The 2025 Microsoft Excel World Championships final in Las Vegas has been won by Irishman Diarmuid Early. Bestowed with the nickname ‘the LeBron James of Excel spreadsheets,’ it might not therefore be the most surprising victory. However, Early had to beat 256 other eager and dedicated spreadsheet heads to win the trophy, and secure the prize pot of $60,000.

From quiet home office to cacophonous Las Vegas arena

Early contrasted the initial knockout rounds of the Championships, played from a quiet home office, to the eSports arena with enthusiastic crowds and commentators in America’s live entertainment capital.

It’s a wonder that the stark difference in atmosphere doesn’t put some people off. Perhaps handling the distractions of the HyperX Arena was one of Early’s strengths – or others were more affected by the roaring crowds and hectic atmosphere.

Given his ‘stage name’ you would be correct to assume that this wasn’t Early’s first rodeo. Indeed, the Irishman, originally from Galway and Waterford and now living in New York, has been a finalist three times. However, he admits he has a record of choking as the competition reaches its climax.

Has Early got a secret behind his success? He says that having his own business helped, and it’s a financial business, so spreadsheets are a constant daily work feature.

Timed eliminations build excitement

Chatting with BBC News, Early conveyed the pressure and excitement of spreadsheet-based eSports. Notably, the stress of competing dramatically ramps up with the timed eliminations of the final rounds. Every five minutes, those in last place get knocked out, explained Early, “You're constantly watching your back.”

Triple world champion Andrew Ngai was held to second place this year, with an award of $5,000.

Excel eSports?

Perhaps one of the most eyebrow-raising eSports tournament hits is the enthusiasm for playing and watching people face spreadsheet challenges. The source report notes that Excel as an eSport is more than 20 years old.

Microsoft’s Excel has grown to be a remarkably capable and complex application over the years. Earlier in 2025 we even highlighted that a dev had managed to get Linux running inside the app, just for fun.

Developer NSG650 has succeeded in his attempt to get “Linux running in Excel.” The GitHub-hosted and aptly named LinuxInExcel project was uploaded to the cloud-based developer platform earlier this week, and updated with input support just yesterday.

Getting Linux to run within the confines of Excel is the latest in a long line of Excel coding gymnastics, which might only be rivaled by those boasting of running various incongruous software gems inside PDFs. And yes, we have already seen Linux running inside a PDF.

If you’ve read about these kinds of software feats previously, you'll know there is perhaps more than an ounce of trickery in running complex software like Linux within the confines of a spreadsheet application.

Developer NSG650 openly admits that his achievement leans heavily on a RISC-V emulator built by fellow GitHubber cnlohr. It also makes use of a Microsoft VBA macro to call the emulator in the DLL, which “gets the output and writes it into the cells in the spreadsheet.”

Using this emulation layer and software vector to run Linux takes a toll on performance – and stability doesn’t seem to be the best, either. NSG650 confirms LinuxInExcel is “very buggy,” but seems to be happy enough with achieving the software milestone, as it stands. It was “done mostly for fun,” says the Bangaluru-based developer in the GitHub readme.

Despite exhibiting little intention to refine his LinuxInExcel project, it has already seen an important improvement. Specifically, NSG650 thanks YouTuber Enderman (who hit our headlines in 2023 by tricking ChatGPT into generating Windows 95 keys) added interactivity by implementing input support.

Edit 11/26/2024 7:00am PT: Microsoft, via Twitter (below), has now stated that the company does not use the data to train its large language models (AI models). 

It is not a secret that Microsoft's Office has Connected Experiences which analyze content created by users. However, according to @nixCraft, an author of Cyberciti.biz, Microsoft's Connected Experiences feature automatically gathers data from Word and Excel files to train the company's AI models. This feature is turned on by default, meaning user-generated content is included in AI training unless manually deactivated. However, this deactivation is a very convoluted process. Microsoft has yet to comment on the information, so take it with a grain of salt [EDIT: as stated above, Microsoft has now said this feature does not enable AI].

This default setting allows Microsoft to use documents such as articles, novels, or other works intended for copyright or commercial purposes without explicit consent. The implications are significant for creators and businesses relying on Microsoft Office for proprietary work, as their data could become part of the company's AI development. For this reason, anyone concerned about protecting their intellectual property or sensitive information should take action immediately.

