General Gaming Article |
- Comcast Rolling out Gigabit Internet via Cable
- New Lian Li Case Has Lots of Drive Mounts
- Newegg Daily Deals: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, Corsair Hydro H100i GTX, and More!
- Malwarebytes Scrambles to Plug Security Holes Pointed Out by Google Researcher
- Crappy USB Type-C Cable Sends Google Engineer's Laptop to the Grave
- Toshiba's Upgraded OCZ Trion 150 SSDs Boast High Bang for Buck
- Logitech Has Its Own VR Plans
- Fallout 4 Graphics Revisited: Patch 1.3
- Technolust: On the Road Again or Homeward Bound
| Comcast Rolling out Gigabit Internet via Cable Posted: 03 Feb 2016 02:30 PM PST Comcast announced this week the rollout of gigabit Internet connections for a handful of cities across the nation. The new service will hit residences and businesses in Atlanta and Nashville in early 2016, followed by Chicago, Detroit, and Miami in the second half of this year. Comcast hasn't yet provided pricing information. What makes this announcement a big deal is that the new gigabit service won't be experienced on fiber optic connections as seen with the company's current Gigabit Pro service, which costs $300 a month and provides speeds of up to 2Gb/s. Instead, this new service will use the current TV cable network that's already installed and sparkly new DOCSIS 3.1 technology. First introduced in 1997, DOCSIS stands for Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification. New versions typically don't make the headlines, the company explains, but v3.1 is different because it now allows gigabit speeds. That means Comcast doesn't have to run new lines and its customers don't have to pay a hefty fee for installing the necessary equipment, unlike other gigabit services. Comcast says that it has "extensively" tested the DOCSIS 3.1 modems in labs and simulated network environments, and a few have been installed in homes in Philadelphia and Atlanta. This rollout across the five cities will be the first time these modems will be widely used in homes and offices. Comcast will also be using its existing cable plants. News of the cable-based gigabit service arrives after Comcast introduced Gigabit Pro last year to metro Atlanta, which offers a 2 gigabit symmetrical (same speeds up and down) residential service. Gigabit Pro has evolved into an 18 million client business, spreading over Chicago, Detroit, Miami, Nashville, and other markets. It's a fiber-to-the-home solution, meaning potential customers must be located near Comcast's fiber network in order to get the service. Although Comcast's new offering will be slower than Gigabit Pro, it's still faster than what most North Americans receive from their broadband cable provider. There's a good chance Comcast will charge half of what its Gigabit Pro customers pay. Comcast says that installation will be as easy as switching out the old cable modem for the new DOCSIS 3.1 model. "DOCSIS 3.1 represents a tremendous step forward in our commitment to keeping customers at the technology forefront. Combined with all the upgrades we have already put into our advanced fiber optic-coax network, this technology will not only provide more gigabit speed choices for customers, it will also eventually make these ultra-fast speeds available to the most homes in our service areas," says Comcast Central Division President, Bill Connors. Along with the lack of a price, Comcast has also not specified if the new Gigabit service will have data caps or overage charges as seen with its broadband service. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| New Lian Li Case Has Lots of Drive Mounts Posted: 03 Feb 2016 02:21 PM PST Got a lot of hard drives you need to pack into a single mini-tower chassis? You're in luck, as Lian Li just introduced the PC-M25, a small form factor case that provides space for up to seven 3.5-inch hard drives. There's even a hot swap HDD cage that supports up to five 3.5-inch drives, and enough room left over to pack in a VGA card measuring up to 410mm in length. The specs show that in addition to the hot swappable cage, the new case provides an HDD tray at the bottom for the remaining two 3.5-inch drives, or three 2.5-inch drives if you want to install something smaller. The cage itself includes thumb screws and a rubber suspension, for ease of pulling out the five hard drives on the fly. On the cooling front, the case has a vent on each side and two fans: a 140mm intake fan to force cold air through the HDD cage and a 120mm exhaust fan at the top of the chassis. Thus air is pulled in from the front, blown across the hardware, and then up and out through the exhaust vent. Why not out the back? You need space for the ATX PS/2 power supply and its fan, which takes up around 230mm. Lian Li's new case supports Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX motherboards, and a CPU cooler measuring 80mm tall. Additional notable features include a tool-less side panel, vented PCI brackets, a PCI lock, a removable dust filter, and rubberized case stands to keep the case from scratching your desktop's surface. The chassis is made of aluminum and comes in either Black or Silver finishes. "Lian Li is famed for its quality of construction and minimal design, exemplified by the PC-M25. Everything from the power button to the case stands are cut from quality aluminum; it's a solid, lightweight chassis weighing only 8.24 pounds," the company says. The new Lain Li case measures 199(w)x322(h)x441(d)mm and will be made available in mid-February for a not-too-shabby price of $169. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Newegg Daily Deals: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, Corsair Hydro H100i GTX, and More! Posted: 03 Feb 2016 11:37 AM PST Top Deal: It's time to upgrade your graphics card and you're thinking, "Go big or go home!," right? But then you check out the asking price for a GeForce GTX Titan X and think, "Hmm, maybe I'll go just a little less big." Hey, there's no shame in that, and if you're looking for a potent graphics card that's not quite as pricey as a flagship, then check out today's top deal for an EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB FTW Gaming w/ACX 2.0+, Whisper Silent Cooling w/ Free Installed Backplate Graphics Card for $630 with free shipping (normally $680; additional $20 Mail-in rebate; Free game: Rise of the Tomb Raider w/ purchase, limited offer). It's not exactly cheap, but cheaper than usual, comes with a free game, and sports a custom cooling solution and reinforced backplate design. Other Deals: Corsair Hydro Series H100i GTX Extreme Performance Water / Liquid CPU Cooler. 240mm for $110 with free shipping (normally $130; additional $20 Mail-in rebate) Team Dark 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory for $60 with free shipping (normally $65 - use coupon code: [EMCEGEG32]) Dell U2414H Black 23.8-inch 8ms (GTG) HDMI Widescreen LED Backlight LCD Monitor IPS for $190 with $1 shipping (normally $200 - use coupon code: [EMCEGEG34]) Asus Black 12X BD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM SATA Internal Blu-ray Drive for $40 with $1 shipping (normally $53 - use coupon code: [EMCEGEG49]) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Malwarebytes Scrambles to Plug Security Holes Pointed Out by Google Researcher Posted: 03 Feb 2016 10:55 AM PST Time's up Google's Project Zero team doesn't mess around when it comes to security vulnerabilities—if it finds one that's noteworthy, it gives companies 90 days to fix the issue before going public. Surprisingly, one of the latest disclosures involved Malwarebytes, a popular anti-malware program. No anti-malware program is perfect, though in our experience, Malwarebytes does a good job of detecting threats that other software solutions miss. Be that as it may, Google Project Researcher Tavis Ormandy discovered a few security holes in Malwarebytes that could leave users vulnerable to attack, The Register reports. He alerted the company back in November of last year, but since several of the security issues have gone unpatched, they're now public. One of the lingering issues is that Malwarebytes doesn't use a secure channel to deliver updates, nor are they signed, which leaves users open to man-in-the-middle attacks. And the other security holes could lead to things like remote code execution and trivial privilege escalation. The good news is Malwarebytes isn't ignoring the threats, nor does it appear salty at Ormandy for pointing them out (companies *ahem* Microsoft *ahem* haven't always been receptive of Project Zero's 90-day policy). "In early November, a well-known and respected security researcher by the name of Tavis Ormandy alerted us to several security vulnerabilities in the consumer version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware," Malwarebytes stated in a blog post. "Within days, we were able to fix several of the vulnerabilities server-side and are now internally testing a new version (2.2.1) to release in the next 3-4 weeks to patch the additional client-side vulnerabilities. At this time, we are still triaging based on severity." Malwarebytes doesn't necessarily agree with Project Zero and Ormandy regardaing the severity of the security holes, but it is concerned enough with the findings that it's issuing fixes. The company also announced a bug bounty program that will pay anywhere from $100 to $1,000 per qualifying bug, depending on the severity. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Crappy USB Type-C Cable Sends Google Engineer's Laptop to the Grave Posted: 03 Feb 2016 10:16 AM PST Proving an expensive pointBenson Leung, the Google engineer who took it upon himself to test and review USB Type-C cables and adapters on Amazon to call attention to the dangers of using ones that are out of spec, just sacrificed his Chromebook Pixel to the digital gods. No cheap lesson, Chromebook Pixels start at $999 direct from Google. Nevertheless, Leung continued with his mission of publicly shaming (or praising, in some cases) USB Type-C cable makers through transparent user reviews on Amazon. When he attempted to test SurjTech's 3M USB A-to-C cable, he discovered just how troublesome a poorly constructed cable can be. "Hi, Benson here doing another USB Type-C legacy cable review. This one will probably be the last one I do for a little while because this cable (1-star review score, straight off) seriously damaged the laptop computer I am using for these reviews, a Chromebook Pixel 2015, and two USB PD Sniffer devices (Twinkie)," Leung stated in his review. Leung said he plugged the cable into the Twinkie as a pass-through and then into his Chromebook Pixel, which wreaked havoc as soon as he turned his system on. It immediately killed his analyzer, as well his laptop's USB controller chip, which took out both USB Type-C ports. "I directly analyzed the Surjtech cable using a Type-C breakout board and a multimeter, and it appears that they completely miswired the cable. The GND pin on the Type-A plug is tied to the Vbus pins on the Type-C plug. The Vbus pin on the Type-A plug is tied to GND on the Type-C plug," Leung explained. "This is a total recipie for disaster and I have 3 pieces of electronics dead to show for it, my Pixel 2015, and two USB PD analyzers." Mistakes happen on the manufacturing side, this one admittedly much more severe than most. However, the poor Q&A that went into this particular product wasn't the only egregious complaint. Further investigation revealed that even if it had been wired correctly, it's still yet another Type-C cable that's out of spec. Here's what he had to say in a follow-up Google+ post:
It's easy to take cables for granted and aim for the least expensive ones, but as Leung has shown on multiple occasions, these seemingly simple accessories aren't all built the same. Source: ArsTechnica | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Toshiba's Upgraded OCZ Trion 150 SSDs Boast High Bang for Buck Posted: 03 Feb 2016 09:34 AM PST Budget drives by circumstance only Even if you have no plans whatsoever of overhauling your setup and upgrading to a fancy pants NVMe-based solid state drive, you should be super excited about the category. Why? Simply put, those stupid-fast drives that take advantage of PCI Express are pushing yesterday's performance models into budget territory. Just look at Toshiba's new OCZ Trion 150 line for evidence of this. The Trion 150 line is pitched as a real-world performance upgrade to the Trion 100 family. You might recall that we evaluated a 480GB Trion 100 SSD and weren't exactly blown away, but if the Trion 150 does indeed improve real-world speeds like Toshiba claims, it would suddenly become much more compelling. Let's cover some stats. The Trion 150 uses Toshiba's 15nm triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash memory paired with Toshiba's own controller and firmware. The result is a list of performance ratings that, not too long ago, would have been considered top-end. Here's a look at capacities and speed ratings: And here's a look at street pricing:
Those prices are a bit cheaper than the what the Trion 100 series debuted at—the aforementioned Trion 100 480GB that we reviewed was $159 versus $140 for the same capacity Trion 150. Once again, Toshiba's hoping to entice "value oriented mainstream consumers" with these new drives, and at the above price points, the company has our attention. The question is, do these drives bring enough of a real-world performance bump to make them more exciting than their predecessors? We'll let you know as soon as we have a chance to run some benchmarks. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 03 Feb 2016 03:32 AM PST In a recent interview with The Australian Financial Times, Logitech CEO Bracken Darrell revealed the company's plans for entering the virtual reality market. However, don't expect to see products from the company any time soon. Darrell indicated that Logitech intends to enter the VR market late rather than bust in "early and awkwardly." "Just like with the mouse and keyboard, optimizing the experience of the peripherals that go with VR will be an interesting place for us," he said in the interview. "We're in the middle of many discussions in that space … and at some point you can bet we'll jump in. But we're years away from viewing that as a serious category." However, Logitech doesn't plan on developing its own VR headset, but rather the peripherals that would be used along with a third-party solution such as Facebook's