About 1200 delegates, including 340 travel buyers from 26 countries, will attend. Read...

Amazon has begun what seems to be a very slow rollout for Alexa+, its new AI-enhanced version of Alexa. But if you’re looking for hands-on impressions from everyday folks who’ve actually tried the new Alexa, they’re curiously hard to find.  During Amazon’s earnings call late last week, CEO Andy Jassy told investors that “over 100,000” users are currently testing Alexa+, which Amazon unveiled more than two months ago during a splashy New York City press event.  “People are really liking Alexa+ so far,” Jassy reportedly said on the earnings call. A hundred thousand people may sound like a lot, but as AFTVnews points out, it’s just a tiny fraction of Alexa’s estimated 100 million-plus active user base, meaning the vast majority of Alexa users has yet to try Alexa+ out for themselves.  Meanwhile, the lucky few who have kicked the tires on the new AI Alexa are generally keeping mum about it.  There have been a few sightings here and there, including at least one screenshot on Reddit from a user claiming to be in the elite group of Alexa+ testers. But details have been hard to come by, and queries for reports about Alexa+ experiences have far outstripped any actual hands-on experiences.   In any event, Amazon appears to be moving extremely slowly—and carefully—with its Alexa+ rollout. That’s in contrast to the tone during February’s Alexa+ event in New York, where Amazon seemed to be giving off “full steam ahead” vibes for the new AI Alexa.  At the presentation, Amazon announced pricing for Alexa+–$19.99 a month, or free for Prime users—along with word that a public preview for the new Alexa would begin in March. Amazon also trotted out confident demonstrations of Alexa’s new tricks, including the ability to control smart devices with natural language queries as well as go shopping, book travel tickets, text contacts, suggest recipes, and more.  To be fair, Amazon said that the initial public preview would only be for a small group, with Echo Show display owners getting first dibs. But given the bullish tone of Amazon’s Alexa+ in February, it’s surprising the preview rollout has been this slow.  Then again, all the major tech players have been proceeding with caution when it comes to revamping their voice assistants with cutting-edge generative AI abilities.   Apple, for example, has reportedly pushed back Siri’s “conversational” AI makeover until 2027, while Google is taking baby steps toward replacing Google Assistant with Gemini. And let’s not forget the new Alexa’s initial reveal way back in September 2023, which was followed by months of silence and bad tidings.  Maybe Amazon will surprise us again with a wider Alexa+ rollout in the very near future, but for now, Alexa’s AI preview remains oddly quiet. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Accomplishes its goal: provides a usable AR workspace XReal glasses are lightweight and comfortable Cons Numerous bugs Subscription cost is a significant investment Our Verdict Sightful’s Spacetop is undoubtedly useful as a massive AR alternative for those who can’t access a number of physical displays. But a number of fixable bugs still soured my experience, capped off by a fairly hefty subscription price. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Sightful Spacetop Bundle Retailer Price Sightful $899 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Sightful’s Spacetop, a gigantic augmented-reality supplemental monitor for your PC, succeeds as a concept. But it still needs some fine-tuning before you’ll be completely happy with it, especially at the price Sightful is charging. So, what is the Sightful Spacetop experience? Imagine looking through a swim mask at the night sky, made up of a regular grid of small stars. Upon this grid floats a small taskbar and various Windows windows, which you can move around and drag, just like a desktop. Spacetop functions as a massive virtual screen that seamlessly replaces your laptop’s monitor. Look up, down, and to the sides, and you can see your windows and apps. There’s a small floating taskbar for in-Spacetop navigation. You can run Teams or Slack in one corner and Outlook in another since it’s all in Windows. Instead of a swim mask, however, you’re using a pair of XReal augmented-reality glasses. Does it work? Absolutely. However, I felt like I was wrestling with the interface as much as using it, which isn’t a strong endorsement. There are workarounds, however. The biggest obstacle to this review, sadly, was probably myself—a product of the pre-PC educational system. Sightful concept art showing what it’s like to use the Spacetop. It’s pretty close to the real thing.Sightful The Spacetop bundle: Out of the box and setup Sightful debuted Spacetop in May of 2023, when it was a quasi-headless laptop with the XReal glasses directly built into the device. Since then, Sightful has retooled the device to run as a subscription-based app on top of a new generation of AI PCs and made the Sightful app Windows native. (Before, the Sightful Spacetop was essentially a Chromebook.) Now, the Sightful Spacetop costs $899, including a pair of $699 XReal Air Ultra 2 AR glasses that serve as the Spacetop display. You’ll need to supply your own AI PC, too. If you fall in love with the Spacetop, you’ll need to pay $200 for a year’s subscription; the bundle already ships with a year’s worth of Spacetop service. That’s a pricey package, in the neighborhood of what Adobe charges per month for Photoshop. At least the glasses are yours to keep, regardless. Sightful asked me to review the Spacetop software rather than write about my experiences with the XReal glasses or the associated laptop. That’s not entirely possible, as it’s a holistic