Speedtest.net is one of the most popular online tools for people to measure their Internet speed and bandwidth. Every day, millions of users around the globe use this tool from their web browsers, mobile devices, and even smart TVs. Now, Speedtest launches an internet speed leaderboard that will be updated monthly, called Speedtest Global Index. The Global Index takes data from the Internet speed tests in the specific month. According to Speedtest, they have over six thousand servers in more than 190 different countries. This huge, comprehensive infrastructure can ensure people’s ability to test their Internet using a local server. It therefore prevent inaccurate speed test results, when connecting cross-country servers. A country’s ranking will only be included in the Speedtest Global Index, if it has got over 3,333 unique user results and over 670 unique user results for broadband and mobile network respectively. The rankings are determined by the country’s average Internet download speed. If you click an individual country’s name in the list, both its download and upload speeds, as well as a chart will be displayed to show the trend/improvement. Currently, rankings in July 2017 is released. For mobile, Norway is at the top with a download speed of 52.29 Mbps. United States is at 46 with 23.05 Mbps. For broadband, Singapore puts itself to the top with a speed of 154.38 Mbps, which is also forth in mobile. United States comes in at 9 with 70.75 Mbps. Source from Speedtest. Feel free to leave comments below, if you have any opinion about this website. Share the website around if you enjoy reading it. Subscribe to our Newsletter or follow our Google+, Facebook and Twitter. Support this website simply by shopping in Amazon. It will give us small kickbacks, if you use the above affiliate links to make any purchases, which will help us grow.
Consumer Reports, a well-known magazine that publishes reviews of consumer products, removes its recommendation from four Microsoft Surface laptops. And at the same time, it cannot recommend any other Surface computers (including tablets), due to bad predicted reliability.
The Microsoft Surface Laptop (128GB and 256GB) and Microsoft Surface Book (128GB and 512GB) are the four Surface computers that no longer recommended by Consumer Reports. In fact, those laptops did reasonably well in previous tests from CR (Very Good or Excellent Scores). The decision made by Consumer Reports is based on its annually conducted survey about products’ reliability. From Consumer Reports:
New studies … estimate that 25 percent of Microsoft laptops and tablets will present their owners with problems by the end of the second year of ownership.
The above studies collects data on over 90,000 laptops and tablets, that were bought new between 2014 and early 2017, from Consumer Reports’ subscribers. Some of the devices have problems like unresponsive touch screen and unexpected shutdowns. According to CR, Microsoft’s estimated breakage rate for its Surface Computers was significantly higher than other brands’. This is the main reason why CR would not accept them as recommended products, not up to CR’s required standards. After CR’s announcement, Microsoft quickly responded. They are disappointed and disagree with CR’s survey results. They claim that they are constantly improving the Surface Computers’ quality with a 1/2-year failure rate well below 25%. They stated to have about 98% of their Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book users are satisfied with the products. However, it is common for Consumer Reports to adjust its rating of different products, such as the Apple’s Macbook Pro Late 2016 models. Sources from Consumer Reports and Microsoft.
Feel free to leave comments below, if you have any opinion about this website. Share the website around if you enjoy reading it. Subscribe to our Newsletter or follow our Google+, Facebook and Twitter. Support this website simply by shopping in Amazon. It will give us small kickbacks, if you use the above affiliate links to make any purchases, which will help us grow.
If you are new to using Apple’s macOS, you will notice its slightly different keyboard layout. All of your familiar Windows keyboard shortcuts are not functioning. You have to click everything using the mouse, causing you precious time. However, there are a couple useful macOS keyboard shortcuts that are able to help you increase your working efficiency, once you have mastered them.
In general, (but not the key combinations)
Command key = Windows key
Option key = Alt key
Return key = Enter key
Quit Applications
In macOS, you are not actually quitting the programs when clicking the cross/red button on the top left. The programs are still running at the background. To exit an application, press “Command + Q”. It is every helpful, especially if you have multiple applications opened.
Cut, Copy and Paste
“Ctrl + C” and “Ctrl + V” are probably the most well-known keyboard shortcuts in Windows environment. There are similar key combinations to perform the same functions in macOS. If you press “Command + X”, “Command + C” and “Command + V”, you can conveniently cut, copy and paste using these shortcuts.
Spotlight Search
To get the most out of macOS, you must know how to use Spotlight Search. It not only let you search for documents and applications in the machine, but also can answer simple questions directly with suggestions. In order to quickly access Spotlight Search, you can press “Command + Space”. If you have different input languages set up, you may need to press “Control + Space” to call up Spotlight Search.
App Switcher
You can switch between applications using “Alt + Tab” in Windows. This is useful if you open a few applications, but without a multiple monitors set up. For macOS, the keyboard shortcut is changed to “Command + Tab”.
