At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros A repairable and customizable 2-in-1 laptop Swappable ports Reasonable performance for its class A microphone shutoff switch! Cons Battery life is on the lower side Not quite a budget price No keyboard backlight No biometrics for Windows Hello Our Verdict The Framework Laptop 12 delivers a capable 2-in-1 laptop with extreme customizability and repairability. However, battery life is a little on the low side due to the previous-generation CPU. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today The Framework Laptop 12 is something of a rare breed: a compact 2-in-1 convertible that you don’t just use, you build. It brings Framework’s vision of a do-it-yourself laptop experience to a machine that’s both less expensive and more flexible than Framework’s other laptops — literally, thanks to its 360-degree hinge, touchscreen, and stylus. Framework originally designed this laptop with students in mind, but the company says, “every adult who tried it wanted one too” during the prototyping process. As Framework’s first 2-in-1 machine, the Framework Laptop 12 is largely a success! Like all of Framework’s laptops, you may pay more for this type of do-it-yourself experience. But if you’re the kind of person who likes to build and customize your own PC, Framework is hugely interesting in the laptop space. Framework Laptop 12: Specs IDG / Chris Hoffman The Framework Laptop 12 is available in two different editions: A pre-built edition that comes ready to use with Windows installed and a DIY Edition that lets you build the machine yourself. Framework loaned us a DIY Edition for this review, and I put it together myself. It’s an incredibly simple process that just takes a few minutes. Installing Windows (and the drivers the machine requires) takes longer than building this laptop. Assembling the hardware is the easy part! The Framework Laptop 12 has a variety of different hardware configurations. The DIY Edition starts at $549, but you’ll need to bring your own storage, RAM, power adapter, and operating system — and the ports are extra, too. Still, you could get the base hardware with four USB ports for $593 and bring everything else yourself. The pre-assembled machine comes with Windows already installed and costs $799, which isn’t quite a “budget-priced” 2-in-1 but is arguably at the lower end of a mid-range one. It’s also worth noting that the base model comes with an Intel Core i3-1315U processor with a total of six cores — two performance cores and four efficiency cores. A step up to an Intel Core i5-1334U processor with a total of ten cores — two performance cores and eight efficiency cores — costs another $150. Both are based on Intel’s 13th-generation Raptor Lake architecture, which means they don’t have neural processing units for AI tasks or the kind of battery life improvements we saw in Intel’s Lunar Lake or even Meteor Lake chips. CPU: Intel Core i5-1334U Memory: 16GB DDR5 RAM Graphics/GPU: Intel UHD Graphics NPU: None Display: 12.2-inch 1920×1200 IPS display with 60Hz refresh rate, touch screen, and stylus support Storage: 1 TB PCIe Gen4 SSD Webcam: 1080p 2MP camera Connectivity: Up to four swappable ports of your choice – USB-C (USB 3.2 Gen 2), USB-A, HDMI 2.0b, Ethernet, DisplayPort, microSD reader, and SD card reader Networking: Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 Biometrics: None Battery capacity: 50 Watt-hours Dimensions: 11.29 x 8.42 x 0.72 inches Weight: 2.86 pounds MSRP: $1,176 as tested If you want a modular, repairable, customizable 2-in-1 laptop, there’s no other machine like this on the market. This is your dream machine.” Framework Laptop 12: Design and build quality IDG / Chris Hoffman Framework offers the Framework Laptop 12 in a variety of two-tone color schemes: Black, Gray, Lavender, Bubblegum, and Sage. Our review unit came in the two-tone Gray color, but the colorful variants look particularly striking. True to Framework’s DIY ethos, the Laptop 12 is easy to build and exhibits solid build quality. You lift the screen up like you’re opening a normal laptop and discover a plastic tray where the keyboard would be, with the laptop’s internals right below it. You’ll just remove the piece of plastic and insert the storage and RAM. There are no screws to deal with on the inside. The storage and RAM just snap into place. You then place the keyboard tray into position, where it snaps in magnetically. IDG / Chris Hoffman Finally, it’s just a matter of closing the laptop, flipping it over, and tightening a few screws on the bottom with an included screwdriver. The ports themselves are easy to install and swap as needed — they’re little blocks that plug right into USB-C ports set into the bottom of the