experience. XReal’s XReal Air Ultra 2 AR glasses, sitting on top of the HP laptop Sightful provided for review purposes.Mark Hachman / Foundry Sightful provided me with an HP AIPC laptop with Spacetop already provisioned upon it. Spacetop’s app appears to be just a Windows app, and Sightful’s representatives said that it can be moved from laptop to laptop just like a normal Windows app. However, I was unable to test the setup process myself. (“Customers who purchase the Spacetop Bundle receive a link to create an account and download the software (regular MSI installer), then, following the installation, are required to log in once to activate their license on the laptop,” a Sightful representative said when I asked about setup. “If a customer purchased an optical attachment, they get a link to upload their prescription, and the attachment is shipped together with the XReal glasses to them.” The optical attachments are just prescription inserts. XReal’s glasses don’t allow room for eyeglasses, but you can ask Sightful to serve as a go-between if you need prescription lenses. Prescription single-lens inserts cost $50, while prescription progressive lenses cost $150. As part of this review, I supplied my prescription to Sightful, which installed prescription lenses. (I’m not sure what will happen if your prescription worsens, or if you want to swap them out for progressive lenses.) The Xreal glasses are lightweight and comfortable. Note the prescription inserts.Jennifer Sundberg XReal’s glasses come bundled, and XReal has no connection to Sightful’s Spacetop other than that. Still, the Air Ultra 2 glasses weigh just 83 grams, and that’s absolutely critical on a device you plan to wear for potentially hours. The glasses felt lightweight, comfortable, and open to the side. They also include small audio speakers. That’s comforting in an unfamiliar environment, like a coffee shop, where you’d like to have an awareness of your surroundings. But on a plane or in a hotel room — trusted locations, for which you might buy the Spacetop for working — you might find the gaps to the side a bit distracting. It’s a trade off. Spacetop: AR as a productivity device Plug in the XReal glasses, and you’ll see a duplicate of your laptop’s screen, floating in your vision. You’ll need to launch the Spacetop app to get what you paid for: the AR environment, which extends your view about 180 degrees in all directions. If you were to lie on your back and look up, your AR workspace would be about what you could see in the sky above. XReal’s OLED displays supply 1080p per eye at up to 120Hz, so I didn’t feel like I needed to make any adjustments to the font size or via Windows settings. I could read my Windows apps perfectly well, and any text was legible without needing me to adjust anything. XReal rates XReal Air Ultra 2’s field of view (FOV) at 52 degrees. I tried to reproduce the familiar environment of my desktop: a large landscape display in the center of my desk, with a second portrait display to one side and my laptop just below. Multiple physical monitors confine you to the space they offer. But Windows does offer Windows Snap, which allows you to quickly align windows in various configurations. Spacetop doesn’t provide this feature, so I had to manually adjust various apps and windows until I achieved the desired alignment. The layout appears to be persistent, though, so there’s that. (I’d really like to show you what you can see as you’re using Spacetop, but I can’t really show it off. Screenshots don’t really work, though I’ve included one below. Even trying to share your screen via Zoom displays a pair of screens, as both of the XReal’s displays are projected.) Mark Hachman / Foundry Look up, and the virtual space extends to about your ceiling. On my setup, the “bottom” of the workspace reached the top of my laptop tray in front of me, extending to about 90 degrees to either side. You can adjust the AR display by moving it closer or farther away or tilting it. The little dots that describe the virtual landscape layout don’t always signal how far you can go, but dragging a window to the side will expand the AR space until it can go no further—a bit like adding new tables and charts to an Excel spreadsheet. In the center of your screen perches the Spacetop toolbar, which basically stands as a minimalist representation of your Windows toolbar. You can open and launch apps via a Start-like button to the left, access Windows settings, and more. Unfortunately, it just sits there, plopped in the center of your screen, without any easy way to move it around. That becomes a pain when it accidentally blocks part of your windows, which have to be readjusted to accommodate it. Sightful representatives say that the toolbar is not adjustable; I’d say it needs to be. Spacetop’s toolbar sits plopped in the center of your screen. Yes, you can put windows above and below it, but it seems like it should live somewhere else. Note that the apps menu only pops out when you click on the grid icon, on the left of the toolbar.Mark Hachman / Foundry There’s one more interesting twist: travel mode. Let’s say that you’re waiting for an appointment and need to move into a conference room. When used normally, what you see in the Spacetop environment won’t change orientation if you move about. In travel mode, Spacetop syncs the center of its workspace to the way your laptop is facing, helping you to keep everything in its place. I never really thought about it, but it’s a smart idea which works. If you get “lost,” a small little icon will show you the location of your mouse cursor. . Glitches don’t overwhelm Spacetop, but they are there Spacetop: a gigantic virtual display for your laptop. That’s easy enough to understand. But the road to that experience is