To do so, users must actively opt out by finding and disabling the feature in settings. The process requires unchecking the box 'Turn on optional connected experiences' that is enabled by default.

On a Windows PC, the steps include going to File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options > Privacy Settings > Optional Connected Experiences and unchecking the box. Seven steps to disable a critical feature that is turned on automatically seems very convoluted.

Microsoft's approach mirrors a broad trend in the tech industry, where other companies have introduced similar features to train their AI models. While all AI models are trained on something generated by humans, doing so without their consent is unethical, to put it mildly.

Microsoft has not publicly confirmed or denied that it uses content from Excel and Word documents generated by users of Microsoft Office to train its AI models. Nonetheless, there is a clause in Microsoft's Services Agreement that grants the company 'a worldwide and royalty-free intellectual property license to use Your Content.'

"To the extent necessary to provide the Services to you and others, to protect you and the Services, and to improve Microsoft products and services, you grant to Microsoft a worldwide and royalty-free intellectual property license to use Your Content, for example, to make copies of, retain, transmit, reformat, display, and distribute via communication tools Your Content on the Services," the clause reads.

In the ongoing quest to do strange, and seemingly impossible things with Microsoft Excel, Redditor u/awesomegraczgie21 posted a demonstration of a functioning, playable raycaster in the form of a first-person maze game running entirely through Microsoft Excel using its Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) programming language.

Specifically, this maze tech demo is seen utilizing raycasting to support transparency and per-column texture mapping. Transparency is noted as being done from the player's view outward (close-to-far rendering), and a simple collision system is used to keep the game functioning within the constraints of its walled maze. The maze is, of course, explored entirely in first-person, navigated pretty much one frame at a time via the included 4 movement and 2 strafe buttons.

Compared to past attempts at rendering graphics in Microsoft Excel, like the "Fallout for Excel" game, this is far more ambitious, though similarly limited in scope and playability. While there is sped-up video footage (10 FPS!) of navigation through the maze being spread online from the original posting, the actual gameplay is more like a "interactive slideshow" . With its creator stating that the FPS ranges between "2FPS up to 5 SPF (0.2 FPS). Rendering multiple overlapping transparent walls kills the performance, but it's worth it." The entire demo is coded in just 400 lines of VBA.

Excel - the best game engine. A simple raycaster with support for transparency and per column texture mapping. More info in the comments. from r/GraphicsProgramming

Back in January, another Excel hobbyist went and proved that it was possible to build an entire functioning 16-bit CPU complete with 128 KB of RAM, a 128x128 pixel display, and a custom assembly language (dubbed Excel-ASM16) within the constraints of Microsoft Excel. Like with Excel-ASM16 and "Fallout for Excel", it's likely that this playable Excel raycaster demo simply won't work outside of Microsoft Excel, i.e. in alternatives such as OpenOffice or LibreOffice.

Like most of these Excel projects, then, it would seem that this project was done almost purely for fun and/or amusement, though it's also noted by the creator that it was made as a project for a "Programming in VBA" university course, "because why not". The creator had wanted to build a raycaster from scratch since they were 16, but lacked the knowledge to make it happen. Now in their second year of university, AwesomeGraczGie21 has done it, but will they stop there? As far as university assignments go, breaking the assumed boundaries of Microsoft Excel with just "~400 lines of code" is something that one would hope would facilitate a passing grade.

Ever wanted to explore a Fallout (1997)-flavored post-apocalyptic wasteland from with the safe confines of Microsoft Excel? Dynamic Pear on YouTube, or "The Storyteller" on Storyteller-Blog.com, has been making playable Excel experiences for some time now — and the latest on the list is "a Fallout-inspired RPG game," in which  players explore the post-apocalyptic "Mercer".

If this sounds unusually ambitious for a Microsoft Excel project, it actually... isn't. We've seen a functioning 16-bit CPU worked into Excel, complete with accompanying programming language. There have also been projects such as a functioning 3D game engine made in Microsoft Excel. As it turns out, people do lots of weird stuff with this application in addition to creating impossible-to-navigate spreadsheets.

In terms of gameplay, this Fallout-inspired Excel RPG actually looks a bit more like Wasteland (1988) than it does Fallout. The Fallout series originally started as a result of disputes over who had the rights to the name, with some of the original team eventually working to create a different post-apocalyptic series. Then inXile eventually got the rights to Wasteland from EA and Kickstarted a sequel, leading to the twenty-six year gap between Wasteland games.