Screenshot
You will not find a “Print Screen” button on any macOS dedicated keyboards. Instead of using one specific button, you will need to press “Shift + Command + 3” (entire screen) or “Shift + Command + 4” (selected portion of screen) to capture your screen. All the screenshots will be saved at your Mac’s desktop. Of course, there are still tons of keyboard shortcuts in macOS. You can find and learn to use them to suit your needs and habits from Apple. The above 5 shortcuts are some of the most common actions that a normal user will need. Hope you find them useful. Feel free to leave comments below, if you have any opinion about this website. Share the website around if you enjoy reading it. Subscribe to our Newsletter or follow our Google+, Facebook and Twitter. Support this website simply by shopping in Amazon. It will give us small kickbacks, if you use the above affiliate links to make any purchases, which will help us grow.
As Internet become an unshakable part of our daily life, we rely on it to do almost everything, from social media, communication, to online banking/accounting. We store a lot of our private personal information in those websites. However, most of them are only protected by a easily hackable password. People create simple passwords, like “ABCDEFG”, “123456789”, and using the same password in every site. According to some online security centers, over 560 million passwords are found on anonymous database. Therefore, I tried using a password manager.
My Requirements
Store passwords locally
Cross-platform support
Seamless user experience
With any cloud based password managers, your data is stored in the companies’ servers. Although they can be easily accessed and synced across different platforms, they are not secure enough with a higher chance for being hacked. A locally stored password manager provides user more control over how their precious data is used and shared.
Being able to use between multiple devices in different operating systems is one of the must-have functions that a password manager needs. Each user generally has more than one devices, computers and smartphones. Comprehensive platform support allow users to maintain the same level of security when switching devices.
The main reason that deters people’s incentives to use a password manager is the cost of extra input time. No one would like to use a password manger, which requires them to copy and paste the passwords every time.
Why I choose Enpass Password Manager
First of all, Enpass Password Manager do not store any data in their servers. They keep the 256-bit AES encrypted passwords in your local machine, which is what I prefer. This reduces the risk of leaking and hacking.
For most online password managers, they tend to charge users for a subscription fee monthly or annually; while offline managers would likely to charge users for the applications. However, Enpass Password Manager offers a completely free desktop application with no restriction (unlimited number of accounts). A free mobile application is also available with a limitation, only able to store up 20 accounts. If more entries are needed, a fully-featured mobile app costs $9.99 USD per platform for a lifetime license.
Moreover, Enpass supports almost any operating systems, devices and web browsers. Windows, macOS, and Linux are supported in desktop environment. Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and even Blackberry OS have their compatible applications. I can easily install Enpass in all my devices without any problem.
It is a smooth experience when using Enpass. You can install their web browsers’ extensions (plug-ins) to enable websites autofill. This is a great feature that allows you to enter all the account credentials in just one click. I find the autofill very useful and intuitive, without causing me extra time to copy and paste passwords from the software.
How to use Enpass Password Manager
When you are setting up for the first time, you will have to create a master password. It is the main key that will be used to unlock the Enpass application. This is the only password you need to remember. Keep in mind that there is no way to recover your data if you forget it. Also, please make a strong and hard to guess password for it. Random word phrases work the best, such as “buyexcitedsunwebsite” and “getinternetgreatcomputer”.
To add an account information, press the “+” button. Enter all the required credentials needed for log in. You can either type in your own password or let Enpass to generate a random password. You can customize the password length, decide if it is composed of pronounceable words, or how many number and characters.
When you are logging in, press the browser’s extension button near the address bar. A small window with all your accounts will pop up. If you have entered the log-in page as the account URL, Enpass will directly show you the responding account. Or you can search for your desired one. Then, double click the account name, everything will be autofilled and logged in.
There is still an optional feature if you want to sync all the passwords across your devices. You can choose to sync with online cloud storage, such as Dropbox and Google Drive. Also, you can determine how secure your Enpass Password Manager is. Choosing how long it will prompt for entering the master password at idle, sleeps and locked.
Conclusion
I have been using Enpass for half a month now (7 August). It has been performing very well without any issue. In fact, it has sped up my log-in process a lot. No need to type in the long email address and password, I can enter every website with a click. For my usage scenario, Enpass is more secure than I need. With a local storage and optional cloud sync, it will fit most people requirements in both security and convenience.
I recommend everyone, especially those who never use a password manager before, to try Enpass Password Manger. The result may surprise you.
Feel free to leave comments below, if you have any opinion about this website. Share the website around if you enjoy reading it. Subscribe to our Newsletter or follow our Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Support this website simply by shopping in Amazon and Newegg. It will give us small kickbacks, if you use the above affiliate links to make any purchases, which will help us grow.
