Framework is a unique company, offering modular laptops designed for easy repairs and near-infinite upgrades. But it’s also a small company, much more susceptible to market changes brought on by things like capricious tariffs. Though it’s tried to insulate itself from skyrocketing RAM prices brought on by “AI” datacenter demand, something had to give. And that “something” is laptop prices. A few weeks ago Framework stopped selling RAM separately from laptops and the new desktop (which uses the same SO-DIMM memory), giving a public statement that it was trying to prevent scalpers from buying up supply, and saving its reserves for customers who buy pre-configured laptops. But now the prices for said laptops, when configured with memory, are rising. In a blog post from founder Nirav Patel, the company announced a 50 percent price bump for RAM (and only RAM) in the store configuration tool. A single 8GB stick of DDR5 RAM costs $60 (and I wouldn’t even recommend going that low to run Windows 11). Two 8GB sticks for 16GB total costs $120, though you can get a single 16GB stick for the same price. 32GB is $240, with prices going up predictably all the way to $720 for 2x48GB, 96GB in total. Checking an Archive.org backup of the Framework store, these prices are indeed 50 percent higher than they were before today. Prices on other components have not changed — if you happen to have a source of reasonably-priced RAM, you can still buy the laptop without any memory at all. RAM prices have been completely out of control for the last few months, with consumer-packaged DDR5 doubling and now tripling in cost. A boom in “AI” datacenters, hungry for memory and storage, is assumed to have gobbled up all the industrial production capacity. Micron, one of the “big three” memory manufacturers, will completely shutter its Crucial sub-brand in order to focus on supplying the AI industry. Other companies like Lenovo are trying to keep prices down with forward-looking deals and stockpiling. But consumers who want to buy and install their own memory are at the very bottom of this particular monetary totem pole, and getting the worst of a bad situation. Framework isn’t far off, though the blog post says the company has “strong partnerships with Micron…[and] memory module makers like ADATA.” I’ve spoken with various representatives of PC manufacturers in the last few weeks, and asked them all about the RAM and storage situation. They’ve given similar answers, though none were ready to go into specifics or commit to anything regarding pricing in 2026. It’s disappointing, but unsurprising. The long and the short of it is this: If you can wait for an upgrade, do so…and if you need an upgrade in the near future, you might want to pull the trigger now before prices go higher and higher. Framework is committed to staying transparent about pricing, though it notes that the return policy needs to be adjusted. It worries that scalpers will buy its laptops for the below-market prices on RAM alone. So if you return your Framework computer, the RAM has to come with it, too. Read...

OLED monitors are great. Portable monitors are great. You know where this is going, we’ve got a peanut butter-and-chocolate situation here. You can find a USB-C-powered portable screen to augment your laptop for a song, but getting an OLED upgrade isn’t cheap. Unless you check out this Amazon deal: a 13.3-inch OLED portable monitor for $99.99, a $30 discount off the . Innocn is definitely one of those Amazon brands that seems to have been generated by a cat walking across a keyboard. But for what it’s worth, the company has been making generally reliable budget monitors for a few years. This USB-C model isn’t anything special beyond the gorgeous OLED panel, offering a standard 1080p resolution and a magnetic kickstand. You get two USB-C ports, some tiny speakers (hey, better than nothing), and mini-HDMI for devices that don’t support video over USB. That makes this a great companion for a home console if you’re travelling. With the built-in kickstand and a magnesium alloy chassis (according to the spec list), this looks like it’s a little more sturdy than your usual budget USB monitor, and a $30 discount on the retail price certainly doesn’t hurt. If you’re looking for more great deals on monitors, be sure to check out PCWorld’s picks for the best monitors on the market. Get a 13-inch OLED portable USB monitor for $100View Deal Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Fun, attractive design Super affordable Decent 400MBps reads Stands out from the crowd Cons Limited to 256GB capacity Already slow 150MBps writing drops to 80MBps after a few gigabytes Our Verdict If your younger kids need to back up or transport stored data, there’s no more enticing or entertaining way to do it than with SanDisk’s Crayola flash drive. But writes are slow, then painfully so with anything more than a couple of gigabytes. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: SanDisk Crayola flash drive Retailer Price SanDisk 18 View Deal $22.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices I’ve been accused of being a big kid, which makes me part of the target audience that the SanDisk Crayola flash drive is being blatantly marketed to. Hints of cynicism aside… Making an SSD imitate a crayon is unique, fun, and definitely makes the drive stand out from the crowd — a possibly useful trait for anyone that I’ll explain later. But it’s a very slow writer (150MBps) from the get go, and drops to 80MBps after only a few gigabytes. Yikes. Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best external drives for comparison. What are the SanDisk Crayola’s features? The Crayola is, as described (mostly) — a mildly fatter rendering of a crayon. Excuse me, Crayola crayon. It measures 3.22-inches long by 0.67-inches round at the cap, and 0.62-inches around the main cylinder, which is slightly flattened on the back (See below) for stability. The cap covers a Type-C connector. While SanDisk doesn’t make any claims as to weather- or dust-proofing (there’s no IP rating), I’m guessing that with the cap on, the Crayola could stand up to most abuse. Note that the cap is not captive and and SanDisk warns that the drive is not for children under three years. SanDisk Crayola Mango Tango with cap removed. SanDisk sent me the Cerulean Blue, but the Crayola is also available in Electric Lime and Mango Tango (pink and orange). A Vivid Violet is in the works. All are distinctive and stand out from the crowd. Weight? A mere 10 grams, or 0.35 ounces. Unusually for a thumb/flash drive the Crayola carries a 5-year limited warranty, though how exactly that’s limited isn’t explained via a TBW rating (terabytes that may be written). Not to give anything away (I already have), but considering the Crayola’s slothful write speeds, there’s no way you’ll exceed the drive’s limits in anything remotely resembling the near future. How much does the SanDisk Crayola cost? Good news here: There’s no breaking the bank to entertain your youngster or young-at-heart soul! The 64GB version of the Crayola flash drive is $18, the 128GB is $23, and the 256GB version I tested is $33. Those prices include a 3-month subscription to the Crayola Create & Play app. How fast is the SanDisk Crayola? Alas, those low prices reflect the Crayola’s performance. It reads fast enough at 400MBps, but write speed starts out slow at 150MBps and drops further to 80MBps once you exceed approximately 4GB of data. For reference, a good-performing 5Gbps SSD will read and write at around 550Mbps. Even a fast 6Gbps SATA 3.5-inch hard drive manages 250MBps. Because of the low capacity and slow writes, I had to go off script for testing and with nothing similar to compare it to, didn’t create any charts. Below are the CrystalDiskMark results at several data set sizes. Note that one MiB (mebibyte) is 220, or 1,048,576 bytes, where a megabyte (MB) is 106/1,000,000 bytes. GiB (Gibibyte) is 230, or 1,073,741,824 bytes, where a gigabyte (GB) is 109/ 1,000,000,000 bytes.   Performance was hunky-dory at 512MiB. If you can call 143MBps hunky-dory. Given the low price and fun factor of the Crayola, we can live with this performance. The 1GiB data set actually saw a slight bump in speed. The 1GiB data set actually saw a slight bump in speed. The Crayola managed its “top” write rate with the 4GiB data set. 150MBps is what we’d call a tolerable write speed, but it only lasts for a few gigabytes. Good enough for a school assignment, but not much more. The 8GiB data set is where we started to see the write performance drop-off. That’s not all that much data when you’re dealing with video, etc. Note that we’ve seen slower drives off cache, such as the Addlink P50, though that drive writes at 1GBps for several hundred gigabytes before tanking. This is not the write speed you want for any sort of serious use. In terms of real-world testing, the Crayola took a hair over 11 minutes (662 seconds) to write our single 48GB file with FastCopy. That’s 10 times longer than any other thumb drive or portable drive we’ve tested over the last several years. I didn’t feel the need to test/humiliate the Crayola further. Other than to see that it read back the same file in 127 seconds, that is. Suffice it to say that the Crayola absolutely is not the drive you want to write more than a few gigabytes at a time to. SanDisk Crayola Electric Lime with the cap in place. Of course, in the real world, that actually covers a whole lot of practical tasks. In fact, I’m going to use it as my Macrium Reflect Free boot disk (I re-image my test beds quite often) simply because it’s so easy to spot among the rest of my boring (looks-wise) collection. I’ll only have to put up with the slow write once, I don’t mind any ribbing about the appearance, and its read speed is fine for a boot disk. Should you buy the SanDisk Crayola? As long as you’re aware of the severe write performance limitations, by all means, indulge. The Crayola is fun, and its distinct appearance makes it easy to spot in a crowd. As I’ve already pointed out, that could be handy in a write-once, read-many role. Strictly for kids? Maybe not. 