As Windows 10 nears its end-of-life, Kauricone unveils Interface OS, designed to extend the life of millions of PCs and laptops, reducing environmental waste. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating ProsHigh quality in the right lightGood control for Windows and MacExtra effects with GeForceConsDoubtful with wrong lightNo microphoneNo control for Windows on ArmOur VerdictThe Facecam Neo, the latest offering from Elgato, is designed to make professional streaming as easy as possible. Whether you’re streaming a work call or a popular video game, you’re going to need a webcam that makes you look good. The Facecam Neo, the latest offering from Elgato, is designed to make professional streaming as easy as possible. The Elgato Facecam Neo is sold as either as a standalone product or in a kit that includes other gadgets such as a microphone, a light panel, and so on. As a standalone product, it costs $99.99. For that price, you get a sturdy little camera that can be angled vertically and swiveled sideways. It’s a nice camera, but it definitely has its limitations, which we’ll dive into below. Further reading: Best webcams 2024: Top picks and expert buying advice Elgato Facecam Neo: Easy to hook onto your screen You get a bracket to hook the webcam onto a screen and it sits firmly. It can also be used to stand it on a table, slightly elevated. Otherwise, you can also attach it to a stand of your choice, there are standard threads for it at the bottom. The screen mount comes separately and you can screw the camera to any tripod instead. The screen mount comes separately and you can screw the camera to any tripod instead.Mattias Inghe The screen mount comes separately and you can screw the camera to any tripod instead.Mattias Inghe Mattias Inghe The camera has a USB-C cable attached, so that’s the only way to connect it to a computer unless you buy your own adapter for USB-A. Elgato doesn’t specify whether it’s a USB 2.0 or 3.0. However, according to the stated system requirements, a USB 2.0 port on the computer should be sufficient and there shouldn’t be any compromise on image quality. The camera delivers 1920×1080 pixels at 60 Hz at best, with a signal that does not seem to contain too much compression. I don’t see any otherwise typical jpeg artefacts in video recorded with it, just some banding in tinted areas. Whether it can do that with a USB 2.0 connection I don’t know, I didn’t actually have a port to plug it into and test. But most Type C ports today are USB 3 model, so it shouldn’t be a problem. The Facecam Neo has no built-in microphone. For audio, you’ll need to connect to an external microphone or use a headset. Cooling grille with self-draught on the back. Cooling grille with self-draught on the back.Mattias Inghe Cooling grille with self-draught on the back.Mattias Inghe Mattias Inghe Elgato Facecam Neo: Looks good, but only in the right light The image quality is good thanks to a CMOS sensor and large aperture, autofocus, and optics with a 26 millimeter focal length that gives it a 77 degree angle of view. In 60 Hz image mode, the response is instantaneous and the image is completely free of blur and the image shows crisp details. It can be really good with the right lighting, with studio light, or incident daylight, but the image can also be annoyingly dark. I get harsh contrast and excessive color saturation when testing with just indoor lighting late at night in my home office. Skin tones become mottled and shades are unflatteringly emphasized. I don’t usually like the beauty filters found in many smartphone cameras, but here I actually started longing for something similar. Or at least better automatic light compensation. Other webcams are better this. The camera can deliver the right image, but the only thing that works with plug and play auto is the excellent white balance. To get a handle on excessive mottling and harsh contrast, I need to go into Camera Hub. To get a handle on excessive mottling and harsh contrast, I need to go into Camera Hub.Mattias Inghe To get a handle on excessive mottling and harsh contrast, I need to go into Camera Hub.Mattias Inghe Mattias Inghe Elgato Facecam Neo: Competent software works best with GeForce Let’s talk about the Camera Hub program real quick. It gives you control over digital zoom and crop with face tracking, contrast, light level, sharpening filters, saturation, and color temperature control as well as various HDR, noise reduction, and anti-flicker options. If you want to have good control over your image, this program is a must. It’s not as difficult as it may seem, though. I needed to adjust the light and contrast sliders to add more natural-looking skin colors to my face. With more light in a room, the quality increases dramatically. Camera Hub also includes AI-supported image effects in collaboration with Nvidia Broadcast, if you have a compatible graphics card for it. It can provide unmasking for green screen effect or blurred background and there are a bunch of presets for backgrounds. You also get an eye contact effect, which is very effective. However, these only work if you have an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 or better. Five minutes with the image sliders and GeForce effects and it looks better. The effect that fakes eye contact is one of the better ones I’ve tried. Five minutes with the image sliders and GeForce effects and it looks better. The effect that fakes eye contact is one of the better ones I’ve tried.Mattias Inghe Five minutes with the image sliders and GeForce effects and it looks better. The effect that fakes eye contact is one of the better ones I’ve tried.Mattias Inghe Mattias Inghe Elgato Facecam Neo: Needs more support Elgato specifies Windows 10, Mac OS 13, iPad OS 17, or later as system requirements for the camera. For Windows computers, the specifications require an Intel and AMD processor. However, it complies with the UVC standard and should work with other systems such as Chromebooks and new Windows computers with Snapdragon processors. I tried it on a Snapdragon X laptop and can confirm that plug and play installation works there, too. What limits compatibility is that Elgato doesn’t have Camera Hub for systems other than Windows and macOS. Trying to install the existing Windows version on a new Snapdragon X laptop will not work. The way around this is running the Camera Hub on a computer that supports it. Just plug the camera in, save locally to the camera’s built-in flash memory, and then plug it into your Snapdragon laptop. Let’s hope they fix the Arm-compatible Windows version of Camera Hub (and their other applications) soon. It would be a shame if Elgato gets left behind on that point. If you don’t have it, you’ll have to rely on better lighting and manual greenscreen. Neatly placed on a desktop screen. Neatly placed on a desktop screen.Mattias Inghe Neatly placed on a desktop screen.Mattias Inghe Mattias Inghe Elgato Facecam Neo: Conclusion I do wonder if the Facecam Neo is worth the investment. There are plenty of other Arm-compatible webcams out there that come with built-in microphones. If you’re willing to get the kit that includes a small microphone and a light panel, it might be a good fit. However, as standalone camera for the video meeting, it’s questionable. Elgato Facecam Neo: Specifications Product Name: Elgato Facecam NeoTested: August 2024Manufacturer: Elgato Interface: Usb 2.0 Type CResolution: Up to 1080pFrame Rate: Up to 60 Hz. 1080p/60HzMicrophone: NoSystem requirements: Windows 10, MacOS 12 or later, USB-C 2.0Features: Autofocus, Auto HDR, tripod mount, monitor mount, Camera Hub (for Windows and MacOS)Price: Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Read...