laptop. Assembly was easier than with the last Framework laptop I put together: There was no fiddly cable connection of the touchpad to the motherboard, for example, as on the Framework Laptop 13 I reviewed in 2024. It’s just a quick magnetic snap into place and then tightening a few screws. And opening the laptop up is just as easy — whether you’re starting with a DIY edition or getting a prebuild edition. The weight of the laptop means that I can’t quite open the lid of the laptop with a single hand, but the 360-degree hinge feels great otherwise. The choice of the material on this laptop is very unusual for a laptop: Framework calls it a “chassis made of overmolded shock-absorbing TPU over plastic with an inner metal structure.” Rather than smooth plastic or metal, like many laptops, the chassis and keyboard tray have more of a matte plastic feel. Framework says it’s hard to break, but I didn’t subject it to any drop tests during the review process! It does seem to pick up fingerprints quite a bit, as you can see in some of the photos I took. IDG / Chris Hoffman While this is a DIY build-and-customize-your-own-laptop experience, once the keyboard is popped on magnetically and the screws are tightened, everything feels like a normal laptop. Even the ports have locking switches so they won’t pop out. At 2.86 pounds, it’s not unusually heavy for a 2-in-1 machine, although it may be a tad on the heavier side. Framework Laptop 12: Keyboard, trackpad, and stylus IDG / Chris Hoffman The Framework Laptop 12’s full-size keyboard feels pretty good. With 1.5mm of key travel, the action feels responsive. It’s a solid chiclet-style laptop keyboard with good feedback. I could type quickly on it, and it’s also pleasantly quiet — a bonus for classroom or library environments. Unfortunately, the keyboard has no backlight. This is, of course, an extremely helpful feature in dark or dim lighting. If you can reliably touch type or just plan on using the laptop in good lighting, it’s not a concern. You’ll have to decide whether you need a laptop with a backlit keyboard, but I would’ve liked to see one — at least as an option. If you’re a Linux user, you’ll appreciate that the “Windows key” on the keyboard doesn’t have a Windows logo. It functions as a Windows key in Windows, but it has the Framework gear logo on it. Also, unlike most modern PC laptops, there’s no Copilot key on the keyboard here. The trackpad also feels nice and smooth, and the click action feels solid. I like that the click is rather quiet — many laptops have loud, clicky sounds, while this feels like something you could use in a classroom or library without bothering other people. IDG / Chris Hoffman Framework didn’t have the swanky Framework Laptop 12 Stylus ready for us at review time — Framework says they’ll release it later in 2025 — but they did provide a MPP 2.0-compatible stylus to test the system out. Both the stylus input and the touch screen worked well. Framework Laptop 12: Display and speakers IDG / Chris Hoffman The Framework Laptop 12 has a 12.2-inch 1920×1200 IPS display. Its 60Hz refresh rate could be higher for a smoother picture, but it’s brighter than the average budget laptop display with over 400 nits of brightness. The display looks good and sharp — that’s a solid resolution for a 12.2-inch display, and it’s more brightness than a budget laptop’s display would offer. However, this being a 2-in-1 laptop with a touch screen and stylus support, the surface of the screen is rather glossy. That’s a given, and the reasonable amount of brightness helps. However, glossy displays produce more reflections in direct sunlight and other bright areas, so a glossy display isn’t the right fit for everyone. The Framework 12’s speakers are decent. They’re nowhere near as loud as some other laptop speakers I’ve used, however. Playing Steely Dan’s Aja on Spotify, the audio was clean and clear, but didn’t have the kind of crisp and bright instrument separation you hear on a higher-end pair of headphones. Playing Daft Punk’s Get Lucky to test something modern with more bass, the audio was clear, and there was no distortion, but there wasn’t a lot of bass — and the audio wasn’t quite as punchy as it might be on a laptop with higher-end speakers. These are fine speakers with no problems, but you’ll want a good pair of headphones for the best music or video-streaming experience. Framework Laptop 12: Webcam, microphone, biometrics The Framework Laptop 12 has a 1080p 2MP webcam. On paper, that’s fine but not particularly special — although it is a relief to see that this machine has a 1080p webcam instead of a 720p webcam! In the real world, though, the Framework Laptop 12’s webcam looks pretty good — this is more than good enough for video