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The NY Times will flip the switch on its digital paywall next Monday, and the Grey Lady don’t come cheap: $15/month for the website and the phone app, $20/month for the website and the iPad app, or a wallet-singeing $35 for web, phone, and iPad. But there are loopholes! And they are generous. Here’s your game plan.

Read For Free

As much as a paywall might get your hackles up, the folks running the Times understand that no amount of digital subscription revenue would make up for the sting an page view exodus. That’s why—in addition to 20 free articles … [Read More...]

The Asus GTX 590 takes on the AMD Radeon HD 6990 in a battle of the dual GPU cards. Win, lose or dead heat? We put them to the test.

Hot on the heels of AMD’s Radeon HD 6990 dual-GPU monster, Nvidia is putting the pedal to the metal with its own dual GPU video card. The GTX 590 implements a pair of full GF110 CPUs, each with its own 1.5GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory, all 1,024 shader units and a custom cooler. There are, however, some compromises. The core clocks are set to 607MHz—substantially down from the 772MHz of … [Read More...]

Which AV product is up to the task of keeping your PC squeaky clean and immune to malware?

In some ways, visiting cyberspace is kind of like entering a crowded subway car during the peak of flu season. You’re surrounded by all sorts of germs—in the form of trojans, spyware, viruses, rootkits, etc.—just looking for a vulnerable host to invade and feed on. Once you’re infected, these pests can wreak havoc on your system, swiping your personal information and passwords, annihilating your credit rating, and stealing your identity. To avoid a potentially virulent attack, you need to take precautions.

Wouldn’t … [Read More...]

We’ve waited a long time for Google Cloud Print, and it’s every bit as convenient as we had imagined. The new service from Google makes it possible for PC users to wirelessly print to a networked printer from smartphones, laptops, and tablets capable of supporting Google services, such as Gmail or Google Docs. To get your own Google Cloud Print party started, follow these simple steps.

1. Download Google Chrome Beta 4

Google Cloud Print supports a number of flavors of Windows, including XP, Vista, and Windows 7. No matter which version of Windows your rig is rocking, you’ll need … [Read More...]

System builds up, instead of out

Just how much power can you stuff into a small form factor rig? Ask that question of Digital Storm and the company will likely lay its fabulous Black Ops Enix on you.

Using Silverstone’s wickedly cool Fortress FT03 case, the Enix is like your typical small form factor lunch-box design, turned on its head. This gives it a couple of big advantages. The most obvious one is as clear as a skyscraper: a footprint that’s little larger than a piece of binder paper. The second advantage is thermals. Heat likes to rise, and with … [Read More...]

XCom Global brings WiFi to your pocket in more than 35 countries, for $17.95 per day.

For international travelers, feeding an Internet addiction while traveling abroad can be incredibly inconvenient, not to mention costly. XCom Global, a rather-fresh entrant to the International roaming market, has the perfect solution, however. Travelers can rent a pocket-sized unlimited-use Novatel MiFi 2373 device from the San Diego-based company for $17.95 per day, regardless of your destination – less than you’ll pay for WiFi in many European hotels.

We took an XCom Global MiFi on a recent trip to Paris, and the device arrived two … [Read More...]

Can an off-the-shelf cooling loop out-cool a custom-built system?

I’m taking a standard midrange computer with a Core-i7 930 CPU (stock speed: 2.8GHz) and clocking it up to 4GHz. That’ll up my CPU’s heat output, and I’ll need better cooling. Water-cooling can be quieter and more effective than air, but isn’t necessarily cheap or easy to install.

How much time and money do you need to spend to get good cooling? To answer this question, I’m testing three build options: a basic off-the-shelf liquid-cooling loop (Corsair’s H70), an all-inclusive Swiftech DIY kit, and finally, a custom-built water-cooling setup of my … [Read More...]

Tegra 2 makes for a scary-fast smartphone

As far as referendums on nVidia’s new Tegra 2 processor go, Motorola’s and AT&T’s Atrix 4G is a shining success. It throws off beastly performance and also manages to greatly reduce power consumption. However, when viewed as a referendum on the ARM architecture’s potential to scale up and supplant x86 in laptops and desktops—or even run Windows—the outlook isn’t quite as promising.

