APC April 2022

Welcome to an especially exciting issue of APC! There’s several different doses of excitement all in this single issue, starting with all our new bits. We don’t like to play too much with the magic formula that is APC, but we’ve been working on some tweaks to the ingredients, and a few small changes make for a big overall improvement. Beginning in this issue are some regular new sections that we hope you enjoy, and freshen up your APC experience a bit. Let’s open this box of chocolates, eh? Futures (page 24) is our all-new looking ahead and coming soonish tech page. The topics we cover will be relevant to your life at some point, and perhaps soon – for better or worse – so this is the place to get a…

ASHAMPOO BURNING STUDIO 2022 The classic tool to safely burn CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays Ashampoo Burning Studio 2022 is a powerful disc burning software for CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs. The software quickly burns files, audio and video to all recordable disc types but also specialised media such as BDXL or M-Disc. The built-in disc ripping auto-detects track names and easily turns audio files into custom audio discs complete with individually designed covers and inlays. Playlists can be auto-generated during ripping for easy playback in the desired song order. The program can also finalise discs to make them playable on older retail players or car radios. Built-in disc spanning automatically spreads data across multiple volumes if it can’t fit on a single disc. This makes it easy to burn entire photo, document…

“Championing technology doesn’t mean we’re unrelenting yes-men and -women, however, and APC aims to be as objective as possible in all our coverage.” 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…

Microsoft’s PowerToys just improved several of its best features in an update to version 0.56.1. The app now supports up to 128 FancyZones, up from its previous limit of 40. Shaking a mouse can now activate the Find my mouse utility in PowerToys as well. In addition to improving existing features, the most recent version of PowerToys fixes quite a few bugs. The FancyZones feature is a window management utility that allows you to snap windows into different layouts. Some similar options are built into Windows 11, but FancyZones is more powerful when it comes to window management. With support for up to 128 FancyZones, you may need one of the best computer monitors to take full advantage of the feature.…

As a result of the United States government’s export restrictions on semiconductor sales to Russia due to its war against Ukraine, both Intel and AMD have suspended chip sales to Russia. In addition, reports have also emerged that TSMC’s decision to participate in the sanctions will thwart Russia’s supply of homegrown chips. The new US export restrictions are akin to the sanctions levelled at Huawei, but they apply to an entire country – a first. Russia has prepared for years to deal with potential sanctions, especially in the wake of the international sanctions in 2014 after its actions in Crimea, by both promoting its own indigenous semiconductor production and also stockpiling chips for just such an occurrence. The new export restrictions are primarily aimed at chips for military purposes or dual-use chips…

Chiplets play a huge role in gaming processors today as a big part in AMD’s rise to the top with its Ryzen CPUs. There’s more to come, too. Intel is going hard on chiplet (or tiled) tech with its coming generations of CPUs and GPUs, and we’re only seeing the start of it today. One step toward that interconnected future is a consortium to promote an open die-to-die interconnect standard called Universal Chiplet Interconnect Express (UCIe), announced today by tech’s heavy hitters. According to Intel, this unified standard for interoperable chiplets will drive down costs and deliver 20x better I/O performance at 1/20th of the power. The consortium consists of Intel, ASE, AMD, ARM, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Samsung, and TMSC. Intel had originally developed the UCIe standard and donated it to…