Best VPN services: Reviews and buying advice

Choosing the right virtual private network (VPN) service is no simple task. A VPN should keep your internet usage private and secure, but not every service handles your data in the same way. 

Rest assured, we’ve done the legwork to determine if a VPN service has a history of good or bad behavior. A service has to protect online privacy; allow you to keep anonymity; offer a good variety of locations from which to direct your traffic; offer fast, reliable performance; and provide an easy-to-use interface.

Scroll to the bottom of this article to learn more about VPNs and what to look for when choosing one.

Updated 11/11/20 to include our review of TorGuard VPN, a good VPN with acceptable speeds, that works with Netflix, and has decent pricing. See links to all of our VPN reviews at the bottom of this article.

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NFL without cable: A cord-cutter’s guide for the 2020 pro football season

Whether you've cut the cord or are sticking with cable, our guide will show you all the ways you can watch America's favorite sport on TV, including Monday Night Football and NFL RedZone.

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Don't log out of Microsoft 365, Microsoft warns as Teams, Outlook.com and more go down

If you’ve been unable to connect to Microsoft’s services, you’re not alone. Microsoft is suffering through an outage that has taken down Outlook, Microsoft Teams, and others. If you are connected, don’t be tempted to disconnect just to see what’s going on, Microsoft warns.

Microsoft’s Office.com portal health site shows that Outlook.com still remains down, though other consumer services remain unaffected. The Microsoft 365 service page, showing the status of Microsoft’s business services, notes that Microsoft Teams may also be affected, along with its related services. 

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Microsoft is testing a Skype Meet Now button in the Windows 10 taskbar

Skype Meet Now was Microsoft's reaction to Zoom just as the pandemic was taking hold: a quick invitation to a video call, no app needed. Now Microsoft is making Skype Meet Now even simpler, by adding it to Windows 10's taskbar. 

Well, sort of. Meet Now is the flagship feature of Windows 10 Insider build 20221, part of the Dev Channel of Microsoft's Insider builds. This means it's part of Microsoft's code base that may never see the light of day, or may emerge in a future build. In any event. Microsoft is rolling the new feature to just a subset of the Dev Channel for now, paring down its audience further.

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Nvidia will buy Arm for up to $40 billion, combining smartphone, GPU powerhouses

Nvidia agreed to purchase Arm for up to $40 billion in cash and stock, the companies said Sunday night. This mammoth deal in the chip industry is expected to bolster AI and GPU powerhouse Nvidia’s chip portfolio, even as it’s sure to attract antitrust attention.

Nvidia will pay Softbank, the company’s current owner, a total of $21.5 billion in Nvidia stock and $12 billion in cash, including $2 billion payable at signing. Nvidia will also issue $1.5 billion in equity to Arm employees. It may also pay Softbank up to $5 billion in cash or stock if Arm meets specific financial performance targets—bringing the final purchase price up to $40 billion.

The deal has been approved by the boards of all three companies—Arm, Nvidia and Softbank—though it’s subject to regulatory approval in China, the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States.

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How to connect your iPhone or iPad to your TV

Try these options when you want to mirror iPhone or iPad content on a bigger screen.

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Flight Simulator: Microsoft's breathtaking virtual, real world

It’s 8 a.m. on a clear, sunny day in Oakland, California. No, it’s a rainy afternoon in Hong Kong. Or is it evening in Paris? Microsoft Flight Simulator doesn’t care.

At a time when gorgeous “open world” games are the norm, Flight Simulator helps set the bar even higher. Yes, it offers a stunning recreation of a virtual world, with weather and realistic landscapes, real-world traffic and ocean waves, and even, apparently, animals. But the virtual world is our world, our planet, and you can go anywhere in it.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Flight Simulator’s “home” screen.

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PCWorld's August Digital Magazine: Dell XPS 15 9500 reviewed

Stay on top of the latest tech with PCWorld’s Digital Magazine. Available as single copies or as a monthly subscription, it highlights the best content from PCWorld.com—the most important news, the key product reviews, and the most useful features and how-to stories—in a curated Digital Magazine for Android and iOS, as well for the desktop and other tablet readers.

In the August issue

This month we review Dell's XPS 15 9500, the laptop Apple should have made. We pick the best PC Games of 2020 (so far). Plus, find out why Xbox Game Pass for PC is the best deal in PC gaming.

