Ben Funk
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Recent posts
For many, Ubuntu is the go-to distribution for a Linux desktop. Sure, there are a host of other distributions, some of which like Linux Mint are themselves based on Ubuntu. Thanks to pre-built systems like Dell's XPS 13 Developer Edition, Ubuntu has a lot of mindshare. That hasn't been the case on single-board...
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Smartphones have never been all that easy to repair, but that hasn't stopped owners from fixing (or attempting to fix) broken screens, dead charging ports, speakers that don't make sound, and a host of other issues. There's nothing quite like the feeling of using a heat gun to melt some adhesive underneath a screen...
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Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 series, the company's flagship notebook lineup, is no stranger to our offices. The various iterations of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon are some of our favorite ultra-light notebooks. In recent years, Lenovo has pushed the X1 family into 2-in-1 convertible devices as well, something we've very much liked...
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Zen 3 is coming, and it's close enough that we can just about taste it. While the Ryzen 5000 family of CPUs just might squash just about every architecture before it in single-threaded performance, every member of AMD's new processor family we've seen so far has been a desktop chip. A couple of recent leaks, however...
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Intel's 11th Gen Core Tiger Lake family of processors really impressed us in terms of is single-threaded performance gains as well as its general high level performance. It doesn't matter what the task, content creation, productivity or otherwise, 11th-generation Core processors from Intel could handle it with ease...
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Single-board computers (SBCs) are wildly popular AI development platforms and excellent tools to teach students of all ages how to code. The de facto standard in SBCs has been the Raspberry Pi family of mini computers. NVIDIA of course has its own lineup of programmable AI development platforms in its Jetson family...
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Lots of HotHardware readers love to learn about, look at, and experience high-end portable PCs with their sturdy build quality, luxurious materials, and high-end specs, but not everyone has the budget to buy one for themselves. An interesting subgenre of premium ultra-portable PCs is the upscale Chromebook, like Google's Pixelbook Go or Samsung's...
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Amazon's Prime Day may not have officially started yet, but much like Black Friday sales, retailers have no reason to wait for the actual day to start grabbing eyeballs and convincing consumers to bust out the ol' credit card. The ubiquitous retailer's big shopping event spans Tuesday and Wednesday, October 13 and 14...
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The AV1 video codec created by the Alliance for Open Media promises big gains in video quality for a given bitrate. The new codec also delivers an open, royalty-free standard that the consortium hopes to use to replace Motion Picture Entertainment Group's (MPEG) H.264 and Google's VP9. AOM says that AV1 can achieve...
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There is very little worse than knowing you've just lost everything to ransomware. When it happens on our phones, where so much of our identity and our lives live, the situation can feel hopeless. It's a never-ending battle for platform owners like Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Every time a company creates new...
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Intel's ultra-portable Tiger Lake aspirations got off to a great start and reset the playing field for laptop performance, once retail examples broke cover last week. We've all been interested in seeing what the company would do for an encore in segments where power budgets are higher. Current speculation is that...
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The Nintendo Switch phenomenon known as Joy Con drift "isn’t a real problem or hasn’t caused anyone any inconvenience." Reportedly, Nintendo is making this claim in its defense of the class-action lawsuit regarding Switch controllers registering input even when not being touched. These words will no doubt be of great...
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The name Team Xecuter might bring back nostalgic waves for console pirates from the early 2000s, but for Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, the name likely brought shivers down executives' spines. In the early 2000s, the notorious pirate hackers created several iterations of modification chips for Microsoft's Xbox...
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Always-connected Windows 10 PCs powered by Arm processors have plenty of potential as nice portable workstations with other-worldly battery life. Every time we've tested one of these machines, starting with the Surface Pro X, we've come away impressed with battery life while maintaining adequate performance for most...
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The last few weeks has been full of exciting product launches, and it seems like it might not let up for the next couple of months. One mammoth release among them is the emergence of Tiger Lake, Intel's 11th-generation Core processor lineup for notebooks and 2-in-1 laptops. We've already looked at Intel's reference platform, and the performance...
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While we are still in the early stages, more and more PC manufacturers have jumped aboard the Windows on Arm train. First we had Microsoft's initial offering, the Surface Pro X. Then Samsung joined the fray with the traditional-looking Galaxy Book S, with battery life that lasted for days. Now Lenovo has crashed the party with the Flex 5G,...
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While COVID-19 can claim some credit for more workers than ever performing their job duties remotely over the course of this year, the fact is the corporate world has been moving in that direction for a long time. At the same time, more businesses are trusting their data with private datacenters or public cloud...
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CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most hotly-anticipated games of recent years. The Witcher developer's take on the dystopian Cyberpunk tabletop RPG series promises to merge tons of action, series lore, and amazing graphics into a huge open-world adventure through Night City. From the screenshots we've...
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These days just about everybody takes Bluetooth for granted. Manufacturers phase out useful physical ports like headset jacks in high end devices with the expectation that buyers will use Bluetooth headphones. Our cars, watches, locator tags, home theaters, and even game controllers rely on the ubiquitous short-range...
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"Epic" might be the best word to describe what's sure to be a prolonged, dramatic court battle between gaming heavyweight Epic Games and iOS App Store walled garden builder Apple. By now you're familiar with the somewhat sneaky direct payment method Epic hid from Apple inside the iOS version of Fortnite during the...
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Windows 10 on Arm is starting to gain more traction, thanks to a bevy of new systems based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx high-performance mobile SoC, and its second-gen follow-on which was just announced. Those laptops have all been defined by two common traits: exceptional battery life with still a few lingering app...
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AMD's Navi family of graphics cards falls into a pretty tight price range currently, from the $170 Radeon RX 5500 XT 4 GB to the $400 Radeon RX 5700 XT, where AMD's Navi-based GPU ambitions max out (for now). Anything priced lower than that relied on the older cut down GCN Radeon RX 500 parts. While NVIDIA counts down...
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