In this case, the top-down scrolling graphics and map navigation of the original Wasteland are present here in Fallout-Excel, as is the mostly text-based gameplay. On that note, Wasteland is currently just a few dollars on Steam — though of course, this Fallout in Excel project is completely free to play. It's also much shorter than the original Wasteland, never mind the sequels.

Fallout-Excel can be broken down into two main gameplay components: Questing and Battling. Eight quests can be found in the explorable top-down map that comprises Mercer, our legally-distinct Wasteland alternative. The "meat" of the game is in the Battling system (like most RPGs), which uses some Dungeons and Dragons tabletop rules for its turn-based system. Again — way more Wasteland than Fallout.

That said, the overall gameplay of this Excel RPG from Dynamic Pear looks pretty similar to the gameplay of the rest of his Excel RPGs. Not to be overly critical, though— it's cool that someone would go to the effort of making free RPGs that should run on any machine that runs Excel. It should be especially cool if you're into Pokemon battles or... Wordle. Now that's some real post-apocalyptic gaming.

Managing a Formula 1 team is challenging, typically leaning heavily on state-of-the-art technology and the most advanced automotive engineering to gain even the slightest competitive edge. Imagine the surprise of James Vowles and Pat Fry, who took over the team principal and chief technical officer roles at Williams F1 in 2023, when they found this F1 team had been relying on Microsoft Excel for the crucial Williams car build workbook. According to the digital motorsport channel The Race, this was just one notable feature of the “team’s outdated working practices and systems” that was holding back Williams, complained Vowles.

Vowles, who made his name at Mercedes, decided on two main areas of focus for his first year at Williams. First, the car’s technology was upgraded, with some sections of the vehicle requiring a tenfold increase in custom-made parts. Second, the creaking Excel spreadsheet that had barely coped with tracking parts previously was replaced by a new bespoke digital parts system.

Up to and including the 2024 Williams FW46 race car, the headlining Excel spreadsheet was crucial for building cars and managing parts. Vowles didn’t pull his punches when talking about the old system. “The Excel list was a joke,” blasted the new Williams team principal. “Impossible to navigate and impossible to update.”

The inherited Williams Excel system contained around 20,000 individual components and parts but didn’t include fields for essential data like component costs, stock levels, and lead times.

Vowles gave an example where using Excel to create an order for a car front wing (with 400 parts) would be a click-and-hope procedure because the Williams Excel workbook was useless in surfacing the information Vowles wanted at a glance. "You need to know where each of those independent components is, how long it will take before it's complete, how long it will take before it goes to inspection. If there have been any problems with inspections, whether it has to go back again," explained the team principal. He also opined that "once you start putting that level of complexity in, which is where modern Formula 1 is, the Excel spreadsheet falls over, and humans fall over. And that's exactly where we are."

So, Vowles blasts Excel, variously describing it as "a joke" and "useless." However, some might argue that this office software doesn't have issues managing a 20,000-item parts list, and an expert Excel wrangler could have made a big difference to the spreadsheet users. For some examples of pushing Excel to its proper limits, recently, we reported on a software developer managing to shoehorn GPT-2 (the 'Small' version with 124 million parameters) into Microsoft's spreadsheet app to create a working local LLM. Earlier this year, a hobbyist built a functional 16-bit CPU with 128KB of RAM and a 16-color display into Excel...

Replacing Excel contributed to millions spent on Wiliams F1 team transition

F1 racing teams are allowed a budget of $135 million per season (not including driver pay). Vowles and Fry have decided to use more than they would like from that budget to bring Williams up to date, which may consist of a few million for banishing Excel’s use as the container for the firm’s workbook and parts list. “It’s an opportunity that’s not small,” said Vowles. “It’s millions of pounds of cost cap money. And it’s tenths of performance in just having processes, structure, and system.”

The transition has precipitated a painful 2023/24 Winter while these big tech and culture changes are being implemented. Still, after taking this bitter medicine, it is hoped Williams will “enjoy some success a bit later on into the year.” Vowles reckons it could take three years for the 1,000-strong workforce to fully adopt the new culture and work together like a well-oiled machine.

