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Believe it or not, AI is already subtly reshaping the PC. No, we’re not talking about the microprocessor or integrated NPUs. There, progress has been slow and stuttering, as chip vendors and Microsoft work toward establishing an ecosystem of Copilot+ PCs. Instead, PC vendors are looking for ways to reinvent the familiar with AI capabilities. Within Windows, you’re already seeing this with generative AI and filtering influencing the direction of Photos and Paint. But we wanted to know what PC vendors thought about the future of the AI PCs they’re building. The unexpected answers? Voice. The phone. Unlike, say, monitors, an AI PC is a fusion of the underlying processor, the surrounding hardware, the operating systems, and any AI apps and services PC makers layer on. All of those companies have their own agendas, and their own perspectives. What PC makers appear to agree on is that consumers need to hear a single, unified message about why they need an AI PC — and that’s still being worked out. The year of the Copilot+ PC wasn’t really To be fair, I didn’t think I would hear that much from PC vendors about the AI PC’s future. After all, the AI PC is barely in its infancy. This was supposed to be the year of the AI PC. Microsoft picked out the Copilot+ brand as the signal to consumers that they were buying a “real” AI PC, not the half-hearted first-generation AI PCs with minimal AI TOPS. Second-generation AI chips including AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 and Intel’s Core Ultra 200 (Lunar Lake) were supposed to debut — they did — and be blessed as Copilot+ PCs — they were — offering all the features of Copilot+ PCs. They didn’t. Copilot+ kicked its premier feature, Recall, down the road for further testing, and the AMD/Intel Copilot+ PCs still can’t run all of their expected features without the necessary updates from Microsoft. Mark Hachman / IDG That means we’re exiting 2025 with still just one chip architecture that really qualifies as a Copilot+ PC processor: the Snapdragon X platform from Qualcomm. What a mess. So PC makers moved on. Using AI to improve voice So far, one of the more effective strategies has been to find applications PC users already like and enhance them with AI. Ever since Windows 10, Microsoft has hoped that users would engage in back-and-forth conversations with Cortana, now replaced with Copilot. But users now can interact with AI and large-language models via voice in true conversations, both on their PCs and on their phones. Some users may be too shy to do that. Even so, those users will need to talk to their colleagues via Teams, Zoom, or Google Meet — and AI is playing a quiet, understated role in filtering out unwanted noise. Asus showed off a version of AI noise filtering early this year, and it was amazing. But AI’s ability to actually “talk” has prompted changes, too. Asus offers a ton of AI processing modes.Mark Hachman / IDG “I think AI is going to unlock new ways we interact with a device,” said Tom Butler, executive director for Lenovo’s worldwide commercial PC portfolio, in an interview. “It’s not going to necessarily change… the traditional structure of keyboard, screen, your folding laptop. But I think the way we interface or interact with the device is going to change. And for quite some time, we’ve had voice capability on the device, but there’s really been no [significant] reason to have a conversation with the device. Now, with AI engines running and supporting natural language interface, you can now have a conversation with these AI engines.” Eric Ackerson, Acer’s associate director of product marketing, agreed. “I think some of the changes have already happened for us in the 2024 product releases, in terms of little things that users can’t see: the number of mics, the type of mics that are used for voice interaction with the PC, for the various Copilot features, voice-to-text, and so forth. There are small, little hardware changes there that the user won’t see, but definitely benefits from.” To help make it a bit more obvious, Acer also built in an “AI activity indicator” that helped signal users that AI was active, Ackerson added. Otherwise, the physical design of Acer’s AI PCs will look and feel mostly the same during the first half of 2025, he said. Is the phone the remote control for the PC? Microsoft, too, has a role to play. One of the things that makes Samsung interesting is that its PCs are part of an ecosystem that connects to its Galaxy Buds earbuds, Galaxy Tab tablets, Galaxy phones, and an array of consumer devices connected by SmartThings. One Samsung executive said he sees Microsoft possibly leaning on the phone more as an entry point to the PC. Microsoft Phone Link does an excellent job connecting your phone to your PC.Microsoft According to Rafael de Ory, a senior product manager at Samsung, Microsoft is doing a great job “identifying a handful of different features that really resonated with consumer needs,” he said, pointing to the way in which Android phone and iPhones interact with Windows PCs and Phone Link. Today, Phone Link can exchange photos between a phone and a PC, send messages, and even place calls. “I do believe that this is a great entryway to kind of introduce consumers to the first steps of an ecosystem,” de Ory sad. “Take what you already have on you in your pocket, your phone, and have that communicate with your PC.” “We would be looking to work with Microsoft to evolve features like that, where we were able to leverage the best of our hardware and the best of AI to show better communication across our ecosystem — being able to say… ‘extend my screen to my tablet,`” de Ory said. “Or if you were connected to Samsung’s [home ecosystem] SmartThings, ‘hey, please make sure the garage door is closed.’ ‘Turn my TV on.’ Things that really start to bring the value from AI and form a convenience factor.” “Based on conversations that we’ve had with Microsoft, they’re definitely understanding the need to enhance and optimize some of those experiences,” Samsung’s de Ory added. Consumers need to understand why they need AI, and from where One question that some vendors have is what difference a few TOPS may make from one generation to the next — especially when GPUs offer sharp step increases over an NPU. Nvidia is expected to release consumer versions of its “Blackwell” (GeForce 5000) GPU in or around January, in versions both for the desktop PC as well as laptops. While no one knows the potential AI performance of those chips, they’ll certainly be substantially higher than what an integrated NPU offers. The tradeoff, of course, is efficiency: A GPU will be able to easily outperform a CPU’s integrated NPU, but at the cost of additional power and heat. “You’re going to get the good and the bad that comes with it,” Acer’s Ackerson said. GPUs dramatically outperform NPUs in terms of AI horsepower…but will consumers really see them as AI engines?IDG “I think there will be a growing number of not just businesses, but professional users that want to take advantage of that GPU to do local device AI,” Ackerson added. All three PC makers agreed that better messaging has to be part of the AI PC’s future. Lenovo’s Butler compared AI to the early days of the dot-com boom, where no one really knew what a “.com” domain could do for you, but that you needed it. “Overwhelming, leading toward confusing” is how Acer’s Ackerson described the industry’s approach to AI marketing. Each company has their own emphasis, their own features, from Qualcomm’s NPU-centric approach to Nvidia’s feelings that the GPU is best. And there’s an element of fear, too, that AI will end up taking jobs away. “I think consumers are just generally confused, because there’s so much to take in, and they don’t know where a good source of information is or what [AI] can truly do,” Ackerson said. They think AI is a complete solution that does everything, and it’s not.” Read...

At a GlanceExpert`s Rating Pros Imaging, backup, and disaster recovery Actively protects against viruses and ransomware Integrated cloud storage available Cons Heavy installation footprint Subscription only Lots of telemetry Our Verdict Acronis True Image (nee Cyber Protect Home Office, nee True Image) is a comprehensive backup and security solution with no peer. If you want everything tied up in a neat package, this is it. However, if your needs are more mundane, it’s a might bit of overkill. It’s also subscription only. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Retailer Price Acronis $49.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Acronis True Image Retailer Price Acronis $49.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Acronis True Image (2024), nee Cyber Protect Home Office, nee True Image, is without question the most comprehensive suite of utilities for keeping your computer backed up and secure. It’s not even particularly close in fact. Marrying anti-malware and backup, as True Image does, might seem an odd choice at first. However, the ability to fire off a backup or shut off access to previous backups when malware is detected makes a whole lot of sense. I was a bit skeptical when the company first started down this path, now I’m completely on board with the concept, if perhaps not the heavy system footprint and copious telemetry. Further reading: See our roundup of the best Windows backup software to learn about competing products. What are Acronis True Image’s features? There’s a lot to cover in a program as comprehensive as True Image. I’ll get to the malware protection in a bit, but first let’s talk about backup. The program creates image files from drives or partitions, as well as selected files and folders. These can be full (everything), incremental (everything since the last backup), or differential (everything since the initial backup).  You can also back up files from your phone or files from remote shared-network locations, and employ Blockchain to notarize backed-up files (premium version). True Image offers just about every backup feature known. True Image lets you save backup jobs and schedule them, automatically (or manually) cull older backups when space runs low, split backups, copy sector-by-sector or data-only, validate backups post facto, run commands pre- and post-operation, and a lot more. In short, just about every option invented by the backup community has been implemented. The program also backs up to nearly any type of media or location: local drives, network destinations, the 1TB of cloud storage provided by Acronis with some subscriptions, and even optical — remember CDs and DVDs? They’re still in use! If you’re super old-school, sorry, tape is not supported.  True Image will optionally place a version of the program on removable media for use during restore (Acronis calls it “recovery”) operations — i.e. create a disaster recovery boot disk. A favorite feature of the recovery disk, other than being able to make additional emergency backups (some disks don’t) is the system report facility. In short, just about every option invented by the backup community has been implemented. True Image offers a variety of pre-cooked backup schemes including the hybrid chain. The explanatory image is actually animated. Sweet. Many people conflate sync with backup, and while they have similarities, they’re not the same operation. Backups are meant to be immutable, remaining available well into the future so you can retreat to older versions and data. Syncs evolve and generally reflect the current state of your data. You can futz sync into backup with some programs by implementing versioning — i.e., saving older versions of files rather than deleting them, and not mirroring deletions from the source. Acronis’s sync is two-way with the only option being whether it’s synced to Acronis Cloud first (if you opted for the service), rather than the destination, assuming the destination isn’t Acronis Cloud to begin with. True Image will sync as well as back up. This is file-based, not imaging. The reason I discussed the difference between sync and backup is