Other highlights include:

• News: Arm Macs and AMD rising: How Intel's endless 10nm struggles cost it so much
  
• Lenovo Yoga C640 review: The battery life blows us away
• HP Chromebook x360 12b review: It's affordable and good
• Samsung SSD 870 QVO review: Stupendous 8TB capacity in a SATA SSD
• Best Galaxy S20, S20+ and S20 Ultra cases: Top picks in every style
• Android tips: 11 quick ways to clear space on an overstuffed Android phone, plus how to share large video files from your device
• Here's How: How to fix audio problems on your Windows PC

Video highlights

Watch: The Acer Aspire 5 has been a bestseller on Amazon for months. Here's why: It has a nice, big 15.6-inch display, a slim chassis, and solid performance from its Ryzen 3 CPU on day-to-day computing.

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Microsoft says it hopes to buy TikTok by September

Microsoft confirmed on Sunday that it is interested in buying the American business of ByteDance’s popular TikTok social-networking service, pending a review by the Trump administration, with the intention of closing the deal by mid-September.

Microsoft’s announcement caps off an eventful weekend that began Friday night with President Trump stating that he would ban TikTok, the Chinese short-form social video service. Rumors then began swirling that Microsoft was interested in aquiring the company, but that Trump’s opposition to the service might prevent the deal from occurring. A Sunday-night blog post from Microsoft confirms that the deal is, in fact, in the works.

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Xbox gaming, Windows drive Microsoft's sales as the world works from home

As consumers worked on Windows PCs during the pandemic and played games on their Xbox in the evening, Microsoft benefited from both trends. In a shift from prior quarters, Microsoft’s More Personal Computing business, the home of Windows and Xbox, helped drive company growth.

In its earnings call Wednesday, Microsoft reported that net income fell by 15 percent to $11.2 billion. However, second-quarter revenue jumped 13 percent from a year ago, to $38 billion. This was helped in part by a 14-percent increase in revenue for the MPC group, to $12.9 billion.

There, the drivers were Microsoft’s traditional consumer pillars: Windows, Surface, and Xbox. The first six months of 2020 have been affected by the coronavirus in most areas of the world, and Microsoft has struggled to sell pricier Windows 10 Pro licenses. In the recent quarter, Pro license sales actually fell, down 4 percent. But as consumers and businesses turned to cheaper PCs, Windows 10 “non-Pro” (Windows 10 S and Windows 10 Home, mainly) grew 34 percent. Surface sales also recorded a strong quarter, jumping 28 percent to $1.72 billion.

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I tried switching from the 13-inch MacBook Pro to the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Here's why I failed

Here are the reasons why I just can’t switch from the Mac to the iPad Pro, even though I loved typing on the Magic Keyboard.

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Google's new, integrated Gmail looks a lot like Outlook

A...simpler Google? Yes, from the company that brought you chat app after chat app, Google said Wednesday that it planned to integrate Gmail, Chat, Rooms, and Meet into a unified interface—that looks a lot like Outlook.

That should come as no surprise. Javier Soltero, who led the Acompli email app that was later acquired by Microsoft, integrated a calendar, a file picker, and even a focused inbox years before Microsoft Outlook did. Those features eventually became part of Outlook. Now Soltero, the vice president and general manager of Google’s G Suite, has tidied up Gmail as well.

Last month, Google brought Google Chat into Gmail for the web. According to a blog post Google published today, Chat will “soon” be joining Gmail on Android and iOS as well. The interface should be extremely familiar to mobile Outlook app users, though while Outlook includes a calendar, search, and email icons at the bottom of its mobile app. Google has all four of its key collaboration apps at the bottom of the new Gmail interface. (Weirdly, Google Calendar still hasn’t made an appearance.) 

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Best gaming laptops: Know what to look for and which models rate highest

The gaming laptop landscape is experiencing an earthquake-like shift. With the near-simultaneous launches of AMD’s Ryzen 4000 and Intel’s Comet Lake-H mobile CPUs, we have a real fight for the first time ever, focusing on Ryzen 4000’s cores vs. Comet Lake-H’s clock speeds. Meanwhile, Nvidia has unveiled a new generation of mobile graphics technologies. Check out our top picks immediately below, and keep reading to catch up on the latest news and reviews. 

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Intel unveils the Thunderbolt 4 spec, which AMD believes it can use

Intel unveiled Thunderbolt 4 on Wednesday, tightening the existing I/O specification for docks, some displays, external storage and GPUs. Bandwidth remains unchanged from Thunderbolt 3, though executives said to expect new types of docks and longer cables. AMD, which has traditionally never associated Thunderbolt with its Ryzen platforms, pooh-poohed Thunderbolt demand but said it meets the spec’s security restrictions.