Software developer and self-confessed spreadsheet addict Ishan Anand has jammed GPT-2 into Microsoft Excel. More astonishingly, it works – providing insight into how large language models (LLMs) work, and how the underlying Transformer architecture goes about its smart next-token prediction. "If you can understand a spreadsheet, then you can understand AI," boasts Anand. The 1.25GB spreadsheet has been made available on GitHub for anyone to download and play with.

Naturally, this spreadsheet implementation of GPT-2 is somewhat behind the LLMs available in 2024, but GPT-2 was state-of-the-art and grabbed plenty of headlines in 2019. It is important to remember that GPT-2 is not something to chat with, as it comes from before the 'chat' era. ChatGPT came from work done to conversationally prompt GPT-3 in 2022. Moreover, Anand uses the GPT-2 Small model here, and the XLSB Microsoft Excel Binary file has 124 million parameters, and the full version of GPT-2 used 1.5 billion parameters (while GPT-3 moved the bar, with up to 175 billion parameters).

GPT-2 works mainly on smart 'next-token prediction', where the Transformer architecture language model completes an input with the most likely next part of the sequence. This spreadsheet can handle just 10 tokens of input, which is tiny compared to the 128,000 tokens that GPT-4 Turbo can handle. However, it is still good for a demo and Anand claims that his "low-code introduction" is ideal as an LLM grounding for the likes of tech execs, marketers, product managers, AI policymakers, ethicists, as well as for developers and scientists who are new to AI. Anand asserts that this same Transformer architecture remains "the foundation for OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Bard/Gemini, Meta’s Llama, and many other LLMs."

Above you can see Anand explain his GPT-2 as a spreadsheet implementation. In the multi-sheet work, the first sheet contains any prompt you want to input (but remember the 10-prompt restriction). He then talks us through word tokenization, text positions and weightings, iterative refinement of next-word prediction, and finally picking the output token – the predicted last word of the sequence.

We have mentioned the relatively compact LLM used by GPT-2 Small, above. Despite using an LLM which might not be classified as such in 2024, Anand is still stretching the abilities of the Excel application. The developer warns off attempting to use this Excel file on Mac (frequent crashes and freezes) or trying to load it on one of the cloud spreadsheet apps – as it won't work right now. Also, the latest version of Excel is recommended. Remember, this spreadsheet is largely an educational exercise, and fun for Anand. Lastly, one of the benefits of using Excel on your PC is that this LLM runs 100% locally, with no API calls to the cloud.

Microsoft’s Stefan Kinnestrand announced today that Microsoft Excel will officially support Python integration. This will be accomplished via a partnership with Anaconda which brings a huge repository with common libraries like statsmodels, Matplotlib and pandas. The new Python integration is available starting today as a preview for those in the Beta Channel Microsoft 365 Insiders group.

The integration will become a part of the many tools offered in Excel’s repertoire. As such, you won’t have to take any additional steps to add Python to your copy of Excel. More specifically, this integration will be implemented as a part of Excel’s data transformation tool known as Power Query.

If you want to get in on the early action, you’ll need to be a part of the Beta Channel Insider group in the Microsoft 365 Insider Program. The preview will be automatically included in the latest Insider build. Just install the latest copy of Excel offered and open a new workbook. In the ribbon go to ‘Formulas’ then ‘Insert Python’. There you should have an option to try the preview.

Anaconda has more details about their work on the project over at their official website. We definitely recommend checking it out for an inside look at what the new Python support is capable of. They also offer training courses which can help you get off the ground with the new addition.

The preview will only be available for a limited time so now is your chance to check it out and see what it’s like hands-on. The preview will also be extended to Microsoft 365 subscribers. Once the preview expires, it will still be available but with limited functionality. To restore full access, users will need to purchase a license.

If you want to get a closer look at the details of the new rollout, we recommend both reading through the official announcement shared by Microsoft as well as the official documentation from Anaconda.

Microsoft's Build developer conference is all about AI. The 2023 show, which is taking place both online and in person, is being headlined by AI, Bing Chat, and new tools for developers using Windows, GitHub, and the Windows Terminal. Every change, big or small, is being touched by artificial intelligence.

