At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Excellent benchmark performance PCIe 5.0 Less power draw than the T705 Reasonably priced for the category Cons Note quite as fast in the real world as some others Our Verdict With less power draw and better benchmark results, Crucial’s T710 is a worthy new member of the company’s NVMe SSD lineup. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Crucial’s T710 is a very fast addition to a worthy stable of NVMe SSDs from the company. It’s marginally faster than the older T705, though it didn’t beat out its sibling in every test. What are the Crucial T710’s features? The Crucial T710 sports 232-layer Micron TLC NAND which is handled by a new Silicon Motion SM2508 controller. Being a single-sided 2280 (22 mm wide, 80 mm long), PCIe 5.0, NVMe 2.0 SSD, it’s suitable for just about any Windows PC or laptop. Peeling back the label on our 2TB test drive revealed a single Micron SDRAM which according to Crucial is 2GB on our drive as well as the 1TB model, with 4GB on the 4TB capacity. The T710 installed in our new Z890 test bed. We don’t measure power draw, but Crucial claims a 24% reduction in power use compared to the older Phison-based T705 — always good news for laptop users. That said, there are still a lot of other power hungry components in the laptop battery life calculation, so don’t expect miracles from an upgrade. Crucial warranties the T710 for five years and 600TBW (TeraBytes that my be Written before read-only) per Terabyte of capacity. That means you can write about that much data before the drive won’t let you write anymore — theoretically. In practice, SSDs track the number of worn-out cells and the spares available to replace them, then go read-only when the latter run out. The TBW rating is just an estimate of when that will occur, and is basically linked to the warranty so that consumer-priced SSDs aren’t used in high-volume servers that run them dry in less than the warranty period. How much is the Crucial T710? Like its older T705 brother the T710 is available with or without a heatsink. For the 1TB version the different versions cost $199.99/$179.99 respectively, for the 2TB it’s $299.99/$279.99, and for the 4TB $569.99/$549.99. Those prices are about average for a DRAM-endowed PCIe 5.0 MVMe SSD. Crucial did not send me a version with the heatsink, but if it’s anything like the ones that shipped with the T705 – it’s beefy indeed. The majority of users will not need the heat sink, but if you’re one that does rest assured, this one will do the job. How fast is the Crucial T710? As a successor to one of the fastest PCIe SSDs we’ve tested (it was fastest at its test date), the T705, we were expecting great things from the T710. Well.. depending on the test, it’s a bit greater — or not quite as great. Note that we have revamped our test bed, and to some extent our testing MO, so these numbers are only directly comparable to the drives listed in these charts. Older results are ballpark so not completely out of line for comparison purposes. According to CrystalDiskMark 8, the T710 offers a nice improvement in sustained throughput over the older T705 — especially with only a single queue, which is still what Windows uses for file transfers. The T710 ruled in the CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential tests, only lagging slightly behind the Samsung 9100 Pro in multi-queue reading — something most software doesn’t do. Longer bars are better. The Crucial T710’s single-queue random performance is also slightly improved over the T705, which is again, the most important test as regards current Windows. But multi-queue performance is a bit weaker, which might show up in programs that use their own multi-threaded I/O. As Windows uses a single-queue for most transfers, we’ll call this a slight win for the T710 over the competition, though we would like to see better multi-queue performance. Longer bars are better. The T710 improved in Windows Explorer over the T705, but was slower in most of the other tests which now include DiskBench and the command line Xcopy run in batch files. If these results seem very close — they are. To the point where they’re not particularly useful for comparing drives, only to see what performance is like in real life transfers. XC is xcopy, DB is DiskBench, and the last four are Windows Explorer drag and drop. Faster in some transfer, slower in others, the T710 in the real world is hard to tell from other DRAM PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs. EX is Explorer, DB is DiskBench, XC is Xcopy. Shorter bars are better. Where the Crucial T710 proved a disappointment was in the 450GB write, which we now perform with Windows Explorer, DiskBench, Xcopy, and FastCopy. All four showed the drive lagging behind