The SpaceX Starship took another big step toward spaceworthiness today with a 500-foot “hop.” This is one of those times when SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was definitely not overpromising. It took just a few days after the for SpaceX to prep the vessel for its test flight, which went off without a hitch. The SN5 is just the latest prototype of the company’s next-generation Starship rocket. SpaceX has burned (literally) through several versions of the Starship, as well as a smaller test vehicle called the Starhopper. Before now, Starhopper was the only vehicle to fly with the new Raptor engine.
AMD’s market share has been on a steady upward trend since Ryzen debuted in 2017 and the most recent market share estimates from Mercury Research bear out this continued improvement. According to Mercury, AMD’s overall x86 share is 18.3 percent, an increase of 3.5 share points quarter-over-quarter and 1.2 share points year-on-year. The implication of this is that Intel’s market share had been higher in Q1 2020 than it was in Q2 2019, showing that there’s moderate fluctuations between the two companies on an ongoing basis. AMD’s share of the desktop market, excluding IoT, hit 19.2 percent, an increase of 0.6 percent quarter-on-quarter and 2.1 percent year-on-year.
Samsung’s second major Unpacked event of 2020 has a different tone than the first one. Samsung announced the Galaxy S20 series in early 2020, shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic exploded across the globe. The latest edition featured a of the company’s Note20 family, Tab S7 tablets, and more. Samsung even backed off slightly on prices but probably not enough to avoid criticism. These are all still very spendy electronics. The Note20 and Note20 Ultra are the latest Snapdragon 865 flagship phones from Samsung. The smaller Note20 has a 6.7-inch 1080p OLED, which is limited to 60Hz. The Note20 Ultra is 6.9 inches 1440p with a 120Hz refresh rate.
Not only can you save $700 on a powerful Dell Alienware gaming laptop today, but you can take advantage of current sales to save $100 on a high-end Android 4K TV with quantum dot and HDR technology. If you want a fast notebook with plenty of performance for running the latest games, you may want to consider Dell’s Alienware M15. This system was literally built for gaming and it features a fast six-core processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070. You can get this system from Dell marked down from $2,379.99 to $1,599.99.
When you’re working from home, productivity takes on an even greater importance than ever before. With some many potential added distractions, your time spent in front of your personal laptop, banging away on a work project, absolutely needs to be time well spent. Of course, certain deficiencies can easily detract from that focus, including the state of your monitor situation. A second monitor to expand your desktop has been shown to increase productivity by up to 50 percent — and while your office computer likely spotted that extra feature, it’s very likely your laptop isn’t so equipped.
Step up your game with a high-end Dell Alienware desktop. Today you can save $400 on one of these edgy looking systems; it comes equipped with a top-tier Ryzen 7 3700X processor and an Nvidia RTX 2080 Super graphics card. This Alienware desktop features an edgy, rounded design and powerful gaming hardware capable of running most current AAA titles with maxed out graphics settings. In addition to looking cool, this system was also designed to provide improved airflow over the older Aurora desktops, which means the hardware inside will also run cooler as well. For a limited time you can get this system from Dell marked down from $2,029.99 to $1,619.99.
Microsoft and Sony are clearly taking two different approaches to their next-generation console ecosystems, and Microsoft, thus far, is winning the battle for player-friendly features. While the Xbox Series X will support the same controllers MS used for the Xbox One, the PlayStation 5 will not. Instead, support for PS4 controllers on the PS5 will be limited and arbitrary. , “such as officially licensed racing wheels, arcade sticks, and flight sticks, will work with PS5 games and supported PS4 games.” Platinum and Gold headsets as well as third-party headsets that connect via USB port or audio jack will work, as well the DualShock 4 wireless controller or officially licensed third-party game pads — provided you are playing “supported PS4 games.
Good reliability data is both highly prized in computing and frustratingly difficult to come by. Occasionally, a third party firm like SquareTrade will publish its own figures but these reports are few and far between. It’s effectively impossible to track how a manufacturer evolves from year to year without a set of consistent criteria and multi-year tracking. European reseller Mindfactory recently chose to share its GPU RMA data for AMD versus Nvidia products and the results are quite interesting. I’ve written about Mindfactory’s data before and I’m willing to use them as a source for this article, but I want to note an important caveat that I don’t have an explanation for.
Wireless networks have come a long way in the past couple of decades. And yet, sustained Wi-Fi speeds are still a vexing problem in a lot of situations. A number of things can come into play, such as the way your router is set up, whether there’s nearby interference, whether you live in an apartment building or a separate house, where your microwave sits in relation to the rest of your network (yes, really), and how far apart your devices are from the router. Fortunately, there’s always a way to fix slow transfer speeds. If you’ve ever messed around with your Wi-Fi router’s settings, you’ve probably seen the word “channel.
