At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Controls on/off, dimming, color, and white color temperature of WiZ-compatible lighting Runs on Wi-Fi, no hub required Virtually no delay in state changes Cons On the chunky side for a remote control WiZ app can be a little convoluted to use Only works with WiZ-compatible smart bulbs and fixtures Our Verdict This battery-powered, wall-mountable remote control not only lets you dim connected WiZ-compatible smart lights and fixtures, it can also trigger custom lighting scenes and change both the color and white color temperature of connected lights. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Before we get started with this PureEdge Pure Smart Wi-Fi Smart Remote Room Controller, allow me to give you a little background on the platform on which it runs: WiZ, also known as WiZ Pro and WiZ Connected. If you’re not familiar with WiZ, it’s a hardware brand owned by Signify, which also manufactures Philips Hue smart lighting products. You’ll find all kinds of smart bulbs marketed directly under the WiZ name, but the WiZ brand and the underlying WiZ technology is also licensed to other manufacturers, so you’ll find many additional products on the market that work in the WiZ ecosystem. That’s a long prologue to explain what PureEdge is doing with its Pure Smart products, including this remote lighting controller (the company also offers a 120-volt version that must be connected to your home’s wiring). PureEdge doesn’t have a smart app of its own: It relies on the WiZ app, and its Pure Smart products freely work with other WiZ devices, regardless of who makes them. If your home’s lighting revolves around WiZ or PureEdge Pure Smart bulbs and lighting fixtures, the Pure Smart Wi-Fi Smart Remote Room Controller is hard to beat. The primary difference between Hue and WiZ is the wireless standard behind each of them: Hue relies on Zigbee and requires a hub (though some devices can also work hub-free over a Bluetooth connection, with limitations), while WiZ devices connect directly to your 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network and don’t require a hub to connect to the internet and communicate with other WiZ gear. Specifications The PureEdge Pure Smart Wi-Fi Smart Remote Room Controller functions, illustrated.PureEdge The WiZ-compatible component we’re evaluating in this review looks deceptively simple on the surface, offering the appearance of a rather chunky in-wall light switch, one that’s designed to control WiZ lighting products. But here’s surprise number one: It’s not an in-wall switch at all. Rather, it’s fully battery-powered (again, there is a different SKU available if you want a wired, in-wall controller). Crack open this device by prying the plastic cover up and you’ll find space for four AAA batteries (not included) nestled in along the sides of the switch. The controller is intended to be mounted on the wall, which can be accomplished by attaching it to an electrical box (sans wiring), using screws to attach it to drywall, or simply using adhesives to stick it to the wall. (All the relevant hardware is included in the box.) Frankly, you don’t even need to attach it to the wall at all if you want an unorthodox remote control. Surprise number two is more visible, and it’s right on the face of the device. In addition to a standard (if undersized) rocker in the center of the device, you’ll see two additional rockers: a vertical one to the right of the main rocker, and a horizontal another beneath the main rocker. Each of these has a specific function, and it’s worth noting that they can’t be reassigned. Here’s a rundown of what those functions do: The primary rocker, as expected, serves as both an on/off switch (a single tap on the top or bottom half) and as a dimmer (press and hold the top half to brighten, or do the same to the bottom half to dim). The slim vertical rocker on the right-hand changes color temperature when a white bulb is connected, letting you slide your way over the color temperature range supported by the bulb. Day-to-day use PureEdge I tested the controller with PureEdge’s Pure Smart TruColor RGBTW A19 smart bulb, which has a range of 1500K to 6500K and was easily able to see the bulb’s color temperature change over the course of 10 intervals—about 500K at a time—while clicking the rocker up or down. Lastly, the horizontal rocker at the bottom of the switch lets you change the scene applied to the room or device. Specifically, you can cycle through four “favorite modes” that you set in the WiZ app, whether these are default white light modes like daylight or color scenes you create yourself. Choosing these four lighting modes is the only part of the controller that is user configurable. While setup is easy in the WiZ app—it discovers new devices with just a few taps and quickly bridges them to your Wi-Fi network—using the app to manage onboarded equipment isn’t always intuitive. It’s simple enough if you want to, say, simply change the color of a light bulb (although the interface is a bit basic), but configuring more advanced options for the controller is more complex because these features can be scattered or buried. I had