because True Image features sync jobs as a separate function — as it should be. This allows you to synchronize data between your local PC, Acronis Cloud, and your mobile devices. Yes, as mentioned, True Image offers Android and iOS clients as well. See below. Screen captures of the Acronis Android app. Other related and tangential features include hardware-independent WinRE recovery media (USB/optical), disk cloning, an OEM-like recovery partition (boot time restore of your original OS state from your internal drive) creator, a system cleanup tool (think CCleaner), and a secure-erase utility. True Image offers a number of image and backup related utilities. Acronis True Image sports a clean, attractive interface, and is easy to use — once you’re accustomed to it. It’s not amazingly intuitive when it comes to organization and operation, but a half-hour kicking the tires and you should be good to go. Assuming you’re familiar with basic backup concepts. How effective is Acronis True Image’s malware protection? A few years ago Acronis recognized an opening in the market due to a spate of ransomware attacks, and added ransomware protection to its flagship software’s bag of tricks. Don’t pooh-pooh ransomware as something that happens to someone else. It happened to me. It’s out there and without backups, I would’ve been royally hosed. Acronis subsequently expanded anti-malware capabilities to protect against general threats, malicious websites, and other bad behavior such as code injection into apps. This obviously requires real-time intervention — a big addition back in 2021.    True Image’s Protection settings page. To test True Image’s anti-malware abilities I ran the tests on the WICAR.ORG site and surfed some known bad areas of the web. True Image caught everything. As effective as it proved, real-time protection is optional and may be turned off. True Image warning you of a dangerous web page. How much does Acronis True Image cost? Acronis thoughtfully provides a 30-day trial that you can use to test out the program. Beyond that, it’s $50 for a one-year subscription sans online storage (Essentials), $58 per year for Advanced with 50GB of storage (enough for most essential, non-media data) and more malware features, and $125 for Premium with 1TB of storage, which should be enough for most of your stuff excluding video. A full comparison is a available here. Acronis True Image is available as standalone, or with storage. You’re basically paying $75 per year for 1TB of storage with True Image, which is only a bit more than OneDrive’s 1TB plan. However, OneDrive includes Microsoft Office, both local and online. Note that if the subscription lapses, you’ll be limited to restoring data from the recovery disk after 30 days. You’ll also need to grab your online data within that period. Which brings me to cloud storage managers such as CloudMounter and Mountain Duck. These will integrate any number of online storage services, including cheaper S3-compatible services, into Windows Explorer as pseudo local drives. You can then use the $50 version of True Image (or any other backup software) to back up to them and save some coin. Note that there are Enterprise-level versions of True Image available as well, though these still sport the Cyber Protect title. How fast is Acronis True Image? Generally speaking, True Image is as quick as it gets. I ran backup jobs to external and internal SSDs, a NAS box (2.5Gbps), wrote folders to optical (single BD-R/M-Disc), and to Acronis Cloud. All proceeded as quickly as you could ask given each bandwidth, and without incident. I hate incidents and tend not to trust backup software that suffers them.  On the other hand, I did have some slight issues with the Linux boot disc, although the Windows PE version was A-OK. My only real performance gripe is that the main interface is rather slow to launch. No doubt due the large number of processes spawned by the various components, not to mention connecting to Acronis Cloud. 12 processes running in the background is a lot, even for a program as comprehensive as True Image. As to processes… True Image has a sprawling system footprint that spawns a whopping 12 of them (shown above). I noticed little impact on system performance other than the program boot time, and modern PCs such as my AMD Ryzen test bed should be able to handle it, but for older legacy hardware it might be a strain. True Image also takes up a substantial 1GB of disk space. One thing that disturbed me a bit was spotting the Google analytics report sender running alongside True Image. While comprehensive, True Image is also singularly intrusive. One thing that disturbed me a bit was spotting the Google analytics report sender running alongside True Image (see above). While comprehensive, True Image is also singularly intrusive. Should you buy Acronis True Image? Given its broad capabilities, True Image is a pretty good deal. You might opt for another vendor with cheaper online storage, but Acronis Cloud is integrated and I will admit, I found it very handy. Bottom line: If you’re looking for a comprehensive, set-it-and-forget-it data-safety solution, I know of nothing better, or comparable for that matter. However, it’s overkill for the average user, there’s a ton of telemetry going on, and it’s subscription software — albeit with 30-day grace period for restore functionality (perpetual from recovery media). If you’re confident in your anti-malware setup, check out our favorite: R-Drive Image. Note: This review originally sported the Cyber Protect Home Office moniker in its title. The review has been lightly edited to reflect the product’s new name and our most recent experience with it as of December 2024. Our software testing is necessarily limited due to time and equipment constraints. We report any issue experienced historically or during testing for the article; however, you should research user forums for information on issues other users may have experienced. This applies to all software. Read...

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