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» DEPARTMENTS
5 News
28 Consumer Watch
43 Reviews & Ratings
132 Farewell, Pat McGovern
» COLUMNS
113 Here’s How
» FEATURES
83 12 PC upgades for under $300
99 Laptops for
work and play
APRIL 2014
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
122 Hassle-Free PC
125 Answer Line
3
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NEWS
6 Windows 8.1’s
spring update
16 UI designer: Forcing
Metro on all is great
for power users
19 Microsoft to use a
pop-up to push users
off XP
22 Intel wants its new
mobile chips in all
your devices
25 Three big trends ruled
the Mobile World

Congress
5
» By far the most welcome change in the Windows 8.1 update
is one that many users may not even notice. If Windows 8.1
does not detect a touchscreen input on your device, it’ll boot
directly to the desktop to keep its finger-friendly live tiles
away from keyboard-and-mouse users. The opeating system
then tosses up a new tutorial prompt to tell you how to find
the modern Stat screen.
Boot to desktop by default


Windows 8.1’s spring update
Due in early April, the OS’s third refresh might be the charm.
BY BRAD CHACOS
Tech and trends that will aect you today and beyond.
NEWS
6

» Microsoft’s modern Windows 8 apps now appear in the
taskbar, mimicking the functionality of taditional desktop
software. The Windows Store app is pinned in the taskbar by
default in the Windows 8.1 update, to seve as a guidepost and
to drive users to Microsoft’s marketplace. Modern apps still
appear full screen when maximized; windowed modern apps
are repotedly in store for the 8.2 update (“Threshold”) in 2015.
Modern apps on the desktop taskbar
7

» In modern apps, you now can find the taskbar by moving your

cursor to the bottom of the screen. The taskbar spans the screen’s
length even when multiple modern apps are snapped side by side. As
a result, bouncing between standard desktop progams and modern
apps is much less of a burden (though still not seamless).
Unfotunately, the taskbar sometimes covers inteface elements in
modern apps since they weren’t designed with it in mind.
The taskbar is everywhere

Inside Windows 8.1’s
spring update

NEWS
» Previously, closing modern apps or snapping them side by side
required moving your cursor to the top of the screen, clicking and
holding, and dagging the app to one of the edges—a gesture
designed for touch displays. In the new update, a title bar appears at
the top of modern apps. Clicking the upper left corner reveals a
mouse-ready context menu with sizing options, while minimize and
close buttons appear at the upper right.
Mouse-friendly title-bar menus
9

» On the Windows 8.1 Stat screen, if you’re using a mouse, right-
clicking an app now pops up an options menu for that live tile. In
contast, if you’re using a touch input, the familiar modern-style
options bar pops up at the bottom of the screen. And the Stat
screen now includes discrete power and search buttons at the upper
right. Before, you could find those crucial functions only via the
hidden charm bar.
Start screen changes


Inside Windows 8.1’s
spring update

NEWS
» Windows 8 dumped tiles on the Stat screen for evey modern app
you installed. Windows 8.1 required you to add tiles manually, which
reduced clutter but made it easy to forget you’d installed an app
unless you added it to the Stat screen immediately. The update
finds a happy medium: Next to the arrow that moves you from the
Stat screen to All Apps, a notification appears if any newly installed
apps are available.
New apps installed notification
11

» The All Apps screen that displays installed progams has received a
slight rejiggering. The Tiles menu under the Settings charm now has
a ‘Show more apps in Apps view’ option, which does what you’d
expect by reducing the size of each app’s icon. The condensed view
should come in handy for taditional-PC users who configured their
Windows 8.1 desktop Stat button to launch the All Apps screen as
an ad hoc Stat menu.
Show more apps in Apps view

Inside Windows 8.1’s
spring update

NEWS
» The Windows 8 and 8.1 versions of the modern Internet Explorer
hide the open tabs and address bar behind an inteface that you

must manually summon. The incoming update leaves that inteface
visible by default. A helpful Options button in the Tools menu now
negates the need to go messing around in the Settings charm, and
the button to launch IE’s awesome Reading Mode is now more
clearly labeled.
Internet Explorer tweaks
13

» Windows 8.1 added a slew of ganular options to the modern
version of PC Settings in a bid to keep lovers of Microsoft’s touch-
centric inteface ensconced in it. The update continues the shift by
including a new ‘Disk space’ menu under the ‘PC and devices’ options,
which provides tools for you to view and manage the gigabyte
gobblers on your hard drive. A button to purge the Recycle Bin is a
paticularly convenient touch.
Disk Space menu in PC Setings

Inside Windows 8.1’s
spring update

NEWS
» Finally, an under-the-hood change: Microsoft has said that the
coming Windows 8.1 update will be usable on devices outfitted
with just 1GB of RAM and 16GB of stoage space, a change that
essentially halves the previous system requirements. Why move
backward? Sick of losing customers to Android tablets and
Chromebooks, Microsoft seems to be gearing up for a price war
with Google.
Reduced system requirements
15


