0-day exploited by maliciously crafted web content to break out of security sandbox. Read...

If you use Firefox, you should check which version you currently have installed. On Friday, March 14, certain extensions and streaming services may stop working on older versions of Firefox. The reason for this? The expiry of a critical root certificate. This also includes a version of DRM that’s required to use various streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. The security tools integrated in Firefox could also be affected if you don’t update. All Firefox versions older than Firefox 128 or Firefox ESR 115.13 are affected. If you haven’t updated your Firefox browser since 2024, or if you work in a company that doesn’t update regularly, you should act now. What you can do about it First things first, check which version of Firefox you’re currently using. To do this, open the three-line menu and navigate to Help > About Firefox. The browser version should be displayed there. If your version is older than Firefox 128 or Firefox ESR 115.13, then you should update straight away so you can continue using all extensions and streaming services without interruption. You can get the latest version using the update checker in the About Firefox window, or as a direct download from Mozilla. If you’re also using Firefox on Android, you should update that app as well. Navigate to Settings > Apps and find Firefox in the list (or find it using the search field). Select Firefox to see the installed version number shown all the way at the bottom. If it’s outdated, update your Firefox app via the Google Play Store. Further reading: Easy browser tweaks to secure your web browsing Read...

Here’s a hot computer tip coming to you straight from 1995: don’t enter random stuff in the Windows Run command bar. This might seem obvious to anyone who knows what “run” means in a PC context, but one weirdly stupid-but-ingenious bit of malware is spreading across the web this way. It’s not quite as dumb as it sounds… but it’s still pretty dumb. The plot goeth thusly: You’re browsing a slightly sketchy site, or maybe just a normal one that isn’t as vigilant as it should be against sketchy ads. You see a CAPTCHA alert that instructs you to click the little box to show you’re not a robot. (Which is kind of a presumptuous thing for any kind of automated tool to do, but I digress.) But instead of asking you to spell out some nonsense text or click all the squares with street lights, it has a numbered list of steps for you to demonstrate your humanity. MalwareBytes Labs spotted one such CAPTCHA that demanded three unusual steps from prospective users. First, press Windows key + R. Second, press Ctrl + V. Third, press Enter. Now, if you’ve been using Windows for even a little while, alarm bells should be going off in your head. Turns out, the pop-up “verification” is trying to get you to open the Windows Run command, paste in a bit of text that the site snuck into your clipboard via JavaScript when you clicked “I am not a robot,” and then run it. All of that is pretty sneaky, even if it only works on Windows and on less tech-savvy users. But here’s the ingenious part: the text that the site copied to your clipboard begins as “I am not a robot – reCAPTCHA Verification ID: XXXX” or something similar. As it happens, this is exactly as much text as it takes to fill up the Run command horizontally in its default appearance. What you can’t see, hidden beyond the bounds of the Run window, is a trigger for the Mshta command that downloads a certain file from a web server. MalwareBytes MalwareBytes reports that these are typically disguised as media or HTML files, but in reality it’s a tool designed to hunt down personal info on your system and relay it back to a remote location, or just a good old-fashioned remote control trojan. This setup relies on your nearly automatic response to CAPTCHA verification, a bit of ignorance for the nuts and bolts of Windows (which I think is a problem both for merely non-techy people and youngsters who are far more comfortable on smartphones and iPads than a laptop), the outdated user interface of the Run command window, and a lax security setup that allows JavaScript to run on unfamiliar websites. Like I said, it’s stupid and kind of brilliant at the same time. Basic Windows 10 or 11 security should flag malicious files as they’re being downloaded, ditto for browser-based security that requires verification for JavaScript. But MalwareBytes researchers say they’ve seen this setup in multiple implementations with a variety of nefarious payloads, so presumably someone out there is falling for it. Read...

In September 2024, the Germany’s federal criminal police (BKA) and the public prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt, Germany were able to report a success: The suspected operators of the darknet platform Boystown, formerly one of the largest websites for child pornography with around 400,000 members, were identified and arrested after years of research. The special thing about this is that the suspects were identified via the TOR network, which to this day stands for security and anonymity on the internet. Has TOR now been cracked? If criminals can be stopped, this is of course good news. But the TOR network is not only used by criminals. Many press representatives and opposition members in totalitarian states also use TOR to gain access to information, disseminate news, or communicate with each other without being identified by the state authorities. See also: What is the Darknet? How the web’s secretive, hidden underbelly works Major international media outlets such as the BBC, the New York Times, and the NDR maintain mailboxes in the TOR network, through which they can be reached anonymously by informants. And the darknet is not all evil either. Deutsche Welle, for example, operates a website there to give the inhabitants of some heavily monitored countries free access to information. Are all these services no longer secure? And what other options are there for remaining anonymous on the internet? Internet connection via a proxy server The little brother of the TOR network is the proxy server. The word proxy means a representative, and this is how you could actually describe the function of a proxy server: It surfs the internet on behalf of the user. In technical terms, this means that you connect your PC to a proxy server, which forwards your website calls, entries, and commands to the internet and returns the responses to you. Only the IP address of the server is visible to the outside world; your own address remains hidden. Websites such as Raid.Rush maintain constantly updated lists of free proxy servers. There are hundreds of these servers in countries all over the world, so the user can fake any location.Foundry You can find dozens of lists of free proxy servers on the internet, many of which also provide data on current utilization and accessibility. Examples include Raidrush and Hidemyname. Instead of configuring the proxy server in the Windows settings (Windows icon > Settings > Network and Internet > Manual proxy setup > Setup), you can also use proxy websites such as Proxysite.com, Croxyproxy, or the free online web proxy from Steganos. The disadvantage of free proxies is that the data transfer rates are often rather low. In addition, these services often do not offer any real anonymity, but instead name the country in which the user is based, for example, or sell the collected user data to advertising networks. You should also be aware that many proxy servers write the data of the connections that run through them in log files, which they pass on to government agencies on request. You can get more anonymity and higher speeds with paid proxy services. You can find a list here, for example. Proxysite is one of many