There's plenty of developments for the cloud, like AI in Azure, as well as a new analytics system that Microsoft is calling Fabric. But here are the AI announcements Microsoft is making at Build that you're most likely to see coming to tools you use soon:

AI Plugins

At Build, Microsoft said that it will use the same plugin standard as its partners at OpenAI use for ChatGPT. This should allow developers to make plugins that are interoperable between ChatGPT, Bing Chat, Dynamics 365 Copilot, and Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Microsoft is also announcing support for new plugins for Bing Chat. Newly announced add-ons include those for Instacart, Kayak, Redfin, Zillow, Klarna, and many others, alongside OpenTable and WolframAlpha. Communications head Frank Shaw told the press that as part of Microsoft 365 Copilot, there will be more than 50 plugins announced at Build, including from Atlassian, Adobe, Thomas Reuters and Mural, with "thousands" of plugins by time Copilot it hits general availability.

Copilot coming to Edge, Windows 11

Microsoft is bringing some of its Copilot features (which are currently in a private preview in MIcrosoft 365) to the Edge browser.

Microsoft 365 Copilot already uses large language models to answer requests from Microsoft 365 apps such as Excel, Word, Teams, Outlook, and PowerPoint. Now, the Copilot will also work with Edge, so people will be able to use the AI in conjunction with their web browser. Perhaps they'll get a PDF that opens in the browser, and users can ask Edge to summarize it.

Windows 11 will use Bing Chat along with third-party plugins and Microsoft's own. Windows Copilot will let people change settings, open apps or perform other actions with AI, while also mixing in Bing Chat to answer questions from the web. It will be able to be parked aside in a panel for easy access.

Media Provenance

At Google I/O, Google discussed features that would secretly mark images and videos made by AI so they could be identified as such. At Build, Microsoft is following suit with "media provenance" abilities being added to Bing Image Creator and Microsoft Designer.

Microsoft's tech will use cryptographic techniques to "mark and sign AI-generated content with metadata about its origin." The company says that this signifier will be in accordance with  standards set by the Coalition for content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), of which Microsoft is a co-founder. Microsoft says it will start by supporting "major images and video formats" when the initiative ramps up in the "coming months."

Microsoft Store Gets an AI Hub

The Microsoft Store will be filled to the brim with AI. The Microsoft Store will get a section specifically for AI apps and experiences. Developers can submit their AI-focused apps to be featured.

 AI is also coming to review summaries. Reviews in the app store will be scanned by AI, which will compile them and recapitulate. Additionally, developers will be able to fill their listings with AI-generated keyword suggestions to improve search engine optimization.

Dev Home

Beyond its AI tools, Microsoft also doubled down on Windows as a tool for developers with a new feature called Dev Home. Available in preview, it lets users set up a machine, connect to GitHub and build dashboards and other extensions, as well as use GitHub widgets and track CPU and GPU performance.

Microsoft is also adding WinGet configuration to the Windows Package Manager, taking care of setup and, according to Microsoft, dropping setup time from days to just hours. WinGet's configuration file will ensure you get the right version of software packages and frameworks.

There's also a new storage volume, Dev Drive, which Mifcrosoft says is based on the Resilient File System (ReFS) and offers a 30% improvement in build times, partially due to a "performance mode" in Windows Defender. Microsoft hasn't said much about this new mode, other than that  this "new performance mode is more secure for developer workloads than folder or process exclusions, providing a solution that balances security with performance.  

But of course, dev tools are also getting the AI treatment. Windows Terminal is gaining support for GitHub Copilot X, and will be able to use an "experimental chat experience" to use language both inline and in chat to learn more about errors, get recommendations and to perform actions throughout Terminal. Microsoft says it also wants to add GitHub Copilot-style AI in other developer tools, such as WinDBG.

We'll likely learn more about all of these features during the Microsoft Build keynotes. CEO Satya Nadella will start the show today at 9:00 a.m. PT / 12 p.m. ET. 

Microsoft rebranded Office 365 to Microsoft 365 in Oct. 2022, part of its effort to slowly take the long-running "Office" brand out of the limelight. At the time, the company didn't make any significant changes to the subscription tiers or features offered. But that will change later this month with the addition of a new Microsoft 365 Basic tier, which will cost $1.99/month ($19.99/year).