bumpier than it needs to be. I really disliked two things about the Spacetop experience. First, the app provides you a window with your laptop’s desktop in case you need to access any files stored there. I was able to move that screen around, like a window, with absolutely no issues at all. But other windows—a collection of Microsoft Edge browser tabs, for example—sometimes would glitch repeatedly and wouldn’t move. I challenge anyone to not have to look at their keyboard while navigating these shortcuts!Mark Hachman / Foundry I think that has to do with being a left-handed user, and possibly that certain elements within the Spacetop environment respected my choice of mouse/taskbar buttons, and others did not. (When I dropped out of the Spacetop environment, the laptop’s trackpad worked as expected for moving apps and windows around.) That drove me mildly insane until I connected a mouse to the laptop. As a left-handed user, I’m not impressed. Second, I’m not sure if I triggered a CTRL LOCK function on the laptop, but the application absolutely refused to allow me to type a URL inside Edge until I tapped the CTRL key a few times. (Typing “O” would bring me to a File “Open” function within File Explorer instead.) I solved my issue by tapping the ESC or CTRL keys until the problem went away. I also encountered a couple of other bugs, including one where the audio would cut out over the XReal speakers unless I adjusted the spatial sound within Windows. In another, a small Favorites window within Edge apparently hooked onto the toolbar and wouldn’t let go. Other popup windows, several of which asked for confirmation, weren’t responsive until I repeatedly tried to interact with them. Not a glitch, just a restriction. Apparently Spacetop is a connected application.Mark Hachman / Foundry But the biggest handicap? Me, unfortunately. What Spacetop instantly exposed was that I’m not the typist I thought I was. I learned typing as sort of a hybrid of two- and multi-fingering, and I work best upon a familiar keyboard. The associated XReal glasses basically block you from looking at your fingers for any reason, so I found that the unfamiliar laptop keyboard caused me to make more errors than usual. I wanted to check my finger placement before I began typing, which the glasses wouldn’t allow me to do. Eventually, I learned to “cheat” by stealing glances down below the glasses to make sure that I wasn’t accidentally tapping the CAPS LOCK key when I was trying to type the characters simply next to it. The issue wasn’t Sightful’s fault. But it still meant that I preferred my traditional laptop keyboard, and I ended up feeling more productive in my everyday work environment. But yes, Sightful’s Spacetop can be used to get work done. I previously tried Meta’s implementation of a virtual workspace within Horizon Worlds, and it just didn’t work; the virtual displays were too “far away” and low-resolution that I couldn’t really see myself getting anything done. Spacetop running on top of the XReal glasses works, and I liked it the more I used it. Is Spacetop better than your home office? Was using the Spacetop comfortable? Surprisingly so, though I grew into it. Originally, I found it easiest to work in quick bursts before I solved some of my pointing issues. As I became more familiar, I worked for longer stretches. I wrote a draft of this review entirely within the Spacetop environment. It was as easy to pull up supplementary documentation in separate windows as it was within a more conventional laptop with multiple monitors. XReal’s glasses provide audio, so I was able to skim a video on the web and jot notes as well. My wife burst out laughing when she took this picture, but at least it’s a little less dorky than the Apple Vision Pro or a Meta headset.Jennifer Sundberg But there’s definitely some element of fatigue. My eyes grew somewhat tired after a while, and I found I needed to take breaks. I also felt some traces of vertigo on a single occasion. I think I solved it by adjusting how much light the XReal glasses let in—from nearly black to nearly transparent— all by tapping a button on the glasses. It also makes Spacetop well-suited for both indoor and outdoor work. Over time, the unfamiliar weight of the glasses caused a slight strain on my neck. All told, I got to the point I would work for about 45 minutes to an hour at a time. I do think my experience improved over time, and I’m not entirely sure why. I didn’t specifically test how long the laptop battery would last, though I noticed it drop from 48 percent to 21 percent in about 45 minutes, as measured by the toolbar battery meter. Most planes now offer power plugs, so I don’t think this will be an issue. I still prefer my trusty desktop setup, though plugging in a USB mouse to the laptop made the Spacetop experience significantly better. On the other hand, certain scenarios throw you into situations where you simply don’t have the luxury of working under your preferred conditions, such as on a plane. I didn’t hop a flight to write this review, but I did simply flip off my screens and use my keyboard drawer as a tray table, writing this review under those conditions. Would I recommend it? If I flew to Asia every week, would I find value in the Spacetop? I think I would. Sure, Windows already offers you options to see “more” than just a single screen’s worth of data, especially via the virtual desktop feature that allows you to slide screens’ worth of data back and forth. I do like the option to keep a few lightly used apps off to the side, however, and Spacetop accomplishes that nicely. Is it all worth $899 plus $200 per year? That’s the real question. For the premium flyer zipping back and forth on a corporate dime, yeah, maybe. But for the average consumer? Probably not. This is a one-trick Apple Vision Pro for the Windows world. A useful trick, yes, but an expensive one. Read...