both the T705 and Samsung 9100 Pro in this test. The 450GB write was a bit of disappointment for the T710. It doesn’t match the CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential ratings. Shorter bars are better. All in all, the T710 is a very good performer, though not the best of the PCIe 5.0 lot for large file transfers. Some current technology notes: the Z890/Intel Core Ultra combo we now use is found to be less adept at PCIe M.2 NVMe than the older Z790. Because of this, we use adapter cards in the PCIe 5.0 slots for testing. Should I buy the T710? Yes, it’s a very fast SSD. But it’s not the fastest and not a huge improvement over the T705. In short, either the Crucial T705 or this newer T710 will do nicely. Base any buying decision on price — the performance difference between DRAM-based PCIe 5.0 SSDs simply isn’t all that significant. How we test Drive tests currently utilize Windows 11 24H2, 64-bit running off of a PCIe 4.0 Samsung 990 Pro in an Asus Z890-Creator WiFi (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard. The CPU is a Core Ultra i5 225 feeding/fed by two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of memory total). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 are integrated and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. SSDs involved in the test are mounted in a HighPoint 7604A 16x PCIe 5.0 adapter card. We run the CrystalDiskMark 8, AS SSD 2, and ATTO 4 synthetic benchmarks to find the storage device’s potential performance, then a series of 48GB and 450GB transfers tests using Windows Explorer drag and drop, DiskBench, Xcopy, and FastCopy to show what you’ll actually see under Windows as well as what’s possible. The 48GB transfer tests utilize an USFMount RAM disk taking up 58GB of the 64GB of total memory. The 450GB file is transferred from a 2TB Samsung 9100 Pro. Each test is performed on a newly NTFS-formatted and TRIM’d drive so the results are optimal. Note that in normal use, as a drive fills up, performance may decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching, as well as other factors. This can be less of a factor with the current crop of SSDs with far faster late-generation NAND. Caveat: The performance numbers shown apply only to the drive we were shipped and to the capacity tested. SSD performance can and will vary by capacity due to more or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes across and the amount of NAND available for secondary caching. Vendors also occasionally swap components. If you ever notice a large discrepancy between the performance you experience and that which we report, by all means, let us know. Read...

Have you got your heart set on a new computing life with Linux when Windows 10 bites the dust in October? It’s a noble idea, but Linux has its downsides too. For some users those downsides may be par for course. But for others, they’ll be total dealbreakers. Here’s a list of the most common to help you make up your own mind… 1. Software and driver compatibility is lacking There’s no denying that there are compatibility limitations with Linux that you won’t see with Windows. These issues affect software but also drivers. Take software as an example. Linux forums users are often miffed that common Windows software like Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite aren’t fully compatible with Linux. There are workarounds to using these programs, of course, but they require a little tinkering. Driver incompatibility issues are another common complaint, especially the lack of support by manufacturers for GPU drivers. It seems illogical but GPU drivers aren’t always installed on some Linux distros (the different distributions of the Linux OS) when you first install your system, since standard GPU drivers are closed-source. Lack of driver support can be a big letdown for gamers especially, some of whom complain about acceleration issues with Nvidia graphics cards on Linux systems. (AMD’s Radeon group is better with this.) The driver issue is also a bummer if you want to deck out your Linux PC with cool peripherals. That’s because manufacturers of peripheral devices like printers and headsets don’t always provide driver support for Linux. Linux users often have to rely on open-source drivers to get them to work, for better or for worse. MSI 2. Rolling updates to distros can cause instability issues If you’re looking for a seamless OS user experience, Linux currently isn’t it. Updates to Linux distros often cause instability and breakages in tools and extensions that Linux users rely on. That’s because of the way Linux distros are updated. Instead of having comprehensive new version releases every year or so a la Windows, which tend to be a little more thoroughly tested (but not perfect), Linux distros