Once upon a time, “reinstalling Windows” was an often recommended remedy for all sorts of computer problems. Windows 95 and XP were notorious for becoming less stable over time, with “crap in the machine” in the form of settings left in the Registry, traces of uninstalled programs that had not been properly removed, and other things that lurked. Indeed, many people chose to reinstall from time to time even if the computer showed no symptoms, as part of regular maintenance. get windows 11 pro for cheap Windows 11 Pro Windows 10 and 11 are much better at keeping order and cleaning up automatically. Today, frequent reinstallations are not something we at PCWorld or any other experts recommend. But sometimes it can still be appropriate. Maybe you want to make the move from Windows 10 to 11 and prefer to start over with a fresh system instead of upgrading. Maybe you have so much junk in your system that it will simply be easier to reinstall the OS and only install the programs you really need than to sit and remove everything you don’t need by hand. Whatever the reason, this is your guide to a safe and secure computer reset. Before you start Don’t start a reset without first making sure you know you can recover your computer, and more importantly your files, if something goes wrong. Samsung Samsung Samsung 1. Back up No matter how you go about reinstalling Windows, it’s a good idea to review your backups and make sure you don’t have any files on your computer that you don’t have at least one copy of elsewhere. See our roundups of the best backup software and best cloud backup services for recommendations. If you have an external hard drive you can spare that is at least as big as your computer’s internal disc (C:), you can create a clone of it in addition to your regular backups. A clone backup means that you mirror all the contents of the internal disc to the external one, and if something goes wrong, you can restore the same way in the other direction to get your computer back to the way it was before, including all installed programs. Choose a backup program, such as our favorite one, R-Drive Image that will do this. Foundry Foundry Foundry 2. Remember what you have installed today It’s also a good idea to create an inventory of what programs you have installed on your computer, and any extensions and plugins to these. The most common example of the latter is browser plugins, and it is sufficient to take a picture or write down the list of installed extensions in the browser(s) you use. For installed applications, you can use Settings or Control Panel to get a list of all installed applications. You can then use the same list after reinstalling to see which are included in Windows and which are missing. You can then find and install the missing programs you actually want to keep and ignore the rest. 3. Check your software licences If you own any expensive software whose license only allows installation on a certain number of computers, it might be a good idea to deactivate the licence on your computer before you reset it. Otherwise, the old installation will continue to count as one of your authorized installations. This was a bigger problem in the past. Today Adobe and others have features that can automatically move licenses to a new computer or system after reinstallation. But if you have a feeling that a program you’ve bought might get lost, it’s worth checking before you go any further. 4. Windows license key Speaking of licenses, it’s also a good idea to check that you have the Windows license key to activate your computer after reinstallation. Depending on how you acquired the system and have activated it, this may work slightly differently. Foundry Foundry Foundry Open Settings > System > Activation and click on Activation Status. If it says that Windows has been activated with a digital license linked to your Microsoft account, you don’t need to do anything special. As long as you don’t make any hardware changes, the system should activate automatically when you log in to the same Microsoft account after the reinstallation. It may also say that the system is activated with a digital license, but without mentioning anything about your Microsoft account. In this case, you should choose to add an account, otherwise Microsoft may not be able to find the digital license after reinstallation or if you make changes to the hardware. By linking the license to your account, you can activate the system using the activation troubleshooter. However, if it says that the system has been activated with a license key, open Powershell/Terminal and type the following command: wmic path softwareLicensingService get OA3xOriginalProductKey If a key is displayed, you can write it down. If no key is displayed, it is probably because Windows was included when you bought the computer and the key is embedded in the hardware. This means that the same version of Windows should be activated automatically after reinstallation. 5. Synchronize settings Microsoft Microsoft Microsoft If you use a Microsoft account, you can now synchronize many system settings, both between multiple computers and as a kind of settings backup when you reinstall your system. Go to Settings > Accounts > Windows Backup. Here you can activate two features: Remember my apps: The system will offer to automatically install the so-called modern Windows apps you had installed via the Microsoft store. Does not apply to regular programs that are installed with a custom installer. Remember my settings: This saves settings such as Wi-Fi, assistive technology, personalization, and language. In short, most things. When you log in to your account after the reinstallation, the system will read the synced settings and set everything up again. Zapping everything or just the system? How total do you want your reboot to be? That question determines which type of reinstallation you should choose. There are two basic methods of reinstalling, and for each method there are a few different options that affect the outcome. From Settings or through your computer’s recovery environment, you can reinstall Windows over the current installation, and either keep or delete files in the user folder. This will remove installed programs, except those that came with the computer. Creating installation media on a USB stick gives you a few more options, including the ability to reinstall the system and keep both your files and any installed programs. The table below shows the different options. Type of reinstallationOptions for reinstallationWhat happens to programmesFiles in your home folderFiles in other folders and on other discsIn settingsFixing problems with Windows UpdateAll programs and settings are preservedPreservedPreservedIn Settings or via the recovery environmentKeep my filesProgrammes that did not come with the computer are deletedPreservedPreservedIn Settings or via the recovery environmentDelete everythingDeletes programs that did not come with the computerDeletedDeletedWith installation mediaKeep everything (default)All programs and settings are preservedRetainPreservedWith installation mediaKeep personal dataAll programmes are deletedRetainedRetainedWith installation mediaDo not retain anythingAll programmes are deletedDeletedDeletedClean install with installation mediaReformats C: or all disks and partitions. All files and programs are deleted. Caution: Warning! Keep in mind that if you choose to reformat the entire computer with installation media, disks other than C: will also be deleted. Method 1: Via settings The easiest way if the computer still boots is to restore Windows via Settings > System > Recovery. Here you have three options. If you think something is wrong with Windows itself but are not looking to clean up in other ways, you can start by trying Fixing problems with Windows Update. It will download and reinstall all system files without affecting installed programs, settings or your files. If you want to start from scratch instead, select Reset this PC. You will then be given another choice, to keep or delete your own files. Whichever you choose, installed programs will disappear and all settings will be reset. This is a good choice if you want to remove all the old junk that has accumulated over the years, but still want to keep the files in your home folder. You can also access this feature from the Windows recovery environment. Foundry Foundry Foundry With all three options, the system takes care of the rest. The computer will reboot a few times during the process, just like with some system updates. Once that’s done, you’ll have to go through the Windows Welcome Wizard, sign in to your Microsoft account again, and so on. Then you can just start installing programs you really need. You’ll also have to redo some system settings, but if you made sure to synchronize settings (see above), most of them will be restored. Method 2: With installation media These are actually two different methods, but they both start the same way: with a USB stick that turns into installation media. You can create the installation media on any Windows computer, not necessarily the computer you are reinstalling the system on. You need a USB stick of at least 8GB, which will be reformatted (i.e. all files will be deleted), and the Media Creation Tool which you can download here. When you run the program, you will have to choose the edition and language of Windows. After that, select the correct USB drive and click on it. The program will first download Windows and then create the installation media. If the computer boots properly, you can start the reinstallation by running setup.exe on the USB stick via Explorer. The program will chew for a while. Then click past user agreements and other things until you get to a dialog where you can choose what you want to keep. Select the Keep personal files and apps to upgrade in place. The options Keep only personal files and Nothing work as via Reset this computer in Settings (see above). Boot your computer from the USB stick If you have a major problem and Windows doesn’t start up as usual, you can boot your computer from the installation media and reinstall the system from there. Unfortunately, the Windows installer is not very good at handling more than one hard drive or SSD in the computer, so if you have discs other than C: it is a good idea to physically disconnect them. This avoids potential errors and means you don’t risk deleting something you don’t want to delete. You can reconnect the discs once Windows is installed and the computer boots properly. Boot your computer from the USB stick by plugging it in, starting your computer and pressing the button that opens the boot menu. Foundry Foundry Foundry Once it has booted, select the language and keyboard, click next, and then Install now and the installer will start. Fill in the product key or proceed without, and select the correct edition of Windows in the next step. Accept the user agreement and you will be presented with two options: Upgrade or Custom. Upgrade works just like Keep personal files and apps and Fix problems with Windows Update above, and only works if Windows Update can install the system on top of the existing one. All files and installed applications will remain, but the reinstallation may not do any good. Custom can either reinstall Windows and move all your old files to a new folder on C: called Windows.old, or reformat (delete) C: and install a completely new system without any other files on the disc. To keep the old files, select the Windows partition from the list of available partitions and move on without doing anything more. To start from scratch, delete all partitions from your computer’s boot disc, where the current Windows resides. If you have more than one hard drive or SSD in your computer and haven’t unplugged them as I recommend above, you need to be careful here, as you can easily accidentally delete the other disks. Look for a partition that is named something with Windows and is of type Primary. Note the drive number. My Windows partition is on Drive 1. Select each partition on that drive in turn and click Delete. When the whole drive is just Unallocated space you can select it and click Next. The installer will then format the drive appropriately and begin the installation of Windows. Once everything is ready, just sign in to your Microsoft account and let the settings sync if you chose to. Then you can move your files back from the backup and install the programs you need. Read...