upcoming Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive. Both those headsets will come with their own controllers, so whatever Logitech plans to launch is unknown at this point. That said, by the time Logitech enters the VR arena, the market may be into its second or third generation of headsets. The market should be quite large by then, giving the peripherals company a bigger playing field to develop VR products. After all, the VR market is expected to explode into a billion dollar industry in just a few short years. According to the interview, Darrell has been looking to expand Logitech's reach into new territories such as mobile since he took the CEO role back in 2012. Since then, the company has produced products for tablets and phones, portable speakers, and smart home devices like the "Harmony" TV remote controls and the Bluetooth Audio Adapter. Just last month, the Switzerland-based company saw a 3% rise in sales during its third quarter compared to the same quarter last year. Retail sales actually grew to 9% in constant currency at $595 million. Thus, the company raised its fiscal year 2016 outlook, expecting retail sales to grow 7% to 9% in constant currency. Logitech taking the road to VR should come as no surprise, as the company produces some of the best peripherals on the market. Logitech offers game-focused peripherals as well spanning from mice to keyboards to controllers for racing enthusiasts. We're keeping a close watch on you, Logitech | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Fallout 4 Graphics Revisited: Patch 1.3 Posted: 03 Feb 2016 03:22 AM PST War, war never changes……the hardware and software you're using, on the other hand, can change in rapid fashion, often rendering older results meaningless. This is the case with Fallout 4, which we initially benchmarked right after launch. Two and a half months later, we've just received the latest official 1.3 patch, which was in open beta for the past week or two. Unlike the beta, the official release is intended to be ready for general consumption. This is important because there have been rumblings that Fallout 4 performance has gotten worse with the patch. Let's just cut straight to the point: That's bollocks. We've got the same performance sequence we used in our initial testing, only now we're running the latest AMD and Nvidia drivers. After dozens more repeat benchmark runs, we can comfortably say that almost everyone will see some healthy improvements to performance compared to the state of the game back in November. But there's more to the story than just driver updates and bug fixes. Fallout 4 version 1.3 offers a few new enhancements to graphics, both courtesy of Nvidia's GameWorks libraries. Now, before any AMD fans get too bent out of shape, let's be clear that all the new features are optional using the graphics presets. So if you go into the options and click Low/Medium/High/Ultra, you won't even see the new enhancements. Instead, you'll need to open the Advanced menu, and there you will see the option to set Ambient Occlusion to HBAO+, and if you have an Nvidia GPU, you can also set Weapon Debris to one of four options (Off/Medium/High/Ultra). Weapons Debris appears to leverage some PhysX libraries—or at least, something Nvidia isn't enabling for other GPU vendors—while HBAO+ will work on all DX11 GPUs.  What does Fallout 4 look like with the image quality maxed out compared to the Ultra preset? The shadows are improved and there's more foliage in some areas, but outside of pixel hunting you likely won't notice a sizeable change in the way things look.   Besides the graphics updates, we've also noticed that the game now plays much more nicely when it comes to disabling V-Sync (iPresentInterval=0) or using a display that supports 144Hz refresh rates. Entering/exiting power armor no longer causes the player to occasionally get stuck, at least not in our experience, and while picking locks at high frame rates is a bit iffy (you'll break a lot of bobby pins), the only main concern with disabling V-Sync is the usual image tearing. Let's talk performanceBefore we get to the new performance numbers, let's quickly recap the launch. Fallout 4 showed clear favoritism for Nvidia GPUs, but at the time AMD hadn't released an optimized driver for the game. That came out about a week after our initial benchmarking, and it dramatically improved the situation for AMD graphics cards. Since then, we've seen the Crimson 15.12 and 16.1 drivers, but Fallout 4 performance has mostly stayed the same. Nvidia meanwhile has gone from their Fallout 4 Game Ready 358.91 driver to the current 361.75 driver, and they've also shown some performance improvements during the past few months. CPUs were also a potential bottleneck at launch, particularly for AMD graphics cards, but the optimized drivers appear to have largely addressed that area.
