PC Magazine April 2022

Welcome to our second annual study on the best places to live if you’re working from home. Two years into the pandemic—which is maybe, finally subsiding but is definitely still happening—many of us are still working at home. Quite a lot of us may never commute again. We’ve had a real sea-change in US (and global) work life. Remote work has been a thing for years, sure. But never have so many employees turned their living spaces into their workplaces. It’s not that this wasn’t possible before COVID-19 struck, but remote work suddenly became very necessary, and current technology let it happen—more or less smoothly. Even now, though, as outside life feels like it’s getting safer, offices aren’t filling up so quickly. Employers have realized how productive working at home can be…

Verizon’s plan to cover 175 million people with C-band 5G by the end of the year is focused on the 46 existing economic areas the company is licensed to cover, which means those 46 regions are going to see complete coverage by the end of the year, Verizon’s VP of technology development and planning, Bill Stone, told PCMag after the company’s analyst day yesterday. “It’s about getting to 175 million of the 191 million [people in the 46 regions],” Stone said. Verizon’s big 5G expansion currently relies on its new mid-band, “C-band” airwaves. The satellite firms that formerly held them are required to release them in two bunches. The first group, 100MHz split 60/40 between Verizon and AT&T, is available in only 46 partial economic areas (PEAs). That includes most of the…

WINDOWS REQUIRES A MINIMUM OF 8 HOURS ONLINE TO UPDATE SUCCESSFULLY MS and other large vendors forget a lot of the country still doesn’t have reliable/affordable broadband. I live 90 minutes from Washington, DC, and cap out at 5Mbps. I’m getting a BSOD related to an incomplete Windows update that will likely require that I reinstall Windows, wasting many hours of time.—John2510 Eight hours to install, plus 100 milliseconds to reboot without permission and discard all of your work.—Freon Sandoz Microsoft’s arrogance (due mostly to its near-monopoly) is amazing. Only because there isn’t any other choice can a vendor get away with treating their clients so poorly. I guess doing something right because it’s the right thing to do isn’t anywhere in Microsoft’s playbook.—vonskippy It took my laptop only about 90 minutes to upgrade…

At Apple’s March 2022 event, the company’s M1 silicon muscled its way into added relevance on desktop PCs. Desktops are the original hardware that made Apple a household name, and the new Mac Studio desktop—and the M1 Max and M1 Ultra chips that power it—are the penultimate step in completing the transition away from Intel Core and AMD Radeon chips in favor of ARM-based processors, which Apple engineers design in-house. Those last steps will be bringing Apple silicon to the lone Intel/AMD holdout, the Mac Pro desktop, and (perhaps) to some differently sized iMacs. Apple has hinted that the Mac Pro move could happen soon, but in the meantime, there’s now a newly established hierarchy among Apple processors. At the bottom is the Apple M1, which powers the MacBook Air, the entry-level…

Influencers make life look easy. They float on unicorns in crystal blue pools, eat impeccably arranged meals, and document huge hauls of luxury goods. While it may not seem like the concerns of the world affect them, the inescapable issues of inequality persist in the online lives of Black influencers. So much of online culture takes from Black creators and influencers, and they get back very little in credit, followers, or payment. Instead, they often have to contend with harassment in comments and discrimination from social media platforms. Righting some of these wrongs online is theoretically not as difficult as it is in real life. Brands and social media platforms can change their practices and policies, but they have been reluctant to do so unless faced with pushback after the public has…

I’m already tired of hearing the word “metaverse.” My wife and friends turn to me, the resident Prophet-Nerd, whenever news reports from various talking heads on TV mention and re-mention “metaverse” every evening on a seemingly never-ending loop. Most people believe the metaverse is nothing more than a cleverly disguised re-branding of Facebook (a.k.a. Meta) in the wake of recent privacy snafus, disinformation sharing, and whistleblower come-forthings to appease shareholders and change the narrative. Others, like me, see a cascade event brought on by a global pandemic: Facebook, along with Apple, Google, and Microsoft, injecting critical-mass-level investment dollars into the second act of the internet as foretold by the Wachowskis in my favorite movie, The Matrix. HORIZON VENUES In his critically acclaimed 1992 metaverse novel Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson wrote, “Software development,…