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 Crucial 64GB DDR5 5600MHz modules (128GB of memory total). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 5 are integrated into the motherboard and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. Internal PCIe 5.0 SSDs involved in testing are mounted in an Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 adapter card sitting in a PCIe 5.0 slot. We run the CrystalDiskMark 8.04 (and 9), AS SSD 2, and ATTO 4 synthetic benchmarks (to keep article length down, we report only the former) to find the storage device’s potential performance. Then we run a series of 48GB transfer and 450GB write tests using Windows Explorer drag and drop to show what users will see during routine copy operations, as well as the far faster FastCopy run as administrator to show what’s possible. A 25GBps two-SSD RAID 0 array on the aforementioned Asus Hyper M.2 x16 Gen5 is used as the second drive in our transfer tests. Formerly the 48GB tests were done with a RAM disk serving that purpose. Each test is performed on a NTFS-formatted and newly 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 issue has abated somewhat with the current crop of SSDs utilizing more mature controllers and far faster, late-generation NAND. Our testing MO constantly evolves and these results may not match those from previous articles. Only comparisons inside the article are 100% valid as those are gathered using the current hardware and MO. Read...

Corporate greed, unchecked hubris, technology advancing too fast without any regard for its impact. All these themes are explored in the Fallout games, and in the wildly successful TV series that Amazon debuted in 2024. Someone at Amazon probably should have watched it, before submitting an “AI”-generated recap so full of errors and flubs that the company was forced to blow it up. You’re probably familiar with the short recap video format, a little “previously on Battlestar Galactica” segment that now precedes many scripted streaming shows when they drop a new season. They can be essential for viewers who need a refresh, especially since the large scale of prestige streaming TV means it can be more than a year since the last one debuted. They’re short and easy, probably a couple of days’ work in the editing room, maybe a bit of voice-over. But this small bit of human effort, to enhance the viewing experience of a show that reportedly costs more than $100 million per season to produce, is apparently too much for Amazon. The company has been using auto-generated alternatives that splice together short clips of the show with “AI”-powered voice-over to catch viewers up. If you watched the slop video for Fallout season 1, like Games Radar did, you’d think that the nuclear war that takes place in the show’s flashbacks occurred in the 1950s. In the games and the show, as is constantly repeated and confirmed, the Great War occurred in 2077. It’s the kind of error that you’d see in a million “recap” edits posted to YouTube by people who didn’t actually watch the movie or TV show, and which are now, of course, replaced with AI slop. After the issues with the recap video were spotted by Games Radar, the recap was taken down from Amazon Prime Video. The Verge reports that similar recaps were made for other shows like Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, and have since been deleted. Bethesda The aesthetics of Fallout are indeed steeped in 1950s and 60s American imagery, though its fictional timeline extends far into our future even before the world gets destroyed. It’s an intentional and ironic choice meant to echo real history, when the world seemed to look forward to a mythical “atomic age” of technology even while dreading nuclear escalation during the Cold War. Fallout‘s pre-war culture and technology are, in many ways, frozen for over a century as unchecked commercialism and corporate power runs rampant. It’s a detail that’s crucial to the series’ identity and themes…and the kind of subtle distinction that large language models aren’t very good at spotting. This isn’t Amazon’s first issue with AI slop on Prime Video. Just a couple of weeks ago the company pulled AI-generated English and Spanish audio tracks from several anime series, apparently generated and applied to the shows without the knowledge or consent of some of the original creators. Viewers complained of terrible audio “performances” from the AI-generated voices, and started sharing clips that would embarrass fan dub torrents from the 2000s. Remember when Amazon made you pay extra for Prime in order to watch video without ads? I wonder where all that money is going. Read...