When a laptop has finally outlived its usefulness, it can be tempting to discard it, both mentally and literally, and move on to your next laptop that’s better, faster, lighter. It’s an exciting time! But before you do, hold on. Don’t just throw your old laptop in the trash. For starters, you’ll want to wipe it clean of all your personal data. After that, you might be able to recoup something from it. And even if you can’t—or simply don’t want to—reclaim value from your old laptop, you still shouldn’t just throw it away. The U.S. produces almost 7 million tons of e-waste each year and you’d only be contributing to this growing problem. Fortunately, there are plenty of organizations out there that will be more than happy to help you get rid of it in a more greener way. Here are several ways to dispose of your old laptop in an eco-friendlier way and help the world in reducing unnecessary e-waste. First step: Wipe your data clean Before you discard your laptop at all, you should really back up your important data and then wipe the laptop completely. That means securely erasing the SSD and/or hard drive to make sure your data doesn’t fall into anyone else’s hands. Performing a factory reset might feel like adequate protection, but it isn’t enough. Someone who knows what they’re doing could potentially recover your seemingly deleted data, and that can leave you vulnerable to identity theft or hacking attempts. And if you do end up trashing the laptop altogether, you can physically destroy all of the drives if you want to be absolutely sure. (Or you can save those drives and repurpose them in other ways.) With that out of the way, here’s what you can do with the actual laptop that you no longer need or want. Option #1: Trade it in Bram Van Oost / Unsplash Bram Van Oost / Unsplash Bram Van Oost / Unsplash If your plan is to simply replace your laptop with a new one, it’s worth seeing if you can trade it in to get a discount on your purchase. Manufacturers like Dell, Apple, Lenovo, Microsoft, Acer and retailers like Best Buy, Walmart, Staples have various trade-in programs. Giving them your old laptop could save you hundreds of dollars off your next laptop. You don’t even need to trade in the same brand, although you will probably get a better deal if you do. Regardless, be sure to shop around. Some places will give you just a few bucks for an especially old laptop, while others will offer a flat fee no matter what you’re trading in. The best laptop trade-in program for you will depend on your laptop model and intended replacement. New laptops can be expensive, so this is a great way to kill two birds with one stone: get rid of your old laptop while saving on the next. Option #2: Sell it Karolina Kaboompics / Pexels Karolina Kaboompics / Pexels Karolina Kaboompics / Pexels If you have no plans to replace your old laptop and a trade-in program is off the table, then consider selling it outright. The easiest option would be to conduct a private local sale over Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist. If you’re comfortable with staging, photographing, and shipping, you could also list your laptop on eBay, Mercari, OfferUp, and other used marketplaces that allow electronics. Or you can look into buy-your-gadget sites like Swappa, Decluttr, and ItsWorthMore, which all have programs for buying hardware and conveniently setting you up with a shipping label. They may not offer as much as you could get in a private sale, but the convenience factor and quick turnaround might be worth the lesser profit. Either way, it’s a great way to make a little extra money from an unused laptop while making sure it doesn’t just end up in landfill somewhere. More on this: How to sell your old electronics Option #3: Donate it Computer Aid Computer Aid Computer Aid If your old laptop still has a lot of life left in it but you want it to go towards a more noble cause than simply selling it for cash, you could always take the altruistic path and donate it. Organizations like Computers With Causes, DigitUnity, and Computer Aid are always looking to receive gently used electronics. These donations go on to help students, teachers, foster homes, shelters, military veterans, the elderly, plus other outreach groups and organizations. If you want to make the biggest impact with your old laptop, this is the way. It doesn’t have to be an entirely selfless move, either. By donating your old laptops and other electronics, you can deduct the current market values of each donated device from your taxes. If you’d rather focus your donation efforts locally, speak to your local school board, library, or local government organizations, as they may be interested in receiving donations of specific hardware types. Option #4: Recycle it Patrickewastenz / Wikimedia Commons Patrickewastenz / Wikimedia Commons Patrickewastenz / Wikimedia Commons If you have no other use for your laptop, you can’t be hassled to sell it, and you don’t think anyone will want it even as a gift or donation, please don’t just throw it in a dumpster where it’ll end up at a landfill. Like many modern electronics, laptops are composed of both precious materials that can still be reused and toxic materials that can be hazardous to the environment. Recycling is important because it helps reclaim the good stuff while properly disposing of the bad stuff. By recycling, you reduce the burden on landfills, you reduce the amount of hazardous waste in the environment, and you reduce the need to extract precious more metals and materials from the earth to produce new devices (much of which comes from global conflict zones). Many laptop manufacturers have their own recycling programs that make it easy to send in your laptops. Alternatively, retailers like Best Buy and Staples have in-house recycling and e-waste programs that let you drop off old hardware, no questions asked. Furthermore, many states and local municipalities have state-wide or city-wide e-waste recycling programs you can take advantage of. Further reading: Clever ways to repurpose an old laptop Read...

Can AI be used ethically for school work? It depends upon who you ask — quite literally. That’s because less than two years after ChatGPT was originally released in November 2022, the attitudes towards AI in the classroom still vary widely. High schools have viewed AI as a crutch at best, and at worst as a tool for cheating. But several universities leave generative AI use entirely up to the discretion of the person teaching the course. In general, however, the answer boils down to a single golden rule: Students should develop their own answers, incorrect or not. Any AI assistance — from editing to research to actual writing — may be seen as a violation of an academic honor code that some schools require. If AI is used, the thinking now is that it should be cited, like a footnote. ‘AI’ usage depends on how you define it AI doesn’t refer to just any one thing. Generative AI “chatbots” include Anthropic’s Claude, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Then there are the supplemental AI services like Khan Academy’s Khanmigo ($4/mo for families and individuals), which acts as a supplementary tutor and shies away from providing “the answers” directly to the student. AI art plays a role, but to a small extent. The Los Angeles School District spent over $3 million commissioning its own scheduling and tutoring AI assistant, “Ed,” but then shut it down after major layoffs at the tool’s developer. Some schools are even using AI to develop lesson plans. A demonstration of how Khamigo works, by Khan Academy. All of these tools have their own strengths and weaknesses, including writing code and summarizing complex topics. Some pull “live” answers from the Internet, which is good for research. But not all AI tools cite their sources, and AI that can “hallucinate” answers still exists. All of this plays a role in whether an AI tool should be used for education. Finally, governments are placing their own restrictions on what students can or cannot do with AI. Uploading personal information, test scores, or texts to AI might be literally prohibited by data-privacy laws. As of February 2024, for example, only Microsoft Copilot is officially allowed at Ohio State University, according to its resource center. At high school, AI is often seen as a cheat Bing Image Creator Bing Image Creator Bing Image Creator High schools and universities seem to treat AI differently, with high-school teachers taking a much more hands-on, supervisory role. Still, high schools seem to have a less comprehensive policy on using AI than major universities. In California, Los Angeles schools banked on “Ed,” but right now AI use there seems to be in limbo. Neither San Jose nor the San Francisco Unified School District has a formal policy on generative AI, but San Francisco acknowledges that “blocking AI tools will not prevent their use” and “these tools will be prevalent in our students’ future.” That’s not the case at Mohonasen Central School District in New York, where AI services like ChatGPT have been blocked from school computers because of the temptation to cheat. “ChatGPT, we view as the most basic of AI for education,” said Bill Vacca, director of instructional technology there. “ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot: phenomenal for real-world use cases, like if you want to learn how to write a business letter, or make a pitch for your company. But in terms of education, they can be the most dangerous in terms of having students cheat.” Vacca said that his district was “very out front” in terms of encouraging AI, with full-day lessons on how to utilize AI and its importance. But teachers were scared of the implications and wanted nothing to do with AI, he said. “Our biggest teacher pushback was how do we prevent students from cheating?” Over time, Vacca said, teachers have become more familiar with AI, and have approached him specifically about using AI in the classroom. So have students, although he said that isn’t a majority. This year, the Mohonasen Central district will trial Khanmigo with a small group of teachers, emphasizing math, and using the Khanmigo tools to help assess how the students have progressed. A key Khanmigo selling point is that the tool doesn’t give “the answers,” but helps the student work toward the correct solution. So can AI be ethically used in high schools? Vacca said he sees both sides. “I was interested in when the calculator came out in classrooms,” Vacca said. “I was thinking about that, and it’s the same exact same thing. You had people debating where calculators were going, and if we even needed to teach how to do basic multiplication. And we’re seeing that now. But [AI] is only a couple of years old, and the calculator has been out for decades.” The goal is to bring AI in to help students learn, and that’s what teachers at all levels appear to be wrestling with. “In