tend to have a lot of rolling updates that aren’t anywhere near as fine-tuned. Understandably, these bugs can cause big disruptions. One recent update for the Linux distro Ubuntu broke Gnome’s Shell extensions. Gnome is an open-source desktop environment for Linux whose updates are usually bundled as part of Ubuntu updates. In 2024 an update to Gnome 46 led to widespread breakages in third-party shell extensions including important productivity tools, which left many users without the applications they count on every day. Dominic Bayley / Foundry 3. Some triple-A games aren’t supported Some big-name developers don’t provide support for their games to run natively on Linux, which means there’s currently fewer triple-A games available to play right now than there are on Windows. ProtonDB’s website (the community website for Valve’s Proton technology, which allows Windows games to run on Linux and the Steam Deck) reports that about 70 percent of triple-A games available on Windows are currently playable on Linux. Some of those unsupported games are big names, too. The multiplayer game Fortnite, for instance, isn’t playable on Linux unless it’s being played through a cloud gaming service like GeForce Now. Admittedly, that figure is a lot better than it used to be just a few years ago, when there were only a handful of triple-A games playable on Linux. Thanks, Steam Deck! One roadblock to getting even more games on Linux is the problem Linux has with anti-cheat software. On Windows, anti-cheat software — like Epic’s Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) — prevents players cheating in multiplayer games by blocking them at the grassroots file level. Yet these anti-cheat programs don’t work on Linux, which means the games either aren’t unplayable, or aren’t playable without special workarounds — and those workarounds can sometimes get you banned. There has been speculation that Microsoft is working on a fix that will mean Windows games won’t need a special workaround for kernel-level anti-cheat software on Linux, but we have yet to see it happen. Dominic Bayley / Foundry 4. Game performance isn’t guaranteed If you’re super proud of your PC’s performance in a certain triple-A game — say, Cyberpunk 2077 — that cozy experience may be upended on Linux. Why? Because it’s common for game performance to be different on Linux than it is on Windows. That’s certainly the case for Cyberpunk 2077 which some Linux gamers have said is “unplayable,” others that they get “lower FPS on Linux than they get on Windows.” Still, that’s just one game. That’s not to say every triple-A game performs poorly on Linux. In fact, it’s sometimes the case that games perform better on Linux than they do on Windows. The point is, you can’t expect like-for-like performance, so keep that in mind before switching to Linux just to play a specific game. IDG 5. Linux has a steeper learning curve Linux often requires more tinkering than Windows or MacOS for a smooth user experience. It’s subjective, and people will have their own views and experiences, but it’s true in the sense that sometimes installing software or configuring settings on Linux requires the use of a command-line interface instead of the less intimidating graphical user interface (GUI). On Windows, you have the option of typing commands at the command prompt, but it’s not mandatory — you can still do most tasks via Windows’ GUI. Some users will get a kick out of learning the old-school commands for Linux. Others, not so much, so it’s worth considering that point before making the switch. get windows 11 pro for cheap Windows 11 Pro Read...

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I don’t know how your tech drawers look, but mine are filled with wires I’ll likely never use again because technology has advanced quite a bit. Thankfully, USB-C seems to be here to stay since there is no wrong way to plug these things in. It’s not just smartphones, tablets, and laptops that use these, however, but also a long list of gadgets. We’ve scoured the market for hidden gems: gadgets that will make you think “Wow, I didn’t know I needed that, but it will make my life so much easier!” So, let’s dive in and see what cool devices you’ll be able to use your type-C cables and ports with. Wowstick 1F+ mini electric screwdriver Wowstick If you often have to fiddle around with your computer or other gadgets, this Wowstick mini electric screwdriver may be just what you need. This pen-shaped screwdriver features three LED lights so it’s easier to see what you’re working on and rotates 200 times per minute so you can finish the job faster. The screwdriver has a stylish base so you can hold it on your desk, and a whole collection of 56 aluminum alloy bits. The screwdriver can be charged via USB-C and it can