16
UI designer: Forcing Metro on
all is great for power users
BY BRAD CHACOS
WINDOWS 8’S MODERN
inteface didn’t go over well out of the gate.
Although the live tiles and touch-friendliness offered a lot to like,
usability expets panned many of the design choices, and power users
felt abandoned.
But beyond bridging the gap between PC and tablet, Windows’
immersion in the inteface formerly known as Metro may have had
another purpose: sepaating novice and power users. This move could
preseve the best of Windows while making it more palatable to the
casual computing public.
“Before Windows 8 and Metro came along, power users and casual
users—the content creators and the content consumers—had to
share the same space,” Windows inteface designer Jacob Miller wrote

17
on Reddit in Februay (go.pcworld.com/
millerreddit). (A Microsoft spokesperson
confirmed his employment.) Any new feature
had to be simple enough for newcomers but
pactical enough for power users. Miller
claims that many features, such as vitual
desktops, fell by the wayside.
All work, no play, and vice versa
Enter Windows 8. Yes, the modern inteface is simple and better
suited for content consumption than content creation, but Miller—

who clarified that he was speaking as an employee sharing his
viewpoint ather than in an official capacity—claimed that was
the point.
Our hands were bound, and our users were annoyed.
So what did we do? We sepaated the users into two
groups. Casual and power. We made two sepaate
playgrounds for them.
So if Windows 8 was designed to herd casual and power users into
sepaate corners, why does the OS default to the modern inteface?
Casual users don’t go exploring. If we made desktop
the default as it has always been, and included a nice
little stat menu that felt like home, the casual users
would never have migated to their land of milk and
honey… So we forced it upon them.
Now that Microsoft has fenced casual users inside the land of live
tiles, Miller says it can work on making the modern inteface better for
casual users while filling the desktop with power features.
Once [the modern inteface is] purring along
smoothly, we’ll stat making the desktop more
advanced. We’ll add things that we couldn’t before.
Things will be faster, more advanced, and caftier.
NEWS
Displaced Windows
desktop aficionados
can start to feel
optimistic again.

18
Peering into the future
If Miller’s claims prove to be true, the results could be enticing.

Windows 8.1 stated the migation, adding an optional boot-to-
desktop feature and numerous tweaks that improve the modern
inteface: more control settings, more lexible snap functionality, and
Bing Smat Search. Microsoft’s modern apps are constantly adapting,
too, as the company shifts toward apid-fire updates.
Leaked versions of the impending Windows 8.1 update 1 (see
“Windows 8.1’s spring update,” page 6) show that even more
improvements are inbound. But its new features—such as the ability
to boot to either the desktop or the Stat screen, depending on
whether your setup has a touchscreen—seem like a Ballmer-esque
“refinement of the blend” (go.pcworld.com/ballmerblend) to make
the desktop and modern intefaces play more nicely together, ather
than a doubling down on the strengths of both.
It’s unclear whether Microsoft always intended to smooth the edges
or if it became more of a priority after Windows 8’s hard landing. But
considering the new update’s changes, Satya Nadella’s appointment
as Microsoft’s CEO, and Miller’s comments, displaced Windows
desktop aficionados can stat to feel optimistic again.
Windows 8.1
update 1
offers mouse-
friendly Metro
options.

19
Microsoft to use a pop-up
to push users off XP
BY MARK HACHMAN
NORMALLY, AN UNEXPECTED
pop-up is a reason to wory: Is your PC

infected with a virus? Is this pop-up an ad? With one paticular pop-up
from Microsoft, you’re supposed to wory—but the message is legit.
In its ongoing bid to encouage Windows XP users to move to
Windows 7 or Windows 8, Microsoft began pushing a pop-up window
to users’ machines in March. The company is also patnering with
LapLink to offer a free migation tool to assist with the tansition.
NEWS

20
By now, PCWorld readers and other people who keep up with tech
news should know that the expiation date for Windows XP is April 8,
2014. Suppot for XP is ending, meaning that any vulneabilities
Microsoft hasn’t patched by now will remain open for malware
writers to exploit. A few contingency plans (see “Keep Windows XP
secure after Microsoft ends suppot,” page 37) can mitigate that
threat somewhat; Google will suppot Chrome for Windows XP
through 2015, for example. And although Microsoft has ditched
suppot for Internet Explorer 8 (the last browser for XP), Microsoft
Security Essentials will suppot Windows XP until July 14, 2015. Still,
that’s like wapping duct tape around the Titanic.
So the challenge for Microsoft is to find a way to move users off XP.
The company’s answer? The tried-and-true pop-up notification.
According to Bandon Leblanc, the chief blogger for Microsoft,
the pop-up displays only for users who have elected to receive
updates via Windows Update. It includes a link to the Windows XP
End of Suppot website (go.pcworld.com/xpend), where XP users
can learn how to stay protected against security risks and viruses
after April 8. The notification is set to recur on the 8th of evey
month unless the user disables it, Leblanc says.
Son, am I supposed to click this?