Microsoft 365 Basic slots between Microsoft 365 (free) and Microsoft 365 Personal ($6.99/month). It replaces the previous 100GB OneDrive storage subscription and adds some perks. Microsoft says customers can expect these features with the new tier:

• 100GB cloud storage
• Works on Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android
• Web and mobile versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, OneDrive, and more
• Ad-free Outlook web and mobile email and calendar with advanced security (data encryption, suspicious link cheer, malware scanning for attachments)
• Microsoft technical support

The extra functionality seems like a nice upgrade for users currently getting by with just the 100GB OneDrive storage tier. In addition, Microsoft says it will add "even better advanced security features" later this year, including shared links that are password-protected, and ransomware recovery.

While the inclusion of Office is welcome, we should note that this tier only includes the basic, web-based versions of Microsoft's popular productivity apps, which are available for free. To access the "premium" desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, you'll have to step up to Microsoft 365 Personal.

Microsoft was quick to point out that Jan. 29, 2023 marks the 10th anniversary of Office 365. The high-end Office 365 Home Premium subscription initially included only 20GB of cloud storage. Today, the Microsoft 365 Personal tier offers 1TB of OneDrive storage. In addition, the flagship Microsoft 365 Family tier for consumers ($9.99/month) supports up to six people, each with their own 1TB allotment of OneDrive storage.

Microsoft 365 Basic will be available starting Jan. 30. Current 100GB OneDrive subscribers will automatically be shifted to the newer, more feature-packed tier.

Microsoft is preparing to retire or at least deemphasize its decades old Office brand in favor of Microsoft 365 branded cloud productivity tools. Users should expect to see the changes permeate throughout the Microsoft cloud ecosystem in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, PC stalwarts using offline standalone Office suites and applications will probably not notice any difference.

The news was secreted within Microsoft’s announcement of a new Microsoft 365 app on Wednesday. On that page you will find a FAQ which helpfully spells out what is changing with regards to Microsoft 365 and Office brands, when changes will be pushed through and what it means to users of either branded products / suites. It also explains that “over the last couple years, Microsoft 365 has evolved into our flagship productivity suite,” and this is seemingly behind the decision to transition Office.com, the Office mobile app, and the Office app for Windows into Microsoft 365 branded products.

The key thing for many users of Microsoft's flagship office productivity tools, is that they are not going away. Microsoft says that “as part of Microsoft 365 you will continue to get access to apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.” Also, Office 365 subscribers in business / enterprises will not be moved to Microsoft 365 plans. Importantly to many readers, those seeking the most recent offline / perpetual Office editions will still have the opportunity to buy apps as one-time purchases via Microsoft’s Office 2021 and Office LTSC plans, too.

While the branding change is a pretty big deal, once you read all the small print, it isn’t very impactful. However, the same could be said of any branding or naming change. The most affected will be personal consumers, students, and small home offices which currently use the Microsoft 365 cloud-powered productivity platform via mobile and web-apps. Existing users of these cloud office tools won’t have to do anything; existing accounts, profiles, subscriptions, and files won’t be disrupted, even if you are accessing them from the new app with new branding and icon. In a way, the naming changes help emphasize the difference between the cloud-powered and the perpetual Office releases; with the online version highlighting collaborative tools like Teams and OneDrive being used alongside more traditional office productivity apps in the new hybrid working world.

Expect to see many of the above changes arrive with the rebranding of the unified Office app to Microsoft 365 in November, with the whole rebranding effort expected to be completed by January 2023.

Today, Asus has announced a new 2-in-1 tablet known as the ExpertBook B3 Detachable designed for professionals. It's a unique device that features a Snapdragon processor paired with Microsoft's Windows 11 Pro operating system.

The tablet specs include a Snapdragon 7c Gen2 eight-core processor along with 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM and a storage capacity of just 128GB of eMMC memory. This tablet is one of the first Windows 11 based machines to come with an ARM processor, which should boost battery life significantly compared to more power-hungry x86 solutions.

As the name implies, this tablet is aimed more towards professionals who need a small tablet for jotting down notes, looking at Excel sheets, or other similar light-use tasks. Given the device's specs, don't expect to do any professional video editing or heavy Photoshop work without encountering massive slowdowns.

To turn the tablet into a true 2-in-1 device, Asus paired the B3 with its ExpertBoard keyboard that magnetically connects to the tablet and functions very similarly to Microsoft's own touch covers for its Surface tablets.

However, the keyboard itself can't do all the heavy lifting. As a result, Asus also pairs the B3 with its homemade ExpertStand, allowing you to prop the tablet when needed to work as a laptop or propping up the tablet vertically for other uses.

