APC September 2022

BEN MANSILL Works with the best damn editorial, design and production team in the biz. Welcome to this issue – and if you’ve come to us from our sister title TechLife – welcome to the world of APC! After many long years of serving up expert tech advice to Aussies, TechLife has now merged with APC. If you’re familiar with both mags, you’ll know that APC and TechLife have much in common. A very long time ago TechLife was known as PC User, and along with APC it helped Aussies discover the latest in tech for decades. TechLife always had the PC at its core, and you won’t find better computer coverage than right here in APC. But APC goes beyond the PC, just as TechLife always did, too. We’re all over the…

ABELSSOFT SCREENVIDEO Record your entire Windows screen. The Windows tool ScreenVideo offers a very easy screen capturing and films either the whole screen or only a part of it. A moderator function with picture-in-picture integration further enhances the films. This results in presentations, tutorials and documentations in resolutions up to 4K. The Windows program ScreenVideo films the current screen – either completely or only in parts. Allows a screen capturing (full frame or part) as video, moderator function (picture-in-picture), possible Special functions such as slow-motion effect, cropping, drawing sound transfer from webcam, microphone or system, output in quality levels up to 4K Download link: www.apcmag.com/exclusives ASCOMP TEXT-R Simple optical text recognition (OCR) for Windows. The problem: PDF files and images from a scanned paper document contain text that cannot be copied or edited. However, manual typing…

APC is Australia’s oldest consumer technology magazine – having been consistently in print for forty years, since our first issue way back in May 1980 – and we take that heritage and responsibility very seriously. While our focus is obviously on the personal computer the very definition of the PC has changed and shifted markedly since the early 1980s. As such, we touch on many other areas of tech, too, from smartphones and apps to peripherals, accessories, and beyond. We have two goals: to find the best modern tech and to help you make the most of it. We’re also an open church in terms of platforms. We know most people aren’t wed to a single brand’s products and use a variety of devices. And, like you, APC’s journalists want to…

Windows 8.1 will hit ‘End of Support’ on January 10, 2023. There’s still a bit to go until that fateful day, but Microsoft’s least-loved OS has already started getting all melodramatic, announcing its demise to users. Logging into a PC running Windows 8.1 today will produce a pop-up screen stating it is nearing the end, along with a link to Microsoft’s site, as BleepingComputer reports. Not that there are too many users left, since the most recent Steam Hardware & Software Survey pegs just 0.57 percent of systems with the OS currently installed. Given that Windows 7 is on 3.01 percent of machines, and support for that OS finished in January of this year, that alone says plenty.…

A new Windows Media Player update for Windows 11 has brought back CD ripping, meaning that any audio CDs you have can be transferred to your PC and added to a playlist. If you’ve been a PC user in the last 25 years, you’ve most likely come across CD ripping within a media player, allowing you to save your music onto your computer. However, in recent year’s it’s fallen out of favour, due to fewer PCs coming with CD or DVD drives, plus the rise in streaming services like Spotify. However, Windows 11 build 25158 will once again allow you to rip a CD into MP3, AAC, FLAC and ALAC within Media Player, alongside setting the bitrate.…

China, despite its growing economic status and political influence, remains behind the likes of the USA, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea when it comes to its chip sector, and the US would like to keep it that way. According to Bloomberg, the US is pushing Dutch chipmaking technology firm ASML to stop selling China essential tech that’s needed to grow its chipmaking sector. "The US continues to link technological and trade issues with politics and ideology and uses them as tools to push forward its technological blockade and decoupling in an attempt to block others’ path, but it will only isolate itself in the end." ASML is the world’s largest supplier of lithography equipment, which is essential for chip production. ASML is already barred from selling its most advanced Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) tools…