meetings, and it’s a solid entry for the laptop’s price range. The microphone was a little quiet out of the box — in other words, after installing Windows 11 and then installing Framework’s driver package myself — but tweaking the settings in the Realtek Audio Console application improved things. It did a good job of canceling background noise and the audio quality was fine. The Framework Laptop 12 is a rare beast: Above its webcam, you’ll find not just a physical webcam shutter switch but also a physical microphone shutter switch. A physical switch to disconnect the microphone is an important security feature, but it’s extremely rare. Now this is a machine designed with privacy controls in mind. Unfortunately, there are no biometrics for Windows Hello here: You won’t find a fingerprint reader or an IR camera for facial recognition. Framework Laptop 12: Connectivity IDG / Chris Hoffman The Framework Laptop 12 shines when it comes to connectivity — mostly. The base laptop has a combo audio jack on the left side, and that’s it for the base model. Then, there are four places to plug in “ports,” which you can buy from Framework and swap on the fly. That lets you choose which ports you want: USB Type-C, USB Type-A, HDMI, DisplayPort, Ethernet, microSD card, or SD card. You can also buy “ports” that have storage inside them to expand the laptop’s storage. The machine charges via USB-C, so at least one of those ports must be USB Type-C so that you can plug in a charger. But you can put the USB-C port on either side of the laptop — or on both sides. That said, there’s a limitation under the hood. Functionally speaking, all of those “ports” are blocks that plug into a USB Type-C port — it’s all USB-C under the hood. These ports are all USB 3.2 Gen 2 under the hood, so there’s no faster USB4, Thunderbolt 4, or even HDMI 2.1 here — just HDMI 2.0b. There’s a good chance that’s fine — just be aware. This machine also supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. The Wi-Fi worked well, but it would’ve been nice to see Wi-Fi 7, of course. Framework is using previous-generation Intel “Raptor Lake” hardware here, and Wi-Fi 7 doesn’t come standard with this Intel hardware. Framework Laptop 12: Performance The Framework Laptop 12 can run either Windows or Linux. I installed Windows 11 Home on this machine myself to benchmark its performance with our standard suite of Windows benchmarking tools. Framework says this machine was designed “to be unusually powerful for its class,” which is why it has a full Core i3 or Core i5 processor rather than a less-expensive, mobile-focused version. In day-to-day desktop use, the Intel Core i5-1334U CPU in this machine handled web browsing in applications like Google Chrome, conversations in workplace tools like Slack, and producing content like this very review in Microsoft Word. The laptop’s keyboard stayed cool and comfortable even when the fan was whirring away and expelling heat from the back of the machine. However, the bottom could get fairly hot under load — that’s the older Raptor Lake hardware in action. As always, though we ran the Framework Laptop 12 through our standard benchmarks to see how it performs. IDG / Chris Hoffman First, we run PCMark 10 to get an idea of overall system performance.  The Framework Laptop 12 delivered an overall score of 5288 in this benchmark — that’s on the low side compared to other modern laptops, which isn’t a surprise as this is a previous-generation chip. 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. The Intel Core i5-1334U in this machine has fewer cores than the CPUs in the other modern PCs we compared it to, so it’s no surprise that the multithreaded score of 2106 is on the low side. IDG / Chris Hoffman We also run an encode with Handbrake. This is another heavily multithreaded benchmark, but it runs over an extended period. The Framework Laptop 12 completed the encode process in 2648 seconds, which is just over 44 minutes. That’s a long time, and it confirms that this machine isn’t a speed demon — especially at tasks that benefit from a lot of multithreaded CPU performance. IDG / Chris Hoffman Next, we run a graphical benchmark. This isn’t a gaming laptop, but it’s still worth evaluating GPU performance. We run 3DMark Time Spy, a graphical benchmark that focuses on GPU performance. The Framework Laptop 12 produced a score of 1255 in 3DMark Time Spy. That’s very low compared to other modern laptops, which is no surprise — the Intel UHD Graphics here are part of the previous-generation Raptor Lake package here, and integrated GPUs have improved dramatically since then. Overall, the Framework Laptop 12’s benchmark scores didn’t impress compared to other recent laptops with more modern CPUs. It was still