We're using the same hardware as before, though we've modified our choice of CPUs on the low end from parts that don't actually exist to a simulated Core i3-4350. Many gamers wouldn't be caught dead running such a "low-end" processor, but you might be surprised just how much performance even a Core i3 part can offer. We've trimmed down our list of GPUs slightly this round as well, dropping the GTX Titan X and GTX 960 as those scores aren't all that different from the other parts we're testing. And with that out of the way, let's just dive right back into the radioactive waters and hope our Rad-X can keep us healthy…. Running at 4K resolutions, particularly at Ultra quality, is generally the domain of multi-GPU setups, and that remains the case with Fallout 4. Sure, a single GTX 980 Ti can break 30 fps most of the time, and paired with a G-Sync display it's certainly playable, but it can definitely feel choppy. The good news is that nearly all of our GPUs show some decent performance improvements since launch, and especially AMD looks much more reasonable here. With the 1.3 patch in place, we now have two GPUs comfortably breaking the 30 fps mark, and even the GTX 980 manages to just squeak by. 97 percentile frame rates are all below 30 fps, however, so you can expect a bit of stuttering on occasion—especially when you're outside and transition between area boundaries. Fallout 4 doesn't demand ultra-high frame rates, however, and with a bit of tweaking (say, the High preset, or maybe just disable TXAA) you can definitely play 4K with the R9 390, GTX 980, R9 Fury X, and GTX 980 Ti. What's interesting is how far the gap has narrowed between AMD and Nvidia GPUs. Where the 980 Ti and 980 used to hold double-digit percentage leads over the Fury X and 390, with the patch and updated drivers the cards are now running basically tied (4–6 percent leads for Nvidia, but AMD has better 97 percentile results now). The 970 was also more or less tied with the 390 before, but now the 390 holds a sizeable 12 percent advantage. It's just unfortunate it took a couple of weeks after launch to narrow the gap. We could point out how badly AMD dominates Nvidia at the $200 market, though with sub-20 fps results we'll save that for below. If the changes at 4K were helpful to AMD, at QHD they're almost a night and day difference. 980 Ti used to lead the Fury X by 30-40 percent; now it's down to less than 10 percent. The 980 still beats the 390 by 5-15 percent, but it should given their respective prices; the 970 on the other hand has gone from leading the 390 by 5-15 percent to trailing by 5-10 percent. And we're not just talking meaningless numbers here; at 1440p Ultra, all of these GPUs are certainly playable—particularly if you pair them with a G-Sync/FreeSync display. 97 percentiles are above 30 fps for all of these cards, and if you're shooting for even higher frame rates you can always drop the quality settings a notch. For the lower priced cards like the GTX 950 and R9 380, 1440p Ultra still proves to be (mostly) insurmountable. The R9 380 4GB card is easily ahead of the others, however, and it leads the GTX 950 by almost 20 percent. Of course, it also costs 35 percent more than the GTX 950 2GB, so it's not really a decisive victory. 1080p Ultra isn't really where the highest-end cards are designed to run, though the 980 Ti still easily claims the top spot. AMD for their part shows 20-40 percent improvements compared to launch performance, with the Fury X benefiting the most. This is why driver optimizations for games are important, and the sooner you get them into the hands of gamers, the more likely they will be to recommend your hardware. If you're a day-0 gamer that pre-orders stuff in advance, AMD's track record doesn't look so good. Nvidia still shows better scaling overall, suggesting the CPU is perhaps more of a bottleneck on AMD GPUs in this title. We'll get to that further on down the page. Having 4GB of VRAM also looks to be a big boost to performance here, with the R9 380 outpacing the R9 285 by a solid 15 percent or more, where prior to the driver and game updates the gap was mostly equal to the difference in their core clocks. But what happens if you enable the new HBAO+ ambient occlusion—along with maxing out all of the other settings? (Note that the weapons debris option is only available with Nvidia GPUs, so we left it off.) If you compare the numbers from 1080p Ultra to our 1080p Max, interestingly, the gap between AMD and Nvidia narrows again. All of the GPUs we tested remain "playable" (meaning, higher than 30 fps averages), though interestingly it's Nvidia that appears to have more stuttering and low frame rates now. How's your CPU?To be frank, I wasn't actually going to retest CPU performance, but there was a small snafu. The last testing I had done involved Rise of the Tomb Raider, running with a simulated i3-4350. I ran all of these benchmarks using that configuration before