last for hours. This super fun electric screwdriver usually goes for $41. Anker Nano Power Bank Anker One thing you need to have in you bag/pocket/backpack is a power bank because you never really know when your phone will fail you and cry for a recharge. Well, the Anker Nano power bank is tiny enough to fit just about anywhere. It comes with a foldable USB-C connector and a port on the side so you can charge two devices at once if you need to. The 5,000mAh capacity is just about enough for a full phone recharge, so it will be great in a pinch. It’s also only $30, but we’ve seen it as low as $16. Endoscope camera with light Ennovor Although it’s not something you’ll use every day, this Ennover endoscope camera can definitely come in handy. You just plug it in your phone, install and app, and see everything your camera does. Our team swears by it, using it for finding whatever they dropped behind the desk, while working on the car, or looking for pipe leaks. Since it has an IP67 rating, you can even plop it in your aquarium. The camera comes with a 16.4ft semi-rigid cable and several accessories, including a hook, magnet, and a mirror. You can get this one for $23 right now. Blukar flashlight Blukar I don’t care who you are—you need a flashlight. The smaller, the better, because you get to shove it into any pocket. This model from Blukar comes with a built-in 1800mAh battery that you’ll recharge with one of those many type-C cables you have in that tech drawer we were talking about. It can work for up to 16 hours on a single charge, which is pretty decent. There are four different lightning modes to cycle through, including one that will help you signal for help. Plus, one of these is only $10, so no excuse to pass on this one. Heat It insect bite healer Anyone plagued by mosquitoes in the summer will be particularly pleased with this ingenious gadget. This tiny device, which can be easily connected to your smartphone via USB-C, can significantly reduce the itching of bites and stings with targeted heat. You simply charge the small Heat It bite healer via the app and then hold it on the bite. The heat then does the rest, breaking down the proteins in the mosquito bite that cause the area to swell, itch, and hurt. A true must-have for summer, and it costs only $20. A tiny air pump Also perfect for summer is this small air pump from Cycplus, which fits in any bag while on the go. Not only can it inflate a bicycle tire in two minutes at the touch of a button, but it’s also USB-charged. According to the manufacturer, it’s suitable for mountain bikes, road bikes, motorcycles, and even cars! In addition to being an air pump, this practical gadget can also be used as a flashlight or power bank for on-the-go use — all things that come in very handy on a bike ride. And at just $57, it’s highly recommended if you need quick help with a flat tire. USB-C mini fan These little fans are also pretty ingenious; you can easily carry them in your pocket in the summer and quickly use them whenever you need them. Anyone who’s ever sat on a crowded subway train in 30-degree heat and wished for at least a little fresh air will love this gadget. The mini fan, which costs just $20, has a USB-C port and can be easily powered by power banks, computers, laptops, or USB chargers. There are even smaller and cheaper fans available that can be connected directly to your phone, costing under $10 each. But these also provide less powerful airflow, so we recommend the standalone version. Reading light with a book clamp Anyone who enjoys reading a lot, sometimes late into the night, will appreciate this little gadget: a reading lamp that you can simply clip onto your book. It may not be groundbreaking, but with a total of three color temperatures and five different light modes, you can individually adjust how much light you need for reading. The Gritin reading lamp costs just $15 on Amazon and features a 1200 mAh battery that lasts up to 80 hours depending on usage. Afterward, you can easily recharge it via USB. You can swivel the neck of the lamp back and forth as desired, and there’s even a small charging indicator. What more could you want? Samsung flash drive Samsung The vast majority of flash drives have a USB-A connector, but this one from Samsung has a Type-C connector. With transfer speeds of up to 400MB/s, you’ll move files around in no time. The beauty of this thumb drive is that you can even pop it in your smartphone to record 4K vids directly on it. The Samsung Type-C flash drive comes in multiple storage options, starting at 64GB and up to 512GB and they start at $14. The 256GB version, for instance, is $27 at the time of writing. Editor’s note: This article was originally published on May 16, but was updated to include additional devices. Read...

