firmware. It’s often riddled with vulnerabilities, it’s difficult to update with patches, and […]