a third-grade classroom, you’re not bringing a calculator out to do your math,” Vacca said. “You’re going to learn it. But when you get into the higher grades, you can use it to help create something even more extraordinary.” Colleges have a much more freewheeling approach Bing Image Creator Bing Image Creator Bing Image Creator Colleges are taking a more hands-off approach to AI. But Vacca’s feelings about it were echoed by John Behrens, director of the office of digital strategy in the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Notre Dame, especially as students make the transition from the senior years of high school to the early years of college. “The first reaction from a lot of people, especially people that have been using computers for a long time, people later in their career, their first reaction was oh, this is a cheating tool,” Behrens said. But it’s not that simple, he added. “If you’re teaching a beginning language class, ChatGPT is going to be better than the students,” Behrens said. “It might not be appropriate for users learning to translate, because then it’s just replacing the students’ learning process. But if you have really advanced students, then they’re probably going to be as good as ChatGPT. And there you want to use ChatGPT to make work and activities and interactions that are expanding what you can do with the students.” “It’s a complex environment, because most instructors have very little idea how it works and how best to use it right now,” Behrens added. Most U.S. universities haven’t put any hard and fast rules on the use of AI by students in the classroom. Instead, virtually all of the AI policies reviewed by PCWorld leave the issue entirely up to the professor teaching the course, from banning it entirely to encouraging its use. Of several university academic policies regarding AI — which included Harvard, Notre Dame, Ohio State, UC Berkeley and Stanford — only Stanford issued an umbrella statement stating that when there is any doubt with regards to students using AI, the answer is no. “Absent a clear statement from a course instructor, use of or consultation with generative AI shall be treated analogously to assistance from another person,” Stanford’s Generative AI Policy Guidance states, dated Feb. 2023. “In particular, using generative AI tools to substantially complete an assignment or exam (e.g. by entering exam or assignment questions) is not permitted.” Some professors have used their academic freedom to seize upon the opportunities AI can offer. “I received criticism when I first started incorporating AI into my classroom setting, with other professors letting me know that I was doing a disservice to my students by teaching them about how to use AI in higher education,” Carol-Lynn Perez, a senior lecturer in communication studies at San Jose State, said. “What they failed to realize early on is that AI is here to stay, and it is only going to get more advanced as the months roll ahead. In just the couple of years AI has been around our students have been far ahead of the game, and if we don’t make friends with it, we will be left behind.” There’s also the concern about keeping up with the real world, said Nitesh Chawla, a professor of computer science and engineering at Notre Dame. In class, computer science students can use AI to create 60 percent of the code, allowing the professor can move on to a higher-level topic that the class would never have had time to cover…because the students would be writing the code, instead. Yet an employer would almost certainly demand the use of AI if it could save the company time and money, he said. “So is a student graduating from [a university] where AI is banned…going to be at a detriment in the workforce when the student joins? We don’t have an answer to that yet,” Chawla said. How and when to use AI in school work Bing Image Creator Bing Image Creator Bing Image Creator Relying on AI isn’t always the best choice. In one recent paper primarily authored by researchers at the U. of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, about 1,000 high-school students were divided up into groups and asked to take a math test. One group was allowed to take the test assisted by what was essentially ChatGPT-4. The tool provided incorrect answers about half of the time, and yet students who were polled felt that they didn’t do any worse using the tool than they would otherwise. AI, put simply, can be a crutch, the study concluded. “These results suggest that while access to generative AI can improve performance, it can substantially inhibit learning,” it said. Perez noted that AI also has several flaws: AI hallucinates, can be racist or sexist, will make up citations, and can easily give the wrong information along with a lack of depth and absence of human nuance. But students still prefer information in short, manageable chunks. “The creative process can begin with AI, but what students fail to realize a lot of times is that it cannot interpret problems or offer creative decisions like a human can,” Perez said. Educators seem to agree that you shouldn’t use AI to create work that you pass off as your own. Instead, if you are going to use AI in class, treat it like any other source of information. “As an early adopter I routinely tell my students that AI should be cited like a peer-reviewed journal article,” Perez said. ” When something is not written in your own words, it must be cited. Higher education is still figuring out this piece of the puzzle, but my motto is, ‘When in doubt, cite it out.`” Miriam Scott, a secondary education teacher in Australia, provides guidelines to students on how to incorporate generative AI into their schoolwork. Style guides are now beginning to accommodate the new reality by including footnote rules for citing AI-generated content, such as in this summary from the Canton State University of New York. The problem, though, is the middle ground. Nathaniel Myers, an associate teaching professor at Notre Dame who will be teaching a course titled “Advanced Writing and Rhetoric: Writing in the Age of AI” this fall, says he worries about even using AI as an editing tool. “The example that I’ve experienced myself is, if I’ve asked it to fix grammar, it will instead affect things that are more than just sort of simply grammatical choices,” Myers said. Myers referred to work done by Anna Mills, an instructor at Cañada College, who has raised concerns about a writer’s voice becoming “blurry” when AI is applied to improve their draft. AI can replace a specific point of view or style with a much more generic approach, Myers said, citing Mills. That can be a problem, for example, when a writing style associated with a specific point of view, such as a minority, becomes generalized via AI. To Chawla, the time is right to have these discussions. “Kids know [AI] in middle school, kids know it in high school,” Chawla said. “Kids know it in elementary school. And in school, they are being taught not to use it, at least in my children’s schools. They’re being told not to use it at the school — and at the same time, they’re figuring their own way out of what is and what is not appropriate use of these technologies. “AI is as mainstream as it gets.” Further reading: The AI PC revolution: 18 essential terms you need to know Read...

Here’s one of the coolest things we’ve ever tested at PCWorld: this tiny, super-fast SSD that’s about the size of a bulky flash drive and looks like a shiny, golden scarab. It has a fitting name, too! Already awesome enough at full price, the SK Hynix Beetle X31 is now down to $47.80 on Amazon, a sizable drop from its usual $70. That’s a fantastic deal and one we think is absolutely worth jumping on. The SK Hynix Beetle X31 is one of the most compact and stylish SSDs out there today. In our review of the SK Hynix Beetle X31, we gave it a 4.5 out of 5 stars rating and appreciated its performance and design, although we do wish it came in colors other than gold. “The Beetle X31 took the number-one spot among 10Gbps SSDs in synthetic benchmarks and our 48GB transfer tests,” noted our expert as he crowned the Beetle as the winner in a battle between similarly classed SSDs. This SSD delivers blazing-fast data speeds with a sequential read speed of up to 1,050MB/s, making it perfect for quick file transfers, seamless video editing, and smooth gaming. The SK Hynix Beetle X31 is pretty versatile, too, able to be used with a wide range of devices, including desktops, laptops, Macs, Android devices, tablets, and gaming consoles. It comes with two cables (one USB C-to-C and one USB C-to-A), so it’s a breeze to connect it to any of your gadgets and computers. This hot deal is going to sizzle out fast, so grab the 512GB version of the SK Hynix Beetle X31 for just $47.80 right now at Amazon. The bigger 1TB version is also on sale at a similar discount. The SK Hynix Beetle X31 is at its best-ever price right nowBuy now on Amazon Read...

Can you record Roblox games while playing? The answer is YES. You can record gameplay on Roblox with the proper tools. Solutions vary between devices. Here is a quick overview of how to record on Roblox on multiple platforms: Windows and Mac players can use a Roblox screen recorder, like EaseUS RecExperts to record Roblox on pc and macOS without any lag and in good quality. Console gamers of Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo Switch can record Roblox directly from the controller. However, it only enables users to capture clips for a limited time. Chromebook users can capture Roblox videos from EaseUS Online Recorder. This web-based tool allows users to capture the webcam, microphone, and system sound from a website easily. iOS and Android players can use the built-in recorder to capture clips on Roblox. If no such tool exists, use third-party recording software. Roblox is an ultimate virtual universe where players can create and share experiences (games) with others. Since it helps develop critical thinking, creativity, and teamwork, Roblox Studio has gained great popularity among these virtual explorers. Many players would like to capture and share their highlight moments with more people on YouTube, Facebook, and other social media platforms. This article will teach you how to record on Roblox on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Chromebook. How to record Roblox with voice on PC and Mac EaseUS RecExperts is a reliable Roblox recorder for Windows and Mac computers. Its Game Mode enables you to select a specific game window and record yourself playing Roblox without lag and watermark. Look at these features that can help you record the gameplay on Roblox better: Record Roblox videos without time limit, lag, or watermark. Record computer audio, your face, and your voice. Screen record videos on Roblox with up to 144 fps. Record Roblox game footage in good quality for up to 8K resolution. Capture the full