Microsoft has released a new report showing what people used its AI assistant Copilot for in 2025. The analysis is based on 37.5 million de-identified conversations and shows that in addition to productivity, Copilot is used for health, relationships and personalized guidance. Health was particularly prevalent on mobile, with users turning to Copilot around the clock for tips on exercise, routines, and wellness. August also saw a clear pattern of people using Copilot to code during the week and play at weekends. In February, in the run-up to Valentine’s Day, Microsoft saw a surge in conversations about relationships and personal development. The data also shows that at night, interest in religion and philosophy also grows, while travel planning mainly takes place during the day. Another clear trend is that more people are seeking advice rather than just facts. Copilot is increasingly used as a counsellor to discuss life decisions and emotions rather than an information tool. Microsoft says that the insights from the report will be used to improve Copilot. Read...

I recently made the switch to Gemini on my Google smart speakers and displays, and for the most part, I’m liking it. Gemini is chatty without being a blabbermouth, and it capably controls my smart home while also delivering detailed weather reports and answers to my other queries. So far, I’m impressed.  But there’s one Google Assistant feature that I miss: Continued Conversation, which allowed the Assistant to briefly keep listening after answering a question in case you have follow-ups. If you did have something else to ask, you could do so without having to repeat the “Hey Google” wake word.  Continued Conversation mode could be enabled on any of your Google Assistant-powered speakers and displays, and it came in handy for a variety of situations. For example, if you asked Google about the weather, you could quickly follow up with questions like “will it rain today?” or “what’s the weather for the rest of the week” without having to say “Hey Google” over and over.  Now that Gemini for Home is gradually taking over for Google Assistant (Google has stepped up the pace for early access Gemini for Home invites, and has promised to send invites within 24 hours to those who request one), Google smart speakers are getting a wealth of Gemini-powered features, and Google has promised that basic Google Assistant functionality will be carried over even if you don’t pay for a Google Home Premium subscription.  To my surprise, Continued Conversation mode is one Google Assistant feature that doesn’t appear to have made the cut, and I’m not the only one who’s noticed. I’ve reached out to Google for more details.  Now, if you want to chat with Gemini without saying “Hey Google” before each question, you must engage the free-flowing Gemini Live mode, which requires a Google Home Premium subscription starting at $10 a month.  Without the Google Home Premium plan, you must use the “Hey Google” wake word before each and every query, leading to such stilted Gemini chats as “Hey Google, what’s the weather? Hey Google, will it rain tonight? Hey Google, what’s the weather tomorrow?”  Continued Conversation mode does still work with Google Assistant on Google smart speakers and displays, but only as long as you stay with Google Assistant. Once you switch to Gemini for Home, there’s no going back.  Is the lack of a Continued Conversation-type mode for the free version of Google Home a dealbreaker? Not for me, I am impressed with Gemini for Home’s new abilities, and I’ll have more thoughts once I’ve performed more thorough testing.  That said, saying “Hey Google” over and over again is feeling like a step backward rather than forward.  This news story is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart speakers. Read...

It’s not every day that you get a really good full-price game for free from Epic Games. But now it’s finally happening again, because for one week only you can get Hogwarts Legacy for free. The open-world role-playing game is based on the Harry Potter franchise and is a fantastic experience that no fan should miss. What’s inside Hogwarts Legacy Hogwarts Legacy was developed by Avalanche Software and released in February 2023, so it’s not even three years old. If you haven’t played it yet, now is the best opportunity to do so without having to pay a cent. What makes the game special is above all its world. The developers managed to recreate the school of magic known from the films and books in such a way that it becomes an impressive setting that invites you to explore. As a new wizard student, you get to know the various houses and lessons, discover numerous secrets in hidden rooms or complete tasks in which you encounter magical creatures or dangerous adversaries. The battles are fun but not very challenging, and are also suitable for beginners. We can also travel around Hogwarts, either on foot, on a broom or on the back of a majestic Hippogriff. In the course of the story (which incidentally takes place several years before the books), we uncover a dark secret and learn various spells that we can use either in battle or to solve puzzles. Is Hogwarts Legacy worth it? Almost three years later, Hogwarts Legacy is still a fantastic game. Metacritic gave the title a very good score of 83 points on the PC (85 on Playstation 5). Since then, some bugs that were in the release version have been fixed and there have been a few free updates that added modding, for example. A sequel has already been confirmed, so at some point we will get a second instalment of Hogwarts Legacy. Until then, it’s worth at least checking out the first instalment and experiencing for yourself what it would be like to become part of the wizarding world. How to get the free game Simply log in to the Epic Games Store with an account by December 18 and add Hogwarts Legacy to your shopping basket. There is no additional cost to purchase and the game will be added to your library. You can keep it afterwards and continue to play it even after the free period has expired. Play without paying: The best free games Read...