plenty capable of producing solid-day-to-day productivity performance, but it will particularly struggle when it comes to CPU-heavy multithreaded workloads and 3D graphics. Obviously, that’s not what this machine is for — but it’d be nice to have better performance, especially for 3D graphics, with a laptop designed for students. Framework Laptop 12: Battery life The Framework Laptop 12 has a 50 Watt-hour battery, which is on the small end for a machine like this one. Additionally, the choice of an Intel Core i3 or Core i5 CPU from the older 13th generation (“Raptor Lake”) keeps the price down and delivers decent performance, but it suggests this machine will be more power-hungry and get lower battery life than a newer machine with Intel’s Lunar Lake hardware — which is, of course, much more expensive. IDG / Chris Hoffman To benchmark the battery life, we play a 4K copy of Tears of Steel on repeat on Windows 11 with airplane mode enabled — and the screen set to 250 nits of brightness — 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. The Framework Laptop 12 lasted for an average of 688 minutes — that’s nearly eleven and a half hours — in our standard benchmark. While that sounds impressive, real-world battery life will always be less than this, and it’s a low number compared to laptops with more modern power-efficient CPUs. CPU manufacturers have made a lot of progress since Intel first released Raptor Lake in 2022! For my workload — Google Chrome, Slack, Microsoft Word, OneNote, and similar apps — I got about five hours before I had to plug in the machine. That’s serviceable, but it’s still far below what a machine with Intel Lunar Lake or Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite or Snapdragon X Plus would deliver. A larger battery would make this less of an issue. Framework Laptop 12: Conclusion The Framework Laptop 12 is a hard laptop to score. If you want a modular, repairable, customizable 2-in-1 laptop, there’s no other machine like this on the market. This is your dream machine. You’ll find 2-in-1s with more battery life and performance, but you won’t find any you can crack open and make your own like this. On the other hand, when comparing this to other 2-in-1 machines, if repairability and customization aren’t priorities, this machine is a tougher sell, especially over something with a newer CPU and faster 3D graphics performance. For a few hundred bucks more, for example, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition delivers much improved battery life, CPU performance, and GPU performance — alongside an NPU for AI tasks — and the main sacrifice is Framework’s repairability and customizability. Framework’s laptops are amazing. I love that they exist! If it had a slightly newer CPU, it’d be a slam-dunk. As it stands, it’s an excellent (though niche) choice for tinkerers and students who value flexibility over raw performance. Read...

SentinelOne has partnered with Amazon Web Services to enhance cloud security by integrating AI-powered threat detection with AWS Security Hub`s new features. Read...

TL;DR: Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2022 is down to just $27.97 (reg. $499), giving you access to premium development tools without the premium price tag. Whether you’re building your first app or managing large-scale software projects, having the right tools makes all the difference. Visual Studio Professional 2022 gives developers a powerful, flexible environment for writing, debugging, testing, and deploying code across multiple platforms, and right now, it’s available for a one-time price of just $27.97. This isn’t a trial or a watered-down version. It’s the full suite of Microsoft’s flagship IDE, ready to support Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and web development. You can work with .NET MAUI to create cross-platform apps, use Blazor to build interactive UIs with C#, and even run and debug C++ or .NET code on Linux. Speed up your workflow with modern features: Hot reload: apply code changes without restarting. IntelliCode: offers AI-assisted code suggestions and autocompletions. CodeLens: insights on references, changes, and test results without leaving your code. Live Share: collaborate with teammates in real time with no screen sharing required. If you’re looking to level up your development stack or need a reliable platform for professional coding projects, this deal is a no-brainer. Just don’t wait too long—licenses are limited, and once they’re gone, they’re gone. Get Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2022 now for just $27.97 (reg. $499) while these codes last. Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2022 for WindowsSee Deal StackSocial prices subject to change. Read...