We don't have the B3's entire spec sheet, so some details, like display specifications, are unclear. But Asus does mention the screen has a 16:10 aspect ratio, which should provide some extra screen real estate over traditional 16:9 displays. The resolution remains unknown, but we're assuming it'll be around the 1080P ballpark.

The only I/O on the device appears to be a single USB-Type C connection and a single headphone/mic jack on the right side. To the left, you get your power button plus volume buttons.

For notetaking, the B3 includes a stylus with a built-in charging holder inside the table. The charging rate of the pen is impressive, with Asus promising up to 45 minutes of use if you leave the pen to charge inside the tablet for just 15 seconds.

Asus has also specced out the ExpertBook B3 to the MIL-STD 810H U.S. Military standard, so you can expect the B3 to be very durable and reliable. Some of the qualifications include 15,000 insertion and removal cycles for the USB type C port, and the ability to withstand eighteen 40G shocks while the device is powered on.

Microsoft recently announced that Office 2021 will release alongside Windows 11 on October 5th. The latest version of Microsoft's Office series will be the successor to Office 2019, and brings new features to the office suite while retaining price parity with Office 2019.

Office 2021 will be a rather minor upgrade over Office 2019, but, for some people there will be enough features to make the upgrade worthwhile.

Excel is getting the most attention with the latest update, Microsoft has added several new functions including XMatch, LET, Dynamic Arrays, and XLookup. XLookup for instance, allows you to find any data within a table by using a search bar-like function, and LET will allow you to assign names to calculation results.

Outlook has also received a couple of updates. There's a new translator in Outlook that will translate messages on the fly, and there's a new global search that allows you to find emails across all your folders and email accounts with several search parameters.

Other features include new performance improvements for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, as well as a newly refreshed UI with refreshed tabs in the ribbon.

Check out the rest of Office 2021's new features here, including new features for Word (like ODF support) and PowerPoint.

Pricing will remain the same as Office 2019, with Office Home and Student going for $149.99, Home and Business going for $249.99. Office 365 users will get the free upgrade to Office 2021 once it releases on October 5th.

Office 2021 will be fully compatible with Windows 11, Windows 10, and the three most recent versions of MacOS.

With the release of Office 2021, Microsoft will also be discontinuing support for Office 2013 and it will not be supported on Windows 11.

The age of subscription services may be well upon us, but Microsoft isn't liable to leave any revenue sources on the table. The company today started rolling out its Office LTSC (Long Term Servicing Channel) for Windows and macOS, which is a version of Office specifically geared for government and commercial clients who don't find value in the company's cloud elements for Office 365, and whose systems might go without any service update for years at a time. Baked into that announcement, however, was also the commercial release of Office 2021 for general consumers. Mark the date: October 5, 2021. That's the same day as the Windows 11 launch. 

Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365, said that "While it [Office 2021] offers performance improvements and expanded accessibility, it will not offer the cloud-based capabilities of Microsoft 365 Apps like real-time collaboration and AI-driven automation in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, as well as security and compliance capabilities that give added confidence in a hybrid world." 

The standalone, perpetual license version of Office 2021 includes a number of performance and feature improvements, including Dark Mode support as well as support for version 1.3 of the OpenDocument format. Four new Excel functions will be made available (XLOOKUP, LET, XMATCH and dynamic arrays); PowerPoint will introduce support for presenter video recording, ink recording, and laser pointer recording; and of course, all Office 2021 apps will see a visual language update to keep them in line with the new Windows 11 interface and design philosophy.

Microsoft will offer five years of "Mainstream Support" for Office 2021, and there are no plans for extended support programs beyond October 2026 - a year after support ends for both Office 2016 and Office 2019, which have enjoyed longer mainstream support commitments from Microsoft.

The company also announced that pricing will remain the same for Office 2021 as compared to previous versions of Office which means $150 for the Office Home & Student version, and $250 for a single Office Home & Business license.

A new type of malware, dubbed ‘Panda Stealer’ by researchers, is spreading through spam emails and malicious Discord links, and has its sights set firmly on your ever valuable cryptocurrency. According to Trend Micro, the phishing emails appear as business quote requests, with an XLSM file attached that’s loaded with malign macros. 