free proxy websites that provide a private way to browse.IDG VPN: Good and cheap services If you have decided to pay for an anonymizing internet connection, you should consider a VPN service as the means. VPN stands for virtual private network. Like proxy webites, these services also redirect your data traffic via a server on the internet, but go one step further when it comes to anonymization. In contrast to a proxy service, the connection between your PC and the VPN server is securely encrypted, while the proxy server forwards the data unencrypted. Further reading: The best VPN services In addition, a proxy service works at application level, i.e. it only conceals your IP address when using the browser, for example, but not when working with an FTP client or a mail program. A VPN service, on the other hand, works at operating system level and protects all data traffic via the internet. There is a whole range of free VPN services. However, with these providers you always have to live with restrictions, either the monthly data volume is limited, or the number of VPN servers is only in the single-digit range, or the speed is limited. There is also a risk that these services will transmit user data to the advertising industry or government agencies. our favorite vpn for ultimate privacy Mullvad Read our review Paid VPN services such as NordVPN, Mullvad VPN, or ExpressVPN offer high speeds and thousands of servers around the world at prices of around $3 to $5 per month. The services advertise a no-log policy, i.e. they promise not to store any user data. This has also been confirmed in the past by independent institutions for the three services mentioned. Blurring fingerprints As IP addresses can change from time to time and computers from networks access the internet under a shared IP address, the advertising industry has been relying less and less on IP addresses to identify website visitors for years, and instead increasingly on fingerprinting methods. Firefox and some other browsers contain defences against fingerprinting and provide incorrect or nonsensical data in response to such requests.Foundry Fingerprinting does not (only) record the IP address of a website visitor, but also the configuration of their computer. Which browser is she using, which version, with which extensions, which screen resolution is set, which graphics card is installed, which driver version, which operating system …? The browser willingly provides all this and much more data to the web server after a Javascript request. You can make fingerprinting impossible by deactivating Javascript, but this also means that many websites can no longer be used. Firefox, Brave, and Avast browsers contain functions that either deliver incorrect data in response to Javascript requests or generally block companies that are known to use fingerprinting. Classic tracking with cookies, etc. When you browse the web with a browser, the websites you visit place cookies on your computer. These are small text files which, on the one hand, are a prerequisite for online shops to function at all. On the other hand, so-called third-party cookies are used by specialized tracking companies to track visitors to a website as they move around the internet. These companies generate a profile from the data collected in this way, which they sell to advertisers who use it to display adverts tailored to you on the websites you visit. You can switch off the acceptance of third-party cookies in any browser. In Edge and Firefox, it is also possible to automatically delete all cookies when you close the browser, and there is a corresponding extension for Chrome called Click & Clean. You will also find a do-not-track switch in every browser, which prevents the websites you visit from tracking you as you browse the internet. However, this is nothing more than a request. Switch the function on anyway. In Chrome, as in other browsers, there is a do-not-track switch that you can use to ask websites not to track your movements on the internet.Foundry Why TOR is still the best solution The TOR network protects its users by redirecting connections via three randomly selected servers (the so-called nodes) and encrypting them at least three times. The second node only knows the location of the first server, but not the user. The third only knows the second server, but neither the incoming server nor the user. After 10 minutes at the latest, the TOR browser — a customized version of Firefox — swaps the second and third servers for other locations. Connections via TOR are therefore highly secure and anonymous. The TOR browser is a slightly modified version of Firefox that offers preconfigured access to the TOR network. The TOR network, in turn, is a prerequisite for access to the Darknet.Primakov / Shutterstock.com In the case of the darknet platform Boystown, the investigators had probably exchanged messages with the suspect via a messenger. This meant they knew exactly when which data packet was sent and only had to wait until one of them was forwarded via the nodes they were monitoring. The BKA officials presumably configured a large number of high-performance and well-connected servers as TOR nodes for this purpose. As the TOR network looks for fast servers with low latency when switching nodes, it was only a matter of time before a chat with the suspect was registered there. However, correspondingly extensive investigations can only take place in individual cases. For the vast majority of users, currently around 2 million every day, TOR is still the safest way to remain unrecognized on the internet. Anonymizing search queries Both Google and Bing save their users’ search queries. Google and Microsoft use this data to create user profiles and sell them to the advertising industry. If you have a Google account, you can see what queries and other activities you have saved there after logging in online. You can also deactivate this tracking at the same place. Bing provides this information directly via the browser: Open the menu with the three dashes at the top right and go to “Search history.” There you can delete the search history, deactivating it is not possible. To remain anonymous during your web searches, you must switch to other search engines. Although the Dutch search engine Startpage uses Google’s search results, it does not record your search history, does not save IP addresses, and does not display personalized advertising. The U.S. service Duck Duck Go obtains its results from over 400 sources, including Bing, Wikipedia, and Yahoo. Like Startpage, it does not store IP addresses or information about users. However, due to the U.S. Patriot Act, Duck Duck Go must grant the U.S. authorities access to its servers on request. Anonymous with the smartphone Almost all smartphones work with either Android from Google or Apple’s iOS. In both cases, large amounts of user data flow to Google and Apple, but also to the app manufacturers and advertising companies. There are two ways to switch off this data flow: by optimizing the privacy settings and installing special data protection apps or — in the case of Android devices — by installing alternative operating systems, so-called custom ROMs. Lineage OS is an alternative operating system for Android smartphones. The manufacturer promises a higher level of data protection than the Google system. IDG The two best-known custom ROMs are Lineage-OS and /e/OS. Please note: These operating systems are not suitable for every Android smartphone. First check the compatibility lists to see if your model is listed. Please also note that although the custom ROMs are based on Android, not every app will run on them. These systems are well suited for older smartphones that are no longer needed, which you can convert into secondary devices with a high level of data protection. Read...