One of the most prominent features of this year’s spate of graphics card launches—from both AMD and Nvidia—is the pricing issues they’ve faced. Due to various factors, GPUs that launched at modest MSRPs are selling with price tags several hundred dollars beyond. Though some newer and more affordable cards are bucking the trend, like AMD’s Radeon RX 9060 XT, most gamers are simply being priced out by the latest GPUs. Anyone looking to upgrade is likely having a hard time, and a new study by Liquid Web suggests these prices are sending gamers toward cloud gaming in greater numbers than ever before. Liquid Web (admittedly a cloud hosting company) polled 1,000 gamers of various ages and backgrounds on their recent PC upgrade interests and intentions. Some of the results are quite stark. PC gamers are being priced out Over half of all polled gamers said they had been so affected by price hikes and scalping on GPUs that they’d been forced to delay—or even cancel—their PC upgrading plans altogether. In fact, 43% of respondents said that life expenses (e.g., rent and bills) had forced them to skip graphics card purchases. You have to imagine there’s a lot of crossover there. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 Founders Edition is incredible, but its exorbitant price puts it out of reach of just about everyone.Foundry That’s no surprise considering the sky-high graphics card prices we’re seeing. Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090 was supposed to sell at $2,000, but it quickly rocketed to over $3,000 at most retailers. Even much-more-affordable cards, like the RTX 5070 Ti and 5070, ended up retailing for hundreds of dollars north of their MSRP in the weeks following launch. The downside of rapidly rising GPU prices isn’t just that PC gamers miss out on next-generation gaming experiences—it disillusions them to the idea of upgrading at all. Among gamers who were ready to upgrade, 39% said they would wait at least another one to two years to upgrade their graphics cards, while a further 37% said they’d run what they have into the ground and only replace it when it dies. Then again, maybe by that time they won’t feel the need to upgrade anymore. Liquid Web’s study also shed insight on gamers switching to cloud gaming, where upgrades aren’t dependent on hardware availability or retail pricing. And there were an impressive number of respondents who were keen on the idea. Will the cloud replace hardware? Cloud gaming has come a long way over the past decade, and today it’s a relatively solid alternative to native play. Geforce Now, Xbox Game Pass, PlayStation Plus—they all offer relatively affordable options for playing large libraries of PC and console games without needing to own the proper hardware… or, in some cases, even the games. As of this writing, cloud gaming is far from replacing local gaming. There are a number of factors as to why that is, but for the gamers in this study, it’s mainly due to latency problems. 62% of respondents (mostly Millenial and Gen Z) said they would switch to cloud gaming full-time instead of playing on their own hardware if latency were “eliminated.” Cloud gaming makes gaming anywhere with anything a lot easier.Muha Ajjan / Unsplash Unfortunately, that’s just not going to happen. While modern hardware and networking is fast, there’s just no beating the physical immediacy of local rendering on your own machine. However, when the question was asked more broadly of respondents, a sizeable number (42%) said they’d skip upgrading their graphics cards if “their needs were met” with either cloud gaming or AI upscaling. That’s a much more achievable goal for cloud providers who want to deliver a premium remote gaming experience. Around 20% of Millennial and Gen Z gamers believe that high-end GPUs will become less essential in the next three years because of cloud gaming and the growing improvements to AI upscaling like DLSS and FSR. Meanwhile, nearly 60% who are still holding out for a GPU upgrade to improve their gaming experience. I’m not entirely sold on the idea of AI upscaling being everything, but frame generation has made some impressive leaps lately. If Nvidia keeps its focus on AI and can’t figure out how to keep its GPUs in better stock, we may all be relying on more cloud and AI features before long. Read...

Customers lost internet for up to an hour. Read...

The Downdetector site shows reports of outages across the North Island. Read...

Outage website Downdetector shows a spike in reported outages for One, Spark and 2Degrees. Read...

The soaring price of copper makes networks tempting targets for thieves. Read...