to go back to the manual and/or YouTube tutorials to figure out where to adjust things on more than one occasion, an issue exacerbated by the fact that the manual isn’t quite 100 percent correct, as it claims the battery-powered controller (impossibly) must be connected to household wiring in order to be set up. the Pure Smart Wi-Fi Smart Remote Room Controller runs on 4 AAA batteries (a hardwired version is also available).Christopher Null/Foundry Another quirk is that the controller must be assigned to a room, but it can in fact control multiple devices simultaneously whether they are in that room or not. The documentation for this is a bit sketchy, so it can take a bit of trial and error to ensure everything is working properly, but I was able to get the controller set up with two PureEdge bulbs reasonably quickly. The good news is that, in regular use, the controller is surprisingly responsive no matter what you’re doing with it. During my testing, all commands were carried out in a split-second, even with multiple devices, whether that was simple power toggling, changing color temperature, or switching scenes. The system is even smart enough to allow you to assign scenes to your four favorites that might not be compatible with every connected device. For example, I set up a “green” color light favorite while having both a color and white-only bulb connected to the controller. When activated, the controller correctly set the color bulb to green while leaving the white bulb’s color temperature as is. Similarly, the color temperature toggle didn’t do anything when the color bulb was set to green, while the white bulb’s color temperature was correctly adjusted. In a nutshell: It works exactly like it should. While the WiZ ecosystem at large supports additional smart home systems, including Alexa and Google Home, there’s nothing you can do with the Wall Controller outside of the WiZ app itself, since the controller can’t control non-WiZ devices. PureEdge relies on the WiZ app to control its Pure Smart Wi-Fi Smart Remote Room Controller.Christopher Null/Foundry Should you buy the PureEdge Pure Smart Wi-Fi Smart Remote Room Controller? At $79 (sold exclusively at Lightology.com), the PureEdge Pure Smart Wi-Fi Smart Remote Room Controller is a little pricy. A somewhat similar Lutron Caséta dimmer costs about $60, while the prettier Lutron Caséta Diva dimmer costs about $70. Both of those devices, however, require an $80 Caséta hub to unlock their entire feature set, and neither of them can control colors or white color temperatures. Further reading: This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best smart dimmers and switches. If your home’s lighting revolves around WiZ or PureEdge Pure Smart bulbs and/or PureEdge’s Pure Smart architectural and outdoor lighting products, on the other hand, the PureEdge Pure Smart Wi-Fi Smart Remote Room Controller is hard to beat. We haven’t seen another product like it—apart from the company’s similar 120-volt offering, that is. Both offer a feature set we haven’t seen anywhere else. Read...

Why is your computer running like a dog? (A slow dog, that is. Not a greyhound or one of those dogs that likes to herd sheep.) Ask a technically inclined friend and they might suggest a RAM upgrade or a speedier storage drive. Ask your computer and it might suggest the same thing, at least after a future update comes to Windows 11. Phantom of Earth tried out the newest developer build of Windows 11 and spotted a new FAQ section in the Settings app under the About menu. It’s hidden by default, currently only visible with some command line inputs, but it looks fairly straightforward. New Frequently Asked Questions list in Settings > System > About hidden in builds 26120.3576 and 22635.5090. Has some questions related to the Windows version and device specs. (vivetool /enable /id:55305888)— phantomofearth ? (@phantomofearth.bsky.social) 2025-03-17T23:52:44.970Z In one screenshot, in response to the suggested question “Is my GPU sufficient for high end gaming and video experience?” [sic], the section suggests getting a discrete graphics card with more than 4GB of RAM. It also says that 4-8GB of RAM is only good enough for “basic tasks like web browsing, document editing, and emailing.” (For reference, the virtual machine PC in the screenshot has 6GB.) Microsoft hasn’t said anything about this new FAQ, but as The Verge notes, it wouldn’t be the first time that Windows itself evaluated the machine it was running on for the benefit of the user. The Windows Experience Index is no longer used, but it used to give your PC a 1-6 score for performance back in the Vista days. This advice is a little more actionable, and surprisingly doesn’t outright suggest buying a new computer. (No, Windows’ built-in advertising should handle that.) It’s possible that the next big yearly Windows update will include the new FAQ section. And it’s just as possible that it won’t. Or that this info will only appear when it detects that your hardware is a little pokey. We’ll have to see how Microsoft is feeling in the latter half of the year, and if it shows up already enabled in Windows Insider builds before then. Read...