After months of speculation, including by yours truly, the U.S. Department of Justice has doubled down on its recommendation that Google be forced to divest itself of Chrome in punishment for operating an illegal monopoly. Personally, I can’t wait. How we got here It was over six months ago that the DOJ won its four-year suit against Google, which was found in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta found that Google had intentionally created and maintained an illegal monopoly by using agreements that forced its business partners to use Chrome and Google Search. Google’s own Android operating system, in conjunction with its search agreements with Apple for the iPhone and iPad, cemented its unassailable position as the mobile web boomed. Initially there were a lot of options on the table. The Department of Justice considered forcing Google to sell off or otherwise get rid of Chrome, Google Search, Android, or some combination of all three. Google appealed — indeed, might still be appealing, considering the slow pace of these big intersections between business and law. There was also a big question mark over whether any of this would matter: August 2024 was before a business-friendly Donald Trump won a second presidential term, and before Google “donated” a million dollars to him and sent CEO Sundar Pichai to the inauguration. Pichai visited the president-elect at his Mar-A-Lago residence before Trump assumed office, and the company has also abandoned its diversity and inclusion staffing goals to align with Trump’s directives, in the explicit hope of preserving contracts with the U.S. federal government. Google All of these would be questionable moves for a company in the middle of the biggest antitrust case since AT&T in the 1980s. In 2025, it appears to be standard practice — Google wouldn’t be the only company that saw its legal troubles disappear after donating to a politician. But it hardly matters. The DOJ, now firmly under the thumb of the Trump regime, is still insisting that Google get rid of Chrome, but not Search or Android. Google’s attempts to curry favor seem to have failed, as the Republican-controlled Congress is also looking to get a few good licks in. We’re probably still months away from this getting a final, definitive resolution and the approval of a federal judge, with Google no doubt exhausting every official and unofficial avenue to stop it. It isn’t the triple disaster that the big G was dreading, but the Chrome browser is still an essential part of the company’s strategy. Proceeding under the assumption that Google will indeed be forced to give up Chrome, there are a lot of ways that I think this will be a positive for users like you and me. Google doesn’t deserve to keep Chrome Judge Mehta declared that “Google is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” That was already blindingly obvious to anyone who looked at a search market analysis. Google holds a 90 percent share today, with the closest alternative being Bing at under 4 percent, and that’s almost certainly due to Microsoft aggressively shoving it into every corner of Windows. Other competitors like Baidu and Yandex operate in regions where Google does not, China and Russia, respectively. But there’s an important distinction between a monopoly and an illegal monopoly, as determined by the Sherman Antitrust Act. If you sell the only EVA space suit for turtles, than you have a monopoly on turtle space suits…but that’s not illegal. Google, it has been determined, intentionally engineered and maintained its monopoly state. It used corporate partnerships and its status as the owner/maintainer of Chrome and Android to make it effectively impossible for a competitor to gain ground, and hid or destroyed evidence to make it harder for investigators and litigants to prove it. Michael Crider/Foundry All of this was in aid of keeping Google the de facto search on the internet, an invincible juggernaut of digital advertising, one of the most valuable and powerful technology companies on the planet. That’s what finally pushed it over the edge here. And it’s worth pointing out that these moves helped Google obtain a 65 percent share of the browser market and 70 percent of the mobile OS market, too. Again, none of this is shocking, and it’s not even necessarily concerning from the perspective of an individual user. It’s all but impossible to use the modern internet without interacting with companies like Google, Amazon, Meta/Facebook, and Microsoft, and having your personal info sold to a thousand different data brokers. But speaking as a computer and smartphone user, not a commenter on public policy and the governance of America’s technology sector, I have plenty of reason to take issue with Google’s handling of Chrome in particular. Chrome seems to have become fundamentally worse as a browser over the last few years. It’s always been a RAM hog compared to alternatives, but the speed that won so much praise when Google debuted it way back in 2008 seems to have slipped away — though that might also be because the web is just a lot heavier these days. Joel Lee / Foundry Google’s more deliberate choices aren’t without problems. It seems to have hamstrung ad-blocking extensions with the latest standard update, something that’s only just recently come into effect for most users. Google says that the Manifest V3 update is to improve performance, security, and privacy…but developers disagree, strongly. The creator of the popular uBlock Origin refused to hobble his extension, and created a “Lite” version rather than comply. I won’t say that Google is lying…but the idea that one of the biggest advertising companies on the planet intentionally made a software design choice that makes blocking advertising harder on the biggest browser would hardly be surprising. After all, it’s been more than ten years since Google released Chrome for Android, and it still doesn’t support third-party extensions, something that both the desktop version and other Android browsers can do. I wonder why…when one of the first extensions most users load up is some kind of ad blocker. Google has made plenty of other choices that give users like me reason to complain, like mismanaging YouTube, making Google Search worse and worse, and pushing questionably necessary “AI” into all aspects of its business. Its hoarding (and sharing) of personal data is a cornerstone of today’s web advertising. In short, the idea of Google being divorced from Chrome and the browser market isn’t one that brings a tear to my eye, no matter how we get there. We’re in for some chaos That being said, I’d be a fool if I didn’t foresee a lot of problems coming out of a breakup. Chrome isn’t just Chrome, and hasn’t been for a long time. Whatever its sins, Google has done tons of open source browser development via the Chromium project. Chromium now forms the code base of most of its Chrome’s alternatives, including Microsoft’s Edge, Opera, and my own new browser bestie, Vivaldi. In fact, of the browsers with more than 1 percent of the market, only Firefox and Apple’s Safari are not based on Chromium. Chromium is also the basis of ChromeOS, Google’s alternative to Windows. While it’s nowhere near as successful as Android, Chromebooks form a substantial chunk of the market, particularly for entry-level machines and large-volume sales to schools and other big, centralized organizations. ChromeOS is still well behind MacOS, even Linux (and I think the Steam Deck is a big part of that), but without it a lot of people would be trying to run Windows on laptops that really can’t handle it. CC Photo Labs / Shutterstock.com So yeah, if Chrome and Chromium disappeared tomorrow, we’d be in for a big shakeup in the browser space and beyond. Exactly what’s going to happen to Chromium (and by extension, ChromeOS and Chromebooks) might be the biggest variable in this situation. It seems unlikely that Google will continue to pour millions and millions of dollars into the development of an open source platform for which it is no longer the primary benefactor. Maybe it’ll switch Chromebooks over to Android for a safe haven, and let some other company take over Chromium. That would still hurt a lot for Google, and cause headaches for every other browser developer. But it wouldn’t be the end of the world…and we’d see some competition that’s been sorely lacking in this space for over a decade. But which company would be the first in line to take over Chrome? That’s not hard to guess. A big chance for Microsoft Microsoft not only has a lot of history as both a backbone of the internet and a browser developer, it has the deep pockets necessary to take over a business as big and unwieldy as Chrome. And I’m betting Microsoft would absolutely leap at the chance to do it — after all, it’s been not-quite-forcing Windows users to deal with Edge for years. Imagine the branding coup that would be “Microsoft Chrome” pre-installed on every new Windows laptop. If nothing else, it would save Microsoft the trouble of faking those Bing search results and support pages. Speaking of Bing, Microsoft would be in a position to use (or abuse, depending on whom you ask) Chrome to grow Bing search, using some of the same techniques that Google has with a browser in its back pocket. Microsoft, Universal Pictures If you’re thinking, “Hey, are you saying Microsoft would try to do the same thing that got Google in so much trouble for creating a monopoly?” Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. And Microsoft is hardly a newcomer when it comes to monopoly abuse, or even being naughty with browser integration. But with a tiny fraction of the search and browser market in 2025, Microsoft has a certain license to try and make up for the advantage Google has been enjoying for the better part of two decades. It would be, if not exactly fair, then at least somewhat balanced. As much as I’d love for an independent like Opera or Firefox to come out on top of this, that just isn’t the world we live in. And Microsoft would certainly take a gamble on regulatory trouble 20 years from now, if it meant getting a big chunk of Google’s browser, search, and advertising business today. Microsoft could certainly use an edge at the moment. It’s in no danger of being dethroned as the desktop operating system leader…but that lead is looking a lot shakier than it used to. Not only are the peasants revolting when it comes to being forced onto Windows 11, Linux is gaining as a realistic alternative thanks to support from Valve’s SteamOS. That would hit Windows right in its comfy spot as the de facto home of PC gaming, to say nothing of a broader shift towards mobile hardware and OS-agnostic web tools. Microsoft is merely the most likely candidate for a new owner of Chrome, according to my reckoning. Other tech giants — Apple, Amazon, Meta/Facebook, you know, all the other companies that would love to make those same monopoly swings — could win a bidding war. Or Google could simply shut down Chrome, if that’s an option, and take a big hit to its bottom line simply to deny its competition that opportunity. If that happens, some other browser (very likely a continuation or fork of Chromium) will take its place. And that’s fine by me. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Exclusive access to the Operator agent Full access to GPT-4o and all reasoning models Full access to o1 pro mode Increased rate limits for Deep Research, Sora, Advanced Voice, and other features Cons Far cheaper to subscribe individually to alternative AI tools à la carte Dall-E (image generation) and Sora (video generation) just aren’t that good Operator’s usefulness is still limited and impractical Our Verdict While ChatGPT Pro’s exclusive Operator agent is novel and fun to play with, it doesn’t provide enough practical value yet. The best part of ChatGPT Pro is the boost to rate limits, especially for Deep Research. If you aren’t making heavy use of Deep Research, then ChatGPT Plus offers better bang for your buck. Or you might be better off cobbling together a bunch of other premium AI services to suit your specific needs. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: ChatGPT Pro Retailer Price OpenAI $200 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket OpenAI’s ChatGPT Pro — the highest tier of access for individuals — is far from cheap. It costs $200 per month and, unlike most competitors, OpenAI doesn’t offer any discounts for an annual subscription. The company also avoids limited-time sales. That’s a hefty price to swallow. At $200 per month, it’s more than twice the price of Adobe Creative Cloud’s Business Plan. It’s enough to finance the monthly payment on a Hyundai Ioniq 5 lease. It’d even make a huge dent in paying down student loans or credit card debt. So, is ChatGPT Pro worth it? To find out, I spent $200 of my own money and used ChatGPT Pro’s features for a month so you don’t have to. What you get with ChatGPT Pro What exactly do you get with ChatGPT Pro that you can’t get in the free version? Or even the much cheaper ChatGPT Plus plan that only costs $20 per month? The short answer is, every single feature OpenAI has to offer — and that list continues to grow quite quickly. The longer answer is that ChatGPT Pro provides access to all OpenAI LLMs (including GPT-4o, GPT-4.5o, o3-mini, o3-mini-high, and o1) along with all the latest features like Operator and Deep Research. On top of that, ChatGPT Pro includes full access to the company’s AI models for media generation, which includes Dall-E for image generation and Sora for video generation. Pro users get priority video generation and, in the case of Sora, access to better resolutions (up to 1080p) and extended durations (up to 20 seconds). ChatGPT Free vs. Plus vs. Pro If you’re still feeling a bit confused about what you get with the different ChatGPT plans, don’t worry, you aren’t alone. Here’s a quick chart I whipped up to help you visualize the differences: Matt Smith / Foundry, made with Claude As the chart shows, upgrading from ChatGPT Free to ChatGPT Plus unlocks access to multiple features, while upgrading from ChatGPT Plus to ChatGPT Pro only unlocks one wholly exclusive feature: Operator. However, I want to draw your attention to the last feature listed in the comparison, which is rate limits. OpenAI regularly changes the rate limits for ChatGPT Free, Plus, and Pro, and they aren’t always documented. ChatGPT Free Generally, though, the rate limit for ChatGPT Free is extremely low. You can exhaust resources with just a few conversations, forcing you to wait hours before you can ask another question. ChatGPT Free’s rate limits for more advanced features (like the o3 reasoning model and Dall-E image generation) are so low that they border on useless. ChatGPT Plus ChatGPT Plus is much more generous. While OpenAI’s LLMs still have firm rate limits in this tier, they’re high enough that most people won’t hit them with typical usage. The rate limits for other advanced features (like Dall-E, Sora, and Deep Research) are still tight, though. ChatGPT Pro ChatGPT Pro’s rate limits are much higher. Certain advanced features are still kind of limited (e.g., Deep Research is capped at 120 generations per month) but high enough that most people won’t come close to hitting them. I used ChatGPT Pro heavily, racking up more than a dozen full conversations a day, and never hit any rate limits. In other words, the rate limits on ChatGPT Pro will only become an issue if you’re incorporating it into automated workflows — in which case you’re really meant to access OpenAI’s models through its APIs. ChatGPT Pro vs. Claude with Perplexity, Midjourney, ElevenLabs, and Kling OpenAI is the most famous of AI companies, but it’s far from the only one. Its many competitors include DeepSeek, Anthropic, Midjourney, ElevenLabs, Meta, and Google to name a few. Which raises the question: If ChatGPT Pro is so dang expensive, how does it compare to the competition? Well, the $200/month spent on ChatGPT Pro would actually be enough to cover the monthly plans for several different AI alternatives, spreading the cost across multiple. For this review, I tried ChatGPT Pro against five alternative services: Anthropic Claude Pro (AI chatbot) — $20/month Perplexity Pro (web search) — $20/month Midjourney Standard (image generation) — $30/month Kling AI Pro (video generation) — $25/month ElevenLabs Creator (speech-to-text/text-to-speech) — $22/month Total cost — $117/month Choosing a suite of competitive AI services with capabilities similar to ChatGPT Pro certainly looks appealing on paper. The total cost is nearly half the price, a steep discount compared to ChatGPT Pro. Matt Smith / Foundry This à la carte approach arguably provides access to a better selection of AI services, too. Coders generally prefer Claude over ChatGPT while Perplexity is better for web search than ChatGPT’s built-in search, for example. Creatives hugely prefer Midjourney’s image generation model to Dall-E, and Kling AI’s titular video models are often recommended over Sora. ElevenLabs, meanwhile, offers speech-to-text and text-to-speech capabilities that ChatGPT doesn’t even provide. On the other hand, ChatGPT Pro offers some features that competitive services don’t emulate. Claude doesn’t offer alternatives to Deep Research or Operator. ElevenLabs’ text-to-speech and speech-to-text are useful but not the same as ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice. And while a variety of AI agents exist, no competitor offers a simple, ready-to-use AI agent like OpenAI’s Operator. This comparison between ChatGPT Pro and a suite of alternative services shows an important point: if you’re subscribing to ChatGPT Pro, it’s likely for access to features that are exclusive to ChatGPT Pro (or rate limited in such a way that they’re only useful with ChatGPT Pro). In that case, we need to dive into those exclusive ChatGPT Pro features