realizing I was missing four cores and 600MHz of CPU clock speed. Here's the catch, though: The simulated i3-4350 still has a full 15MB L3 cache, where a real i3-4350 only has 4MB L3—and of course, quad-channel DDR4-2667 instead of some form of DDR3 memory. You might be wondering how I could have missed the lack of CPU performance, especially in light of our earlier findings. Take a look at the charts, though: Previously, we simulated much slower parts and ran with multiple core configurations. This time, targeting a real Core i3 SKU does a lot to eliminate the performance gap. In fact, there are actually some oddities that show up, with the "Core i3" part often beating the real Core i7. Our best guess is that by devoting the whole 15MB L3 to just two cores, more data can fit into the cache, resulting in improvements particularly for our 97 percentiles. Given we're testing with FRAPS, which is prone to wider variations between runs, we wouldn't read too much into these charts, but overall there looks to be very little difference in performance between our two processor configurations. Average frame rates are mostly within the margin of error (less than five percent), and only the two fastest GPUs (980 Ti and Fury X) appear to benefit from the hex-core i7-5930K—and even then, it's only at 1920x1080 Ultra where they outperform the simulated i3-4350. Crazy! I suspect everything else showing the simulated Core i3 "winning" is due to the cache differences, because really that shouldn't happen with a real Core i3. We've got a faster core clock, three times as many cores, and more than three times as much L3 if we're looking at a true i3-4350 comparison. But even if you have an actual Core i3 processor, short of dual GPUs it's very likely the CPU won't be a significant bottleneck. Prepare for cryogenic sleep…And that wraps up our return to the post-apocalyptic wastes. Things have improved, and if you like open-world adventures, Fallout 4 is awesome. You don't even want to know how many hours I've spent playing the game, let alone benchmarking it. But I digress. The short summary is that Nvidia continues to hold on to the performance crown, but AMD users no longer need to feel betrayed. In the midrange $200 GPU market, AMD even holds the lead, and with a few tweaks to the settings you should be able to happily run around soaking up rads until your eyes rot out. We'll continue to use Fallout 4 as one of our GPU and CPU benchmarks, because it's a popular title and can be reasonably taxing. But unless something really dramatic happens (like a DX12 patch, which is highly unlikely), this is going to be our last detailed look at Fallout 4 performance. Meanwhile, if you heard rumors that Nvidia was intentionally crippling performance on older Kepler GPUs, we did run a quick test with a GTX 770 using both older and newer drivers and found no noteworthy changes, so you can hopefully rest easy. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Technolust: On the Road Again or Homeward Bound Posted: 03 Feb 2016 12:00 AM PST Working from home and awayGetting things done efficiently and effectively is part of our everyday lives. If there's a product out there that can help you get your work done faster, that means more free time to do the things you enjoy. It's also important to be comfortable, and having used a lot of different products over the years, I know what I like and what I don't. I also know what I'll use and what will gather dust, so while it would be really cool to have a sweet drone or an awesome home stereo, they're not particularly high on my priority list. So what upgrades would I like to have right now? I can think of many, but at the top of my list are three things: a new smartphone, a new laptop, and a new chair—not necessarily in that order. My Dream Smartphone (for now)This might seem like a fanboy pick, but let me start out by saying that I only use one Apple product right now, and it's not something I purchased: It's my iPhone 5S 16GB. Prior to coming to Maximum PC, I used an Android phone, a Nexus 5 to be precise. I liked that phone a lot, but then I dropped it and shattered the screen (and repaired it, though it was never quite the same afterward). When I found out that my new job would provide me with a free phone, but it had to be an iPhone… well, I figured I would try switching and see how it goes. First the bad: I miss the back button of Android, and I despise iTunes. Over the past year, I've learned to live with the iOS interface and have found it to be responsive and generally easy to use—the switch from Android wasn't all that bad. I've also found that the GPS works a lot better than on my old Nexus 5. But iTunes… oh, how I love to hate you. On Windows, it feels like it was intentionally developed as a way to try and convince people that Macs are superior. Why do I need to install iTunes just to use USB tethering? Or transfer images from my phone to my PC? It's a clunky piece