PCWorld Jan-14

BEAMFORMING IS ONE of those concepts that seem so simple that you wonder why no one thought of them before. Instead of broadcasting a signal to a wide area, hoping to reach your intended target, why not concentrate the signal and aim it directly at the target? Sometimes the simplest concepts are the most difficult to execute, especially at retail prices. Fortunately, beamforming is finally becoming a common feature in 802.11ac Wi-Fi routers, at least at the high end. First, a bit of background: Beamforming was an optional feature of the older 802.11n wireless networking standard, but the IEEE (the international body that establishes these standards) didn’t spell out exactly how it was to be implemented. The router you bought might have employed one technique, but if the Wi-Fi adapter in your…

MICROSOFT’S INTERNET EXPLORER 11 for Windows 7 provides a nominal speed boost over IE 10, and includes performance-enhancing technologies such as prerendering and prefetching. Although users can download a copy of IE 11 for Windows 7 from the Microsoft website (go.pcworld.com/iedownload), the company is also sending out the upgrade through automatic updates. Overall, Microsoft claims, users will see a 9 percent performance improvement versus IE 10, and performance that’s about 30 percent faster than rival browsers. IE 11 ships with the new Chakra just-in-time Java compiler, which is designed to improve the performance of websites, plus support for components of the ECMAScript6 standard. IE 11 offloads WebGL graphics processing onto the GPU, reducing CPU power consumption and improving performance. Microsoft has improved the browser’s compliance with Web standards, too, including support for…

FEW THINGS IN computing are as vital as the lowly hard drive. If your computer’s memory goes bad or its processor blows up, switching out the dead component is easy enough; when a hard drive gives up the ghost, your precious files expire along with it. Just how long do hard drives last? We now have a semblance of an answer thanks to the BackBlaze cloud-storage service. BackBlaze employs more than 25,000 consumer-grade hard drives to back up its customers’ data, and the service recently released a comprehensive report (go.pcworld.com/backblazereport) on the life span of those hard drives over a four-year period. Life comes in waves Let’s get the big reveal out of the way: Only 26 percent of BackBlaze’s drives failed during the four-year testing period. That’s not too shabby for a…

AFTER MORE THAN 16 YEARS, the much-loved Winamp media player shut down on December 20, 2013, following a mid-November announcement from the software’s makers. Consisting of a small banner notification on the Winamp website, the announcement itself came with a whimper rather than a bang. Such an end seems sadly appropriate: The skinnable, customizable media player software was all the rage in the late 1990s, but barely made a peep after AOL acquired it in 1999. After years of floundering, Winamp saw the release of Android and Mac versions in 2010 and 2011, respectively, but those releases appear to have been too little, too late. Just as Winamp ruled in the era of Napster, iTunes and streaming media services such as Pandora and Spotify control the music scene of today. Winamp had the…

GOOGLE AND HP recently yanked the HP Chromebook 11 (go.pcworld.com/chromebook11) from store shelves, roughly a month after the laptop launched. The laptop disappeared from Amazon, too, as well as from HP and Google’s own Web stores. The reason: The Micro-USB charger that shipped with the HP Chromebook 11 is faulty, and some of the charging units have been damaged from overheating during use. Following is the full text of what Google public relations passed along when PCWorld asked for a comment from Caesar Sengupta, vice president of product management: “Google and HP are pausing sales of the HP Chromebook 11 after receiving a small number of user reports that some chargers included with the device have been damaged due to overheating during use. We are working with the Consumer Product Safety Commission to…

1 Asus Xonar Essence STU go.pcworld.com/xonarstu The Xonar Essence ST and STX have long been the go-to sound cards for audiophiles. Now the Xonar Essence STU offers the same impressive audio in a digital-to-analog converter, with easy-to-reach controls and a minimalist casing. If you use high-end headphones, you owe it to your ears to pick up one of these DACs. 2 SteelSeries H Wireless go.pcworld.com/steelh With the same drivers as the phenomenal SteelSeries Siberia Elite, the H Wireless is a great-sounding gaming headset. It’s not quite as sleek or sculpted as the Elite, but that might appeal to a certain crowd. It’s also wireless, so you can use it from the comfort of your couch. 3 Razer Taipan eSports Edition—Evil Geniuses go.pcworld.com/geniuses This Razer mouse, created in conjunction with the Evil Geniuses eSports organization, features an ultraprecise 8200-dpi laser sensor, an…