Why is your computer running like a dog? (A slow dog, that is. Not a greyhound or one of those dogs that likes to herd sheep.) Ask a technically inclined friend and they might suggest a RAM upgrade or a speedier storage drive. Ask your computer and it might suggest the same thing, at least after a future update comes to Windows 11. Phantom of Earth tried out the newest developer build of Windows 11 and spotted a new FAQ section in the Settings app under the About menu. It’s hidden by default, currently only visible with some command line inputs, but it looks fairly straightforward. New Frequently Asked Questions list in Settings > System > About hidden in builds 26120.3576 and 22635.5090. Has some questions related to the Windows version and device specs. (vivetool /enable /id:55305888)— phantomofearth ? (@phantomofearth.bsky.social) 2025-03-17T23:52:44.970Z In one screenshot, in response to the suggested question “Is my GPU sufficient for high end gaming and video experience?” [sic], the section suggests getting a discrete graphics card with more than 4GB of RAM. It also says that 4-8GB of RAM is only good enough for “basic tasks like web browsing, document editing, and emailing.” (For reference, the virtual machine PC in the screenshot has 6GB.) Microsoft hasn’t said anything about this new FAQ, but as The Verge notes, it wouldn’t be the first time that Windows itself evaluated the machine it was running on for the benefit of the user. The Windows Experience Index is no longer used, but it used to give your PC a 1-6 score for performance back in the Vista days. This advice is a little more actionable, and surprisingly doesn’t outright suggest buying a new computer. (No, Windows’ built-in advertising should handle that.) It’s possible that the next big yearly Windows update will include the new FAQ section. And it’s just as possible that it won’t. Or that this info will only appear when it detects that your hardware is a little pokey. We’ll have to see how Microsoft is feeling in the latter half of the year, and if it shows up already enabled in Windows Insider builds before then. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Sharp, bright display Enjoyable keyboard Respectable CPU performance Long battery life Cons Drab design IPS display can’t match OLED in contrast or color Mediocre integrated graphics performance Our Verdict The Acer Swift Go 14 AI is a competent Snapdragon-powered laptop with long battery life, but it doesn’t stand out from the crowd. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips turned heads in 2024 thanks to their combination of great CPU performance and battery life. However, as the months have passed, they’ve become important for another reason: they’ve put serious downward pressure on the pricing of budget and mid-range laptops.  The Acer Swift Go 14 AI is a solid Qualcomm-powered laptop with a good mix of performance and battery life. However, it faces competitors that offer more for less. Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Specs and features The Acer Swift Go 14 AI has a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus processor, specifically the X1P-42-100. It also has 16GB of RAM and 1TB of solid-state storage—a respectable but typical, configuration for a laptop priced around $1,000. Model number: SFG14-01-X006 CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus (X1P-42-100) Memory: 16GB LPDDR5x-8448 Graphics/GPU: Qualcomm Adreno  NPU: Qualcomm NPU up to 45 TOPS Display: 14.5-inch 2560×1600 120Hz IPS Storage: 1TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD Webcam: 1440p 30fps camera with physical privacy shutter, dual array microphone Connectivity: 2x USB-C 4 with DisplayPort and USB Power Delivery, 2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, 1x 3.5mm combo audio jack Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: Fingerprint reader in power button Battery capacity: 75 watt-hours Dimensions: 12.6 x 8.9 x 0.7 inches Weight: 2.91 pounds Operating System: Windows 11 Home Extra features: USB-C to HDMI adapter Price: $999 MSRP from Acer, roughly $837 retail at Best Buy Acer lists the laptop at $999, which is a bit much for what the laptop offers. However, the laptop is often discounted at Best Buy and more competitive when sold for around $850 or less. The Acer Swift Go 14 AI is currently available in just one configuration, which is the model I reviewed.   The Acer Swift Go 14 AI is a competent mid-range laptop. It benefits from excellent battery life, an enjoyable keyboard, and a bright, high-resolution IPS display.  Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Design and build quality IDG / Matthew Smith The Acer Swift Go 14 AI follows the company’s usual tactic of delivering a simple, competent, but generic chassis that doesn’t impress or offend.  It has a grayish-silver exterior that’s attractive at a glance, and the materials provide a nice metallic luster that will at times catch the light in a room. Acer’s branding is minimal as well with only two small Acer logos on the display lid. However, the laptop’s design is a bit boxy and old-fashioned (though it’s not too thick at roughly 0.7 inches) and the materials used feel a bit thin. The display lid shows no flex when opening or closing the laptop, but the lower chassis wavers slightly when typing or picking up the laptop from a corner. The design is best described as functional. It does the job, but it doesn’t make an impression.  Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Keyboard, trackpad IDG / Matthew Smith A spacious keyboard spans the Acer Swift Go 14 AI’s interior. It provides well-sized keys with only some left-side keys such as Tab, Caps Lock, and Shift, noticeably smaller than normal. Even so, they remain large enough that I didn’t have to adjust my muscle memory.  Key travel is good and keys activate with an enjoyable spring and slight tactile click. The typing experience isn’t incredible, but it’s better than budget competitors like the Dell Inspiron 14 and Lenovo IdeaPad 5x.   The touchpad is less impressive, but fine. It measures about five inches wide and three inches deep, which is the typical touchpad size for a 14-inch Windows laptop. It’s responsive, multi-touch gestures work well and the touchpad surface provides a physical click for right and left-click actions (though tap-to-click also works). However, most laptops in this category offer a nearly identical touchpad experience.  Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Display, audio IDG / Matthew Smith Acer ships the Swift Go 14 AI with a 14.5-inch IPS display with a native resolution of 2560×1600 and a refresh rate up to 120Hz.  Choosing an IPS display instead of an OLED display puts the Swift Go 14 AI at a disadvantage in image quality next to competitors like the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED. IPS has worse contrast and less vibrant color than OLED, which causes the display to look less dynamic and realistic.  