IT General

This was a big week for Windows and PC news, with plenty of new hardware revealed at CES and some important Windows changes. Here are the biggest stories you might have missed.

As our Windows laptops tirelessly work for us, issues can gradually sneak in. If ignored, these issues may lead to costly repairs or even replacements. To ensure your laptop stays in top condition, you must routinely check its hardware health. Here are a few simple tips to help you do just that.

Forget Instagram filters and endless digital albums—instant cameras let you create one-of-a-kind snapshots to cherish or share as meaningful mementos. With classic cameras from Polaroid and Instax combining classic charm with creative possibilities, every shot is timeless.

CES 2025, one of the biggest tech events of the year, has officially come to a close. Here are the biggest stories you might have missed this week, from CES and beyond.

I like to take on a reading challenge every year. By downloading a few reading apps on my iPhone, I find it's a lot easier to stick to my reading habits and see the challenge through. Here are my favorites.

I love renewable energy for the way you can turn everyday infrastructure into stuff that provides power. While it's a big project to line the rooftop of a shed with solar panels, Anker's new solar umbrella is a much easier way to make your backyard a place you turn to for power. I can't wait to order one.

It wasn't difficult to find a common thread among the new Windows laptops showcased at CES 2025. Beyond your expected next-generation refreshes, tech's biggest trade show was all about getting more people to buy into the idea of AI-powered PCs this year.

With consumers still hesitant to embrace AI laptops, prioritizing hardware upgrades over fancy software features, companies' selling points had to come from myriad angles. Most embraced affordability, committing to bringing Qualcomm's upcoming entry-level Snapdragon X processor to dozens of budget-friendly machines. (Copilot+ PCs that cost as much as nice Chromebooks? Yes, please.) Some explored new build materials, targeting eco-conscious consumers with chassis made from oyster shells and ultralight "plasma ceramic aluminum." One manufacturer straight-up renamed all of its long-standing laptop lines in the hopes of helping shoppers more easily find the AI PC that best suits their needs — though it doesn't seem to have gone over so well.

SEE ALSO: Best of CES 2025: Everything that stole the show, according to our experts

And then there's Lenovo, which launched a funky new "rollable" display AI laptop simply because it wanted to see what was possible with OLED technology. It's actually real this time, too.

After countless hours on the Las Vegas Strip and much deliberation, here are our three favorite AI laptops we saw at CES 2025 — plus a few noteworthy honorable mentions.

Best AI laptop overall: Asus Zenbook A14 Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable

Made from a magnesium-aluminum alloy called "Ceraluminum" that's sleek, tough, and 100 percent recyclable, Asus' new 14-inch ultraportable weighs as little as 2.18 pounds, depending on the model — making it the world's lightest Copilot+ PC. It features a beautiful OLED display, a gesture-controlled touchpad, and a battery life of up to 32 hours per charge, which is an unrivaled number among the laptops in Mashable's testing database. Asus hasn't explicitly said as much, but all things considered, this is an obvious answer to the Apple MacBook Air. (Those digits in its name even look like the word "AIR.") It's quite competitively priced, too.

Starting Jan. 13, a Snapdragon X Elite configuration will be available at Best Buy and Asus' website for $1,099.99. Look for a $899.99 Snapdragon X variant at Best Buy this March.

Read Mashable's hands-on review of the Asus Zenbook A14.

Most innovative AI laptop: Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable

We saw it coming from miles away, but Lenovo's new 14-inch business laptop with a "rollable" OLED display is officially heading to market soon. Users can expand the ThinkBook Plus Gen 6's screen with a simple hand gesture or the touch of a dedicated key; the display slides smoothly up from under its keyboard, adding 50 percent more vertical real estate. Lenovo took two years to work on this design after introducing it as a concept, and it's super sturdy and polished in person. It's a compelling new alternative to dual-display laptops for serious multitaskers, provided you can afford it.

The ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 will start at $3,499 when it launches sometime later in Q1 2024.

Read Mashable's hands-on review of the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Rollable.

