PCWorld November 2022

Google Stadia, the company’s first foray into the gaming market and a potentially earth-shattering approach to high-end game streaming, is dead—or at least it will be, once 2023 rolls around. In a somber blog post, Stadia’s general manager, Phil Harrison, said that the service will be shutting down on January 18 of next year. Most users will get a refund on their hardware and software purchases. Stadia was formally announced at the Game Developers Conference in 2019, just three and a half years ago, after a few months of testing the as-yet-unnamed game-streaming service. Stadia was introduced with great expectations: PC game-level performance, utilizing the latest in hardware to both enhance graphics and create brand-new kinds of game experiences, all streamed nearly instantly to players around the world via Google’s massive…

Microsoft’s Surface Pro 9 is noteworthy in one particular aspect: You now have a choice between an always-connected version with an Arm processor, or a more powerful 12th-gen Core chip for more traditional use. Essentially, the single Surface Pro 9 represents the merging of two product lines, with the traditional Surface Pro tablet and the Surface Pro X now transformed as the Surface Pro 9 and Surface Pro 9 with 5G, respectively. And that’s interesting, since the Surface Pro 9’s two different versions continue to significantly differ in both their capabilities and even their feature sets: one for performance and one for connectivity. Both versions of the Surface Pro 9 began shipping on October 25, starting at $999.99 for the 12th-gen Core (Alder Lake) and $1,299.99 for the Surface Pro 9 with…

Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 5 continues Microsoft’s tradition of providing a general all-around productivity laptop, though there’s one pronounced change for this generation: Microsoft has settled on a 12th-gen Alder Lake Core chip from Intel—and that’s it. The Surface Laptop 5 won’t offer us the chance to directly compare Intel’s latest Core against AMD’s latest Ryzen processor, as was demonstrated in our Surface Laptop 4 review. But it will still offer you a choice—between a 13.5-inch display and a larger 15-inch version. Inside, you’ll find the same processors used on the new Surface Pro 9: a choice between the Core i5-1235U and Core i7-1255U, with a faster i5-1245U and i7-1265U reserved for commercial versions. Preorders for the Surface Laptop 5 begin today. Prices will range from $999.99 to $1,699.99 for the 13.5-inch consumer…

While showing off its latest Pixel phones at its yearly hardware debut, Google also announced the first fruit of its union with Fitbit (fave.co/3Vqrlwi): the new Pixel Watch. This device has been highly anticipated, because not only is it the first Fitbit device to fully benefit from Google’s software, it’s the first device powered by the Wear 3.0 OS to come from a manufacturer other than Samsung. The Pixel Watch launches on October 13th for $349 ($399 for an LTE version), and it’s up for pre-order now. The Pixel Watch effectively has two identities. It’s both the flagship for Google’s latest refresh of its wearable brand, and the most expensive, highest-end Fitbit smartwatch. Though it doesn’t have Fitbit’s branding in the name, the software’s health metrics are powered by the popular system,…

For years, USB technologies have been an alphabet soup of terminology—when really all consumers care about is how fast the USB connection is. But now, finally, a new USB logo scheme solves this problem. The USB Implementors Forum recently unveiled new logos for laptop ports, chargers, and cables that actually try to communicate what each one does. It’s a far cry from the nightmare naming scheme that the USB-IF implemented in 2009. It’s worth noting that the names of specifications apparently haven’t changed, but the logos have, and that’s all that matters. USB-IF executives said the new logos were established alongside the new 240W USB-C power specification, which can now charge USB-C powered laptops at the levels required by even some gaming laptops. Now the various USB specifications are defined by their…

As speedy solid-state drives began to rise as a realistic alternative to the decades-old hard drive for consumers, early adopters worried that their new SSDs would fail faster and more frequently. But that might not be the case now, if it ever was. According to the latest Drive Stats report from online backup service Backblaze, its SSDs are failing at a consistently lower rate than old-fashioned hard drives. If the data can be replicated, it means that one of the last advantages (or perceived advantages) of the hard drive is disappearing. Backblaze tested its SSDs performing the same tasks it previously assigned to hard drives after a full company transition in 2018. This includes serving as boot drives, primary storage, temporary SMART storage, et cetera. After four years of aggregated data,…