The problem, however, is that the pop-up looks like evey other pop-
up, complete with a link, that decades of computer use have taught
Pop-ups
geneally aise
suspicion, but
this one’s
legitimate.

21
us not to click. Evey tech-savvy son or
daughter has told their parents to avoid
such pop-ups, too. The alternative now, of
course, is for those kids to step in and to
encouage their parents to buy a new PC.
Or a Mac. Or a Chromebook.
For those people who want to provide
such family tech suppot, Microsoft is offering a free copy of
PCmover Express for Windows XP, which will copy files, music,
videos, email, and user profiles and settings from the old PC to the
new system, including across a network. The utility also allows
Windows XP users to customize exactly what to bring over to their
new machine. The free software is available from WindowsXP.com. If
users want to tansfer applications from Windows XP, they can do
so, but they’ll need PCmover Professional (go.pcworld.com/
pcmover). Normally the price for that version is $60, but after a
Microsoft-sponsored discount it’s just $24.
NEWS
Microso’s solution
for moving users o
XP: the tried-and-

true pop-up.

22
Intel wants its new mobile
chips in all your devices
BY MELISSA RIOFRIO
DESKTOP WHO? WINDOWS
what? The classic Windows-based PC
remains Intel’s bread and butter, but it has needed to diversify its diet
for a long time. At an event at the Mobile World Congress in Februay,
the company announced two new Atom chips, code-named Merrifield
and Moorefield, that could be its first truly competitive mobile
solutions—and they arrive not a product cycle too soon.
In case you didn’t know how high the stakes were, Intel President
Renée James laid it out in her remarks at the event. “About 50 billion
connected-computing somethings”—yes, that’s what she called
them—“will be online by the year 2020.” Getting even a small slice of
that pie would be pretty sweet. But competitors like Qualcomm and
Samsung have enjoyed a long head stat, so Intel has a lot to prove to
prospective customers.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MELISSA RIOFRIO
Watch the
video at
go.pcworld.
com/merri

23
The new chips have two big selling points: Their 64-bit architecture
enables faster peformance. At the same time, Intel wrings more
battey life out of the chips by designing them to power down

quickly after executing a task.
They’re also designed to work with opeating systems beyond
good ol’ Windows. Hermann Eul, Intel vice president and geneal
manager of its Mobile and Communications Group, called the chips
“complete platforms…that can suppot multiple opeating
systems and multiple segments in the market.” The company is
paticularly eager to associate itself with Android, if the green
robots strutting around Intel’s booth on the show loor were any
indication—hardly surprising, as Android could provide the enty to
a much bigger market.
In a small, sterile room tucked discreetly into its booth, Intel
demonstated a bank of reference Android mobile phones in action.
Using the Battey Xpt app for Android, the phones can last as long
as 19 or 20 hours on a full charge, according to Intel. The tests
simulate real-world cell-phone use, which is spoadic, as opposed to
NEWS
Intel showed its Merrifield and
Moorefield chips running in
reference designs at the Mobile
World Congress.

24
the rundown tests taditionally
conducted for PCs.
The demo also included two
identical Windows tablets, one
running Windows at 32 bits and the
other at 64 bits, “just to show we
could do it,” said a spokesperson.
But the real test of these chips lies ahead: Which device makers

will include them in their phone and tablet designs? Eul named
seveal at the event—Asus, Dell, Lenovo, and Samsung—and
promised there would be more patners to come. We’ll see. The lack
of on-board LTE in Intel’s chips has long been a sticking point, for
instance, and the new chips are also LTE free (go.pcworld.com/
nolte), though Intel does sell a sepaate LTE solution.
Eul aimed some
tash talk at
Qualcomm, whose
64-bit ARM chip
isn’t due until the
end of the year (go.
pcworld.com/
qualchip). Intel got
there first, Eul
emphasized: “We
ship. That is the
difference.”
The new chips
have tested with
up to 19 or 20
hours’ battey life.
The real test lies
ahead: Which device
makers will design
with Intel’s chips?

25
Three big trends ruled the
Mobile World Congress

BY FLORENCE ION, SUSIE OCHS, AND MELISSA RIOFRIO
WE SPENT A WEEK IN BARCELONA
at the Mobile World Congress, wading
through weaables (go.pcworld.com/weaables), sampling many
smatphones (go.pcworld.com/tensp), and tying out a tablet or two.
While the Galaxy S5 (go.pcworld.com/galaxys5) was the biggest product
to debut—with weaables from Sony (go.pcworld.com/sonywear) and
Huawei (go.pcworld.com/talkband) also garnering attention—it’s not a
revolutionay release for Samsung, despite some impressive software
additions (go.pcworld.com/s5features). We noticed three trends.
Low-end phones: Flagship models like the S5 aside, most phone
makers were touting low-cost handsets. Mozilla showed off phones
running the Firefox OS that could sell for the low, low price of $25. Even
when phone makers had a big handset to announce—say, Sony’s Xperia
NEWS
Watch the
video at
go.pcworld.
com/mwc2014