The mid-year bounty
A glut of new products is a nice problem to have.
In this issue of APC you’ll find a very useful guide to making Windows 11 a bit better. For anyone that’s recently upgraded, we understand some aspects of the new OS came as a rude shock. There’s much to be loved about Windows 10 (and 7 – it’s still good!), and with our guide it’s easy (and a bit of fun) to tweak away and get 11 just-right.
Everyone loves a great read, and I hope you enjoy our AMD history feature. It’s an incredible story and it’s an ongoing and fascinating tale that’s still unfolding. We’ve all been witness to AMD’s Ryzen miracle, and how it not only brought supreme multi-core performance to the PC – but also how that chip shook up the industry and forced Intel to lift its game. Fascinating stuff!
Darren Yates continues his History of Australian Tech storytelling this issue, this time looking at the Aussie origins of two techs that truly changed the world; radar and microwaves. This is an ongoing six-part series, and we’re only half way there, with more legends of Australian tech to be covered.
Darren’s also dived into the arcane art of benchmarking, and he explains the fundamentals of why we benchmark, and how you can too at home to get a measure of your performance, and maybe identify your weak links that may need some attention.
Our reviews section this month is absolutely packed. It’s a bountiful time of the year, with so many new products raining down upon our poor unprotected heads in the Labs. We always try and give you a good bit of variety in each issue, covering a spectrum of products we think you’ll be interested in.
Right now there’s a flood of 12th Gen laptops hitting, and Joel with his testing is seeing some big performance differences between laptops using the same CPU. It turns out 12th Gen is very sensitive to the cooling capacity of the laptop chassis it sits in. We’re seeing differences of up to 20 percent for the same CPU in different laptops – all depending on just how good the laptop thermals are. That’s why it pays to read our reviews – because what’s on the spec sheet doesn’t necessarily tell the whole tale.
Hope you enjoy the issue, take care and see you in a month!
“There’s much to be loved about Windows 10 (and 7 – it’s still good!), and with our guide it’s easy (and a bit of fun) to tweak away and get 11 just-right.”