But that’s not to say the Swift Go 14 AI’s display is bad or even mediocre. It’s a competent, sharp, and colorful IPS screen that generally looks good even if it can’t match OLED. The Acer’s display is bright and has an anti-glare finish that makes the display more comfortable to view in a bright environment than competitive laptops with an OLED display.  Whether the Swift Go 14 AI’s display makes sense will depend on your needs. A competitor with OLED will have better image quality in games and movies. However, the Swift Go 14 AI’s display has benefits in productivity and portability. Audio quality isn’t a strength of the Swift Go 14. It has downward-firing speakers that may sound muffled, depending on the surface the laptop is placed on. They’re not loud and lack low-end, which leads to muddy and often harsh sound. The speakers are fine for podcasts and most YouTube videos, but I wouldn’t recommend them for music, games, or movies.  Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Webcam, microphone, biometrics The Acer Swift Go 14 AI ships with a 1440p webcam and dual-array microphone. Webcam resolutions up to 1440p aren’t hard to find in 2025, but if you’re coming from a slightly older laptop or comparing against a 1080p or 720p webcam, the Swift Go 14 AI’s camera will feel like a huge upgrade. It’s sharp and colorful. I found the dual-array microphone serviceable, too. It easily picked up my voice even when I spoke softly but also did a good job rejecting repetitive background noise. The audio quality is still hollow and distant, as typical for such microphones, but it’s fine for Microsoft Teams or Google Meet.  Biometric login is provided by a fingerprint reader in the power button. I prefer facial recognition, but the fingerprint reader does the job. It works reliably in most situations but will be fooled if your fingertip is slightly damp or dirty (so don’t swig a Coke before you log in).   Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Connectivity IDG / Matthew Smith A pair of USB-C 4 ports with DisplayPort and USB Power Delivery provide the bulk of the Acer Swift Go 14 AI’s connectivity. These ports are useful not only for data connections but are also used to charge the laptop and can connect to external displays. Both USB-C are on the left side, so keep that in mind if you want to connect a USB-C hub or dongle.  Acer also provides a pair of USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports and a 3.5mm audio jack. The laptop lacks Ethernet and HDMI-out though, in the second case, Acer side-steps the lack of HDMI by including a USB-C to HDMI adapter in the box. Wireless connectivity is good, as the laptop supports both Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. These are the latest versions of each standard. I didn’t experience wireless connectivity issues in my time with the laptop. Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Performance The Acer Swift Go AI has a Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100 chip, which sits at the bottom of the Snapdragon X Plus line and is the second least performant Snapdragon X Plus chip overall. It has eight cores and a maximum single-core clock of 3.4GHz. The chip is paired with 16GB of LPDDR5x 8448 MT/s memory and 1TB of M.2 PCIe 4.0 solid state storage.  IDG / Matthew Smith The Acer Swift Go 14 AI gets off to a reasonable start in Cinebench R24, though it depends on your perspective. It performs well among price-competitive systems and looks particularly good when compared to Intel Core Ultra chips, which fail to keep up in this heavily multi-threaded CPU benchmark. However, the Asus Zenbook S 15 underscores a problem the Swift Go 14 faces. That model has a better Snapdragon X Elite chip with 12 cores and the four extra cores provide a significant upgrade.  That’s a problem for the Swift Go 14 because some laptops with the Snapdragon X Elite sell for as little as $800. IDG / Matthew Smith CPU core count isn’t the only way Qualcomm downgrades the Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100 relative to its more capable siblings. It also turns down the IGP performance with a quoted specification of 1.7 TFLOPs, down from 4.6 TFLOPs in the best Snapdragon X Elite chips. Unfortunately, that translates to a big decrease in GPU performance. The Acer Swift Go 14 AI scored just 16,179 in 3DMark Night Raid. That’s a large decrease from the Asus Zenbook S 15, which has a Snapdragon X Elite chip and scored 25,917. The Asus Vivobook S 14 with Intel Arc 140V graphics is over twice as quick in this benchmark. This is the Acer Swift Go 14 AI’s biggest weakness and it’s particularly weak against Intel-powered alternatives, as most in this price bracket will indeed have Intel Arc 130V or Arc 140V graphics. Put simply, I wouldn’t recommend the Swift Go 14 AI if you want to play recent 3D games or accelerate 3D productivity software.   Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Battery life The Acer Swift Go 14 AI has a sizable 75 watt-hour battery. That’s towards the upper end of battery size for a 14-inch laptop. The large battery and efficient Qualcomm Snapdragon boost the laptop’s battery life to more than 19 hours in our standard battery test, which loops a 4K file of the short film Tears of Steel. IDG / Matthew Smith As the graph shows, the Swift Go 14 AI’s battery life doesn’t set records, but it does come in towards the high end of what’s typical for modern Windows laptops. I also saw great battery life in my day-to-day work, which includes a lot of time spent in Microsoft Word, Affinity Photo 2, and a web browser. Using the laptop for four hours drained the battery by about 30 percent. The laptop’s low power consumption means it only requires a 65-watt charger and the charger that ships with the laptop is quite small. Even so, you might feel comfortable leaving the charger at home. The Swift Go 14 AI charges over USB-C, so a wide variety of chargers can power it, including those that provide less than 65 watts (though charging will be slow and might not happen at all when the laptop is in use).  Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Conclusion The Acer Swift Go 14 AI is a competent mid-range laptop. It benefits from excellent battery life, an enjoyable keyboard, and a bright, high-resolution IPS display.  However, the Swift Go 14 AI’s value is hampered by the specific Snapdragon X Plus and the laptop’s $999 MSRP. While the chip is a fine performer in CPU tests, frequent discounts on laptops with Snapdragon X Elite chips like the Asus Vivobook S 15 make it difficult to recommend a similarly priced Snapdragon X Plus laptop  If the Swift Go 14 AI dips below $800, however, it’s a good choice for people who need long battery life alongside decent CPU performance. Read...