screen, part of the screen, or any selected area. Let’s see how to record on Roblox with the EaseUS game recorder. Step 1. Open the Roblox game you want to record. Download, install, and launch EaseUS RecExperts on your Windows PC or Mac. Step 2. From the upper right toolbar, go to Settings (the nut icon). Here, you can change the Roblox recording settings, such as the file path, frame rate, video and audio output format, and hotkeys. EaseUS EaseUS EaseUS Step 3. From the left panel, go to Game Mode (the controller icon). Here, you can turn on the microphone, webcam, and system audio. Click OK to save changes. Step 4. When you go back to the Game Mode interface, click Select Game, choose a specific game window to record, and tap OK. EaseUS EaseUS EaseUS Step 5. Click REC to start recording Roblox videos. When the 3-second countdown timer ends, the process bar will appear on the screen (it will not appear on your final recordings). You can click the Screenshot icon (or press F11) to take a screenshot or click the Auto-stop button ( the clock icon) to set a specific time to stop recording automatically. Step 6. To end the recording manually, click the Stop button (or press F9). You can preview, play, and even edit this video immediately. How to record Roblox videos on Xbox/PS/Switch Apart from computers, users can play Roblox games or experiences on consoles, including Xbox X/S/One, PlayStation 5/4, and even Nintendo Switch. If you prefer playing Roblox on consoles, you can capture gameplay highlights by using these controllers directly. Sign in to your account, launch the experience you want to record, and make sure there is a stable network connection. Then, follow the steps below: #1. Record Roblox videos on the Xbox console: Step 1. Press the Share or Xbox button on the controller while you are playing. A single press will take a screenshot; a long press and holding the button will capture game clips for 30 seconds. Step 2. Pressing the Share or Xbox again will stop recording. The clip is saved automatically. Step 3. To see your captures, press the Xbox button to enter the guide and go to Capture & share > Recent captures. Tips: If you want to record Roblox videos for a longer time, open the guide and go to Profile & system > Preferences > Capture. Here you can change the recording duration to 3 minutes on Xbox X/S and to 10 minutes on Xbox One. Using an external drive can extend the time limit to 1 hour; using a third-party Roblox game recorder like EaseUS RecExperts can clip on Xbox with no time limit. EaseUS EaseUS EaseUS #2. Record Roblox videos on PS5/4: Step 1. Press the Create button on your DualSense wireless controller. You will see a popup. Step 2. Go to Capture Options. Here you can change the Roblox recording settings: Screenshot File Type, Video Clip File Type, Include Your Mic’s Audio, and Include Party Audio. Step 3. On the screen, you can choose to take a screenshot or start a new recording. Here, we chose Start New Recording. Press X to start. Step 4. Pressing the Create button again will stop the recording. Step 5. Go back to the home page and navigate to Games > Media Gallery. All your recordings and screenshots will be saved here. Tip: The PlayStation console can save a gameplay recording from 15 seconds to 1 hour. To get a longer recording, try a Roblox game recorder like EaseUS RecExperts. #3. Record Roblox videos on Nintendo Switch: Step 1. Press the Capture button on your Switch console. A single press will take a screenshot; holding the button will capture game clips for 30 seconds. Step 2. Releasing the button will stop recording. You can see the saving process on the screen. Step 3. All the recordings and screenshot files are in the Album. Here, you can copy, delete, and trim the file if necessary. Tip: The Nintendo Switch only captures a recording for up to 30 seconds. If you need longer recording time, use a capture card or a Roblox screen recorder. How to record Roblox on Chromebook/ChromeOS If you want to screen record Roblox gameplay on a Chromebook, you can use the EaseUS online screen recorder to record videos from websites. It lets you record the webcam, microphone, and system sound without any lag. No download and installation are required. Let’s see how to record on Roblox on Chromebook: Step 1. Launch the Roblox game you want to record on your ChromeOS computer. Step 2. Visit https://recorder.easeus.com/online-screen-recorder.html from any web browser. Click Start Recording. Step 3. If necessary, toggle on the Webcam, System Sound, or Microphone. Then click Start Recording. EaseUS EaseUS EaseUS Step 4. Choose a Chrome tab, window, or entire screen. Click Share. When the timer is counting down, go back to the Roblox page to play your game. Step 5. To stop recording, click Stop sharing in the middle button panel. You will automatically go back to the recording page, where you can preview and play this capture. Step 6. Click Save to download this video to your Chromebook. If you want to record the game again, click Start a new recording. How to record on Roblox on iPhone/iPad Roblox also supports the iOS platform (iOS version 12 or higher), which means you can play Roblox experiences on iPhones (iPhone 7 and later), iPads (iPad Air 2 and later), and iPod Touches (7th generation and later). If your iOS devices have reached the operating system and model requirements, you can use the built-in screen recording function to clip on Roblox without lag spikes or other issues. To do so: Step 1. Make sure you have enabled the screen recording function on your iPhone and iPad. Go to Settings > Control Center > Customize Controls. Tap the green + icon left to Screen Recording. Step 2. Open the Roblox app and launch the game you want to record. Step 3. On an iPhone with Face ID, swipe down from the top right corner of the screen. On an iPhone with a Home button, swipe up from the bottom edge of the screen. Tap the screen recording button (circle within a circle). A 3-second countdown appears before the recording begins. Step 4. Let the Roblox game play. You can see the red dot recording icon in the upper left corner of the screen. It means your recording is in progress. Step 5. To stop recording, tap the red dot recording icon in the upper left corner of the screen again. Tap Stop in the popup. Step 6. Your recording is saved to the Photos app. EaseUS EaseUS EaseUS If your iOS device does not have a built-in recorder or you want an alternative, you can use third-party iOS screen recorders such as Record it, TechSmith Capture, and DU Recorder. How to screen record Roblox on Android phones If your Android smartphones or tablets run Android 6 or higher and support at least OpenGL ES 3.0, you can install the Roblox application and run these experiences smoothly. Furthermore, make sure the operating system of your Android devices is updated to version 11 and newer. Then, you can record Roblox experiences with the pre-installed recorder. Samsung, Asus, Huawei, Sony, and many brands support this function. Step 1. Swipe down from the top of your phone screen to open Quick Settings. Step 2. Open the Roblox app and launch the game you want to record. Step 3. Tap the Screen Record button from the list and give permission to track your activity if prompted. You may change the Sound settings and click Start recording. Step 4. When the countdown appears, let the Roblox experience play. Step 5. To stop recording, access Quick Settings and tap the Screen Record button again. Step 6. Your recording is saved to the Gallery app. EaseUS EaseUS EaseUS If your Android device does not have a built-in recorder or you want an alternative, you can use third-party Android screen recorders such as AZ Recorder, XRecorder, and Mobizen. Troubleshooting: Roblox record button missing Roblox has a built-in screen recorder that lets gamers record experiences in low quality and at low frame rates. However, some users report that the Roblox record button is missing when they prepare to record Roblox with the screen recording function. There can be several potential reasons and solutions you can try. Disable other plugins because the conflict with other plugins can sometimes lead to missing features. Simply restart Roblox Studio and have a try. Reinstall Roblox to ensure everything runs smoothly. Check the Roblox Develop Hub for any updates or changes. Make sure you are in Reblox Studio instead of Reblox Player. The latter is for visiting experiences and does not have a recording option. Reach out to Roblox support for further assistance. Final words Now that you have learned how to record on Roblox, it will be easy to capture your highlights on Windows, gaming consoles, Mac, iOS, Android, and even Chromebooks if you follow this guide carefully. If you want a smooth and HD recording process on a Windows pc or Mac, try EaseUS RecEperts. It lets you record everything you need on Roblox and other game platforms without lag strikes and watermarks. Its intuitive design suits both novices and professionals. Now, use EaseUS RecEperts to record yourself playing a Roblox experience. Share your creativity and thoughts with more people! FAQ 1. Does Roblox have a built-in screen recorder? Roblox has a built-in screen recorder, which provides basic recording options. You can use it a take a screenshot or record a video. To do so: Step 1. Go into the game or experience and click the menu > Captures in the upper left corner. Step 2. Under the Record tab, go to Roblox Video Settings to select the recording file path. Step 3. Click Record Video to start recording experiences on Roblox. Step 4. Click Stop Recording from the menu to end this task. Step 5. You can view the recorded video from the My Videos folder. 2. How do Youtubers record themselves playing Roblox? YouTubers usually use a combination of software and hardware to record themselves playing Roblox games. Here is a general overview: A PC, gaming laptop, or an Xbox/Playstation game console. A good quality microphone to capture their voices. A decent webcam to capture reactions for face-cam videos. Professional game recording software such as OBS, Bandicam, and EaseUS RecExperts. Editing software such as Adobe, Final Cut Pro, and DaVinci Resolve. 3. How do I record with OBS without lag? To record Roblox games and upload the footage to social media platforms with OBS Studio, see the guide below: Step 1. Download, install, and launch OBS Studio on a Windows, Mac, or Linux computer. Step 2. Navigate to File > Settings > OutPut. Here you can change the recording path and format. Step 3. Start a Roblox gameplay. Step 4. In the Scenes bar of the OBS interface, right-click and choose Add to set a name for the new recording. Right-click the Source bar and select Windows Capture. Then, select the Roblox window you want to record and click OK. Step 5. Click the Record to start or stop recording. The recorded video will automatically saved to your computer. Read...