The internet mogul has moved back to Queenstown, after spending months in Dunedin recovering from a stroke. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Online storage, multi-device sync, and mirroring Fantastically affordable lifetime plans Extremely secure and private Free 2TB account Cons Could use better help and task feedback The backup is actually one-way sync/mirroring Our Verdict Internxt’s intuitively blended web access, file sync, and backup (mirroring) services are impressive. However, the incredibly affordable lifetime plans are by far the most outstanding aspect. The docs, client interface, and backup feedback could be better, but, by Grapthor’s hammer — what a savings! Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Retailer Price Internxt Free View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Internxt Drive online backup Retailer Price Internxt Free View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Though Internxt Drive rightfully touts its 256-bit encryption and dedication to privacy, there’s no feature in particular that sets it apart from the crowd. As with services such as Dropbox, Sync.com, OneDrive, iDrive, etc. there’s sync and storage. There’s also backup, though it’s not true inviolable backup, but mirroring. Internxt presents its features in a largely intuitive fashion, but what wholly distinguishes itself from the hoi polloi are its incredibly affordable lifetime plans. Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best online backup services for comparison. How much is Internxt? When I last reviewed Internxt, I said you might want to hop on its super-affordable lifetime plans before they disappeared. Happily, here we are two years later, and Internxt lifetime plans are still imminently affordable — albeit a bit different than before. Read this discussion carefully. I first tried the free plan with 1GB of storage (formerly 2TB). Sadly, you can no longer increase the free plan’s capacity to as much as 10GB through various actions such as inviting friends to the service. The company Will of course try to upsell you, but you can still have 1GB for free. Beyond that, things have changed a bit since my last look in 2023. Gone are the $0.89-per-month 20GB and $3.49-per-month 200GB plans. Subscriptions now start at $1.65 a month for 1TB and $3.30 monthly for 3TB billed annually. Mind you, these rates are discounted from $10.99 and $21.99 per month, respectively, and might not last. Those prices are also approximate and subject to change as they reflect conversion to dollars from Euros. So Internxt can be a tad pricey on an annual basis when not on sale. But if you’re willing to commit for life (is that even a thing anymore?) Internxt morphs into uber-affordable. See below. (Note that all stated prices are even lower using the links to purchase in this review.) Internxt’s lifetime plans are currently an incredible bargain. Foundry If you’ve priced online storage at any time, these lifetime deals are eye-popping. As mentioned, the 3TB forever plan (assuming the company lasts, of course) is only a bit more per-gigabyte than I pay for 1TB with OneDrive for two years. As to the company lasting, while I hate to be that guy, my job description requires that I point out that Internxt is now only five years old and online storage is a very competitive landscape. That said, I made that same caveat two years ago, when the company was just three years old, and it’s still here. It’s reassuring that the company employs the well-known OVH storage infrastructure. Worst case, your data will still be available for download after any corporate failure, and the lifetime pricing is more than worth a roll of the dice in my book. My being particularly risk-averse makes that a hearty endorsement. Note that features vary with the cost of the plan, not surprisingly. Most notably, the backup function is not available for free accounts. If you’ve priced online storage at any time, these lifetime deals are eye-popping. Internxt Drive features Internxt’s features are basically four-fold: sync, backup, sharing, and a recent addition — antivirus. The first three are located in a menu tree to the left of the web interface, and also the Internxt desktop app which resides in the system tray. The AV is only available in the local client, while sharing is done online. Syncing works like services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, etc. You drag or add files to a local folder/virtual drive that Internxt created, and they’re synced between your devices and the Internxt online storage. There are apps for iOS and Android. The pay plans also let you create a backup plan that will fire off automatically at a rate as granular as one hour. Add any files or folders that you want backed up regularly, set the schedule, and forget about it. Backups don’t sync. You can schedule backups as granularly as per-hour. This is the Mac client. Though I stupidly referred to it as such in my first review, Internxt’s backup isn’t true backup. A true backup is never altered, using versioning to reflect changes. With Internxt, any files that change overwrite older files. This is actually a form of one-way sync known as mirroring. The company is considering versioning (saving older files) but has not implemented it at the time of this writing. I’ve never needed it, and for most users, current-state backup will be fine. As mentioned, Internxt now includes