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When Major League Baseball starts its 2025 season on March 27, you can enhance your big-screen game-watching experience by enlisting the aid of your small screen; i.e., your smartphone or tablet laptop. A second screen adds context to the game by delivering everything from analysis, player stats, and interactive features, to tools for communicating with other fans. We’ve rounded up the six best second-screen apps that belong on your smartphone or tablet this baseball season. Download and install one or more of them to make sure you’re game ready when the ump yells “play ball!” MLB At Bat If you don’t use anything else this season, be sure to install at least the MLB app. Michael Ansaldo/Foundry As second-screen apps go, the MLB App remains the ace of the rotation. It personalizes the viewing experience by curating news, highlights, and live updates based on users’ favorite teams and players. On iPhones, live scores and updates appear directly on the lock screen and within the Dynamic Island, allowing fans to track games without opening the app. MLB.TV subscribers can stream up to four games simultaneously on supported mobile devices. Condensed game replays and key highlights are available shortly after each game ends, making it easier to catch up on the action. Audio access has expanded to include home and away radio broadcasts for every game, even in areas subject to blackout restrictions. The Gameday 3D feature provides real-time pitch tracking in an interactive environment, offering a deeper look at each play. For fans attending games in person, the app integrates ticketing and in-venue experiences, including seat upgrades and exclusive content. iScore Baseball Scoring a game by hand is a tradition that goes back to the earliest days of baseball; but in our digital age, this pen-and-paper activity could easily go the way of flannel uniforms and Pullman cars. Thankfully, there’s iScore Baseball. This app turns your device into a digital scorebook, but you don’t need to know any of the arcana of scorekeeping to use it. iScore employs interview prompts to help you track the on-field action. Say the batter grounds out to first base: To record that play, tap the Out button and iScore will ask what kind of out was made. Select Ground Out and the app will ask you to tap on the diamond where the ball was hit and the position that made the out. As you record each play in this manner, iScore translates it all into scorebook speak. After the game, you can generate and email a completed scoresheet, box score, or team stats. iScore Baseball, available for Android and iOS devices, can create a traditional scoresheet without requiring you to know the details of scorekeeping. And if the idea of scoring a game for posterity seems quaint now that the web can serve up play-by-play stats for just about any matchup in history, consider that its greater purpose might be keeping you focused on the game amid the distractions of home. ESPN If you prefer your baseball coverage from a third-party source, it’s tough to beat ESPN’s free flagship app. In addition to scores and standings, it will keep you supplied with a steady stream of injury reports, contract signings, and other breaking news from around the league. You’ll also get live streaming access to national and regional ESPN Radio stations and more than 100 ESPN Podcasts. Designate your favorite team and you can receive alerts before games and get the latest news and videos about your club sent directly to your ESPN inbox. Best of all, you can use the app as a second screen for other sports after the Fall Classic. Bleacher Report: Sports News Bleacher Report: Sports News lets you curate your own news feed to receive breaking news on your favorite MLB teams, players, and fantasy investments. Michael Ansaldo/Foundry Like most fans, it’s your own rooting interests rather than the league at large that keeps you glued to the screen. Bleacher Report understands this and lets you customize your second-screen experience with Bleacher Report: Sports News. Though not exclusively a baseball app, Bleacher Report: Sports News lets you curate your own news feed to receive breaking news on your favorite MLB teams, players, and fantasy investments. Just add your favorite clubs, and all the latest rumors, news, hot plays, and injury reports from those organizations will appear in a real-time stream on its home screen. The app also makes it easy to email, text, or social-share the juiciest stories with your baseball-loving buddies. A separate Scores tab keeps you up today on your team’s schedule and game results. ESPN Fantasy Sports The ESPN Fantasy app provides everything you need to manage your lineup from opening day to, hopefully, the postseason. You get full access to your ESPN fantasy team, letting you start, bench, add, drop, trade, and waive players, so you’re fielding the best nine possible on game day. It also provides a steady stream of player news and enough stats and analysis to satisfy the most hardcore sabermetrician. During games, the app keeps you updated with real-time scoring by all your fantasy players, while push notifications alert you to injuries, trades, and other player news. MiLB app There’s always important action in the minor leagues, too. The MiLB app helps you keep track of it all. Michael Ansaldo/Foundry A companion to the MLB app, the MiLB app provides similar coverage of 120 minor-league clubs with scores, stats, news, video highlights, and push-notification game alerts. As with the big-league app, the basics are free, but you must buy into video streams of games—both live and on-demand—and other premium offerings. But it’s the best way to scout tomorrow’s stars while following their parent clubs on TV. Pair it with At Bat for complete coverage of your favorite team’s entire organization. Batter up! Okay, those are our picks for the best second-screen apps for baseball. What do you think, did we hit a grand slam or fly out to left field? What are your favorite second-screen baseball apps? Let us know in the comments section on our Facebook page. And don’t miss our in-depth cord-cutter’s guide to streaming Major League Baseball without a cable subscription. Read...