The 2025 school year may be ending, but students who return in the fall will have a new AI tutor: Google Gemini for Education. At the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference, Google launched its new AI teaching tool. “Gemini for Education provides default access to our premium AI models, soon with significantly higher limits than what consumers get at no cost, plus enterprise-grade data protection and an admin-managed experience as a core Workspace service — all included in your Workspace for Education plan free of charge,” Google said. Google is pitching the ability for educators to roll their own “Gems,” or AI experts, which can help students learn new concepts. Google NotebookLM also provides a repository for students to upload documents into and then hear an audio summary, via Audio Overviews. Google recently added Video Overviews, too, which adds a visual element. Google Gemini for Education will be free, though Google is offering a paid Google Workspace with Gemini add-on for $18 per user per month, though with some educational discounts. That program includes the ability to include some 8-second video clips using the Veo 3 text-to-video generator, which will help teachers up their meme game to connect with kids. Of course, there’s a bit of irony in all of this, since teachers are mortally afraid of AI’s ability to help their students cheat — even as they don’t want to deny them the ability to use it, either. It’s a big moral quandary, especially when it comes to testing. The upshot last year was that teachers might use AI to teach, but the safest way to avoid AI cheating was to go back to pen and paper at test time. Gemini will get its own tab in Google Classroom.Google Google, meanwhile, seems to want to make AI as ubiquitous as a laptop. We’ll see what happens in the fall. Read...

Arvind Krishnan has joined Alteryx as Chief Technology Officer to lead the firm`s AI analytics platform and global engineering team. Read...

Microsoft formally announced the next version of Windows 11 on Friday, Windows 11 25H2, and indicated that the upgrade will be much simpler than its predecessor. Windows 11 24H2 will be administered via what’s known as a “shared servicing branch,” which is the normal way for Windows to be updated. Microsoft simply takes the code that your machine lacks and sends it down to your PC via Windows Update, reducing the total download size by about 40 percent, Microsoft said. In early 2025, Microsoft rolled out an update to Windows 11 24H2, which required a much more intensive process. Microsoft called that rollout a full code swap, and when I performed the upgrade myself, it took as long as just under two hours on an older machine. That process essentially swapped all of the existing code for a total update. Since Microsoft is returning to a shared servicing branch, you can expect the update to move much more quickly. Essentially, Microsoft is saying that it will quietly download the Windows 11 25H2 components, then turn them on via an enablement package. Once the code is enabled, all a user has to do is reboot to “turn on” the new code. If you go to Windows Settings > System > About, you can see the new version, Microsoft said. Microsoft didn’t say when Windows 11 25H2 will officially roll out, but history says that it will probably be in September or October. Microsoft isn’t saying what new features will be rolled out as part of Windows 11 25H2. The company released two test builds for Windows 11 this week, one offering a dashboard for its Recall technology as a passkey integration with 1Password. Read...

ChatGPT is rapidly changing the world. The process is already happening, and it’s only going to accelerate as the technology improves, as more people gain access to it, and as more learn how to use it. What’s shocking is just how many tasks ChatGPT is already capable of managing for you. While the naysayers may still look down their noses at the potential of AI assistants, I’ve been using it to handle all kinds of menial tasks for me. Here are my favorite examples. Further reading: This tiny ChatGPT feature helps me tackle my days more productively Write your emails for you Dave Parrack / Foundry We’ve all been faced with the tricky task of writing an email—whether personal or professional—but not knowing quite how to word it. ChatGPT can do the heavy lifting for you, penning the (hopefully) perfect email based on whatever information you feed it. Let’s assume the email you need to write is of a professional nature, and wording it poorly could negatively affect your career. By directing ChatGPT to write the email with a particular structure, content, and tone of voice, you can give yourself a huge head start. A winning tip for this is to never accept ChatGPT’s first attempt. Always read through it and look for areas of improvement, then request tweaks to ensure you get the best possible email. You can (and should) also rewrite the email in your own voice. Learn more about how ChatGPT coached my colleague to write