Most unexpected AI laptop: Acer Aspire Vero 16 Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable

Acer's latest Aspire Vero 16 brings new meaning to the term "clamshell laptop": Its chassis is partially made from oyster shells harvested in Taiwan, where the company's headquarters is based. The shells are cleaned, crushed, and mixed with a blend of over 70 percent post-consumer recycled plastic, resulting in a durable gray case with a slightly speckled appearance. Under its hood, it runs on Intel's just-announced Core Ultra 200H processors.

The Aspire Vero 16 will start at $799.99 when it goes on sale this coming April.

Read Mashable's hands-on review of the Acer Aspire Vero 16.

Honorable mention: Lots of new GeForce RTX 50 Series gaming laptops Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 50 Series announcement was one of the biggest moments of CES 2025, and we got brief looks at several upcoming gaming laptops that will use them. (That includes the refreshed Razer Blade 16, the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 and G16, and the HP Omen Max 16, which is pictured above.) We didn't actually get to play anything on them — they just looped a few clips in our demos — so we don't have much to say about them right now except that they all look really flashy and expensive. However, we look forward to reviewing a slew of them once they start trickling out in March. Next-gen PC gaming is nearly upon us.

Honorable mention: Asus Adol 14 Air Credit: Haley Henschel / Mashable

Asus dedicated a small corner of its CES showcase to its scented notebook made in partnership with fashion designer Anna Sui, which has a subtle, swappable fragrance diffuser built into the center of its lid. It's gimmicky, sure, but also extremely adorable. The notebook is available in four pastel finishes, including a purple one with butterfly accents and a matching quilted travel case. It's only available in China right now, but wider availability could be imminent. Put me down for one, please.

Thanks to AirPlay, you can wirelessly extend or mirror your Mac's screen to an external display such as an Apple TV, certain smart TVs, or other devices running AirPlay receiver software. Here's how.

Typically, you stream Plex in the standard places: on a TV, a smartphone, tablet, or computer. What if I told you that you could stream Plex (or Jellyfin) through your terminal? That's exactly what the new mov-cli-jellyplex plugin does. Here's how it works.

Gaming can be an expensive hobby, especially if you prefer to buy new games on the day of their release. But if you want games that justify the price tag, start looking for ones with high replay value rather than exorbitant hour counts.

There was a time when FPS (First-Person Shooter) and RTS (Real-Time Strategy) games were equally popular, but today the RTS star has long-faded, while FPS games reign supreme. If you ask me, it was the consoles that did them in.

If you’re planning to travel beyond your country’s borders, you need to check that all your gadgets are allowed in your destination country.

Getting into coding can seem intimidating, with countless languages, frameworks, and methodologies to consider. It may even feel easier to outsource everything to an AI. Be reassured: programming for the web can be simple, fun, and—best of all—totally free!

Did you set up your PlayStation 5 console and immediately start playing games? You may have missed a few settings that can make your experience even better, save you space, or safeguard your privacy.

The EcoFlow Delta Plus 3 puts an emphasis on charging and expandability with its upgrade from the Delta 2. The unit may run hot and suffer from a loud fan, but these are workable issues when factoring in overall quality and potential uses. While I may stray from using it for a long-lasting power outage, it can come in handy during those short, sporadic brownouts.

The sun's energy is plentiful. And China is capitalizing.

Images captured by two Earth-observing satellites, operated by the U.S. Geological Survey, revealed a rapid expansion of solar farms in a remote northern Chinese region, the Kubuqi Desert.

"The construction is part of China’s multiyear plan to build a 'solar great wall' designed to generate enough energy to power Beijing," writes NASA's Earth Observatory. (For reference, although all this energy won't directly power the Chinese capital, around 22 million people live in Beijing; that's over two and a half times the population of New York City.)

SEE ALSO: The Carbon Footprint Sham

The two Landsat satellite images below show a section of the major solar expansion between 2017 and 2024. Use the slider tool to reveal the changes. (For a size and scale reference, the images below are about 10 kilometers, or 6.2 miles, across.)

Left: December 20, 2017 Credit: USGS / NASA Right: December 8, 2024 Credit: USGS / NASA

And the solar complex is still growing. It will be 250 miles long and 3 miles wide by 2030, according to NASA.

Though China's energy mix is still dominated by fossil fuels — coal, oil, and gas comprised 87 percent of its energy supply as of 2022 — the nation clearly sees value in expanding renewable energy.