Have you ever experienced a situation that you need to quickly share a file with someone, but it takes too much time to create a shared folder in cloud storage, like Google Drive and Dropbox. Or it is hard to find out the receivers’ emails. Now, Mozilla provides a easy-to-use website for everyone to share files, called Firefox Send.
Firefox Send is a new Firefox Test Pilot experimental feature. It is compatible with any modern web browsers, such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Unlike normal Test Pilot features, Send does not require user to install any browser plug-in. Similar to Apple’s AirDrop, Send provides a cloud hosting file sharing service without the need of emails and mass storage devices. It allows files transfer between two people privately, instead of a group.You can upload file size up to 1GB. A unique download link will be given. The file will be encrypted and it will be removed after one download or after 24 hours (like Snapchat).
To use Firefox Send, you have to select your what file to upload from your computer, maximum 1GB in size. After completing the upload, a link will be provided, which you can share this link with another person. In this screen, you can also choose to delete the file or upload another one. For the receiver, type in the shared link at the web browser. You can download the file, and also try using Firefox Send yourself. The link will be expired after one download or after 24 hours. Firefox Send is now available for everyone, though it is just for experiment at this time. Send will be a good way for a quick share of file with friends. Emails generally have limits in attaching files, about 20 MB in size. It will not be a long-term solution for file sharing and with a large group of people. Try Firefox Send now at https://send.firefox.com/. Source from Mozilla. Feel free to leave comments below, if you have any opinion about this website. Share the website around if you enjoy reading it. Subscribe to our Newsletter or follow our Google+, Facebook and Twitter. Support this website simply by shopping in Amazon. It will give us small kickbacks, if you use the above affiliate links to make any purchases, which will help us grow.
Not long ago (July 30), AMD released their next-generation flagship graphics cards for gaming, the RX Vega. AMD does not provide us more details of how the RX Vega will be performing, except for some general specifications and synthetic benchmarks results. Now, couple benchmark results of the RX Vega 56 were leaked.
The RX Vega 56 does not feature a fully enabled Vega GPU. It gets only 56 out of the 64 compute units. It is also clocked slightly lower than its bigger brother – RX Vega 64. It is a direct competitor of the Nvidia Geforce GTX 1070. They are both priced similarly.
The above benchmarks are run at a resolution of 2560×1440, on a Windows 10 machine. The testbench is configured with an Intel Core i7-7700K at 4.2 GHz with 16GB of RAM. They ran the benchmarks on 4 games in certain graphics settings.
Call of Duty: Infinity Warfare on High Presets
DOOM on Ultra with 8x TSAA
Civilization 6 on Ultra with 4x MSAA
Battlefield 1 on Ultra Presets
The results are quite promising for the AMD RX Vega 56 in a real world gaming test. The RX Vega 56 gains the least 8.46% advantage in COD:IW over the GTX 1070. In DOOM and Civilization 6, RX Vega 56 gets 101.2 FPS and 85.1 FPS, about 17% to 19% more than the 1070. The RX Vega 56 has the biggest separation in Battlefield 1, over 32% higher FPS.
On average, RX Vega 56 is leading the GTX 1070 at about 19.5%. With a similar price but better performance, the RX Vega 56 might be a great deal for a proper gaming PC. However, the above benchmark results are not confirmed in any way possible. Do not take them as your only reference when purchasing anything.
Feel free to leave comments below, if you have any opinion about this website. Share the website around if you enjoy reading it. Subscribe to our Newsletter or follow our Google+, Facebook and Twitter. Support this website simply by shopping in Amazon. It will give us small kickbacks, if you use the above affiliate links to make any purchases, which will help us grow.
When Intel introduced the Optane Memory to the public in April 2017, people became confused about what is the use of this new type of memory. The memory module uses a normal M.2 slot on a motherboard, but with only up to 32GB of storage. Why do we need this Optane memory, if we can get a 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD? What is it?
Intel Smart Response Technology (SRT)
This is one of the features from Intel’s Rapid Storage Technology (RST) that allow users to create a dynamic SSD cache for the slower HDD in the system. It requires at least two drives or a solid-state hybrid drive (SSHD). The technology will store and access frequently used data from the faster SSD based on users’ activities. It helps limit the bottleneck of the HDDs’ low read speed, and accelerate programs’ load time.
Optane Memory
In a lot of ways, current Optane memory modules are using a similar principle as the Intel SRT. The Optane memory will act as a low capacity, fast cache for the hard disk drives. However, Optane is not just an ordinary cache drive. It is based on Intel’s latest storage technology, called 3D XPoint.