In the 1990s, a colleague took me to “Snake Alley,” Taipei’s red-light district, for a night of drinking with “entertainers” and some of their very muscled, serious friends. A good time was had by all, fortunately. Still, I was young, dumb, and lucky that I didn’t end up in any trouble. Some parts of the internet are like that, too. If you think you’ll be potentially surfing into a risky internet neighborhood — a knockoff shopping site, a little-known streaming service, or somewhere you’re just not entirely sure is legit — and you have a spare laptop lying around, you can always repurpose it to become what I call a “Paranoid PC”: a laptop hardened for additional privacy and security. In my case, I was able to do it for “free.” But it does require a version of Windows 10 or 11 that’s not that common, and an existing VPN subscription. I am also not claiming that this PC configuration will protect you from any and all malware and prying eyes, but it will certainly help. Further reading: If you don’t use these PC security essentials, you’re begging to be hacked Putting together a Paranoid PC What you’ll need: a VPN subscription and a laptop (16GB of RAM preferred) running Windows 10/11 Pro I’ve repurposed an older laptop to create my Paranoid PC. You can use your day-to-day PC for this purpose, but it also potentially exposes you to greater risks if anything bad slips through the security screen. In any case, it’s a good idea in almost any case to use an account without administrator access for additional security, and possibly a local account at that. To Get Sandbox, you`ll need this Windows 11 Pro The key, though, is to have a PC set up with Windows 10 or 11 Pro because of a feature it offers: Windows Sandbox. Sandbox has been around for five years (!), and I still feel like it’s one of the most underappreciated features within Windows. Sandbox creates a virtualized environment with minimal setup; essentially, it’s a Windows PC within your PC, protected by a “moat” that isolates it from your PC. Once you close Sandbox, the entire “PC” and anything it has within it is erased, permanently. That includes any malware that may have wormed its way in. Sandbox is an optional feature within Windows 10 or 11 Pro, and to access it you’ll need to turn it on. To enable it, you’ll need to go to the Windows Features control panel, which you can find by searching for Turn Windows features on and off within Windows Search. (We have a deeper dive into Windows Sandbox, here.) Once you enable Sandbox, Windows will update itself with the appropriate features, reboot, and open up Windows again. You’ll need to launch Windows Sandbox via the Start menu or the Search box. Sandbox essentially creates a PC environment within a window, but it’s a generic PC. You don’t need to log in, and please don’t! We want this PC to be as quiet and unobtrusive as possible. Windows Sandbox running within Windows 11 Pro. Note the two taskbars.PCWorld You can expand Sandbox to the dimensions of your screen, or leave it windowed. It’s up to you. Install the Brave browser I’ve argued in the past that Sandbox provides a powerful level of security and privacy, just by its lonesome. But we’re going to go further. What Sandbox allows you to do is use the built-in version of Microsoft Edge to download other software. And while Microsoft Edge is no slouch in the privacy department, we’re going to use Brave’s browser to provide an additional level of privacy and security. Brave offers tons of privacy settings, though it can be a bit aggressive.Mark Hachman / IDG Brave started off as a very privacy-oriented browser, and still is. Its reputation has soured a bit because of its ties to cryptocurrencies, but it’s still a good choice to download for surfing the deeper reaches of the web. If you want to use another browser, though, (or just Edge) you can. Just make sure to configure it the way you want, adding any plugins you choose. I still wouldn’t log in or otherwise identify yourself, however. Install a VPN I use a VPN because, well, it’s none of your business. And that’s the whole point. VPNs can be used to access content in other countries, avoid the eyes of authoritarian governments, privately chat with friends, and so on. It’s akin to locking your door and drawing your shades, and most people do that in the real world. A VPN is a good idea to add to your Paranoia PC.Mark Hachman / IDG Running a VPN won’t necessarily protect your Sandbox PC from malware, but it does add an additional layer of anonymity protection. Some VPNs also include upgraded antivirus, too. (Sometimes Brave can get a tad too aggressive in blocking downloads and scripts. In that case, go ahead and use Edge to download a VPN instead.) You might be able to get away with running a VPN outside Sandbox, but just in case I installed it from within the Sandbox environment. the best vpn we`ve tested ExpressVPN Read our review Which VPN should you use for privacy? You can choose from either a less powerful free VPN or one of our more powerful paid recommended VPNs. I prefer a VPN that offers generous device connections to allow me the freedom to install it on multiple laptops, but there are plenty to choose from. VPNs are a category where you get what you pay for, though. Surf safely through the stormy seas Once you’ve installed Sandbox, Brave, and a VPN, you’re done. You can begin exploring some of the shadier parts of the web. Feel free, of course, to install other software. If you want to download a free or premium antivirus package for additional security, go for it. When you think about it, anything bad is going to have to break out of the Brave browser’s sandbox, then get by the