At a GlanceExpert`s Rating ProsClean interfaceGood antivirus protectionAdvanced settingsConsParental controls have limited utilityUnclear pricingOur VerdictESET Home Security Premium may have changed its name, but not its character. It still offers good antivirus protection, along with useful tools like a password manager and PC utilities. Power users will most appreciate this security suite for its advanced settings, which give more control under the hood. However, parents may need a more robust set of tools for monitoring their kids’ activity. When we last reviewed ESET Home Security Premium, it had a different name. Officially it did, anyway. Despite the update, the antivirus suite formerly known as ESET Smart Security Premium is still called the very same in the app—and has kept its fundamentals, too. Those core qualities start with good threat protection and an easy-to-use password manager. They include enough advanced settings to potentially satisfy power users, too. In fact, if you like your apps to have less handholding and more digging around, ESET could be perfect for you…so long as you can forgive some features for not living up to their hype. Further reading: See our roundup of the best antivirus software for Windows to learn about competing products. What does ESET Home Security Premium include?  As with other security suites, ESET Home Security Premium’s antivirus and firewall serve as the key fundamentals of the app. Together, they shield your PC from malware (including ransomware), suspicious websites and downloads, and potential network attacks. The software also can scan for vulnerable networks, thwart unauthorized use of your webcam, and block dangerous email attachments. Parental controls and a password manager are available, too. However, unlike similarly priced rivals, Home Security Premium is more sparse with its ancillary protections. You get safeguards for browsing sessions (like for banking) and a data encryption tool, as well as an anti-theft feature to help locate lost or stolen devices. No identity protections (like dark web scanning) come with the Home Security Premium plan — you must upgrade to Ultimate to get those. Instead ESET’s mid-tier plan leans more heavily toward PC utilities. These focus on Windows performance — they monitor system changes, provide information on active Windows processes and network connections, help troubleshoot Windows issues, and check what devices are connected to your network. Among ESET’s plans for home users, Home Security Premium is the mid-tier option. Among ESET’s plans for home users, Home Security Premium is the mid-tier option.ESET Among ESET’s plans for home users, Home Security Premium is the mid-tier option.ESET ESET How much does ESET Home Security Premium cost?  When you buy a subscription directly through ESET, you can cover the exact number of devices you want (up to 10). The price starts at $60 for just one device, then increases in $5 increments. Covered devices must run Windows, macOS, or Android — iOS is not supported. Licenses purchased through ESET come with a 30-day money-back guarantee and are automatically enrolled in auto-renewal. You can stack together the company’s 30-day free trial with the return policy.  3-device plan: $70 for the first year  5-device plan: $80 for the first year  10-device plan: $105 for the first year  ESET’s prices are the subscriptions’ list cost, but the company also caveats them as for “the first term only.” In other words, don’t expect to get a rate lock on what you pay. Customers will receive information for the next year’s subscription cost only 30 days before renewal; any price increases are communicated then. For a discount, ESET offers 15 percent off when signing up for a two-year term, and 20 percent off when signing up for a three-year term.  Further reading: How to get antivirus for cheap Key features of ESET Home Security Premium Installation and user interface  After installation, ESET Home Security Premium drops you into the Overview tab, which is the software’s dashboard. For its look, the default is a dark theme, but you can click an icon at the top right of the window to switch to a light theme or match your system settings. PCWorld PCWorld PCWorld In dark mode, the interface is mostly gray with black tiles and green status bar (if all’s well on your PC). A set of seven tabs on the left let you jump to the dashboard, start a scan, update ESET Home Security Premium, use the app’s tools, dive into settings, get help, or go to the web portal for additional settings and features. The app can be resized to fit your window (or any dimension you want) — a rarity among antivirus software. On a surface level, these categories feel logical, but some organization decisions can feel unintuitive. For example, parental controls are tucked within Setup > Internet protection — and they’re off by default. The overview tab also strangely lacks a tile that would let you start a scan. If you’re used to a more straightforward layout, ESET’s app won’t feel natural to use until you’ve fully clicked around and familiarized yourself. Tabs vary in their feature density. Computer Scan has just three options: scanning the local disks on your PC, starting an advanced scan (which includes a custom option), or dragging and dropping files to check them out. Scan-related notifications appear in this window as well. PCWorld PCWorld PCWorld Meanwhile, Tools and Setup are more dense. Features appear as text entries sorted into groups, rather than as tiles. Advanced settings (called Advanced setup) are a maze of toggle switches, too. Power users will enjoy the control, but users who want a simple experience will likely get lost among the options — even with the handy tooltip explanations. The vibe is that of a home wired for its own server room: You first see just the installed ethernet wall ports and perhaps a piece of networking equipment, but if you’re willing to look, a complex setup lives inside a cramped closet down the hall. In addition to the desktop app, ESET Home Security Premium ties into the company’s web portal, which you’ll use to manage your account and password manager users. The anti-theft tools live here too, as do the parental control activity logs for your children’s devices. Virus, malware, and threat protection  Real-time protection ESET Home Security Premium scans continuously for real-time threats on your PC and when you’re online. It checks files on your local hard drive and any removable media for malware and spam, including email downloaded to Windows Mail, Microsoft Outlook, or Mozilla Thunderbird. The software also monitors webpages for dangerous files and phishing attempts, as well as suspicious network activity going to and from the internet.  Unlike similar rival plans, ESET Home Security Premium doesn’t let you limit app access to the internet or specific files as extra protection. It only automatically screens for unusual behavior. And as mentioned above, the Home Security Premium subscription doesn’t include data breach tracking, either — you must step up to the Ultimate tier for identity protections. Scheduled scans Right after installation, ESET performs an initial full-system scan. Its settings also include a system startup file check as part of the default scheduled tasks. However, the app primarily relies on real-time scanning as the primary method of catching threats. You must create your own scheduled scans to proactively screen your system. The first screen you’ll see when creating a scheduled scan in the Scheduler tool. The first screen you’ll see when creating a scheduled scan in the Scheduler tool.PCWorld The first screen you’ll see when creating a scheduled scan in the Scheduler tool.PCWorld PCWorld To schedule a scan, you’ll head to Tool > Scheduler, click on the Add task button, and choose On-demand computer scan. When configuring the scan, you’ll schedule its time (once, repeatedly, daily, weekly, or based on an event trigger), then its behavior (like if it runs when a laptop is on battery).  Next, you’ll select the scan depth — a smart scan, context menu scan, in-depth scan, or computer scan. Smart scans skip files previously marked as clean and not since modified. Context menu scans trigger a user-defined scanning profile when checking a file or folder using the Windows context menu. In-depth scans dig into every file on your system, regardless of previous scan results. Computer scans automatically choose your PC’s local drives to scan. The parts of your PC that can be scanned (including hidden areas) change with the default scan option chosen — and you can pick exactly where to probe. If you want to create a scan that only checks places like the operating memory, boot sectors/UEFI, WMI database, or system registry, that’s possible. So is checking only a network location, a local drive or set of folders, or a combination of all areas. PCWorld PCWorld PCWorld Still not enough granularity? You can dig into ESET Home Security Premium’s Advanced Setup — if you want to tinker with how aggressive the scans are, you can. Manual scans For manual scans, you can only choose between a computer scan (examines the local drives on your PC), a custom scan (lets you select scan depth and the areas checked), a removable media scan, or repeating the last scan. You can also drag and drop folders or files into the window to scan them. Related, you can also submit files of unknown or dubious origin through the app to the ESET labs for further analysis. Firewall ESET replaces Windows’ built-in firewall with its own defenses, taking over the screening of all your PC’s inbound and outbound traffic. While simpler than Windows’ multiple interfaces for settings, you’ll have to dive into Home Security Premium’s advanced setup to change the firewall rules.  If that sounds like your idea of a good time (no sarcasm), you can get quite granular with custom rules. But for typical users of third-party antivirus software, the ESET defaults should be sufficient. Additional notable features  Anti-theft  The anti-theft tool is designed to locate a stolen device. On PC, the app will take several steps if marked as stolen in the ESET web portal — it will grab screenshots of the screen and take photos through the webcam, as well as location info. You can also set up a “phantom” account, which becomes the only active account when someone filches your PC, as well as review activity logs. Actually, my Windows account is not protected with a password… Actually, my Windows account is not protected with a password…PCWorld Actually, my Windows account is not protected with a password…PCWorld PCWorld In practice, this tool isn’t as effective as you’d hope. A webcam can be covered with tape, for starters. The phantom account is useless if your Windows accounts aren’t secured with passwords. While that’s harder to do nowadays in Windows 11, it’s not impossible. ESET’s app can’t accurately tell when a Windows account isn’t password protected, either—and so you don’t get the warning you should. On a local Windows account with set up with a blank password field, ESET still counted the account as secured. (Tapping the enter key to log in is not secure, for the record.) The app also couldn’t always capture the IP address of the test PC — and IP addresses aren’t always an accurate reflection of someone’s true location. Browser extensions ESET promotes its free Browser Privacy & Security extension for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge as an additional way to stay safe online — you can use it to get visual badges for good search results, clean up your browsing history, and wipe metadata from images you upload. But on one PC, I couldn’t get the extension to behave properly in Chrome — a possible conflict with an already-installed ad-blocker extension. It couldn’t connect with ESET’s servers. The same extension worked fine on the test PC used to review the app within Edge, however. Parental control ESET Home Security Premium includes parental controls — both for computers and Android phones. On a PC, you can configure Windows accounts separately, so that your child logging into their account won’t have the same full access to websites as a parent account. The filtering settings adjust based on age group (under 12, 12 to 17, and 18+). You can also change what types of websites are screened and add exceptions to either a block or allow list. Some categories don’t make immediate sense — the help pages online don’t give a detailed explanation of what the less immediately obvious mean. When asked, ESET graciously explained several (“Dynamic” means websites that redirect to other sites or pages, for example), but clearer documentation would be better. Some categories aren’t immediately obvious as to what they screen. Some