How grieving parents, media campaigns, and political opportunism collided to create the world’s most ambitious - and contentious - experiment in digital regulation. Read...

Enterprises brace for a cautious 2026, rolling back risky AI pilots and recasting generative tools as governed, human-supervised teammates. Read...

Each December, our crew looks back on the whole year. One episode dedicated to our top hardware picks. One episode devoted to the success (and failures) of our early predictions. To ready myself, I’ve been reviewing the highs and lows of 2025.FSR Redstone’s launch really encapsulates the last 11 months. AMD first teased the arrival of its supercharged, graphics-enhancing tech for Radeon RX 9000 series cards in mid-November via Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. The game’s launch contained a new machine-learning version of ray regeneration—and then just days later, the company hinted at a full release on December 10. It didn’t say much after that. It didn’t launch much, either. That’s how the situation feels, at least. Welcome to The Full Nerd newsletter—your weekly dose of hardware talk from the enthusiasts at PCWorld. Missed the surprising topics on our YouTube show or latest news from across the web? You’re in the right place.  Want this newsletter to come directly to your inbox? Sign up on our website!  The official debut of FSR Redstone comprises four technologies—FSR Upscaling, FSR Frame Generation, FSR Ray Regeneration, and FSR Radiance Caching. Machine learning powers the whole set. AMD touts Upscaling and Frame Gen as “new” due to the upgrade. Ray Regeneration is truly new, applying deep learning to the denoising of ray-traced scenes. Radiance Caching will also be new when it drops in 2026, striking a middle-ground approach to global illumination via projections, rather than real-time calculations.(Is a product launched if it isn’t accessible until the coming year? Perhaps I’m just a stickler.) Hit the AMD website and you’ll see about 200 games listed as supporting FSR Redstone—that is, “one or more” of the technologies. That group narrows considerably to just 32 titles for Frame Generation. And Ray Regeneration? That only exists in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 right now. You wouldn’t be wrong to look at Redstone as mainly enhanced upscaling, with the promise of further visual enhancements down the road. But you may not want them. As early benchmarks show, the relatively limited group of Radeon GPU owners who even have access to Redstone may not get much use out of it—or that much of an improvement over earlier FSR iterations. Tim Scheisser at Hardware Unboxed dissects Frame Generation’s irregular frame pacing, and how the subsequent judder likely will affect those with variable refresh rate monitors much more adversely. Meanwhile, Steve Burke and the Gamers Nexus team dug into latency, showing similar lag when using Redstone vs. FSR 3.1—so still a killer for certain games and game modes. Games look prettier with FSR Redstone tech on, but it also currently comes with performance trade-offs.AMD The situation isn’t all bad, of course. The Gamers Nexus video has a fun quiz embedded in its coverage, asking viewers to identify the FSR 3.1 vs. FSR Redstone in a split-screen comparison. I could immediately spot the Redstone version. It’s prettier. And as Hardware Unboxed’s testing showed, Redstone is capable of outperforming Nvidia’s competing DLSS tech in image quality for select details, making the tussle between the two companies closer to even. But as a value-add for existing Radeon customers (and a select group at that—remember, Redstone features only work on current Radeon 9000-series graphics cards), this Redstone launch feels underwhelming. Yes, the promise is definitely there. Yes, AMD has proved before that it can and does improve its technologies. Yes, competition is good and necessary for healthy consumer choice. At the same time, PC gamers find themselves staring down the barrel of a hardware apocalypse, where building new or even upgrading may become outright unaffordable. If software is to be our saving grace—if tech giants’ claim that newer GPU architectures will continue to show smaller rasterized performance gains—this feels like an ill omen for the future. “Enshittification” is a term we’ve