Thursday, January 4, 2018

Dell pins its Cinema features for the best streaming experience this year

Recently, you may have noticed more Dell products making big screen appearances in movies – like the Inspiron Gaming Laptop in Spider-Man: Homecoming – and the company is just as big on making its products the best devices to watch movies with this year.

Of course, it’s easy to write off these plans as “well duh, which company wouldn’t want to do that,” Dell has engineered a three-pronged approach to give some of its desktops and laptops the best visual, audio and streaming capabilities.

Cinema Color

Starting off with displays, Dell isn’t a novice when it comes to breathtaking display. The company has introduced some of the first OLED 4K, 8K and high-dynamic range (HDR) monitors and now the company hopes to make the latter a display standard for many of its all-in-one PCs and laptops.

To this end the Dell has introduced Cinema Color software to push display vibrancy and contrast levels to simulate a HDR-like viewing experience.

Looking at the real-life difference between two Inspiron 13 7000 (2017) laptops with and without Cinema Color enabled alongside a MacBook Pro, Dell played a clip of a firefighting documentary on all three machines. On the Cinema Color-enabled laptop we could clearly see more a few more distinct wisps of smoke coming off the fire. 

We were honestly more taken aback by how off the colors were on the MacBook Pro, though, we didn’t get to see how the screens’ software settings were calibrated.

What’s even more impressive is the Cinema Color software also tricks streaming content provider like Netflix into giving it access to HDR channels, even if a screen doesn’t physically meet the HDR10 or Dolby Vision standards.

While both Dell’s laptops and all-in-ones PCs benefit from Cinema Color, laptops will gain the greatest added effect. As of right now putting a screen with the display brightness of 1,000-nits on a mobile device is unheard of – 400- to 500-nits are the typical high-benchmark these days – and would likely result in a battery life of less than eight minutes.

Cinema Sound

Dell is also kicking things up on the audio front with Cinema Sound, which we also heard in action on the Inspiron 13 7000 (2017). More than a month ago we thought the Round Rock electronics firm were merely simulating front-facing speakers with downward-facing hardware, but there’s much more behind the technology.

According to Dell, an ‘Audio Master’ tunes every device for Cinema Sound. The process starts with picking out the optimal loudspeakers and transducers driving the devices’ audio system. From there, engineers test and programming the software to specifically enhance each devices' sound profile.

Even after a laptop or AIO desktop ships out from the factory and is in your home, Cinema sound will continue to use the computer’s litany of sensors to optimize audio through computer learning. Meanwhile, smart amplifiers built into each device will intelligently adjust and optimize the speakers to prevent them from blowing out or distorting.

Cinema Streaming

Last but not least, and arguably most crucially, Dell is improving the streaming experience at wireless connection level.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t involve any magical pixie dust to give you more network speed, instead Cinema Streaming utilizes SmartByte and Killer Wireless' software to intelligently prioritize your bandwidth usage for a buffer-less experience. 

If you’ve run into a spinning wheel because Windows decided to pull an update while you were watching The Defenders on Netflix or a video on YouTube, SmartByte will tell Dell Cinema Streaming to basically deprioritize everything else to make sure the show goes on uninterrupted. It can do the same thing with browser downloads and torrents.

Meanwhile, XPS line and Alienware products come equipped with Killer Wireless solution that instruct Cinema Streaming to prioritize bandwidth for online gaming and other tasks.

Sadly, these Cinema features won't be coming to every single device in its catalog, nor will certain device come outfitted with all three software solutions we've gone over here. 

Rather, Dell tells us that certain products and configurations will have specific features. So some products will have the Cinema Color and Cinema Sound feature early this year, while others will only come with Cinema Streaming.

Still, Dell's Cinema software sounds exciting and along the Kaby Lake Refresh processor upgrades, we can’t wait give its latest desktops and laptops a spin.

  • Keep up with everything announced at CES 2018


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Wednesday, January 3, 2018

The best WordPress hosting companies in 2018

Wordpress turned 10 this year. Primarily created as a blogging platform, it has since been developed into a feature-rich content management system that can be used to power websites of all types. The platform can be downloaded for free from wordpress.org and powers millions of sites across the web.

For many businesses, the beauty of Wordpress is in its simplicity. Its benefits are clear, it's easy to setup and it's straightforward to manage. Choosing a hosting provider for a Wordpress site can be more of a task, however, especially for those without expert knowledge or experience of the market.

Reliability, support and, of course, price are the big three factors when choosing website hosting for a business. Where Wordpress is concerned though, many hosting providers also offer automated installation, so speed and simplicity of setup are also factors to consider.

To help with your decision-making, this article brings together a selection of cheap Wordpress hosting options for UK businesses. Some are based here with others abroad and some focus more on affordability whilst others offer premium features. All of them, however, come with strong reputations and well-priced web hosting packages for Wordpress.

Zyma (UK)

Zyma

Web: http://www.zyma.com/

Price: From £1.79 per month (approx. US$2.94 or AU$3.22)

Zyma is a UK-based hosting provider that launched in 2010. It has developed a reputation amongst both tech writers and users for providing an excellent service and boasts one of the cheapest monthly hosting prices on the market. It also states that 90% of its new users are referred by existing customers.

Zyma doesn't offer a specific Wordpress hosting package, but does offer free installation for Wordpress sites. Once signed up, users just have to submit a support ticket and explain exactly where they want it installed. Zyma also offers a 99.9% uptime guarantee and a 30-day money-back guarantee for new customers.

