This week we took a look at a bunch of images captured in the wild by gamers, all made possible with NVIDIA Ansel. The NVIDIA Ansel system allows a gamer to stop time by capturing the environment in which they're playing a game. Through this system's abilities, users can re-live the moment they were in, and share that moment from angles never before possible.
This morning Razer revealed the Razer Wolverine Ultimate, a customizable gaming controller for Xbox One and PC. This device is one of a collection of Xbox peripherals made by Razer on the market today, this set also including the Razer Thresher Ultimate wireless gaming headset and the Razer Atrox fight stick - another wacky controller made to push the boundaries of what input's possible on the console. The Razer Wolverine Ultimate works with interchangeable D-pads, interchangeable thumbsticks, and 6 remappable triggers and buttons.
Toshiba has taken the wraps off of a new miniature PC called the dynaEdge Mobile Mini PC. While far from being the first miniature PC on the market, Toshiba's offering does pack some impressive specs and a hefty price tag to match. The entire PC measures only 6.5 x 3.3 x 0.8-inches with an overall weight just under 11 ounces. As with some competing models, Toshiba's new mini PC has a battery built in so that the device can be disconnected from display and moved to another located elsewhere.
Gamescom is always a great opportunity to put out new hardware designed to cater to gamers. Indeed, Intel timed its announcement of its 8th generation core processors this week and Acer just revealed one of the first laptops to be powered by such a processor. If you expected that the new Lenovo Legion Y920, Y720 and Y520 gaming towers would be similar, you might be in for a disappointment. That said, while the Acer Nitro 5 is aimed more towards casual gaming, Lenovo’s three new boxes are crafted to cater to every level of PC gamer out there.
This year is the year of fingerprints for security - if it weren't already abundantly clear, here's another bit of proof. This is the VeriMark Fingerprint Key by Kensington. This device is just about as simple as a fingerprint scanner gets - or as simple as a fingerprint scanner gets when it's not already embedded into a device. This fingerprint scanner is a USB dongle - and it lets the user log in to their notebook.
Two new headsets have been revealed by Razer with a similar look, but very different aims - one for hardcore PC gamers, the other for cross-platform play. Both go by the name Tiamat, and both are made for heavy-duty audio and comfort. Tiamat headsets come in 7.1 V2 and 2.2 V2 editions, the former coming with a higher price tag and more features, the latter coming with a slightly more basic set of features for a lower price.
The Fall Creators Update for Windows 10 will be released in the coming weeks, and Microsoft promises it will include new features not only for creatives, but improvements to accessibility, security, and UI as well. Unfortunately, there are several existing features of the operating system that will be getting removed or deprecated with the update. Most of them are aging and no longer being developed, or they're being folded into other tools and applications.
If you were one of the early, and probably disappointed, adopters of the first breed of Windows 8.1 hybrids and convertibles, Microsoft has a good news, bad news thing for you. The good news is that your device is going to be supported for another six years. The bad news is that it only applies to security fixes. As far as “Windows as a Service” is concerned, last year’s Anniversary Update is the end of the line for these devices.
Some things are too good to be true or, at the very least, too good to last. Microsoft has committed to continually update Windows 10 and offer those updates for free as part of its “Windows as a Service” paradigm but everyone knows by now it’s a less than perfect strategy. Now reality is hitting some Windows PC owners even harder as they discover their 2 to 3 year old digital partners, many of them 2-in-1 tablets, locked out of the latest Windows 10 Creators Update. All because they have been deemed incompatible, despite having just received the Anniversary Update last year.
AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPU details have arrived, and they're ready to kick next-gen PC expectations into gear. These two models contain 12/16 cores, 32 threads, 4GHz turbo, and quad channel DDR4 memory. They're more than ready to roll up to Intel's similar CPU options - they've already surpassed them (on paper, anyway).
Microsoft is pretty darn keen for you to be on the latest version of Windows, to the point that it now plans to pester users to install Windows 10 Creators Update. The strong-arm tactics will kick off this week, with Microsoft pinging PC owners who are yet to upgrade to the most recent version with a privacy settings review. For a while you'll be able to avoid it, Microsoft says, but not forever.
Although it doesn't exactly represent majority of the cases, supporting a project on Kickstarter or Indiegogo always involves a chance of never getting what you invested in. Sometimes it's due to a scam, sometimes it is due to unfortunate circumstances. And sometimes it's a little bit of both. It's still too early to say where on that range the SMACH Z lies, but its silence was broken by rather terrible news. The project just lost a partner of a critical component, further delaying a product that was to supposed to ship last April. If it ever ships at all.