Thunderbolt 4 will debut later this year as part of Intel’s “Tiger Lake” CPU platform, as Intel originally announced during CES in January. We now know it will support 40Gbps throughput, but with tighter minimum specs. Thunderbolt 4 will guarantee that a pair of 4K displays will work with a Thunderbolt dock, and require Thunderbolt 4-equipped PCs to charge on at least one Thunderbolt port. Thunderbolt PCs will be able to connect to either “compact” or “full” docks with up to four Thunderbolt ports. Longer Thunderbolt cables will be possible, too.

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Best antivirus: Keep your Windows PC safe from spyware, Trojans, malware, and more

Antivirus software is nearly as crucial as a PC’s operating system. Even if you’re well aware of potential threats and practice extreme caution, some threats just can’t be prevented without the extra help of an AV program—or a full antivirus suite. 

You could, for example, visit a website that unintentionally displays malicious ads. Or accidentally click on a phishing email (it happens!). Or get stung by a zero-day threat, where an undisclosed bug in Windows, your browser, or an installed program gives hackers entry to your system.

We’re not suggesting that PC security software is fool-proof. Antivirus software often can’t do much to stop zero-day exploits, for example. But it can detect when the undisclosed vulnerability is used to install other nasty bits, like ransomware, on your machine. Anyone who actively uses email, clicks on links, and downloads programs will benefit from an antivirus suite.

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Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 GX550 review: Two screens and a whole lot of speed

The Asus ROG Zephyrus Duo 15 GX550 is a dual-screen gaming laptop that’s learned a thing or two. It has a few predecessors, most recently the HP Omen X 2S 15 and Asus ZenBook Pro from 2019. But auxiliary screen sizes have been the limiting factor. The ZenBook Pro upped the ante with a much larger screen, for example, but it still lay flat, which made viewing angles a pain in the neck.

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EA Play 2020: Star Wars: Squadrons gameplay, the return of Skate, and not much else

Hey, at least one part of E3 remains intact in 2020! Thursday night marked the debut of EA Play 2020, which usually is held in a hot parking lot in Hollywood and this year was held in Andrew Wilson’s surfboard room. 

Anyway, EA kept it to a tight 45 minutes, and a big chunk of that was spent hyping up older games that came to Steam earlier in the day. We’ve rounded up the few new game announcements below though, including news of Skate 4, new Star Wars: Squadrons footage, It Takes Two, and Lost in Random. 

Wait, did I say Skate 4?

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Google Meet is now free for everyone, as the pursuit of Zoom continues

Google Meet is now free for everyone. As part of the video conferencing land rush begun by Zoom, Google has moved Google Meet out of its paid, premium tier, and made it available to both consumers and professionals alike.

In the same way that rival Facebook Messenger Rooms requires you to belong to Facebook to launch a new Room, Google Meet does require users to have a Google account, such as a Gmail email address. The free tier also limits users to just 60 minutes, though the company said it won’t enforce it until after September 30.

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Best wireless charger: Ditch the headache of cables with our top pick

As convenience goes, wireless charging can’t be beat. You simply drop your phone onto the charger and walk away. Gone is the headache of managing cables that inevitably break or get lost.

Wireless charging has not only improved as a technology, but it’s also been adopted by most major phone makers, including Samsung, LG, Sony, Motorola, Google, Huawei, as well as Apple. If your phone supports it, it’s time you pair it with a wireless charging stand or pad, so you can experience the benefit.

We’ve tested some of the most popular wireless chargers out there for both Android and iPhone, and picked our favorites from the bunch. Read on for our findings, and check back periodically for our latest updates.

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Best cheap laptops: We rate the best-sellers on Amazon and Best Buy

Editor’s note: The sudden rise in working from home has created unanticipated demand for laptops. As a result, many models that used to be inexpensive are now pricier. Our list of good buys is shorter as a result, but we still care about your limited budget and want to help you make good choices.  

When you’re looking for a good, cheap laptop, knowledge is power. Every budget machine (which we’re defining as Windows laptops costing $500 or less) is the product of compromise—corners carefully cut here and there to hit a price point.

Your job is to find the one that checks off the most boxes for your needs—and doesn’t saddle you with features (or lack thereof) that you’ll regret in a year. We’ll show you what to look for by highlighting which budget laptops among the best-sellers currently listed at Amazon and Best Buy are worth buying. We haven’t necessarily tested these specific machines (we’ll let you know if we have), but we’ve seen enough similar ones to have a good idea of the pros and cons. We’re also focusing on 14-inch and larger laptops, because part of the great deal should be getting a decent-sized display.

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