"As of June 2024, China led the world in operating solar farm capacity with 386,875 megawatts, representing about 51 percent of the global total, according to Global Energy Monitor’s Global Solar Power Tracker," NASA explained. "The United States ranks second with 79,364 megawatts (11 percent), followed by India with 53,114 megawatts (7 percent)."

Energy experts say that solar energy, like wind, is an important part of an energy supply, as they're renewable and have been shown to reduce energy costs. Fossil fuels, of course, still play a prominent role in most states' energy mix today.

But the economics of solar are clearly there. The proof, via U.S. satellites, is in the Kubuqi Desert.

At an extremely remote Antarctic outpost, scientists have unearthed a pristine sample of our planet's history.

It's an ice core 2,800 meters, or some 1.7 miles, long. But it's not just the length that's so significant. The ice contains preserved pockets of Earth's air from some 1.2 million years ago, if not more. Previous ice cores provided direct evidence of our planet's climate and environment from up to 800,000 years ago.

So, this is a giant leap. The team drilled so deep they reached the continent's bedrock.

"We have marked a historic moment for climate and environmental science," Carlo Barbante, a polar scientist and coordinator of the ice core campaign called "Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice," said in a statement.

SEE ALSO: If a scary asteroid will actually strike Earth, here's how you'll know

An international group of researchers excavated the ice at Little Dome C Field Camp in Antarctica, located 10,607 feet (3,233 meters) above sea level. They beamed radar down into the subsurface and used computer modeling of the ice flow to determine where this ancient ice was likely to be. And they were right.

This was no easy feat. Atop the Antarctic plateau, summers average minus-35 degrees Celsius, or minus-31 degrees Fahrenheit.

The location of Little Dome C research base in Antarctica. Credit: Beyond EPICA / EU Ice core drilled from the recent Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice expedition. Credit: Scoto © PNRA / IPEV

Although paleoclimatologists, who research Earth's past climate, have reliable methods of indirectly gauging our planet's deep past — with proxies such as fossilized shells and compounds produced by algae — direct evidence, via direct air, is scientifically invaluable. For example, past ice cores have revealed that the heat-trapping carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere today have skyrocketed — they're the highest they've been in some 800,000 years. It's incontrovertible evidence of Earth's past.

Scientists expect this even older ice core, however, will reveal secrets about a period called the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, lasting some 900,000 to 1.2 million years ago. Mysteriously, the intervals between glacial cycles — wherein ice sheets expanded over much of the continents and then retreated — slowed down markedly, from 41,000 years to 100,000 years.

"The reasons behind this shift remain one of climate science's enduring mysteries, which this project aims to unravel," the drilling campaign, which was coordinated by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy, said in a statement.

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Now, the drilling is over. But the campaign to safely transport the ice back to laboratories, and then scrutinize this over-million-year-old atmosphere, has begun.

"The precious ice cores extracted during this campaign will be transported back to Europe on board the icebreaker Laura Bassi, maintaining the minus-50 degrees Celsius cold chain, a significant challenge for the logistics of the project," explained Gianluca Bianchi Fasani, the head of ENEA (National Agency for New Technologies, Energy, and Sustainable Economic Development) logistics for the Beyond EPICA expedition.

These historic ice cores will travel in "specialized cold containers" as they ship across the globe, far from the depths of their Antarctic home.

TL;DR: Say goodbye to PDF struggles with the PDF Expert Premium Plan lifetime subscription for Mac, just $79.99 (reg. $139) for a limited time.

Are you as tired of wrestling with uncooperative PDFs as the rest of us? Whether editing text, merging files, or signing forms, managing PDFs can often feel like a chore.

But with PDF Expert, you can say goodbye to the hassle. This Apple Editor’s Choice app is the go-to solution for anyone looking to handle PDF tasks quickly and efficiently on their Mac. Right now, you can get a lifetime subscription for just $79.99 (reg. $139) and enjoy a professional-grade PDF tool for life.

It was designed to make handling documents as simple as possible, whether editing text in a contract, inserting images into a report, or converting a file into a new format. Everything feels seamless, polished, and straightforward, making it an ideal choice for professionals, students, and creatives alike.