used on the show before, coined by Cory Doctorow several years ago. The overwhelming majority of 2025 has felt like a turbulent version of that process, simultaneously accelerated and erratic. Redstone isn’t necessarily an outcome of enshittification, but boy, does it drive the point home. Hardware? Too expensive. Software to bridge the gap? Full of compromises and future promises. In a year full of big statements and lackluster delivery, I don’t like this launch as a capstone. But maybe that’s the era we’re in. Consumers won’t matter to businesses until they realize that, actually, we do. In this episode of The Full Nerd  In this episode of The Full Nerd, Brad Chacos, Alaina Yee, and Will Smith discuss Crucial’s unceremonious end at Micron’s hands, the return of 32-bit PhysX, and a rumored extension on B650’s lifespan. You all of course caught some of my thoughts already on Crucial last week, but both Will and Brad weigh in with very relevant points—including the affect on PC vendors like Dell and HP. The most unexpected (and maybe unwanted) revelation: Will is willing to touch poop with his bare hands and admit it live on camera. To quote one YouTube comment, “Unhinged preshow today.”  Maybe a little, yes. It was that kind of show this week.Willis Lai / Foundry Missed our live show? Subscribe now to The Full Nerd Network YouTube channel, and activate notifications. We also answer viewer questions in real-time! Don’t miss out on our NEW shows too—you can catch episodes of Dual Boot Diaries and The Full Nerd: Extra Edition now! And if you need more hardware talk during the rest of the week, come join our Discord community—it’s full of cool, laid-back nerds. This week’s offensive nerd news I exaggerate some, but Kohler’s attitude toward its toilet cam stinks. As does its crappy spin on privacy and encryption. I’m gonna be that party pooper that reminds y’all to always weigh convenience against security…and to dig into the details of any security measures. Thankfully, not all interesting news this week reeks. Well. Sort of. I … yeah. No thanks to this poop cam.Kohler Health Poo by any other name: Kohler obviously doesn’t understand what EE2E means for encryption. Or know about other, sketchier uses for toilet cams. Backup, backup, backup: An AI-flavored reminder that you should always have good backups on hand, in case of catastrophe. Or possibly predictable outcomes. JavaScript was created in 10 days? I am so unproductive compared to early internet pioneers. Speaking of bloat: Given our complaints on the show this week about Windows 11’s resource hogging, the only obvious solution to our problem is this crazy lightweight Linux distro. Or that’s what I imagine Will saying to me at some point. A case for aging gracefully: I suppose we all must accept that white plastic won’t stay white, and not interfere with nature taking its course. Are you entitled to AT&T settlement money? PSA: The deadline got extended until December 18, so get in those last claims if you qualify! So brown.Noctua/Prusa Speaking of poop brown: If you love Noctua’s commitment to earth tones, now you can replicate its exact color scheme with a 3D printer. Would I go back? Eh: Operation Bluebird wants to reclaim Twitter as a trademark, now that use of the name and the logo have been abandoned. I’m not sure if we can go back to those halcyon days where we only ever described our breakfasts in two sentences, though. “Divide by zero, go to hell”: Or so famously said one of my college’s professors. Perhaps he knew just how bad such attempts would go. Update Notepad++ if you haven’t already! Traffic jacking led to malware downloads instead of legit updates. You’ll want version 8.8.9 for the patched version, and you’ll have to do the update manually. Not a friendly rivalry: I can’t imagine having a budget that would accommodate $50,000 of computer replacements/repairs. Much less creating that amount of damage. In just a few days, I’ll be making my nominations for the best of 2025—along with the worst trend of the year. I have petitioned Adam to let us name more than one trend, because [waves hands at everything]. Catch you all next week… ~Alaina This newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Gordon Mah Ung, founder and host of The Full Nerd, and executive editor of hardware at PCWorld. Read...