and evaluate them for value. Are they worth it? Let’s find out. ChatGPT Pro’s reasoning models Let’s start with ChatGPT Pro’s access to OpenAI reasoning models. These models use chain-of-thought reasoning to prompt themselves as they try to work through a problem. This helps the model whenever it’s asked to deal with something that involves logic or requires understanding the real world to reach the correct answer. Reasoning models score well across a wide range of publicly available benchmarks, but they stand out in math, coding, science, and related fields. Matt Smith / Foundry For example, when asked to write code for a particular feature in an app, a reasoning model will often do a better job. It can reason through potential use cases for the feature, as well as the varying approaches to implementation, as it looks for an adequate response. This is more likely to result in code that’s immediately useful without modification. Because of this, reasoning models like OpenAI o1 tend to dominate AI benchmarks focused on math and coding. It’s not all good news for reasoning models, though. They’re slower than conventional AI chatbots, and the more reasoning an AI does, the slower it gets. (ChatGPT o1 can leave you waiting for a minute or longer before it starts to generate a reply.) Reasoning models also tend to have more limited access to files and tools. If you want to use OpenAI o1 to analyze a PDF, for example, you can’t upload it. The best you can do is copy and paste the text into the prompt, which limits the usefulness of reasoning models depending on what you want ChatGPT to do. Reasoning models are great if you want an AI model to help you brainstorm difficult problems or write code that’s more relevant to your software. But if you want to use ChatGPT as a writing or editing assistant, or to analyze files and information, or to answer complex questions, then reasoning models are often less useful than GPT-4.5o. Deep Research is pretty awesome Deep Research is a ChatGPT feature that employs an AI agent to search the web, ingest relevant information, and compile it into a lengthy summary with sources cited. That report can be used for more serious topics (like researching career opportunities in a specific industry) or for more casual pursuits (like compiling a history of cat memes). No matter how you decide to use it, Deep Research’s reports deliver generally useful information and often pick up on details that would be hard to find when searching the web manually. Matt Smith / Foundry Say you want to open a restaurant. You can ask Deep Research to write a report on the restaurant industry for your specific region, and you can even prompt it to find competitors and look for gaps in the market. Deep Research can provide granular recommendations that include underserved niches you can fill, and it can make recommendations down to the neighborhood level, citing specific competitors in said neighborhood to justify its conclusions. The reports aren’t perfect, though. Hallucinations can cause Deep Research to generate incorrect information. And because it searches the web to build its report, it’s susceptible to oft-repeated generalizations, myths, and inaccuracies. Then again, even if you tried compiling that research on your own, you’d likely run into the same issues. So, it’s up to you to decide what to trust and what to filter out. Yes, it has its limits and flaws, but Deep Research is a great feature. The information it compiles is often more detailed than what I could hope to achieve on my own, and it tends to find deeper web sources that I might otherwise miss, skip, or overlook. Deep Research is the best feature currently bundled in ChatGPT Pro, and while competitors are rapidly trying to mimic it, none have matched it yet. Deep Research is available with ChatGPT Plus, but Plus users are limited to 10 queries per month. ChatGPT Pro gives you 120 queries per month (as of March 2025), and that number will likely increase later. Dall-E and Sora sadly disappoint OpenAI’s Dall-E image generator and Sora video generator aren’t exclusive to ChatGPT Pro, but upgrading to Pro makes them more useful. It also exposes some limitations. Dall-E Dall-E is tightly integrated into ChatGPT. The chatbot doesn’t just generate images on request, but also whenever it thinks a visual response is warranted. But Dall-E’s quality is lacking and it hasn’t improved much over the past year, even as competitors like Midjourney continue to make progress. Most competitors also offer advanced features Dall-E lacks, such as storyboarding, detailed image editing, and concurrent jobs. ChatGPT Free has access to Dall-E, but usage rate limits with Free and Plus plans are tight. You’ll need ChatGPT Pro if you want to generate dozens or hundreds of images in a session. Sora Unlike Dall-E, Sora video generation isn’t accessed through ChatGPT itself. It’s a separate tool — one that still requires a ChatGPT subscription to use. While ChatGPT Plus users get limited access to Sora, ChatGPT Pro users enjoy enhanced quality (up to 1080p) and longer videos (up to 20 seconds versus Plus’s limit of 5 seconds). Rate limits on ChatGPT Plus are tight, too, so if you’re looking to use Sora as anything more than a toy, you’ll need a ChatGPT Pro subscription. Matt Smith / Foundry Unfortunately, Sora disappoints. It struggles with basic tasks like stable camera pans and fails almost completely with fast action sequences. Competitors like Kling AI can produce better results while other services like Runway and Pika Labs offer specific AI models for different tasks (like character animation or special effects) with more reliable results. Dall-E and Sora are weak spots in the ChatGPT Pro subscription. Professional artists and creators looking to make ChatGPT part of their workflow are likely to find it isn’t up to snuff. Operator falls short of its potential Operator is OpenAI’s advanced reasoning agent for executing simple tasks in a web browser. It’s notable for being the only feature exclusive to the ChatGPT Pro tier subscription (as of March 2025). Like Sora, Operator is a separate tool outside of ChatGPT that still requires a ChatGPT Pro subscription to use. After entering a prompt with your requested action(s), you’ll see a real-time feed of the agent attempting to fulfill your request in a virtual machine. In the video below, you can see OpenAI’s real-world demonstration of Operator: In theory, an AI agent like Operator could function as a virtual assistant that handles everything from online shopping to completing forms or organizing emails. Operator sometimes succeeds with these tasks. Beyond the basics, however, Operator remains quite limited. It can’t bypass security measures like CAPTCHAs, instead prompting you to complete them. It won’t automatically enter payment details either. (The reasons for that are obvious, right? I wouldn’t trust Operator with my credit card details.) Even so, these limitations make Operator a lot less useful. As of now, you still have to help Operator over various hurdles, which defeats the point of an autonomous AI agent. Should you pay up for ChatGPT Pro? As this lengthy review shows, ChatGPT isn’t just an AI chatbot. It’s a bundle of AI tools that each target completely different tasks. That’s actually one of ChatGPT Pro’s greatest weaknesses compared to alternatives. You can cobble together multiple competing AI services that are each optimized for their particular tasks, and it’ll likely cost significantly less. This piecemeal approach does mean managing more subscriptions, but it feels more practical than OpenAI’s strategy of bundling everything into one flat subscription fee. To be fair, ChatGPT Pro does offer some features that you can’t get elsewhere or don’t live up to OpenAI’s quality. Deep Research is especially compelling if you want an AI research assistant at your beck and call. But the other stuff, like OpenAI’s Operator agent, aren’t reliable enough yet to deliver enough value for the price. As of this writing, the best reason to get ChatGPT Pro is to boost usage rate limits. The rate limits with ChatGPT Pro are high enough that they’re virtually non-existent. Competing services, like Anthropic’s Claude or DeepSeek, can get bogged down at peak times and will throttle you even if you’re a paid subscriber. Even so, the exorbitant price of ChatGPT Pro is hard to justify unless you’re hitting its AI services with hundreds of requests every day. And if that’s the case, you might be better off accessing OpenAI’s models directly through its API services (which charge you per millions of tokens instead of a flat monthly fee). For most people, ChatGPT Plus should suffice. Otherwise, if you’re a power user, professional, or enthusiast looking to benefit from the latest AI advancements, I recommend subscribing to multiple different AI services that each target more specific use cases rather than adopting ChatGPT Pro’s all-in-one package approach. Read...