TSOHost (UK)

TSO Host

Web: http://ift.tt/Z8orwJ

Price: From £14.99 per year (approx. US$24.65 or AU$26.93)

TSOHost is another UK-based hosting provider and comes with excellent reviews from its growing user-base. It was set up it 2003 and now claims to host in excess of 230,000 websites and over 10,000 Wordpress installations.

Wordpress hosting with TSOHost starts at £14.99 per year (£1.25 per month) for the 'lite' package, which is the cheapest package featured but does require a minimum 12-month contract. That said, it also offers a 60-day money-back guarantee for users who are not happy with the service.

One-click installation is available, as are more premium packages and the option to move to a virtual or dedicated server should customers need to scale up their operations.

Name.com (US)

Name

Web: http://www.name.com/

Price: From $29.99 per year (approx. £18.26 or AU$32.78)

Like TSOHost, Name.com offers a minimum 12-month deal that works out very reasonably. Its Rapidshare service includes a domain name, a variety of themes and four weeks worth of daily back-ups for $29.99 per year ($2.50 per month).

Name.com operates out of Colarado, US and its Rapidpress service is aimed at being cheap, simple and well supported. It website talks of, "a commitment to world-class customer service." Whilst the main focus of Rapidpress is to provide a straightforward means of launching a Wordpress site from scratch, sites can also be migrated into the platform.

Bluehost (US)

Bluehost

Web: http://ift.tt/vlonsM

Price: From $4.95 per month (approx. £3.01 or AU$5.41)

Bluehost is well known amongst the Wordpress fraternity and has been providing hosting services since 1996. Its Wordpress hosting packages start from $4.95 per month, which is at the top-end of the prices covered in this article, but the company is recommended by Wordpress and has been since 2005.

As well as being an experienced and well regarded Wordpress hosting provider, Bluehost offers WordPress specific customer support services, free theme installation and an anytime money-back guarantee, all of which may justify spending the extra dollar or two per month. One-click installation is also available.

Dreamhost

Dreamhost

Web: http://ift.tt/vkAtSV

Price: From $3.95 per month (approx. £2.41 or AU$4.32)

Having been set up in 1997, Dreamhost is another veteran of the market and has been a Wordpress partner since 2005. It claims to host the best part of a million WordPress blogs and websites globally and touts itself as delivering great user experience and utilising the best technology available.

Dreamhost's standard Wordpress hosting package starts from $3.95 per month and includes a free domain name, one-click installation and a 100% uptime guarantee. A 97-day money-back guarantee is included for those who are not enamoured with the service. Dreamhost also offers a 'Dreampress' package that features dedicated, high performance and high security hosting for $19.95 per month.

InMotion

InMotion

Web: http://ift.tt/rOT5uh

Price: From $5.59 per month (approx. £3.40 or AU$6.11)

InMotion is based in the US and apparently hosts more than 300,000 hosted sites. The company talks about its Wordpress hosting in terms of speed and security with a focus on business clients.

Amongst its Wordpress hosting features are free new domain names or transfers for the first year, 24-36 hour data backups and one-click installation. InMotion also offers 90-day money-back guarantee, which compares favourably to many of its competitors.

With rates starting from $5.59 per month, this isn't the cheapest Wordpress hosting available, but it is still very reasonably priced and InMotion argues that for the extra cost, customers will benefit from, "one of the fastest and most reliable networks in the world."



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Advertisers can use your browser’s password manager to steal your data

Samsung’s C-Lab projects include smart glasses and a portable directional speaker

 Samsung’s Creative Lab is one of the more entertaining additions to CES in the last several years. Deemed C-Lab for short, the department is a sort of in-house accelerator, where Samsung employees can build and spin off startups, all while leveraging the electronics giants’ seemingly bottomless resources. Read More

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Tuesday, January 2, 2018

The best free screen recorder 2018

New macOS bug allows for full system compromise – if attacker has physical access

Another hole has been found in macOS, with the flaw being revealed by a security researcher (or ‘hobbyist hacker’, as his Twitter profile notes) as the New Year rolled around – hardly the start to 2018 Apple would have wanted.

The researcher who goes by the name of Siguza said that the zero-day flaw seems to have been present in Apple’s desktop operating system since as far back as 2002.

It allows any user to gain full control of a Mac computer, but not remotely – an attacker will need physical access to the machine in question. In that case, they can use this local privilege escalation bug to get root permissions and execute arbitrary code, as Wccftech.com reports.

Furthermore, the exploit isn’t very sophisticated or stealthy, and will log the user out. Siguza observed: “Needs to be running on the host already (nothing remote), achieves full system compromise by itself, but logs you out in the process.

“Can wait for logout though and is fast enough to run on shutdown/reboot until [macOS] 10.13.1. On 10.13.2 it takes a fair bit longer (maybe half a minute) after logging out, so if your OS logs you out unexpectedly… maybe pull the plug?”

Embarrassing episode

Note that this vulnerability apparently affects all versions of macOS, and while it may not be particularly sophisticated, it’s still worrying. Particularly coming after the much-publicized login bug in High Sierra which emerged last November, although that was an entirely more embarrassing affair given how basic the security flaw was (you could log onto any Mac simply by using ‘root’ as the username, with nothing in the password field).

Clearly, though, this is the last thing Apple needed to kick-off 2018 with. Even if it is a rather clunky exploit which requires physical access to the PC in question, it still allows for a full system compromise – and most worryingly it’s a bug which has apparently been present in Apple’s desktop OS for a decade and a half, or thereabouts.

Apple is working on a patch right now, according to the report, so we should hopefully see that come through the pipeline pretty sharpish.

  • A couple of Apple’s MacBooks make our list of best laptops


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The best Mac antivirus software 2018