categories aren’t immediately obvious as to what they screen.PCWorld Some categories aren’t immediately obvious as to what they screen.PCWorld PCWorld Website blocking works well. In fact, you could argue it works a little too well — when I attempted to allow certain websites within a forbidden category during testing, the app wouldn’t let them through. The opposite works, though. You can ban specific sites when the overall category is allowed. Geolocation tracking never quite worked properly for the child account used for testing, either. The Android phone’s location often wouldn’t show properly, and in a whole separate ESET account, never showed up at all. This feature seems best suited for website filtering and activity monitoring. Password manager  ESET Password Manager is straightforward and effective — a good starter password manager, if you haven’t yet started using one. Though it doesn’t offer many extras, the basics are covered in a polished interface. You’ll install the browser extension on PC or download the app for Android, then create a separate account than the one that controls the antivirus app. Be sure to save the recovery key generated during setup — if you forget your password, it’s the only way to get back into your account. The extension fills in and captures passwords seamlessly, immediately recognizing login forms and even password reset fields. You can create entries for accounts, identities, notes, and credit cards, with notes the best option for simple entries like Wi-Fi passwords. (Account entries require all fields, including username, be filled out.) ESET also lets you store and generate two-factor software tokens for accounts — which isn’t the strongest security move, but if it helps you use 2FA, it’s still the better choice than not at all. ESET Password Manager instantly recognized the password fields for this reset page and offered a suggestion. ESET Password Manager instantly recognized the password fields for this reset page and offered a suggestion.PCWorld ESET Password Manager instantly recognized the password fields for this reset page and offered a suggestion.PCWorld PCWorld Additional features include the ability to instantly kill all active sessions from the menu (Secure sessions). You can forcibly log out everywhere, with the option to specifically delete cookies and log out, delete download history, delete history and close tabs, and/or delete bookmarks. You can also manually check your passwords for any caught up in a data leak. And you can secure the browser extension on PC with a PIN to secure your password vault but still get quick access. A few small things keep this password manager from being top-notch. One is easily fixable — by default, autofill is turned on. Once you load a website, your credentials are automatically entered into the form fields. You don’t even have to click on them for the autofill to happen. This can be a security risk and should be turned off in the settings. Any passwords copied to your clipboard can’t be automatically cleared, either. You’ll need to do that manually within Windows. And finally, ESET’s splash screen for the password manager appears every single time you open it, which feels like a needless delay for getting into the vault. PC utilities ESET Home Security Premium includes several tools meant to help you keep tabs on your PC — and keep it in tip-top shape.  System Cleaner looks for any changes to your system settings and appearance from the defaults. Running Processes and Network Connections let you know what apps and processes are active on your PC, and which have used your internet connection. Network Inspector lists the devices linked to your router. SysInspector identifies potential issues with your system, including outdated drivers, broken registry entries, and hardware incompatibilities. Device Control can limit access for devices attached to your PC, like a removable drive, CD/DVD drive, or printer. And Secure Data creates encrypted virtual drives or encrypted folders on removable media. Secure Data makes creating a secure virtual drive on your PC, or adding an encrypted folder to a removable drive very simple. Secure Data makes creating a secure virtual drive on your PC, or adding an encrypted folder to a removable drive very simple.PCWorld Secure Data makes creating a secure virtual drive on your PC, or adding an encrypted folder to a removable drive very simple.PCWorld PCWorld Of the set, Network Inspector has less usefulness. I liked how it put the discovered devices in a list form along with IP address and last connection time, but some routers do this too, and with full accuracy for what’s connected. Network Inspector doesn’t always see every device, either. System Cleaner can be handy for seeing what’s changed when troubleshooting, but its suggestions for reversions or mitigations don’t always work — and sometimes seem untrustworthy. (Why is a system appearance change flagged in red?) Meanwhile, Running Processes, Network Connections, and SysInspector can also be useful for troubleshooting purposes, or just general understanding of what’s going on behind the scenes with your PC. Device Control and Secure Data also worked as advertised when tested. ESET says Secure Data uses 256-bit AES encryption. (Note: I did not verify that the encryption is implemented correctly, so keep that in mind if using this feature to store sensitive data.) Secured browsing ESET offers twin features that lock down potentially sensitive data transmitted to and from your web browser. The first is Safe Banking & Browsing, which ESET says relies on a driver to filter keyboard inputs and scramble them so a keylogger can’t capture them with accuracy. The other is Secured Browsing, in which the ESET antivirus engine screens for any processes that might try to interfere with Chrome, Edge, and Firefox’s normal operation. Chrome running in ESET Home Security Premium’s secured browser mode. Note the thin, bright green line around the edge of the window. Chrome running in ESET Home Security Premium’s secured browser mode. Note the thin, bright green line around the edge of the window.PCWorld Chrome running in ESET Home Security Premium’s secured browser mode. Note the thin, bright green line around the edge of the window.PCWorld PCWorld No visual indicator exists for the safe banking and browsing mode being active. However, you will see a thin, bright green border when the secure mode for browsing is on…and when it’s off, too. This seeming bug happens if you turn off the Secure all browsers option, but leave the secured browser settings still on. I ended up ignoring this feature while testing, and still stuck with my normal best practices for browsing online. (That is, verifying a link is on a secure https connection, navigating directly to a website, using two-factor authentication where possible, downloading files from only reputable sources, and not plugging in unknown USB devices into my PC.) Customer support  If you need help with ESET Home Security Premium, you can find links to the company’s online help pages, knowledge base, and technical support. The help pages function as a basic manual for the application, while the knowledge base is more of a searchable FAQ. Both resources explain concepts in concise language. For more detailed assistance, the technical support form (which you’ll reach after clicking through multiple pages) lets you get into the nitty gritty. You can also contact customer support through live chat or email. Updates and maintenance  By default, ESET Home Security Premium checks for updates to virus definitions and the app every 60 minutes. You can change this interval (or disable automatic updates, which we don’t recommend) by going to Tools > Scheduler in the software. You can also manually check for updates by clicking on Update tab, and then clicking on the Check for updates button in the bottom-right corner.  Performance When evaluated by top security research organizations, ESET performs relatively well. In AV-Test’s zero-day attack and malware tests for March and April 2024, (the most current results released), the software’s antivirus engine caught 99.1 percent of the 316 zero-day malware samples in March, and 100 percent in April. For widespread and prevalent malware, it caught 100 percent of the 19,228 samples. AV-Comparatives’ real-world test results for February through May 2024. AV-Comparatives’ real-world test results for February through May 2024. PCWorld AV-Comparatives’ real-world test results for February through May 2024. PCWorld PCWorld In AV-Comparatives’ real-world protection test for February through May 2024, ESET came in among the middle of the pack. It blocked 99.4 percent of the 489 samples comprised of exploits (like drive-by downloads), malicious web addresses, and URLs linking directly to malware—all without flagging a single false positive. Meanwhile, in AV-Comparatives’ March 2024 malware protection test, it had a 93.5 percent offline detection rate, 96.3 percent online detection rate, and 99.93 online protection rate. These results indicate generally strong defenses even when not connected to the internet, with an overall protection rate that hangs comfortably close to the top. When evaluated for its ability to handle more sophisticated threats like malicious scripts and fileless attacks, ESET had one of the better scores. It caught 13 of 15 test cases in AV-Comparatives’ November 2023 Advanced Threat Protection Test. But in these results, the better-performing antivirus engines generally miss what their rivals catch, which suggests room for growth.  We expect ESET Home Security Premium to have minimal impact on system resources when idle in the background — at least during everyday tasks. After running PCMark 10’s Extended benchmark, which simulates web browsing, video chatting, gaming, and image and document editing in free, open-source apps, the scores were the same as before installing the software. Home Security Premium had light impact during our other two benchmarks, UL Procyon’s Office Productivity, and our Handbrake encoding test. Procyon focuses on Microsoft Office use — e.g., Word, Excel, PowerPoint. Handbrake lets us crunch a big uncompressed video file into a smaller version. In both benchmarks, ESET hanging out in the background only reduced scores by about 1 to 2 percent. AV-Comparatives’ malware test results for March 2024. AV-Comparatives’ malware test results for March 2024. PCWorld AV-Comparatives’ malware test results for March 2024. PCWorld PCWorld As for its effect on your PC, ESET Home Security Premium should have minimal impact on system resources when idling in the background, especially during everyday tasks. After running PCMark 10’s Extended benchmark, which simulates web browsing, video chatting, gaming, and image and document editing in free, open-source apps, the scores were the same as before installing the software. We also saw a light impact during our other two benchmarks, UL Procyon’s Office Productivity and our Handbrake encoding test. The Procyon benchmark focuses on Microsoft Office use — e.g., Word, Excel, PowerPoint. Most antivirus software tends to kick into higher gear when Office apps are active, since Word and Excel files can spread malware. Installing ESET caused a small decline in Procyon scores, with a 3 percent decrease. It had a smaller effect on Handbrake, with a tiny dip of just under 2 percent. Even with a full system scan running in the background, ESET didn’t hit our test PC as hard as rivals have. In PCMark 10, scores drifted down by less than 3 percent. Even in Procyon and Handbrake, where scores can plummet when antivirus software runs full blast, the benchmark results dropped by a relatively modest 12 percent. Rivals like Avast, Norton, and McAfee have shown score degradation of up to 41 percent. (Curious about how we test? You can get further details in our overview of our review process.) In the real world, you can expect ESET to play nicer with older or slower computers — like our test PC, which is a budget laptop. And you’ll see even less effect if you schedule full scans for off-hours (like when you’re asleep). Same goes if you run smart scans on a PC where you don’t often change or add files, since that type of scan skips over unchanged files marked clean in a previous pass. Should you buy ESET Home Premium Security?  Ideally, an antivirus suite’s features should perform well across the board. But despite ESET Home Security Premium’s inconsistencies, this software delivers on its fundamentals, as well as goes easier on system resources. Power users in particular can get a lot out of this suite — provided they don’t need a well-rounded set of parental controls. Less technical users may benefit from a simpler app, though. Read...