antivirus, then crack Windows Sandbox. That’s not impossible, but pretty unlikely. There are a couple things to keep in mind, though. Pay attention to what environment your cursor is in. If you absent-mindedly open Edge in the standard desktop environment, that browser window lacks all of your Sandbox protections, and probably the VPN’s as well. It’s part of the reason I recommend Brave: Not only is it designed for privacy, but it’s not a browser many people use. Brave signals me that I’m within Sandbox’s protective embrace. I’m not recommending that you put Sandbox to the test by downloading malware. In this case, however, the EICAR virus is designed to act like malware without really being malware.Mark Hachman / IDG Brave also blocks ads and popups — which, in certain areas of the web, can be an avenue to malware. We still recommend that you surf safe and do not go clicking willy-nilly on anything you see. But, if you do download something malevolent, it should be cut off by Sandbox. In the worst case, where Sandbox’s “PC” becomes noticeably infected, you can simply close Sandbox down by closing the window. You’ll receive a notification that this will erase everything within the Sandbox environment, but that’s okay. All you need to do is open a new version of Sandbox, which will be pristine and untouched. You’ll then need to re-download Brave, the VPN, and any other software, however. And we’d recommend running an antivirus scan on your main Windows installation just to be safe. Sandbox does have one other feature worth knowing about: its File Explorer, which is sort of like an airlock. If you do happen to download something involuntarily, it will receive the normal protections from Windows Security. But anything you voluntarily download will land in the Sandbox Downloads folder. Downloads from within Sandbox go into the Downloads folder, which can be accessed from outside Sandbox. Just be sure it’s safe by checking it within Sandbox.Mark Hachman / IDG You’d be well advised to double-check the file by right-clicking on it. (In Windows 11, go to “Show more options” and then “Scan with Microsoft Defender” or another antivirus program. Or drop it in VirusTotal.com to check against multiple online antivirus programs.) Just check it (or run it) from within Sandbox! From there, you can cut and paste it into your main PC operating system. Security professionals, of course, will have more sophisticated protection available to them. But for the average surfer, this provides some strong additional protection. Think of this “Paranoid PC” as a bodyguard in a dark alley, with a big SUV waiting to whisk you back to the real world if things go bad. Further reading: These 10 simple security tweaks keep you safe Read...

When DeepSeek-R1 released back in January, it was incredibly hyped up. This reasoning model could be distilled down to work with smaller large language models (LLMs) on consumer-grade laptops. If you believed the headlines, you’d think it’s now possible to run AI models that are competitive with ChatGPT right on your toaster. That just isn’t true, though. I tried running LLMs locally on a typical Windows laptop and the whole experience still kinda sucks. There are still a handful of problems that keep rearing their heads. Problem #1: Small LLMs are stupid Newer open LLMs often brag about big benchmark improvements, and that was certainly the case with DeepSeek-R1, which came close to OpenAI’s o1 in some benchmarks. But the model you run on your Windows laptop isn’t the same one that’s scoring high marks. It’s a much smaller, more condensed model—and smaller versions of large language models aren’t very smart. Just look at what happened when I asked DeepSeek-R1-Llama-8B how the chicken crossed the road: Matt Smith / Foundry This simple question—and the LLM’s rambling answer—shows how smaller models can easily go off the rails. They frequently fail to notice context or pick up on nuances that should seem obvious. In fact, recent research suggests that less intelligent large language models with reasoning capabilities are prone to such faults. I recently wrote about the issue of overthinking in AI reasoning models and how they lead to increased computational costs. I’ll admit that the chicken example is a silly one. How about we try a more practical task? Like coding a simple website in HTML. I created a fictional resume using Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet, then asked Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct to create a HTML website based on the resume. The results were far from great: Matt Smith / Foundry To be fair, it’s better than what I could create if you sat me down at a computer without an internet connection and asked me to code a similar website. Still, I don’t think most people would want to use this resume to represent themselves online. A larger and smarter model, like Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet, can generate a higher quality website. I could still criticize it, but my issues would be more nuanced and less to do with glaring flaws. Unlike Qwen’s output, I expect a lot of people would be happy using the website Claude created to represent themselves online. And, for me, that’s not speculation. That’s actually what happened. Several months ago, I ditched WordPress and switched to a simple HTML website that was coded by Claude 3.5 Sonnet. Problem #2: Local LLMs need lots of RAM OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman is constantly chin-wagging about the massive data center and infrastructure investments required to keep AI moving forward. He’s biased, of course, but he’s right about one thing: the largest and