of software and something I do my best to avoid using. But the phone, well, the phone is still great. Design is where Apple really excels, and compared to most of the Android phones I've used and handled, iPhones simply have a fit and finish that's unmatched. I do think the 5/5S looks nicer in many ways than the latest offerings, and thinner isn't always better, but I do have a few gripes with the 5S. For example, turning on Bluetooth sucks my battery dry, the display is a rather smallish four inches, not to mention the 1136x640 resolution. Having come from a 5-inch 1920x1080 Nexus, I want something a bit larger than the 5S display, but not as big as the iPhone 6S Plus 5.5-inch display. The iPhone 6S is the near-perfect compromise in my book. I don't know if the Bluetooth battery issue has been fixed with the latest model, and I can live without Bluetooth most of the time. It's really about moving to that 4.7-inch display, although for a company that coined the "retina display" category, I'm a bit surprised the resolution is still only 1334x750. Apple is also really good about delivering accurate colors on their displays, however, so given the choice between their lower resolution and other companies' offerings, the iPhone generally wins. What's really surprising to me is how far Apple is pushing the performance metrics with their latest SoC. My old Snapdragon 800 in the Nexus 5 wasn't particularly sluggish, and the move to the 5S was more lateral than forward. But since the A7 in the 5S launched more than two years ago, Apple has come out with the A8 and now the A9 processor. As one of the first 14nm/16nm FinFET parts—yes, if you hadn't heard, Apple sourced the A9 from both TSMC and Samsung, which is frankly a crazy thing only Apple would do—the A9 is at the cutting edge of technology. In practical terms, the iPhone 6S is roughly twice as fast as my current 5S, with graphics performance often two to three times faster. Oh, and Apple also delivers NAND performance that's hard to beat. What's really impressive is that Apple delivers all of this with just two of their Twister cores. Why use eight run-of-the-mill ARM cores when you can custom design your own processors that are apparently superior in every way? That doesn't mean Apple's A9 wins every performance metric, but when we struggle to use more than two cores on many desktop PCs, it's not surprising that the benefits of an octal-core smartphone SoC are more for marketing than the real world. So far so good, but there's one area where I'm really techolusting after something more than my current phone: storage capacity. I got my phone for free, but I also got the base model 5S with a paltry 16GB of NAND. It's enough for minor use, but if I start snapping photos and recording videos, not to mention storing music for listening, 16GB gets gobbled up in no time at all. And of course, Apple has no intent to let you add your own micro-SD card, meaning you get what you buy and you live with it. For that reason, I'd normally go for the 64GB model, but in my dreams I'd go whole hog and nab the 128GB version—because why not? What does the iPhone 6S get me?In a word: more. More of everything. More performance, more screen, more resolution, more battery life, and more storage. There are few upgrades where you actually win in every single area, but this is one of them. The only compromise is in the money you have to spend. Depending on the color, an unlocked 64GB iPhone 6S runs around $800 while the 128GB 6S costs $890–$945. Buying a phone via a carrier can help bring down the price, but only about $50, so I'd rather just pay the extra for a fully unlocked phone. The biggest drawback? We all know we're only eight months away from the iPhone 7 launch. A Well-Balanced LaptopI've had the opportunity to play with some of the fastest notebooks on the planet for much of the past decade. They're awesome, and I love seeing things like the new GTX 980 for notebooks stuffed into MSI's GT72S. But when it comes time for me to actually get a new laptop for business and pleasure, I'm looking for something a bit more portable—there's nothing worse than lugging around a 15-pound backpack during a trade show! Enter Dell's latest revision of their XPS 15. It's come a long way since the earliest models, and the XPS brand is now basically Dell's take on a MacBook Pro Retina. In many ways, they even manage to beat Apple, which is saying something—plus, again, I'm not really an Apple devotee; I'll stick with my Windows OS, thank-you-very-much. The new Skylake edition packs a Core i7-6700HQ processor, which is plenty fast for my laptop requirements. There are many different configurations available, but the one I really want is the fully loaded XPS 15 Touch. $2,650 is a serious investment, but this is basically a go-everywhere, do-everything option. Joining the Core i7 processor is a not-insignificant GTX 960M graphics card. Granted, this is Maxwell 1.0 (GM107), which