Drivers are being advised to delay or cancel travel after a truck breakdown left two southbound lanes on Auckland`s Harbour Bridge blocked. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Top-notch performance Excellent display Fast wired and wireless connectivity Supports USB-C charging Cons Premium pricing Still has the short battery life of a gaming laptops Trackpad could be bigger Our Verdict The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 continues its family’s knack for delivering extreme performance in a quality chassis at a competitive price. There are little areas for improvement, and the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 can’t get away from typical gaming laptop issues like weight and limited battery life, but it’s still excellent for what it is. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Lenovo’s Legion laptop family has been setting a high bar for gaming laptops over the last few years. While the Legion 9 series may be top dog in that family, the Legion Pro 7 series tends to mark a balance of class-leading performance, build quality, and value. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 continues that legacy nicely, offering extreme CPU and GPU performance all in a robust chassis with an excellent display.  With a starting price of $2,849 and a bump up to $3,599 to get the RTX 5080-equipped system tested here, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 is solidly in the high-end gaming laptop category. But from our first benchmark to the last, it wastes no time cementing itself as one of the best gaming laptops you can get right now.  Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10: Specs and features Model number: ?82WQ002SUS CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX Memory: 32GB DDR5X-6400 CSODIMM Graphics/GPU: Nvidia RTX 5080 (175-watt TGP) Display: 16-inch 2560×1600 240Hz OLED, Anti-glare Storage: 2X 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD Webcam: 5MP Connectivity: 1x Thunderbolt 4, 1x USB-C 10Gbps (with DP 2.1 and 140W PD input), 1x USB-A 10Gbps, 2x USB-A 5Gbps, HDMI 2.1, 2.5GbE, 1x 3.5mm combo audio Networking: WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: n/a Battery capacity: 99 watt-hours Dimensions: 14.35 x 10.9 x 1.05 inches Weight: 5.84 pounds MSRP: $3,599 as-tested ($2,849 base) At the time of writing, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 is available in just a few largely similar configurations. The one tested here costs $3,599 and is built around the RTX 5080. It is the only configuration listed on Lenovo’s website, but B&H also has configurations that swap in the RTX 5070 Ti for $2,849 or the RTX 5090 for $3,999. Lenovo often starts off some of its laptop models with just a few configurations but expands on them later on, so don’t be surprised if more options trickle in later on. For now, all of these configurations include the same 32GB of DDR5 memory on two CSODIMM sticks, the same pair of 1TB PCIe 4.0×4 SSDs, the same OLED display, and the Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX.  The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 sets the stage nicely for high-end gaming laptops running on the latest GPUs.  Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10: Design and build quality IDG / Mark Knapp The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 is a hulking machine, much like its predecessors. It packs a lot inside and aims to let it run at high wattages, so the size and weight make sense. Lenovo didn’t push much beyond the necessary bounds though, with the screen featuring narrow bezels and the rear of the laptop sticking out just an inch behind the display hinge to accommodate the beefier cooling required for this kind of application. Unsurprisingly, the laptop ends up over an inch thick.  The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 is blacked out with a matte black aluminum frame spanning the keyboard deck, display lid, and underside of the laptop. This metal build has some minor flex to it but altogether feels quite sturdy.  Despite being a gaming laptop, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 offers a tame look. There’s no needlessly aggressive embossing or angularity to most of the chassis. It has per-key RGB keyboard lighting and a thin light bar at the front edge of the deck, but beyond this lighting (which is easy to turn off), the only real hint to the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10’s gaming nature is the fighter-jet-like exhaust at the rear of the system, which houses a massive radiator that spans the entire rear edge.  There are three intake fans tucked behind the bottom grille — two large ones on either side and a smaller one slightly offset from the center that seems meant for the memory modules. They pull air in from the bottom and sent it out of the aforementioned radiator.   While some of Lenovo’s prior gaming laptops situated extra ports along the back edge of the system, the dedication to heat dissipation in the rear meant Lenovo had to shift all of its I/O to the side of the laptop.  Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10: Keyboard, trackpad IDG / Mark Knapp The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 offers a solid keyboard. The keys are lightly contoured, helping me keep my fingertips centered on them. They’re also very well stabilized for a laptop keyboard, helping keep the stroke even and avoiding rolling off the edge. They’re also not mushy and offer 1.6mm travel. Despite these quality aspects of the keyboard, the deck is long and can make it a bit uncomfortable to type on unless the ergonomics of the desk/table are just right. I was able to get up to 116 words per minute with 97 percent accuracy in Monkeytype, but this was a hair slower and more error-prone than I’d like to see, and it required removing my watch to manage. The rest of the keyboard is quite nice as well. The backlighting is bright and thoroughly illuminates the key legends. Lenovo includes full-size arrow keys slightly offset from the rest of the keyboard, making them easy to use and feel out — great for quick navigation. There’s also a large number pad, and while the keys are slightly narrower than the rest of the keyboard, they still allow for convenient touch typing. The trackpad is a slightly sore point in the inputs. It’s a fine trackpad, offering smooth swiping and a satisfying tactile click when depressed. But it’s rather small for a system this large, and it’s so far to the left that I find I’m almost constantly right-clicking. This may not be a concern if you’re left-handed, but righties will likely find it a slight bother reaching so far over to use the trackpad.  Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10: Display, audio IDG / Mark Knapp The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 includes an excellent display. It’s wonderfully sharp thanks to its 2560×1600 panel, and gamers will get a lot out of its 240Hz refresh rate. Better still, it’s an OLED panel that effectively eliminates ghosting, which can be quite a bit worse on laptop IPS displays than desktop ones in my experience. That combines with infinite contrast, a bold peak brightness of 509.8 nits, 100 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 color space, and color accuracy with a maximum dE of 1.47 — good enough for professional uses.  Lenovo says the display is anti-glare, and while it’s certainly no mirror, it’s not matte either. I can clearly see my reflection in it when I’m in bright environments. It can get bright enough to help subdue some reflections, but that will draw more power and still leave reflections visible in darker areas of the screen.  The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 boasts a set of four speakers. Two are situated above the keyboard on an elevated shelf by the display hinge, and two are on the underside of the laptop. These pump out a ton of volume with crisp mids and a nice bit of bass. If you’re trying to game or watch movies on the laptop, you won’t immediately be running for headphones or external speakers here. They’re quite excellent for laptop speakers. Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10: Webcam, microphone, biometrics You’ll get a great-looking webcam on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10. It offers 5MP resolution stills and can record at 1440p/30FPS. Even without perfect lighting, it’s surprisingly low on noise, and it does an impressive job exposing the picture without blowing out highlights. Its wide field of view will also help if you want to record yourself and a friend side-by-side. It comes paired with a solid microphone system as well. Even in a large room, my voice sounded clear and full to the mics, avoiding room echo.  Unfortunately, you won’t get any convenient biometric login capabilities on the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10. There’s no fingerprint reader or facial recognition.  Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10: Connectivity IDG / Mark Knapp The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 has decent wired connectivity for a laptop of its size. It has USB-A ports on either side, a 3.5mm jack and 2.5GbE port on the right side, and two USB-C ports and an HDMI 2.1 port on the left side. Only one of those USB-C ports is Thunderbolt 4, but the other at least supports DisplayPort 2.1 and 140W PD input. That USB PD input actually lets the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 recharge over USB-C when it’s set in Hybrid Mode (the GPU would drain too much power otherwise), providing some bonus flexibility if you don’t want to carry the 400W charger everywhere you go. An SD card reader would have been a good addition given the system’s productivity and creative application chops.  Wireless connectivity is a strong point, with the system supporting Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. In testing, it had no issues on the wireless front and offered plenty of bandwidth when downloading games on my Wi-Fi 6 network.  Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10: Performance The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 is geared up for major performance, and it’s no surprise to see it zoom through our benchmarks with aplomb. It’s one of the first few gaming laptops powered by an RTX 50-series GPU that we’ve tested, so it presents a good opportunity to not only see the potential of the chips in mobile platforms but also see what improvements have come over the prior generation, if any.  Lenovo tends to make well-rounded configurations with its Legion series, and the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 is no exception. In the holistic PCMark 10 benchmark, we see strong overall performance. By combining a fast CPU, GPU, memory, and storage, it performs impressively in every test that PCMark 10 throws at it, leading the pack here. That said, it’s only a minor uptick over the earlier Legion 9i Gen 9. Impressively, it beat the MSI Raider 18 HX A2XW — a bigger, heavier laptop that ought to have benefitted from extra cooling to run faster but showed a particular weakness in office productivity tasks. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 gets a high-end CPU, so it’s no surprise to see it ripping away at encoding tasks. It pulls off our 4K video encode in just under seven minutes — an impressive pace that pulls ahead of even the Core i9-14900HX in some of its competitors. It didn’t quite keep up with the MSI Raider 18 HX’s Core Ultra 9 285HX, which has the same core configuration but benefits from slightly faster clock speeds. That said, Lenovo didn’t let the MSI’s high-end CPU always take the lead. In Cinebench R20 and R23, it actually led the MSI Raider 18 HX in single- and multi-core performance, though MSI takes back the performance lead in Cinebench R24, which can benefit from extra cooling thanks to its longer run time. While the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 and MSI trade blows with narrow margins, offering extreme CPU performance, they simply blow the rest of the pack out of the water here with double-digit performance advantages.  The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10’s CPU is matched well with its GPU. In 3DMark’s synthetic gaming benchmark Port Royal, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 offers the fastest performance we’ve seen from a laptop. It not only clears the MSI Raider 18 HX with its own RTX 5080 but also beats the RTX 4090 in the Legion 9i and Gigabyte Aorus 17X.  While synthetic benchmarks are a useful guide for gaming performance, it always helps to see actual games run on a GPU, so we put each gaming laptop through a battery of demanding game benchmarks. Unsurprisingly, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 keeps up its lead. Despite its age, Metro Exodus remains a demanding game at its Extreme graphics setting because of its heavy use of ray-traced effects. Still, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 is able to run it at nearly 100 fps on average, leading all of the other systems here and yet again offering some of the fastest laptop performance we’ve seen in this test. Shadow of the Tomb Raider also proves a rather demanding game but isn’t quite as hard on the GPU and therefore lets the CPU help push performance even further. Here, the powerful combination of the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10’s Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX and RTX 5080 achieves an impressive average of 238 frames per second, nearly topping our charts. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 is even capable of running Cyberpunk 2077 at native 1080p with Ultra settings without ray tracing or DLSS at 151 fps. That drops to just 41 fps with the fully path-traced RT Overdrive mode, but again, that’s before tapping into DLSS for any performance improvements.  The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 will default to the performance power profile when plugged in, helping ensure you get the most out of it. But that’s not to say this is its peak. Lenovo’s Legion Space software offers customizable performance settings that could see it eke out even higher speeds.  All this performance does come with some cost: the fans kick up when the system goes into high gear. It’s not too shrill, but it’s fairly loud, and there is still a high pitched element to it that will wear on you after long. Also, the system relies on a massive 400W power brick. Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10: Battery life To help conserve battery, Lenovo has set the Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 to go from Windows’ Performance mode when plugged in down to its Balanced mode when it’s running on battery. Not having to manually make this change can help ensure you don’t find out the laptop is needlessly churning through battery power only after it has wasted a good chunk of charge. And you’ll want to conserve as much as you can. That said, laptops have been making improvements to battery life in leaps and bounds, with some Windows machines scratching 24 hours. While gaming laptops have made improvements, they’re still lacking in this area. With the display set between 250 and 260 nits and the system on airplane mode, the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 managed a little under six hours of runtime in our local video playback test.  Bear in mind, video playback can offer some favorable results where the battery is concerned, especially when an OLED display gets to show letterboxes (black pixels don’t use power, after all). In actual use, the battery life is shorter. Even with the dGPU disabled and performance set to balanced profiles in Windows and Lenovo’s LegionSpace, the system lasts closer to 3 hours in normal use, browsing the web and watching the occasional video. On the bright side, the 400W charger can juice the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 back up quickly. Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10: Conclusion The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 is an extreme-performance laptop. Its combination of potent CPU and GPU readies it for intense gaming and heavy computing workloads alike. That comes with some extra bulk, weight, and noisy cooling, but the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 is still relatively strong next to competing laptops. Lenovo has fit all of that power into a great frame, offering an above-average keyboard, an excellent display, and a healthy selection of ports for most uses.  With all its packing, it’s not surprising to see the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 costs a tidy sum. But at $3,499, it’s still a fair price. It’s cheaper than the prior-generation Legion 9i — a higher-tier system — and yet it outperforms that system in most respects. It’s also quite a bit cheaper than the $4,499 MSI Raider 18 HX A2XW, which it squares off against, trading blows and landing quite a few victories over. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i 16 Gen 10 sets the stage nicely for high-end gaming laptops running on the latest GPUs. Read...