smartest large language models, like GPT-4, do require data center hardware with compute and memory far beyond that of even the most extravagant consumer PCs. And it isn’t just limited to the best large language models. Even smaller and dumber models can still push a modern Windows laptop to its limits, with RAM often being the greatest limiter of performance. Matt Smith / Foundry The “size” of a large language model is measured by its parameters, where each parameter is a distinct variable used by the model to generate output. In general, more parameters mean smarter output—but those parameters need to be stored somewhere, so adding parameters to a model increases its storage and memory requirements. Smaller LLMs with 7 or 8 billion parameters tend to weigh in at 4.5 to 5 GB. That’s not huge, but the entire model must be loaded into memory (i.e., RAM) and sit there for as long as the model is in use. That’s a big chunk of RAM to reserve for a single piece of software. While it’s technically possible to run an AI model with 7 billion parameters on a laptop with 16GB of RAM, you’ll more realistically need 32GB (unless the LLM is the only piece of software you’ll have opened). Even the Surface Laptop 7 that I use to test local LLMs, which has 32GB of RAM, can run out of available memory if I have a video editing app or several dozen browser tabs open while the AI model is active. Problem #3: Local LLMs are awfully slow Configuring a Windows laptop with more RAM might seem like an easy (though expensive) solution to Problem #2. If you do that, however, you’ll run straight into another issue: modern Windows laptops lack the compute performance required by LLMs. I experienced this problem with the HP Elitebook X G1a, a speedy laptop with an AMD Ryzen AI processor that includes capable integrated graphics and an integrated neural processing unit. It also has 64GB of RAM, so I was able to load Llama 3.3 with 70 billion parameters (which eats up about 40GB of memory). The fictional resume HTML generation took 66.61 seconds to first token and an additional 196.7 seconds for the rest. That’s significantly slower than, say, ChatGPT.Matt Smith / Foundry Yet even with that much memory, Llama 3.3-70B still wasn’t usable. Sure, I could technically load it, but it could only output 1.68 tokens per second. (It takes about 1 to 3 tokens per word in a text reply, so even a short reply can take a minute or more to generate.) More powerful hardware could certainly help, but it’s not a simple solution. There’s currently no universal API that can run all LLMs on all hardware, so it’s often not possible to properly tap into all the compute resources available on a laptop. Problem #4: LM Studio, Ollama, GPT4All are no match for ChatGPT Everything I’ve complained about up to this point could theoretically be improved with hardware and APIs that make it easier for LLMs to utilize a laptop’s compute resources. But even if all that were to fall into place, you’d still have to wrestle with the unintuitive software. By software, I mean the interface used to communicate with these LLMs. Many options exist, including LM Studio, Ollama, and GPT4All. They’re free and impressive—GPT4All is surprisingly easy—but they just aren’t as capable or easy-to-use as ChatGPT, Anthropic, and other leaders. Managing and selecting local LLMs using LM Studio is far less intuitive than loading up a mainstream AI chatbot like ChatGPT, Copilot, or Claude.Matt Smith / Foundry Plus, local LLMs are less likely to be multimodal, meaning most of them can’t work with images or audio. Most LLM interfaces support some form of RAG to let you “talk” with documents, but context windows tend to be small and document support is often limited. Local LLMs also lack the cutting-edge features of larger online-only LLMs, like OpenAI’s Advanced Voice Mode and Claude’s Artifacts. I’m not trying to throw shade at local LLM software. The leading options are rather good, plus they’re free. But the honest truth is that it’s hard for free software to keep up with rich tech giants—and it shows. Solutions are coming, but it’ll be a long time before they get here The biggest problem of all is that there’s currently no way to solve any of the above problems. RAM is going to be an issue for a while. As of this writing, the most powerful Windows laptops top out at 128GB of RAM. Meanwhile, Apple just released the M3 Ultra, which can support up to 512GB of unified memory (but you’ll pay at least $9,499 to snag it). Compute performance faces bottlenecks, too. A laptop with an RTX 4090 (soon to be superseded by the RTX 5090) might look like the best option for running an LLM—and maybe it is—but you still have to load the LLM into the GPU’s memory. An RTX 5090 will offer 24GB of GDDR7 memory, which is relatively a lot but still limited and only able to support AI models up to around 32 billion parameters (like QwQ 32B). Even if you ignore the hardware limitations, it’s unclear if software for running locally hosted LLMs will keep up with cloud-based subscription services. (Paid software for running local LLMs is a thing but, as far as I’m aware, only in the enterprise market.) For local LLMs to catch up with their cloud siblings, we’ll need software that’s easy to use and frequently updated with features close to what cloud services provide. These problems will probably be fixed with time. But if you’re thinking about trying a local LLM on your laptop right now, don’t bother. It’s fun and novel but far from productive. I still recommend sticking with online-only models like GPT-4.5 and Claude 3.7 Sonnet for now. Further reading: I paid $200/mo for ChatGPT Pro so you don’t have to Read...