better emails. Generate itineraries and schedules Dave Parrack / Foundry If you’re going on a trip but you’re the type of person who hates planning trips, then you should utilize ChatGPT’s ability to generate trip itineraries. The results can be customized to the nth degree depending on how much detail and instruction you’re willing to provide. As someone who likes to get away at least once a year but also wants to make the most of every trip, leaning on ChatGPT for an itinerary is essential for me. I’ll provide the location and the kinds of things I want to see and do, then let it handle the rest. Instead of spending days researching everything myself, ChatGPT does 80 percent of it for me. As with all of these tasks, you don’t need to accept ChatGPT’s first effort. Use different prompts to force the AI chatbot to shape the itinerary closer to what you want. You’d be surprised at how many cool ideas you’ll encounter this way—simply nix the ones you don’t like. Break down difficult concepts Dave Parrack / Foundry One of the best tasks to assign to ChatGPT is the explanation of difficult concepts. Ask ChatGPT to explain any concept you can think of and it will deliver more often than not. You can tailor the level of explanation you need, and even have it include visual elements. Let’s say, for example, that a higher-up at work regularly lectures everyone about the importance of networking. But maybe they never go into detail about what they mean, just constantly pushing the why without explaining the what. Well, just ask ChatGPT to explain networking! Okay, most of us know what “networking” is and the concept isn’t very hard to grasp. But you can do this with anything. Ask ChatGPT to explain augmented reality, multi-threaded processing, blockchain, large language models, what have you. It will provide you with a clear and simple breakdown, maybe even with analogies and images. Analyze and make tough decisions Dave Parrack / Foundry We all face tough decisions every so often. The next time you find yourself wrestling with a particularly tough one—and you just can’t decide one way or the other—try asking ChatGPT for guidance and advice. It may sound strange to trust any kind of decision to artificial intelligence, let alone an important one that has you stumped, but doing so actually makes a lot of sense. While human judgment can be clouded by emotions, AI can set that aside and prioritize logic. It should go without saying: you don’t have to accept ChatGPT’s answers. Use the AI to weigh the pros and cons, to help you understand what’s most important to you, and to suggest a direction. Who knows? If you find yourself not liking the answer given, that in itself might clarify what you actually want—and the right answer for you. This is the kind of stuff ChatGPT can do to improve your life. Plan complex projects and strategies Dave Parrack / Foundry Most jobs come with some level of project planning and management. Even I, as a freelance writer, need to plan tasks to get projects completed on time. And that’s where ChatGPT can prove invaluable, breaking projects up into smaller, more manageable parts. ChatGPT needs to know the nature of the project, the end goal, any constraints you may have, and what you have done so far. With that information, it can then break the project up with a step-by-step plan, and break it down further into phases (if required). If ChatGPT doesn’t initially split your project up in a way that suits you, try again. Change up the prompts and make the AI chatbot tune in to exactly what you’re looking for. It takes a bit of back and forth, but it can shorten your planning time from hours to mere minutes. Compile research notes Dave Parrack / Foundry If you need to research a given topic of interest, ChatGPT can save you the hassle of compiling that research. For example, ahead of a trip to Croatia, I wanted to know more about the Croatian War of Independence, so I asked ChatGPT to provide me with a brief summary of the conflict with bullet points to help me understand how it happened. After absorbing all that information, I asked ChatGPT to add a timeline of the major events, further helping me to understand how the conflict played out. ChatGPT then offered to provide me with battle maps and/or summaries, plus profiles of the main players. You can go even deeper with ChatGPT’s Deep Research feature, which is now available to free users, up to 5 Deep Research tasks per month. With Deep Research, ChatGPT conducts multi-step research to generate comprehensive reports (with citations!) based on large amounts of information across the internet. A Deep Research task can take up to 30 minutes to complete, but it’ll save you hours or even days. Summarize articles, meetings, and more Dave Parrack / Foundry There are only so many hours in the day, yet so many new articles published on the web day in and day out. When you come across extra-long reads, it can be helpful to run them through ChatGPT for a quick summary. Then, if the summary is lacking in any