PCWorld addresses whether external streaming devices are necessary when modern TVs include built-in smart platforms like Roku or Fire TV. Streaming sticks like Roku Streaming Stick 4K and Apple TV 4K offer faster performance, cleaner ad-free interfaces, and broader app selection than many smart TV processors. External devices provide exclusive features like dialogue boost, ensure continued updates for older TVs, and simplify 4K HDR compatibility issues. Buying a new TV and a new streaming device used to be separate decisions, as televisions didn't always come with adequate smart TV software. These days, though, it's virtually impossible to buy a television that isn't a smart TV, with Roku, Fire TV, or other streaming platforms built in. So whenever I write about the latest streaming devices--like Amazon's new Fire TV Stick or Walmart's latest Onn players --inevitably some folks will ask me what's the point. Why bother using an external streaming box or stick when your TV already supports the same apps? Naturally I have answers to that question, but that doesn't mean everyone should abandon their smart TV software in favor of a separate streaming device. Let's walk through the merits of both.

The Lenovo ThinkPad P16s Gen 4 is a typical workstation affair. It’s fairly potent but big, bulky, and pricey. Next to consumer laptops, its performance doesn’t impress, and new Panther Lake hardware threatens it at every turn.

PCWorld reveals that laptop manufacturers include hidden utility apps offering advanced controls for battery charging, display color gamuts, fan speeds, and audio settings not available in Windows. These manufacturer-specific applications like Lenovo Vantage and MyAsus provide essential features including battery conservation modes, OLED burn-in protection, and performance adjustments without requiring reboots. Users should explore their laptop's pre-installed utility software to unlock customization options, monitor system health, and access firmware updates for improved security and performance. You probably know how to tweak your mouse, control your background, and adjust your laptop's sleep times, all from the Windows Settings pages. But there's a whole host of new capabilities hidden away within your laptop's utility application, and it may be the only place to find them.

Lenovo's latest ThinkPad X13 Gen 7 helps launch the AMD Ryzen AI 400, a chip we haven't seen anything of since its January launch. The laptop has also earned itself a top score from iFixit for its accessible, replaceable components.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This is one powerful laptop. Alienware's beefy 16-inch Area 51 packs excellent CPU and GPU performance, though battery life suffers. The Alienware Area 51 is a laptop with history. The first Alienware Area 51 desktop was released back in 1998, and then came the Area 51 laptops in the 2000s. Fast forward to today and the Alienware Area 51 is still among the most powerful laptops available and capable of record-setting performance.

There's a deep, forbidding moat that surrounds Nvidia--and it has nothing to do with hardware. Forgive me for starting with a cliché, a piece of finance jargon that has recently slipped into the tech lexicon, but I'm afraid I must talk about "moats." Popularized decades ago by Warren Buffett to refer to a company's competitive advantage, the word found its way into Silicon Valley pitch decks when a memo purportedly leaked from Google, titled "We Have No Moat, and Neither Does OpenAI," fretted that open-source AI would pillage Big Tech's castle. A few years on, the castle walls remain safe. Apart from a brief bout of panic when DeepSeek first appeared, open-source AI models have not vastly outperformed proprietary models.

Anthropic has partnered with SpaceX to double Claude Code usage limits across Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans, according to PCWorld. The deal provides access to SpaceX's Colossus 1 data center featuring over 220,000 Nvidia GPUs, significantly boosting Anthropic's computing capacity. This partnership marks a surprising shift, as Elon Musk previously criticized Anthropic but recently expressed being impressed after meetings with company staff. Instead of downgrading its most affordable Claude subscription plan by dropping access to Claude Code, Anthropic has instead doubled Claude Code usage rates for subscribers, starting today. All it took was an eyebrow-raising alliance with an unlikely partner.

The GPUs were placed in servers that were supposed to be shipped from Taiwan to companies in Southeast Asia. The US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York has charged three people with illegally exporting NVIDIA GPUs to China in violation of the Export Control Reform Act. NVIDIA's chips have become a critical component in the rush to train and run increasingly complex artificial intelligence models, one the US has sought to manipulate with export controls and profit-sharing schemes with NVIDIA. The three people, Yih-Shyan Wally Liaw, Ruei-Tsang Steven Chang and Ting-Wei Willy Sun, two employees and one contractor working for US IT company Super Micro Computer, allegedly circumvented export control laws via a multi-step scheme that involved creating fake orders for servers with NVIDIA chips from Southeast Asian companies, that were then secretly sent to China. The plan involved paying a logistics company to repackage the servers in Taiwan, staging dummy servers to be inspected by Super Micro Computer's compliance team and falsifying records so Liaw, Chang and Sun's employer was unaware where the servers were actually being sent.

PCWorld reports that Nvidia's DLSS 5 announcement caught major game developers from Ubisoft and Capcom off-guard, who were unaware their games would be featured in demonstrations. The generative AI technology faces significant backlash from gamers who criticize it as an "AI filter" that potentially devalues game aesthetics and may require two high-end GPUs. Despite being planned for fall 2026 release, DLSS 5 already raises concerns about artistic control and whether developers want this AI-enhanced visual processing in their games. Nvidia DLSS 5 is coming later this year, adding generative "AI" features to the performance-enhancing tech . Gamers are calling the tool an "Instagram yaas filter" and "AI slop," among other, less kind terms. The way that it adds detail to faces and seems to hijack -- or replace?

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. When AI starts redrawing characters and lighting, who's really in control of the art? Because it makes a game look how Nvidia thinks it should look--and uses AI to do it. Nvidia's newly-announced DLSS 5 is an Nvidia feature that injects new details like textures and lighting via generative AI into supported games, all done using the GPU. It's quickly become the focal point of an increasingly vicious battle between human artists and AI.