antivirus with the paid plans. On both Windows and my Mac it proved extremely thorough — and aggressive. One scan registered 114 percent when I stopped it. I appreciate enthusiasm, but let’s stop at 100 percent please. This was from the Windows AV scan. 113 percent effort? I clicked on the above notice with some trepidation, fearing it would simply trash files out of hand. However, it only takes you to a list that you can then select items from. There is no quarantine, only remove. Be doubly sure before you remove stuff. There’s also a custom scan that will let you narrow the scope to a single drive or folder. The antivirus is also very aggressive, so be careful — there were quite a few false positives. Actually all them were, though I understand why most were selected. Internxt has ditched the Photo backup I tested for the last review, although you can still upload photos from your phone’s camera roll to the Family folder. For free accounts this is limited to 25 files per operation. Yup, a teaser. There’s also a separate section where shared files are kept—i.e., files shared with others, not among the Internxt sections. The separation reduces user confusion, even if it might waste a bit of space due to duplication. How easy is Internxt Drive? I’ve never seen an easier sign-up than Internxt. Provide your email, enter a password a single time, and you’re online with two sync folders (Family, Personal) ready to go. There’s an email verification to remove the yellow exclamation point next to your account level, but… The layout and overall structure of the website make it very easy to set up and use. As easy, or easier than any I’ve experienced. It’s got a clean look as well. The help that I complained about last time is also improved. But the app, while easy once you know it, is not particularly intuitive. Who looks for the backup function under “Preferences”? Maybe “Settings”… Then there’s “Change folders” for your backup when “Add/Remove folders” would be much clearer. And of course there’s the aforementioned paranoia-inducing “Remove Malware” button. To be fair, these might be translation issues as Internxt is in Europe. So why isn’t Backups on the main menu? Antivirus, a more ancillary function is. Open the Windows app after it’s installed, and there’s an icon to take you to the local Internxt sync folder. It’s on your C: drive in the same location as your user folders (Documents, etc.), but the name is a rather verbose affair with a hash value tagged on — “InternxtDrive – b44b4d7a-a509-4fd8-98d6-14429611abaa” in my case. Internxt should find a more attractive method of hashing it’s virtual drive folders. I suppose the hash is to allow multiple accounts on the same PC, as I logged on as three different users and two more of these folders appeared, but it’s an ugly naming convention. The Internxt web interface is easy to decipher and browse. But gone is the photos section, and you can no longer upgrade the capacity of the free account by inviting friends, etc. Overall, I give Internxt a B+ for its interfaces. They’re good-looking and functional, though there’s certainly room for improvement. How does Internxt Drive perform? Internxt fixed at least one of the bugs I spotted last time. Formerly, when adding the folder “1. Midi files” the folder showed up in the list as “1” and wouldn’t back up because it couldn’t be found. No such error now occurs. I also didn’t see any false error messages during backups. Nice. Sync across devices was generally fine performance-wise, though I didn’t go much beyond 1GB of files. Uploading photos from my iPhone was rather tedious with each one being encrypted. I didn’t see a setting to disable encryption. Backups also went off without a hitch on both Windows and the Mac for over a week, so I give Internxt an A for reliability. This is from the Mac client . Speaking of logs, Internxt keeps them and provides a link in the app, but they contain every operation. There should be a separate log for errors so you don’t have to search through 10MB of text to find them. The Mac client at least divides the logs into separate tasks. Also, I’d love more granular info on what and how much data has been copied. It seemed when I had two folders selected for backup, it considered the job 50 percent complete when one folder was copied, even though it was only 10MB while the remaining one was 7GB. Internxt should also implement bandwidth throttling. Backups came too close to maxing out the upstream traffic for my taste, slowing or creating issues for other tasks on occasion. I connect to the software Test Bed using Microsoft Remote Desktop and I was continually kicked off by Internxt backups. The Windows Internxt system tray popup lets you know that it’s on the ball. One thing I noticed was that Internxt doesn’t copy zero-byte files. If you sometimes use the name of a zero-byte file as a label for the contents of a folder or some such, it won’t be copied. This should be optional. Success is always the bottom line, and all the backups and syncs completed, so good on ya’, Internxt. But more info would be appreciated. Is Internxt Drive worth it? There’s no way around the fact that Internxt’s discounted lifetime plans are the flat-out steal in the industry at the moment. The client software could use some grooming, but hey, it works and it’s the best online storage deal in town for the long term. Further reading: How PCWorld tests cloud backup services Read...