way, you can go back and plow through the article proper. As an example, I ran one of my own PCWorld articles (where I compared Bluesky and Threads as alternatives to X) through ChatGPT, which provided a brief summary of my points and broke down the best X alternative based on my reasons given. Interestingly, it also pulled elements from other articles. (Hmph.) If you don’t want that, you can tell ChatGPT to limit its summary to the contents of the link. This is a great trick to use for other long-form, text-heavy content that you just don’t have the time to crunch through. Think transcripts for interviews, lectures, videos, and Zoom meetings. The only caveat is to never share private details with ChatGPT, like company-specific data that’s protected by NDAs and the like. Create Q&A flashcards for learning Dave Parrack / Foundry Flashcards can be extremely useful for drilling a lot of information into your brain, such as when studying for an exam, onboarding in a new role, prepping for an interview, etc. And with ChatGPT, you no longer have to painstakingly create those flashcards yourself. All you have to do is tell the AI the details of what you’re studying. You can specify the format (such as Q&A or multiple choice), as well as various other elements. You can also choose to keep things broad or target specific sub-topics or concepts you want to focus on. You can even upload your own notes for ChatGPT to reference. You can also use Google’s NotebookLM app in a similar way. Provide interview practice Dave Parrack / Foundry Whether you’re a first-time jobseeker or have plenty of experience under your belt, it’s always a good idea to practice for your interviews when making career moves. Years ago, you might’ve had to ask a friend or family member to act as your mock interviewer. These days, ChatGPT can do it for you—and do it more effectively. Inform ChatGPT of the job title, industry, and level of position you’re interviewing for, what kind of interview it’ll be (e.g., screener, technical assessment, group/panel, one-on-one with CEO), and anything else you want it to take into consideration. ChatGPT will then conduct a mock interview with you, providing feedback along the way. When I tried this out myself, I was shocked by how capable ChatGPT can be at pretending to be a human in this context. And the feedback it provides for each answer you give is invaluable for knocking off your rough edges and improving your chances of success when you’re interviewed by a real hiring manager. Further reading: No, don’t threaten ChatGPT for better results. Try this instead Read...

Double Data Rate 4 memory—or DDR4 RAM if you’re short on time—has had a good run. It first popped into PCs over a decade ago, but at this point it’s hard to find a new laptop that hasn’t moved on to DDR5, and it’s only really relevant on the desktop side for budget mini PCs and AMD’s AM4 platform. DDR4 manufacturing is winding down, and that means it’s getting a whole lot more expensive. There appears to be something of a rush on the existing stock of new DDR4 memory. TrendForce reports that retail prices for DDR4 RAM kits being tracked have gone up shockingly fast, with the price of some SKUs having gone up by almost 40 percent in the last week. That’s due to several compounding factors, including decreased production from memory manufacturers and the Trump administration’s import taxes (tariffs) feeding anxiety over pricing. Those short-term price increases are, in fact, considerably higher than TrendForce predicted just a few weeks ago, where consumer-grade DDR4 modules for PCs was projected to rise 18 to 23 percent in the third quarter of the year. As Tom’s Hardware observes, this is an unprecedented situation: DDR4 might become more expensive than the much faster DDR5, based purely on scarcity as manufacturers like Micron and Samsung have wound down production. A few quick searches show that DDR4 prices haven’t yet eclipsed DDR5 at the consumer retail level, though the former is definitely higher than it should be for a technology that’s on its way out. I’m more concerned about devices that use soldered memory modules in more affordable form factors, which can’t easily switch to new hardware that supports DDR5. The newest Raspberry Pi is still running on a design that’s six years old, with DDR4 memory that can’t be replaced. If that memory suddenly doubles in price, the Pi 4 will be forced to rise in price, too. It might also be the final, arguably long-overdue death knell for AMD’s AM4 socket. AMD has been producing shiny new CPUs for the nearly 10-year-old platform as recently as this month, but it all depends on cheap and easily available DDR4 RAM to make financial sense. Without that component, we might see the end of a continually supported CPU socket that’s lasted through five chip generations and change. Read...

Australian businesses are shifting to flexible IT financing to stay agile, preserve cashflow, and keep technology current amidst rapid innovation and economic challenges. Read...