First the basics. This is the fastest phone we’ve ever seen. In our CPU, GPU, and combined benchmarks, the 1 GHz dual-core Tegra 2 CPU and GeForce ULP GPU core helped … [Read More...]

Thunderbolt to compete with USB 4.0 rather than USB 3.0

A Thunderbolt chip inside Apple’s newest Mac Book Pro (image courtesy ifixit.com)

If Intel thought that launching Light Peak would help tamp down the nervousness over its new I/O technology, it certainly isn’t playing out that way.

Light Peak, now dubbed Thunderbolt, was never without controversy but now that it’s finally here, the critics aren’t ready to put away the slings. After its launch, the New York Times opined: Is Thunderbolt Really a Thunderbolt? and questioned its consumer value. Slate wondered if it was a worthless grasp at the past? … [Read More...]

And the winners are…

If Nathan Edwards had known that our Art Director would re-color his fancy Glowstone trophy, he wouldn’t have spent so much time mining ore in Nether.

Another year passes, and PC games continue to deliver a healthy dose of shock and awe, sometimes in surprising forms. The advent of DirectX 11 is making games look better than ever. But this year’s Game of the Year delighted us not with spectacular graphics, but the nostalgic look and feel of a 32-bit console. We played through hundreds of titles collectively, and after heated debates, secret meetings, and clever-award-title … [Read More...]

What do you think of when you hear the word “BitTorrent”? For a lot of people, the word connotes illegal activities. But if you ever need to lawfully host a large file for others to download and don’t have the bandwidth to let them download it directly, BitTorrent—which reduces the strain on your own hosting by allowing users to help upload the file at the same time as they download it—is a great way to distribute it. Here’s how you can create your own BitTorrent file.

1. Download uTorrent

First off, you’ll want to grab the torrent client uTorrent (www.utorrent.com) … [Read More...]

Spring is near! The sun is shining, the weather is warming and holy what the mothercakes, gas is four dollars a gallon right now?! And what mister newscaster? It’s going to get more expensive? Geez! This is getting out of hand. We all would appreciate saving some money on gas. Here’s how.

Fill Up at Cheaper Gas Stations

Filed in: duh. But, seriously, filling up at cheaper gas stations, no matter how minuscule the difference, saves you money in the long run. And it’s not hard to find the cheap stations! Start with GasBuddy, a free app on both Android … [Read More...]

Double the GPUs, double the performance, at almost double the price.

AMD’s dual GPU cards have come a long way in the past several years. The original Radeon HD 3870 was noisy, ran hot and didn’t always perform up to snuff. Since then, AMD’s Catalyst Driver suite has substantially improved the performance and breadth of CrossFire-supported games.

On the hardware side, AMD is pulling out all the stops with its Radeon HD 6990 card. The company understands that a dual GPU card is most appealing to a small band of enthusiasts who really want the card to push the edge … [Read More...]

Most of Windows 7’s accessibility options are, at best, of dubious usefulness to the average PC user. And that’s fine, as they’re generally designed for people with special needs, and can be easily deactivated. There’s one accessibility option, however, that can be a big help to anyone: Mouse Keys.

If the name didn’t tip you off, Mouse Keys is an accessibility option that allows you to control the mouse cursor using your keyboard. This can be useful in two ways. First, there’s an obvious utility to Mouse Keys if your mouse ever breaks, or if you have to disconnect it … [Read More...]

One puck to control them all

Square Connect’s SQ Blaster solves a problem we’ve been grappling with for some time now: Integrating control over the devices we manage using the Z-Wave home-control protocol (especially lighting) with control over the devices we manage using infrared, all with a single universal remote. The fact that this hardware/software combo is inexpensive is icing on the cake.

Inexpensive is, however, a relative term: The SQ Blaster’s $200 price tag is pricey if all you’re looking for is a basic infrared repeater (although some kits, such as $320 Niles Audio’s RCA-HT2, are priced a lot … [Read More...]

As PC users, we’re conditioned to think of software as something you run from within an operating system, and an operating system as a collection of files that you save to a hard drive, and then run at boot. However, you’ve probably run into some software that breaks this mold: “Live” operating systems, which can boot from a CD or USB drive, and applications that can be run directly from a CD, without the use of an OS. These can be some of the most useful tools at a hardcore computer user’s disposal, but it can be hard to keep … [Read More...]