3D XPoint is a new storage media that uses a three-dimensional structure to allow much faster performance and lower latency than traditional NAND flash on SSD. 3D XPoint can both be system memory and long-term storage. That is why Intel is trying to deploy 3D XPoint DIMMs in server environment to replace DRAM for its slightly higher latency but bigger capacity. Unlike DRAM, 3D XPoint is a non-volatile memory that keep stored data intact after the power is off.
How to use Optane Memory
What Intel is offering right now (2017) with the Optane Memory module is assisting the slower mechanical hard drives in your system. It will be act as a cache drive between your CPU cache, DRAM and normal hard drives, with a capacity of 16GB or 32GB.
After you install the memory into the M.2 slot, the system will start detecting any patterns of your usage. Frequently accessed data will be stored into the Optane memory automatically without any user’s intervention. You cannot choose which programs to be put in the memory. According to most online reviews, Optane memory can improve boot up and programs load time, as well as overall system responsiveness.
Intel also introduces a high capacity Optane SSD for data centers, the P4800X Series. It is also made out of 3D XPoint memory. It can store up to 375GB of data and costs over $1000 USD.
Minimum Requirements
An Optane Memory Module has a form of a normal M.2 2280 (80 mm long) SSD. It uses the same M.2 slot on the motherboard. Unfortunately, not all motherboard chipsets are compatible with Optane memory. Only the latest 200 series chipset paired with the 7th Generation Core-i series processors can be used (Z270, Q270, H270, Q250, B250, C236). A Windows 10 operating system is also a must.
Intel’s Optane Memory is good for new budget PC builds, which people can purchase a hard drive and Optane memory module now for better storage performance. The technology may not seem promising for consumers at this point, but with constant development and reduced manufacturing costs, 3D XPoint and Optane Memory are going to change how we handle our computers’ storage.
Feel free to leave comments below, if you have any opinion about this website. Share the website around if you enjoy reading it. Subscribe to our Newsletter or follow our Google+, Facebook and Twitter.
Support this website simply by shopping in Amazon. It will give us small kickbacks, if you use the above affiliate links to make any purchases, which will help us grow.
Last night at SIGGRAPH 2017 (30 July), AMD finally revealed more details about their upcoming next generation graphics cards, RX Vega. Similar to how previous rumors suggested, there are three different models of RX Vega cards. How is RX Vega stacking up in the GPU market?
The RX Vega lineup is using AMD’s next-gen compute units and pixel engines to provide better performance in 3D rendering and shading for games. All RX Vega cards utilize high bandwidth memory (HBM2) for cache, which can help deal with high-resolution textures.
The RX Vega 64 is the highest end card in the whole RX Vega family. There will be both an air-cooled and an all-in-one liquid-cooled version. A limited edition card is also available, but there is no difference in specifications between the reference model, only the change in exterior casing design (silver brushed aluminium shroud). RX Vega 64 has a fully featured Vega GPU with 64 next-gen compute units and 4096 stream processors.It is also equipped with 8GB of HBM2 memory, running on a 2048-bit memory bus for a total 483.8 GB/s bandwidth. The liquid-cooled variant will be clocked higher out of the box and have a higher TDP than the air-cooled one.
The RX Vega 56 is a less powerful card with a cut-down Vega GPU. Only one air-cooled reference model will be offered. It has 54 next-gen compute units and 3584 stream processors, paired with 8GB of HMB2 memory. Although the memory bus is the same as RX Vega 64 at 2048-bit, its bandwidth is limited to “only” 410 GB/s.
Comparison
Prices shown are the MSRP
Due to better cooling potential, the RX Vega 64 air-cooled card will have a lower base and boost clock speed at 1247 MHz/1546 MHz, compared to the liquid-cooled card’s 1406 MHz/1677 MHz. However, the liquid-cooled RX Vega 64 will consume 50W more power, at 345W TDP. The RX Vega 56 is clocked at 1156 MHz/1471 MHz, with a 210W TDP.
When comparing with other graphics cards, we can see AMD’s RX Vega cards are looking quite promising. RX Vega 64 and Vega 56 have a single-precision compute performance of 12.7 Tflops and 10.5 Tflops respectively (air-cooled reference models). This is more than 72% better than the RX 580, and over 30% higher than the Nvidia GTX 1080. Although these synthetic benchmark results are not identical to real world performance, at least we can see the potential of the RX Vega.
Release Date
The RX Vega 64 and RX Vega 56 cards will be available in late August. No exact release date is known yet. Source from AMD Radeon.
Feel free to leave comments below, if you have any opinion about this website. Share the website around if you enjoy reading it. Subscribe to our Newsletter or follow our Google+, Facebook and Twitter. Support this website simply by shopping in Amazon. It will give us small kickbacks, if you use the above affiliate links to make any purchases, which will help us grow.