The other day, I sent my dad—who’s old enough to remember programming computers with punch cards—a photo of a two-terabyte M.2 drive. He replied: “The first Burroughs 5700 mainframe I worked on had a two-megabyte drive about the size of two washing machines.” Well, according to Western Digital, next Christmas I might be able to send him a tiny SSD with literally eight million times as much storage. The storage company (which also owns the SanDisk brand as of 2016) announced a slew of new products ahead of the FMS 2024 industry trade show in Santa Clara. In addition to data center flash storage drives of up to a mind-boggling 128TB, the company is also prepping some exciting news on the consumer front. According to its press release, SanDisk MicroSD cards will stretch up to 4TB with the UHS-1 standard and larger SD cards will balloon all the way up to an impressive 8TB. The maximum speed for these cards is 10MB/s, according to the SD Association. This is great news for your Steam Deck and your camera, respectively. What about your PC? While Western Digital is hyping up speedy PCIe 5.0 drives for enterprise, none were shown off for desktops or laptops before the show. But there is a 16TB version of the SanDisk Desk Drive in the works—that’s double the capacity of the biggest external SSD currently sold by the company. A portable version, presumably in the Extreme Portable SSD form factor or similar, is also in the proof-of-concept stage. When will these products arrive and for how much will they sell? We don’t know yet. Technically, Western Digital hasn’t committed to that 16TB portable drive, but I’d be very surprised if it isn’t available at some point in 2025. (The header image for this story is a mockup, btw.) If you’re interested, you might want to start saving now—an 8TB SanDisk Desk Drive currently goes for $700. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating ProsHigh mechanical qualitySlim and portableCompatible with most devicesConsKeys feel slightly crampedNo physical support for mobile and tabletBattery change requires chiselOur VerdictThe Logitech Keys To Go 2 is a compact portable keyboard can turn your mobile phone into a workstation wherever you are. If you frequently work on a mobile phone or tablet tablet, you’re going to need a good physical keyboard. Besides, who has the energy to type long paragraphs of text with their thumbs using an on-screen keyboard? Not me, anyway. It’s much nicer to have a Bluetooth keyboard paired, lean the tablet up somewhere, and turn it into a little laptop. Some have smart cases and support for it while others have a built-in keyboard. But not all and quality can vary. Logitech knows they can deliver quality in keyboards. They make some of the best and most popular ones on the market. The new Keys To Go 2 is their thinnest, lightest, and most portable yet. Read on to learn more. Further reading: Best wireless keyboards 2024: Top Bluetooth and USB models It’s small and lightweight. It’s small and lightweight.Mattias Inghe It’s small and lightweight.Mattias Inghe Mattias Inghe Logitech Keys To Go 2: Build quality The keys are only marginally smaller than a full-size desktop keyboard. Individual keys are top-notch with clear click mechanics despite the thin design and low stroke height, and everything is encased in a sturdy aluminum chassis. The new Keys To Go 2 is their thinnest, lightest, and most portable yet. It feels professional and luxurious to use with its rattle-free, cushioned keys and folding lid with magnetic lock. But yes, it wouldn’t hurt to add a few extra centimeters to accommodate larger keys. It’s a trade-off between compact design and ease of use that I wish didn’t have to be made. You connect via Bluetooth. You can have three gadgets paired at the same time and the three keys at the top allow you to quickly switch which one the keyboard controls. I had no problem finding it and connecting it to any of my test gadgets, from a desktop PC to an iPad. It’s easy to switch between three connected computers and tablets. It’s easy to switch between three connected computers and tablets.Mattias Inghe It’s easy to switch between three connected computers and tablets.Mattias Inghe Mattias Inghe The Keys To Go 2 is powered by two flat button batteries that sit behind a hatch that requires a special screwdriver to access. The batteries are said to last three years if you use it two hours a day, so it’s not an immediate concern. Logitech Keys To Go 2: Compatibility Like most Logitech keyboards, it’s compatible with a lot of systems, from Windows and Mac to Android and iOS. Specialized keys work the same for these and you’ve got the same home menu, function, and alt buttons to accommodate you’d see in other keyboards. iOS and ChromeOS are also represented on the list of compatible systems, but I didn’t have the opportunity to test that. But I assume that all buttons are mapped to the corresponding functions. I also tried pairing to a Linux computer, which worked well with no problems. Keys To Go 2 together with perhaps the ideal tablet for it, Lenovo’s new tablet that has built-in support on the back. Keys To Go 2 together with perhaps the ideal tablet for it, Lenovo’s new tablet that has built-in support on the back.Mattias Inghe Keys To Go 2 together with perhaps the ideal tablet for it, Lenovo’s new tablet that has built-in support on the back.Mattias Inghe Mattias Inghe For Windows and macOS, there is a control program called Logi Options+, which lets you check the battery level, change the function of special keys (only on that computer, not universally), and link them to selected programs on the computer. There’s also Smart Actions, which can combine system functions such as launching grouped apps to clocks or keyboard shortcuts. Logitech Keys To Go 2: Conclusion It feels like Logitech is being too ambitious here. You might as well get a bigger keyboard for your desk at home. If it’s not broken or too shabby, then Keys To Go 2 is a good alternative choice. But the most important thing is the usability of the keyboard in a mobile situation and that means it needs to connect well to a tablet or phone. Mattias Inghe Mattias Inghe Mattias Inghe That’s fine, but a dedicated iOS or Android keyboard would be more practical. And a built-in support for your mobile or tablet would have been nice to have as well. Now you’ll have to figure out how to set it all up on the table to work on your own. Logitech only solves the text input. Logitech Keys To Go 2: Specifications Product Name: Logitech Keys To Go 2Tested: July 2024Manufacturer: Logitech Connectivity: BluetoothBatteries: 2 CR2032 button batteries, approx. 3 years battery lifeFunction: Qwerty, Quick Switch, Smart Action*Compatibility: Windows and MacOS for full functionality. Also supports ChromeOS, iOS, and Android.Size, folded: 25 x 10.9 x 0.9 cmWeight: 222 gramsWarranty: 2 yearsPrice: $999 at Logitech Product Name: Logitech Keys To Go 2Tested: July 2024Manufacturer: Logitech Connectivity: BluetoothBatteries: 2 CR2032 button batteries, approx. 3 years battery lifeFunction: Qwerty, Quick Switch, Smart Action*Compatibility: Windows and MacOS for full functionality. Also supports ChromeOS, iOS, Android.Size, folded: 25 x 10.9 x 0.9 cmWeight: 222 gramsWarranty: 2 yearsPrice: $79.99 at Logitech *With Logi Options+ on Windows and Mac Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Read...