is a bit of a letdown, but it should still handle all games at medium to high settings running at 1080p. Besides, I've got my gaming desktop at home when I need it, so this is just something to let me game a little on the road. Optimus means I can still get good battery life, so there's no compromise there, and the top models are packing PCIe-based SSDs. In this case, you can get a full 1TB SSD, with no slow hard drive taking up space, allowing Dell to use a large 84Wh Li-polymer battery. Dell claims up to 17 hours of battery life, but they're probably running at minimum LCD brightness to get there; in practice, I expect 6–7 hours is more likely, and that's enough for me. The screen is probably the real selling point for me—and I'm not just talking about the 3840x2160 touchscreen aspect. In truth, I don't need that high of a resolution, but it still looks great. What I really love is the "InfinityEdge" design, where the screen bezel is super narrow, at least on the top and sides. Dell would get even more bonus points if they would use a different aspect ratio (16:10 or even 3:2 would be awesome), but that ship has mostly sailed so I'll live with a 16:9 panel. The InfinityEdge does force the webcam down to the lower bezel, which can be a bit odd, but my webcam use is pretty limited so again, not a problem for me. What does Dell's XPS 15 get me?Much like the iPhone, this is a case of more being better. I have a laptop with a 512GB SSD, and it's generally sufficient, but it's not a PCIe-based drive and it's often running at 75 percent filled or more, forcing me to move files over to my desktop. It's not a huge problem, but a 1TB SSD would definitely be nice to have. I'd also like the move to a faster GTX 960M graphics chips for on-the-road gaming (my current laptop's GT 750M is proving woefully inadequate these days), and Skylake should provide a moderate but welcome improvement to both performance and battery life. The important thing is that I can get all of this in a laptop that still weighs under five pounds, and while there are times when I'd like an even smaller Ultrabook-class laptop, ultimately I'm not willing to give up the larger screen size and keyboard. Sit Down and RelaxLast but not least, while the prior two items are great for when I'm away from home, most of my work time is spent at my desk. I've thought about standing desks, but for now I'm sticking with a traditional seated option, which means I need a good chair. I've gone through quite a few office chairs over the past couple of decades, and many of them have ended up in the dump after a few years. My current chair mostly works, but it's uncomfortable and lacks many of the adjustment options I really want. One thing that I know now is that I really don't like leather chairs, particularly when I'm going to be sitting there 5–10 hours a day. They don't breathe well, which is a real problem in the summer, and they're usually firmer than I'd like. Ergohuman makes some great chairs, and their ME7ERG is a fully mesh design—exactly what I'm after. With a current price of $625, It's about three times the price of my current chair, but having suffered with this seat for most of the past two years, I now realize how important a comfortable chair can be. The Ergohuman V1 has been around for a while, though it underwent a slight redesign in 2011. Unlike so many other accessories, chairs can last for decades if they're made right, and a good design won't become outdated. The ME7ERG can adjust the position of pretty much every element, ensuring good support whether you're sitting up straight or reclining. It's also a high-back model with a headrest, which is definitely a must-have feature in my book. The adjustable back gives you better lumbar support, and there's the usual tilt, sliding seat, and height adjustments. The single-lever control mechanism is also pretty slick, and the arm rests can move up and down as well as swiveling in and out. What can Ergohuman give me that I'm currently missing?
Somehow or another, I ended up with one of the least comfortable office chairs I've ever used, and I've been stuck with it for a couple of years. It looked nice when I saw it in pictures, but besides being leather it has a serious problem: It can't properly support my 6'3" 220 pound size. And by that, I mean the height adjustment keeps sliding down. I tried locking the hydraulics in place with a pipe clamp, but the clamp still slides, and that takes away the height adjustment feature. Even at its best, however, this chair was merely serviceable rather than something comfortable that I want to keep using. The Ergohuman is a far better design, with a lifetime warranty, so even if something does go wrong, the company will fix it. And then I can let my children use my current chair and leave mine alone (fat chance of that happening). | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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