Two-hundred flights, both international and domestic, flying into and out of Wellington Airport were cancelled yesterday due to severe wind, upending the travel plans of 22,000 people. Read...

A lot of people still have weak security practices, especially for their passwords. They’re reusing them, relying on easily cracked ones, or are unaware of current recommended guidelines. Their reasons for not using a password manager are usually understandable, too. But they’re still wrong. Passwords are similar to the locks on the front door of a house. And when you live in a city (the internet is definitely that crowded), everyone throws on at least one lock. But choose the doorknob’s lock, and it takes but a minute for an experienced burglar to get past it. You want a deadbolt at a minimum, and in higher traffic or rougher neighborhoods, you might have a thicker door (or even an iron gate before your door), sturdier hinges, and longer screws for your deadbolt strike plate. And yet, you don’t have to rely solely on keys to deal with your door locks. These days you can tailor your safety setup to make life easier and still more secure—e.g., using PIN pads, Bluetooth readers, and other methods to gain entry. Password managers are the same. You can choose one that works for you, whatever your needs or concerns—you don’t need to rearrange your life for it. Don’t believe me? Watch as I dismantle the top six reasons people don’t use a password manager lickety-split. Already using a password manager? Here are 10 ways to make the most of it. Reason 1: I have my own system and it works fine Your passwords are hopefully not this weak, but a homebrew system still can’t beat out a password manager.Shutterstock A lot of folks still believe using numbers and symbols in place of letters or riffing off of a base password is sufficient protection. The sad news is that those strategies aren’t strong enough anymore and haven’t been for a while. My colleague Mark Hachman explains how easy it can be to crack a password—and extrapolate patterns and habits to make cracking future passwords even easier. In other words, it’s becoming easier and easier to pick the lock on a digital door. You can gamble on never getting hit with an account takeover attempt, but you’re going to lose that bet sooner rather than later. Data breaches are only increasing in frequency (and scope), with potential fallout also increasing as vital services move further online. And even if you are generating your own long passphrases or even randomized passwords, keeping track of them will either be less protected than in a password manager (a spreadsheet with an innocuous name isn’t secure, alas) or slip your memory at some point. Reason 2: It takes too much time You can set up a password manager to automatically fill in your login info, as well as generate and save passwords. It’s much faster than manual input. (Shown here: iCloud Keychain on an iPhone.)PCWorld Not true! Typing out your login info takes longer than having your password manager pop up and autofill the credentials for you. So while it may seem like it’s slowing down your process to use one, it’s not.  As for setting up the password manager—some require no work to make them part of your routine. The ones built into Google, Apple, and Microsoft’s ecosystems (heck, even into browsers like Firefox) tie in with your existing account and offer automated password management across devices. Even third-party password managers are pretty seamless if you can spare a few minutes to sign up and then install a browser extension and mobile app. You might have to also tweak a system setting or two to ensure full integration into your flow, but it’s fast if you do. Once that’s complete, the experience is nearly as effortless as with first-party password managers—and you get more robust features. Oh, and entering all your passwords into the manager doesn’t have to happen all at once, either. It’s ideal, but if you take care of the sensitive accounts (and upgrade the quality of your passwords for them too!), you can then gradually add more credentials as you log into those accounts. Reason 3: It costs too much Bitwarden, our top pick for free password managers, offers a ton of features. You don’t have to spend any money in order to have good security.PCWorld You don’t have to spend a single cent for a good password manager. OUr favorite paid password manager Dashlane Read our review Best Prices Today: $4.99 at Dashlane Yes, paid password managers do often get recommended, but that’s because of their extra useful features—not their level of protection. A paid service will offer a wider range of two-factor authentication options (like hardware authentication keys or the ability in the password manager to generate software-based tokens), easier password sharing, family plans with group access to passwords, special travel-oriented features, and more. For not much cash, you get a tangible quality of life improvement. But a good free password manager will store all of your login info securely and also easily generate long, random passwords for every website and app. And just like paid password managers, it will also recognize sites you visit and offer to automatically fill in your credentials, as well as support basic two-factor authentication.  