Reviews

Windows 10 Battery Life Is Better—Except When It’s Worse

I’ve had a devil of a time trying to figure out whether Windows 10 is helping or hurting when it comes to battery life. The answer: It’s complicated. This entire week, we’ve been measuring battery life across four different Windows laptops: two versions of the superlative Dell XPS 13, one excellent HP Spectre x360, and…

PSA: Windows 10 Isn’t a Risk-Free Upgrade

Reviewers agree that Windows 10 is awesome. Reviewers also agree that you should probably wait till bugs get fixed. But maybe you’ve heard that you can simply revert to Windows 8.1 if you don’t like it? Well… I just tried it, and it’s not quite that simple. There definitely is such an option. You can…

Windows 10: The Gizmodo Review

Windows 10 defies review. It’s not a finished product. It will never be a finished product, if you believe Microsoft. Like Apple with Mac OS X, Microsoft has decided that the tenth version of their operating system will be the final one—it’ll just get updated, year after year. Only with Windows 10, even some already-announced…

The Ultimate Guide to Windows 10 Keyboard Shortcuts

If you want to give the impression that you’ve been using Windows 10 for years, learning a few keyboard shortcuts is the best way to go about it—you can navigate around the interface, get apps in position, trigger events, change settings and more with a couple of taps on your keyboard. Here are the shortcuts…

Microsoft Forgot To Fix One Major Thing in Windows 10

There’s been exactly one thing keeping me from buying a Windows laptop for the last three years: Windows sucks at handling high-resolution displays in small laptops. To be clear, this is not some problem with how Windows handles big high-resolution displays — my 27” 2560×1440 screen at home is proof it does that just fine.…

Windows 10 Meta Review: Download It, In A Month Or Two

You can now go get Windows 10 (if you registered for the update months ago, and if Microsoft has rolled it out to your PC yet). But should you? Let’s let the collective wisdom of the internet decide. Reviews of software like Windows have a habit of being polarizing. Some people love the new touch…

Here’s The Incredibly Hacky Way to Disable Windows 10 Updates

Windows 10 auto-downloads and auto-installs updates. This is mostly a Good Thing for general security, but becomes a Bad Thing when said update installs a glitchy graphics driver that breaks your desktop. There is a way to disable auto-updates, but it’s not pretty. The solution comes in the form of a Windows troubleshooter package, basically…

Windows 10, Day Five

The nice thing about reviewing Windows 10 on my own computers is that there’s nowhere to hide. When something goes wrong, I have to troubleshoot on the fly. I can’t say “Oh, I’ll just go back to my personal computer until I figure this out.” You know what’s not so nice? When you shoot the…

Settings Are Better in Windows 10, But That’s Not Saying Much

Computer settings in Windows 8 were a hot mess: they were split between PC Settings and Control Panel, two completely separate ways to change most settings, but with enough differences that you had to use both. Windows 10 makes things better, but I still wouldn’t give the engineers a gold star. The one big improvement…

Motorola’s Surround Is the Slick Evolution of Bluetooth Sport Headphones

Motorola’s new Surround wireless headphones aren’t a new idea—Bluetooth earbuds of very similar design have been around for a while—but that doesn’t mean that they’re not a snazzy little convenience that lots of people are going to like. Motorola basically invented this category of Bluetooth sport headphones with products like the S9, and everyone from…

Windows 10, Days Three and Four

This weekend, I took Windows 10 to a LAN party. It was pretty great. Yes, I’m talking about a nerd fiesta where PC gamers link a whole bunch of computers together with network cables and switches so they can yell at each other while they play games. No, I’m not too old for that shit.…

Does Windows 10 Make Sense On a Big Touchscreen PC?

I own a Dell XPS One 27—a giant touchscreen PC. It’s basically a huge 27-inch monitor with an entire computer crammed inside. The Windows equivalent of an iMac. I like the compact, integrated design so much I’ve bought two of them over the years, but I’ve never really had a need for the touchscreen—it’s just…

Windows 10, Day Two

Two days ago, I promised to upgrade my personal desktop and laptop to Windows 10, to demonstrate how wonderful or terrible the migration from Windows 8 might be. Yesterday, I was surprised how painless it felt. Today, I’m feeling a little pain. https://gizmodo.com/windows-10-day-one-1719864054 It started off brilliantly. I spent most of my second day with…

Yes, You Can Use Cortana in Windows 10 With Any Old Microphone

One of the coolest new Windows 10 features is talking to your computer. For many people, it’ll be the first time they’ve had a voice-activated personal assistant on tap. And yet, most computers won’t have Cortana turned on by default—allegedly because they don’t have certified high-quality microphones built-in. As far as I can tell, though,…

Apple’s New iPod: A Touch Short of Useful

With the latest iPod Touch—Generation 6!— Apple’s iOS runt gets a better camera and powerful guts, which make it feel like a baby iPhone that doesn’t make calls. But why would you buy it if you already have an iPhone? What is it? An iPod Touch, which looks identical to the last. But despite its…

Why the Hell Is Windows 10 Sharing My Wifi Passwords?

Look, Microsoft. Just because I am Facebook friends with someone, doesn’t mean I want to share my wifi passwords with them. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happens by default in Windows 10. Anyone who I’m Outlook.com contacts with (spammers), Skype friends with (webcam strippers), or Facebook friends with (high school buddies turned webcam strippers) can connect…

The Pebble Timehas a firmware update that makes it a whole lot better: a brighter backlight, buzzing notifications that don’t shake your wrist off, and the long-overdue option to dismiss all notifications. [Pebble]

Windows 10, Day One

Last night, as promised, I installed Windows 10 on my own personal laptop. I left everything to chance. I didn’t back up my data. Hell, I set my Lenovo ThinkPad X240 on the floor of a pizza parlor in San Francisco—dongle and all—and let it install totally unattended. Then, I woke my precious laptop to…

Windows Search Doesn’t Suck Anymore

The first thing that everyone notices about Windows 10 is that the Start Menu is back. It’s a cool feature, but an irrelevant one. Thanks to the absurdly powerful new system-wide Search, you’re never going to need a Start Menu again. Search has been getting better and better with every version of Windows, but with…

I Installed Windows 10 and Now I’m Talking to My Computer

Unless you’re one of the handful of people rocking a Windows Phone, you won’t have much experience with Cortana, Microsoft’s personal digital assistant. With the roll-out of Windows 10, Cortana is about to make a lot of new friends very quickly—and like me, they might soon find themselves shouting instructions at their computer on a…