PCWorld January 2022

It’s not as if we needed to be told that the chip shortage is causing increased prices for electronics and computer hardware, but thank Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan for spelling it out. In a tweet forecasting the direction of his company’s self-branded line of stylish gaming laptops, the executive stated flat-out that increased component prices would drive the price of the Razer Blade series up significantly. Just had a long meeting to review our gaming laptops line for next year—looks like there are significant increases in component costs etc and we’ll be seeing price increases for next gen gaming laptops across the board (including the @Razer Blade) next year. —Min-Liang Tan (@minliangtan), November 30, 2021 The tweet was spotted by VideoCardz, which notes that since Razer laptops are far from cheap at the…

Maybe you’re the type of person who laboriously organizes your Windows’ desktop icons, sorting them and adding them to specific folders. If you’re not, Stardock’s Fences 4 utility may be worth a look. On the surface, Fences—from the same developer, Stardock, that authored the recent Start11 app, which fixes Windows 11’s worst Start menu and taskbar sins—doesn’t offer anything truly novel. It simply organizes your desktop automatically. Windows’ Win+D shortcut allows you to “peek” at your desktop, and a related Win+Space shortcut within Fences 4 allows you to peek at your Fences. But like Start11, Fences essentially improves upon what Windows already does. So what does Fences do? On startup, the $9.99 Fences 4 utility automatically groups any icons on your desktop into a shaded region of your desktop, called a fence.…

With a flax-based PCB and a motherboard mounted behind the screen rather than in the usual place under the keyboard, Dell’s Concept Luna laptop definitely shakes things up. But the funky interior design isn’t even the boldest advancement. Dell created Luna to push a sustainable PC vision, and even wilder, you can send parts of it back to Dell when you upgrade for reuse in other, cheaper laptops. Yes, Dell is thrusting used hardware and responsible recycling into the spotlight. On the face of it, Concept Luna looks like a swing-for-the-fences attempt to build a laptop with half the carbon footprint of a conventional laptop. The aluminum body would be made in a plant powered by hydroelectric power, while the motherboard would be made with a flax fiber held together with…

Adobe’s creative tools are typically the standards for their respective industries. But unless you’ve been using them for years, or you invest in some professional instruction, they can be frustratingly hard to use. The latest in the company’s never-ending parade of apps is titled Creative Cloud Express. If the nondescript title isn’t helping, imagine it as baby’s first publishing tool. It’s based on the previous Adobe Spark program. At its heart, Express is a layout editor with a few image editing tools thrown in for good measure. The tool is leaning heavily on a collection of premade templates and art assets that can be slotted into place, then rearranged and tweaked to suit the needs of whatever the user is interested in at the moment. Primarily it’s designed for online promotional…

With large-scale security breaches more or less a permanent fixture of tech news, security practices among standard web users seem to be improving. But it’s not happening very quickly, at least if NordPass’s yearly report on the most common passwords is to be believed. According to the data gathered, hundreds of millions of people still use passwords that can be cracked more or less instantly, with “123456” taking the number one spot yet again. Over a hundred million accounts were found to be using it for the barest minimum of nonsecurity. Other popular passwords include “qwerty” (22 million accounts), “111111” (13 million accounts), and the ever-creative “password” (just shy of 21 million accounts). Less obvious inclusions like “superman,” “baseball,” and “q1w2e3r4t5” are used by only a million accounts each, but Nord…

The Windows Store has been terrible for years, mocking Microsoft’s attempts at a more mobile-style integrated platform on Windows 10. The company seems to have learned at least a couple of lessons from its failures. The Windows 11 version (now rebranded Microsoft Store) is a notable improvement when it comes to design, though still “somewhat lifeless” due to a lack of overall content, according to PCWorld’s Mark Hachman. Microsoft apparently likes the new version so much that it’s bringing Windows 11’s revamped Store app to users still on Windows 10, starting now. Windows 10 users are seeing the shiny new Microsoft Store experience pop up after a background update to the operating system. Bleeping Computer (fave.co/31ZnPCa) noticed the upgrade going out late last week. The most obvious change is a shift to…