Finding high-quality music and sounds for your videos can be a challenge. It’s not only the need to scour the web for the right tones or melodies to fit the mood of your current masterpiece, there’s also the security of knowing there won’t be any problems with copyright claims afterwards. Now, in a new partnership that’s sure to delight content creators around the world, Wondershare’s award-winning Filmora video-editing suite is joining forces with Universal Music for Creators to deliver a service that not only makes your videos look their best, but sound it too. Pro-level production without the complexity The collaboration between these two excellent platforms is great news for video creators. Not only will they be able to avail themselves of the latest professional editing and enhancement features in Filmora 14, but by going to the Audio tab in the app and selecting ‘Universal Music for Creators’, they’ll now have access to the company’s sound catalog which contains over 50,000 claims-free recordings, as well as 200,000+ custom audio edits. These can be seamlessly imported onto the video timeline, cutting down the usual time-sink of sourcing audio, all while benefiting from the studio-quality recordings that are sure to upgrade the sound quality of a production. Universal Music for Creators regularly updates its carefully curated catalog with the latest music across all genres, trends and styles, so you should have no problem finding something that fits the mood of your video. Wondershare Filmora It’s not only the sounds that are powered up to make life easier for content makers, as the new features in Filmora 14 also make it quicker and simpler than ever to edit and enhance the quality of your videos. New tools like Multi-Camera Editing allow you to seamlessly switch between different angles in real-time and all on the same timeline track. Markers ensure that everything stays synced up, greatly reducing how long it takes to assemble professional-looking multi-perspective videos. If you want to change flat surfaces in videos to something more dynamic – say replacing a blank wall to one that contains text or an image – then the new Planar Tracking tool makes it simple to achieve. Just mark the corners of the space, select what you want to insert, then the software will do the rest. There many new tools and editing features in Filmora 14, all designed to streamline the creation process so you can bring your vision to life rather than stay stuck in the editing stage forever. Get going with Filmora 14 and Universal Music for Creators Combining the new video and audio enhancements with the sound options provided by Universal Music for Creators, means you’ll have everything you need to make high quality movies or short videos right there on your laptop. You can sign up to a free 7-day trial of Filmora 14 with Universal Music for Creators to see how this powerhouse partnership can bring your creative dreams to life. You might just find that the finished results are music to your ears.  GET A FREE TRIAL OF FILMORA 14 Read...

Sometimes you have to enter your email address on sites that don’t seem trustworthy. For example, you have to provide an email address for free web access in cafés, buses, and railway stations. If you don’t want to provide your email address and risk getting a lot of spam, you can use a temporary email service. These temporary addresses only work for about 10 minutes, so you can use it on sites where you have to register. During the 10 minutes that the address is active, you have time to get the code you need and then the address stops working. That said, we’d recommend changing your password on the web page that you used a temporary address on, as we’re not sure what these services do with the information that passes through them. Here are four popular temporary email services: Foundry 10minutemail: This service offers an email address that expires after 10 minutes. You get an inbox and have time to receive a verification code. Mailpoof: This service allows you to create random addresses or choose the first part yourself. Received emails disappear after 24 hours. Emailondeck: This service provides an e-mail address for you. It works as long as you have the window open. 10minemail: As the name suggests, you have 10 minutes to receive a reply message. You can also extend the time if need be. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Stunning display Beautiful, shiny design Great Lunar Lake performance Cons Low battery life thanks to the display Webcam is annoying while using it No headphone jack Fingerprint reader is in an odd spot Very glossy and reflective Our Verdict The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14 is a sleek laptop with a unique aesthetic and an incredible display. But it makes some sacrifices to get there. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14 is a visually stunning laptop. That goes for both the both the stunning OLED display as well as the shiny glass lid that produces lots of interesting reflections. It’s also just a great productivity laptop thanks to the excellent use of an Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) processor, also known as Intel Lunar Lake. But everything in life is a compromise. That beautiful display seems to drain this laptop’s battery life faster than normal, and the beautiful design is just so glossy and reflective. And there are some other strange decisions here, like the lack of a headphone jack and an oddly placed fingerprint reader, which will bug some folks. Still, it’s a great machine – and it may be a dream machine for some people, especially if you’re looking for a beautiful and lightweight machine with a design that stands out. Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Specs The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14 (Gen 10) is a lightweight ultraportable laptop with an Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) CPU. Intel’s Lunar Lake hardware offers long battery life with solid performance for normal desktop productivity application — so web browsers, office apps, workplace chat tools, and all that good stuff. It doesn’t have high multithreaded performance, but that’s not what a lightweight ultraportable is all about, anyway. Lenovo combines that Intel Core Ultra 7 CPU with 32 GB of RAM and a 1 TB of solid-state storage, so they’re not cutting corners. The machine we reviewed retails for $1,899, but Lenovo also offers a version with 16GB of RAM and a slightly slower Intel Core Ultra 7 256V CPU for $1,759. CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 258V Memory: 32GB LPDDR5x RAM Graphics/GPU: Intel Arc 140V (16GB) NPU: Intel AI Boost (47 TOPS) Display: 3840×2400 OLED with touchscreen, 120Hz refresh rate, and HDR Storage: 1 TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD Webcam: 32MP camera Connectivity: 2x Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C) Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3 Biometrics: Fingerprint reader for Windows Hello Battery capacity: 75 Watt-hours Dimensions: 12.32 x 8.01 x 0.57 inches Weight: 2.76 pounds MSRP: $1,899 as tested If you’re looking for an ultraportable with a beautiful display, one that also has a beautiful design, this is a compelling machine! Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Design and build quality IDG / Chris Hoffman This machine is all about good looks. It’s available in a “Tidal Teal” colorway, which looks beautiful. It’s all about the reflections: The lid is covered in impact-resistant glass, and it has a very cool looking effect that looks great when it reflects light. Lenovo describes it as a “3D swirling at-eye effect” that “makes your style pop from every angle, reflecting light beautifully.” It’s shiny. It looks great if reflections are what you’re looking for! If you don’t want your laptop to draw eyes with its impressive looking reflections, then it’s perhaps not the right machine for you. The larger issue with the reflections is just how glossy the display is, which is an issue in direct sunlight. This isn’t just an issue with this machine though, it’s an issue with laptops with glossy screens, especially machines with OLED displays. Also, that glass lid smudges easily. You’ll be wiping it to keep its crisp good looks intact. The build quality is good! Aside from the glass on the cover, this machine is made of aluminum. At 2.76 pounds, it’s a nice light weight, but not the absolute lightest PC. The hinge is easy to open with one hand and feels good. While this is branded a Yoga machine, this is not a 2-in-1 that can open to 360 degrees. Lenovo has decided to use the Yoga name, once meant for laptops that could bend into interesting shapes, for laptops in general. I continue to be absolutely baffled by this change in the Yoga branding. It’s not a problem, but be aware: This is a traditional laptop and not a 2-in-1. In fact, it can only open to about 135 degrees, it can’t even lie flat like many other laptops can. For a laptop that bears the Yoga name, this is pretty silly. There’s also more bloatware than I’d like to see — preinstalled McAfee antivirus and notification ads through Lenovo Vantage for services like Amazon Music. It’s fine and you can get rid of it easily enough. It’s common and more understandable on budget focused laptops, but it feels a little obnoxious on an almost $2,000 premium machine focused on beautiful design. Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Keyboard and trackpad IDG / Chris Hoffman The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i has a fine keyboard. It’s responsive enough, not as snappy and crisp as a ThinkPad keyboard or a good mechanical keyboard, but not mushy. It’s the kind of keyboard you find on a good lightweight laptop. You wonder if it feels a little shallow, but then you realize of course it does, they’re trying to make the laptop as thin as possible, so there’s less room for key travel. I do have a major bone to pick with the keyboard. The fingerprint reader is placed smack dab at the bottom right corner of the keyboard, and then the arrow keys are to the left of it. I found myself pressing the wrong arrow key when I moved my finger down there. I’d prefer to have the right arrow key at the left edge of the keyboard. The trackpad feels fine, too–it’s nice and smooth, and the click action is crisp and not mushy. That said, it’s a little on the small side, which makes clicking a little annoying at times since there’s less room to click down. This problem would’ve been remedied had Lenovo used a haptic trackpad. PC manufacturers should choose haptic trackpads more frequently, at least on lightweight ultraportables! The odd fingerprint reader location and slightly small trackpad are artifacts of the same problem: Lenovo has aimed to streamline this machine, cutting down the bezels, shrinking it, and focusing on beauty. There’s not a lot of room for a larger trackpad or to put the buttons elsewhere. For many people, a larger laptop that’s a little less streamlined and a little bulkier will just be more ergonomic, as it gives the keyboard and trackpad some room to breathe. Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Display and speakers IDG / Chris Hoffman The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i’s display is just beautiful. This is a 3840×2400 OLED display. It’s incredibly bright and vivid with a high resolution. It also has a good refresh rate at 120Hz — some OLED displays deliver only 60Hz. With 750 nits of peak brightness, it can also deliver a great HDR experience. If you’re looking for an ultraportable with a beautiful display, one that also has a beautiful design, this is a compelling machine! It’s a touch screen, too. The quad speakers with Dolby Atmos are reasonable. They have a lot of volume, way more than I need! That’s not always true on a laptop. The audio feels crisp and clear. However, as always on a laptop like this one, the built in speakers don’t produce a lot of bass. Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Webcam, microphone, biometrics IDG / Chris Hoffman The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i has an under display webcam, which helps Lenovo shrink the bezel as much as possible. The screen looks normal while you’re not using the webcam. Activate the webcam and a black circle will appear in the middle of the top area of the screen — annoyingly enough, right where you web browser’s tab bar would be. If you want a small bezel and don’t use your laptop’s webcam much, it’ll be a nice upgrade. If you frequently use your laptop’s webcam, this may be rather annoying compared to a traditional webcam that’s not located on your display. The webcam itself is a 32MP camera. While I’ve seen some complaints online, I’d say the webcam is usable, as I’ve seen much worse. It seems like the under display approach is making the image quality worse, though. To be frank, I would avoid this laptop if you frequently participate in video meetings. It’s really annoying having a black circle obstruct part of your screen while the webcam is in use. There’s also a physical camera shutter switch on the right side of the laptop, which is always nice to see. The microphone sounds fine — not unusually good and not unusually bad. It’ll be serviceable for online meetings, but I’ve heard better microphone quality on business laptops designed for this sort of thing. As far as biometrics, this machine has a fingerprint reader on the bottom-right corner of the keyboard for Windows Hello. It worked well, although I wish the right arrow key was down in that corner. This machine doesn’t have an IR camera for facial recognition with Windows Hello. That’s no surprise given the under display webcam situation. It is a shame, though — facial recognition is a convenient way to unlock your PC. Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Connectivity IDG / Chris Hoffman The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i follows the “What are the fewest ports we can include?” school of design. There’s one Thunderbolt 4 port on the left side and one Thunderbolt 4 port on the right side — a total of two places to plug in a USB Type-C cable. That’s it! And you’ll use one of them to charge the laptop. The lack of a headphone jack will be an immediate blocker to many people, although you can of course use wireless Bluetooth headphones or connect USB Type-C headphones. There’s also no microSD slot or anything else. Given that, only having two USB Type-C ports feels really skimpy. It’s another way this laptop is more design focused — it feels like Lenovo has set out to streamline the laptop as much as possible and made the compromises necessary to do so. Some people will like it, but many people will want something a little bulkier that’s more flexible. Thanks to Intel Lunar Lake, this machine does have Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 support. It’s good to see Wi-Fi 7 becoming standard. Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Performance We’ve talked a lot about design, but let’s talk about the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i’s performance. The laptop performed well in the day-to-day desktop productivity tasks you’d use a lightweight portable machine like this one for. It runs nice and quiet in daily use, too. Of course, we ran the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14 through our standard benchmarks to measure its performance. IDG / Chris Hoffman First, we run PCMark 10 to get an idea of overall system performance. With an overall PCMark 10 score of 7,588, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i delivered excellent performance despite its thin-and-light nature. This machine feels like it’s squeezing every bit of performance out of Lunar Lake between its cooling system, RAM, and speedy storage. IDG / Chris Hoffman Next, we run Cinebench R20. This is a heavily multithreaded benchmark that focuses on overall CPU performance. It’s a quick benchmark, so cooling under extended workloads isn’t a factor. But, since it’s heavily multithreaded, CPUs with more cores have a huge advantage. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i delivered a multithreaded score of 4,350 in Cinebench R20. Intel’s Lunar Lake can’t deliver high multi-core performance and we see that here. That doesn’t matter for most people’s basic desktop usage, but it’s an issue if you have workloads that need serious multithreaded CPU performance. IDG / Chris Hoffman We also run an encode with Handbrake. This is another heavily multithreaded benchmark but it runs over an extended period. This demands the laptop’s cooling kick in and many laptops will throttle and slow down under load. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i completed the encode process in 1,249 seconds — that’s nearly 21 minutes. It’s a good score for a Lunar Lake system, but it shows how weak Lunar Lake is on multithreaded performance once again. IDG / Chris Hoffman Next we run a graphical benchmark. This isn’t a gaming laptop, but it’s still good to check how the GPU performs. We run 3Dmark Time Spy, a graphical benchmark that focuses on GPU performance. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i achieved a 3DMark Time Spy score of 4,476. That’s decent for integrated graphics, but it’s certainly much slower than what you’d see on a gaming laptop with a discrete GPU. Overall, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i delivers exceptionally good performance for an Intel Lunar Lake system. But this is still Intel Lunar Lake, so it’s weak when it comes to multithreaded performance. It’s more than fine for most people’s desktop productivity workloads, though. Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Battery life The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14 has a 75 Watt-hour battery, which is on the large side for an ultraportable laptop. Combined with an Intel Lunar Lake processor, we’d expect long battery life. But the display gets in the way. This laptop doesn’t exactly have bad battery life, but it has the lowest battery life I’ve seen from a Lunar Lake machine. IDG / Chris Hoffman To benchmark the battery life, we play a 4K copy of Tears of Steel on repeat in the Movies & TV app on Windows 11 with airplane mode enabled until the laptop suspends itself. This is a best-case scenario for any laptop since local video playback is so efficient, and real battery life in day-to-day use is always going to be less than this. We set the screen to 250 nits of brightness for our battery benchmarks, and it’s worth noting that this machine’s OLED display has a bit of an advantage, as OLED screens use less power to display the black bars around the video. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i ran for 859 minutes before it suspended itself. That’s a bit over 14 hours. It sounds like a long time, but the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 with its also-beautiful AMOLED display ran for 1,401 minutes — that’s another nine hours! (The Galaxy Book5 Pro 360’s display isn’t quite as stunning, though.) 14 hours may sound like a long time, but you’re going to get less battery life in real-world use while you use the machine in the real world. This just isn’t great battery life — you’re giving up a lot of battery life to power this over-the-top display. Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i 14: Conclusion The Lenovo Yoga Slim 9i is a great machine if you want a unique design with an incredible display. It really is a nice piece of hardware. It even delivers very good performance for Lunar Lake. But I’d say that this machine isn’t for most people. Between the almost $2,000 price, low battery life, lack of a headphone jack, skimpy port selection, Lunar Lake’s low multithreaded performance, odd fingerprint sensor position, and so many other issues I’ve mentioned above, this won’t be the right machine for most laptop users. Still, some people are going to love this machine. When I open the beautiful laptop and see that stunning OLED display, for a moment, I can almost feel like all those other problems don’t matter. Read...

When will your computer die? Be assured, it’s a question of “when” and not “if.” Though I can’t give you a precise date, I can tell you the next best thing: all the skills you need to know to be prepared for it. The most crucial part of your PC, assuming that you can’t guarantee the hardware will last forever, is the data. I’ll show you how to protect it. I’d recommend treating this article like a checklist. How you accomplish each task isn’t really as important as knowing that you can do it… preferably with some practice. How to replace a hard drive or SSD  Chris Hoffman / Foundry The storage drive is where your data lives on your computer. And, if you want more of it — or your current drive fails — then you might need to replace it. It’s one of the most basic parts of computer maintenance. Fortunately, it’s also a pretty easy one. All you need to replace a storage drive on most desktops and laptops is a screwdriver (and a replacement drive, of course). The newest computers use M.2 drives that can be swapped out like an old-fashioned game cartridge. Older drives using SATA connections need to be screwed into place onto frames or sleds, but again, the physical part of the process is pretty easy, just plug them into power and data cables. Here’s the bad news. Some of the newest and sleekest laptops aren’t willing to let you into their guts, so you’re stuck with whatever storage came from the factory, just like a phone or a tablet. To avoid that, look for models that allow easy upgrades. For maximum repairability and upgrade options, check out Framework’s modular laptop designs. How to back up and restore a partition  partition manager Here’s the more tricky part of data retention. While you can set up a backup system to create copies of your files and programs on a secondary drive, or use a cloud backup system to create a physically distinct security, the only way to really “preserve” your computer is to back up the primary partition of your storage drive. That preserves everything on it — the operating system, programs, files, and settings. Backing up a partition to another drive creates a near-perfect copy of your computer’s data, as it is when the backup is made. It’s the easiest way to preserve absolutely everything on your PC, and restore it without any interruption. It might take several hours to perform, depending on how much data you have, but there’s nothing like a full partition backup for peace of mind. Partition backups are big, slow, and complicated — it’s not like just moving a bunch of files to a flash drive. But they’re the ultimate in local backups, and a great skill to know if you’re worried about potentially catastrophic data loss. How to set up an uninterrupted power supply  APC Of course the easiest way to protect the data is to never lose it in the first place. You probably already have your PC plugged into a surge protector, but the ultimate in defense from electrical issues is an uninterrupted power supply, a UPS. This is essentially a massive battery that’s constantly recharging and powering your desktop PC directly. With your PC getting power from the battery instead of the electrical system in your house, there’s no way for a momentary outage or a power surge to damage it. As a nice bonus, you get a short amount of time — typically under 30 minutes — to save your work and shut down your computer safely. Best of all, it’s super easy, barely an inconvenience to set up. Plus the UPS into power, plug your PC into the UPS, and you’re done. How to set up encryption  Chris Hoffman / IDG What if what you’re concerned about isn’t the physical safety of your computer, but just keeping any prying eyes off of your files? Then you want to encrypt them. While encrypted data doesn’t make it completely impenetrable, it’s generally safe enough to trust unless you’re dealing with files that would make James Bond sweat. Windows has a built-in encryption system called BitLocker, and it’s generally the easiest way to use encryption on a PC. There are other options if you want more serious protection, or something a little faster or more portable. How to use a VPN ExpressVPN Of course, there’s only so much you can do in terms of security while you’re connected to the internet. What if your local nation or state is either restricting the places on the web you can visit or monitoring your every move? What if you don’t trust that the network you’re using is actually secure? Then what you need is a VPN. A Virtual Private Network is a system that routes your web traffic through a remote server, locking anyone on the local network out of any monitoring activities. It also lets you effectively browse from that remote location — if you connect to a VPN server in California, it looks like you’re browsing in California, wherever you’re physically located. There are a lot of VPN services to choose from, and they specialize in different things, like extra privacy or more speed. But all of them require a degree of trust on your end, and a bit of technical setup for a PC (or a home network). Check out this guide to learn everything you need to know. Read...