One standout feature is its text editing capabilities. Imagine you’ve just received a PDF with a typo or outdated information—there’s no need to go back and forth with the sender. With PDF Expert, you can directly edit the document, update numbers, add paragraphs, or even insert links to relevant pages or external websites. It’s an all-in-one tool that ensures your documents are always presentation-ready.

Another game-changing tool within PDF Expert is its OCR text recognition. If you’ve ever been frustrated by unsearchable or uneditable scanned PDFs, this feature is for you. PDF Expert’s OCR technology allows you to convert scanned text into editable, searchable content. Whether you’re fixing formatting issues or splitting pages from a scanned document, this capability makes it easy to work smarter.

Take a look at all the features of this app and see how it can streamline your flow.

Get a PDF Expert Premium Plan lifetime subscription for Mac for just $79.99 (reg. $139).

PDF Expert Premium Plan: Lifetime Subscription (Mac) - $79.99

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TL;DR: For a limited time, the NanoPhone miniaturized smartphone is on sale for just $89.97 (reg. $199) plus free shipping.

When it comes to smartphones, bigger isn’t always better. The NanoPhone, a credit-card-sized mini marvel, proves that great things really do come in small packages.

For just $89.97 (down from $199), this compact wonder gives you all the essential smartphone features without the bulk of a full-sized phone.

Whether heading to a wedding, a game, the gym, or just out for the night, the NanoPhone is the perfect sidekick for staying connected without worrying about losing or damaging your primary phone.

Don’t let the NanoPhone’s small size fool you — it’s packed with features that allow you to text, call, and use apps just like your regular smartphone. With dual SIM support, you can even stay connected with two phone numbers at once, making it perfect for travel, business, or keeping your personal and work lines separate. And with 4G and WiFi connectivity, you’ll enjoy decent browsing, streaming, and app usage no matter where you are.

Sometimes, carrying around a bulky, expensive smartphone just doesn’t make sense. Maybe you’re dancing at a wedding, cheering at a game, or lifting weights at the gym. The NanoPhone is the perfect solution for these situations. It’s small enough to slip into a pocket or clutch but powerful enough to handle your voice calls, video chats, and essential apps like WhatsApp, Instagram, and YouTube.

It should be noted that a SIM card/data plan is not included. If you want to utilize a 4G network for traditional phone calls, you will need to connect it to a service provider using a SIM card.

This pocket-friendly device packs most of the features you love into a mini, durable design.

Get the NanoPhone miniaturized smartphone on sale for just $89.97 (reg. $199) plus free shipping for a limited time.

NanoPhone - A Miniaturized Smartphone Packed with Mega Features! - $89.97

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TL;DR: Instead of paying $149 for the 2024 edition of Microsoft Office, get lifetime access for only $119.97 with this New Year's offer through January 12.

Did you hear? Microsoft has finally released the latest version of Microsoft Office—it's huge because it's been three years. The 2024 version has given your favorite apps a makeover, new productivity features, AI integration, and so much more to get you closer to your goals. 

You don't need to pay full price for Microsoft Office 2024 since this New Year's offer arrived just in time. Save an additional $30 on your Mac or PC download and grab lifelong access for only $119.97 while supplies last.

Your favorite Microsoft apps, but updated

With this lifetime license, you could drop the subscription you would usually pay for Microsoft 365, which is about $70 a year. Once you complete the one-time payment, you'll have these productivity apps on your Windows or Mac device forever.

There are a number of upgrades and additions, like a sleek, ribbon-based interface on each app for seamless navigation, so check out what's included in Microsoft Office 2024.

The most exciting feature of the newest version of this suite is its overall AI integration. Enjoy assistance from Microsoft's intelligent AI tools for text, formatting, and design suggestions across all apps. There's even AI in Excel to help you analyze data more effectively, and another one that can recommend audio descriptions and alternative text for images for greater accessibility.

Another feature that could boost your workflow is how easy collaboration is with Microsoft Office 2024. The built-in chat, commenting features, and version history could help you and your colleagues work more efficiently.

This New Year's deal is only valid through January 12 at 11:59 p.m. PT, so grab your PC or Mac download of Microsoft Office 2024 while codes are still available for just $119.97.

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