The better free services also provide a way to share passwords securely, set an emergency access for trusted contacts, and can generate unique user names (not just passwords), email masks, and more. Reason 4: Having all my passwords in one place is dangerous You can use an app like Authy or Aegis to generate two-factor authentication tokens.PCWorld I hear you on this one. The idea that you would put all of your passwords in one place can seem like a direct contradiction with security. If someone breaks in, you could be in for a world of pain. But you can mitigate this concern with little difficulty. Your first line of defense: Choose a good master password and enable two-factor authentication. This is arguably the most important thing you can do to safeguard yourself. You can (and should) also protect your accounts by requiring a PIN, biometric authentication, or your master password for all installed browser extensions and apps. How you choose to store your passwords can minimize or eliminate this issue, too. For example, you can lean on KeePass as your manager, which gives you complete control over the file holding all your login info. Save it on a trusted PC or external drive (don’t forget to back it up!) and access to your passwords will remain limited. KeePass might not look like much, but it gets the job done while giving you complete control over your password database. You can also opt for one of its forks, like KeePassXC, for a more modern interface.PCWorld Or you can spread your passwords between different services and apps. Maybe you sign up for both Dashlane and Bitwarden, storing a mix of accounts in each. Alternatively, you could put your info for less valuable accounts in a cloud-based manager, while your high-value account info stays locked up tight in a KeePass file. Another riff on this idea: Split passwords themselves into different fragments and store them across different accounts. For all of these scenarios, you can have both browser extensions or apps installed on your devices for simultaneous use. These options are a little more complicated, but you’ll still be remembering no more than a couple of mega-strong passwords. And you’ll have a faster and stronger system than typing out passwords kept in your brain. Reason 5: Storing my passwords in the cloud seems risky You can approximate a DIY cloud-based password system if you choose KeePass and store its database with a cloud provider you trust. Or just keep the file offline for complete control—the choice is yours.Microsoft This is a fair concern. Even the most diligent company could have a vulnerability in their system. Bugs are an unfortunate but regular part of software development. But you still have options. As mentioned earlier, KeePass saves passwords to a local file, which lets you keep that data out of cloud-based storage. Or you can DIY your own cloud solution by uploading a KeePass vault file to a cloud storage provider you trust (one that has enough engineers to properly ward off hackers and have proper safeguards against rogue employees)—e.g., Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud Drive, or Google Drive. You can go with a hybrid system instead as well. Use an online password manager for medium- and lower-value accounts (places that have your address and billing info, but not more), while financial and other highly personal accounts are stored in a more tightly controlled environment. If you’ve been OK with using Ilovetarget.com as your password for shopping online at Target, this solution surely can’t be that objectionable. Reason 6: I’ll get stuck with a password manager I hate Nope, you can move at will. A standard practice for all reputable password managers is the ability to export your passwords. The better services allow you to export as an encrypted file, which minimizes the risk of sensitive data falling into the wrong hands. By the way, always choose the encrypted option, because a plain-text file of all your passwords is no bueno. (This one’s easy to lay to rest!) Good password managers will let you export your passwords in an encrypted format for easy and safe transfers. (Shown here: Bitwarden’s browser extension.) PCWorld Any (reputable) password manager is better than none This won’t be the last time I write about password managers, much less try to convince people to use them. But let me say, whenever you hear different arguments from tech journalists (even right here among the PCWorld staff!) about why paid password managers are better, or that browser-based password managers should be passed over—don’t let that confuse you. Or turn that into a reason to write off online security as too complicated. The reputable password manager that you use is the best one. Simple as that. I just want you all to be safe. Having to frantically recover an account or deal with identity theft is no one’s idea of a good time. Read...

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