Panda Stealer appears as an innocent XLSM file with macros that once enabled download a "loader" which executes the main "stealer" application. Alternatively, an XLS file may be downloaded, containing a formula that hides a Powershell command that accesses paste.ee, a Pastebin alternative, to download a further PowerShell command. Once running, Panda Stealer tries to detect keys, addresses, and other data associated with cryptocurrency transactions and wallets holding funds including Dash, Bytecoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum. Right now we are unsure if the latest cryptocurrency, Chia is affected. It will also attempt to steal credentials from other applications such as NordVPN, Telegram, Discord, and Steam. It’s capable of taking screenshots of the infected computer, and sucking data from browsers like cookies, passwords, and cards.

Panda Stealer seems to be a variant of Collector Stealer, a cracked build of which is freely available online. While there’s no evidence yet of a particular criminal group behind Panda Stealer, Trend Micro was able to identify an IP address being used by the malware for command and control. It led to a rented Shock Hosting virtual server, and having been reported, the server has been suspended. 

This may not be enough to quell the threat, however, as VirusTotal found 264 similar files in its database, calling home to 140 C&C servers and from more than 10 download sites, some of them from Discord, which may be being used to share the malware between criminals.

Though there are free alternatives available, for many, there’s nothing quite like the familiar, comfortable workings of Microsoft Office, from Word’s superior spell and grammar check to the ease and sense of security of storing files locally on your own PC and not online.

Before you can get Office for free, cheap or any price, you should know there are two main variants. Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) gives you constant updates but requires a monthly or annual subscription fee. Office 2019 is a fixed package of software, but you only have to pay for it once. Microsoft really wants you to use the subscription-based Microsoft 365 service, of course.

The Office 2019 package is slightly different than Microsoft 365. On top of that, there are companies besides Microsoft selling Office for free (both Microsoft 365 subscriptions and Office 2019 keys) or cheaper than Microsoft. And you can even run Office apps for free online. So what’s the best and cheapest way to get your productivity on?

From Office for free to paying $150 or subscriptions, here’s a breakdown of the best and cheapest ways to get Office (we focus on personal versions, rather than business ones).

Office 2019 vs. Office Online vs. Microsoft 365

Download Office 2019 From Microsoft: $149.99

Despite shifting focus to Microsoft 365, which used to be called Office 365, Microsoft still sells Office Home & Student 2019 for a one-time charge of $149.99. This includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote but lacks some solutions Microsoft 365 has. These missing solutions may or may not be relevant to you: Outlook, Publisher (PC only), Access (PC only) and the OneDrive and Skype cloud services.

You can buy some pieces of the Office suite individually, but considering Word 2019 is $139.99, if you plan on using even 1 more Office app, it’s a better deal to buy the whole platform.

No matter where you get Office 2019, it won't be updated monthly like Microsoft 365 is. That means you’ll never see new features added. What you buy is what you get. However, you will get security patch updates “as required,”  Daniel Vargas, Microsoft director of product marketing, told Tom’s Hardware.

It's very possible that you don’t care if your Office software is updated regularly. Heck, you may even be okay with an older version of Office, say Office 2016, which you can still find keys for from third-party sellers for cheaper than Office 2019. However, Office 2016 has reached end of life (EoL), meaning Microsoft no longer provides security updates for it. If you can settle for the 2016 version of Office, you can, as of this writing, get it from Kinguin for PCDestination for about $50. But customer service may be lacking (more on that later). 

Remember, to use Office 2019, you need to be running Windows 10. Luckily, we’ve already detailed how to get Windows 10 for free or cheap.

If Office 2019 is your preferred choice, you can get it for significantly cheaper than the $149.99 Microsoft charges by buying it from a third-party retailer.

Download Office 2019 Key From a Third-Party: ~$45

Microsoft charges $149.99 to download Microsoft Office Home & Student 2019, but you can save a lot of money if you’re willing to buy it from a different store.

Newegg sometimes sells the same download key for $123.99, so it's worth checking. If you can wait for a physical key, Walmart currently sells the key card for $124, Amazon occasionally has it for $125 and Kinguin has it for a shockingly low $36 (and even lower with a Kinguin discount code). 

But before you take out credit card, let's talk about the reasons you might want to avoid these retailers. 

The Downsides

Saving over $100 on Office 2019 sounds like a no-brainer. However, since you’re not buying from Microsoft, you’ll have to exert some caution. You’re probably comfortable shopping at a well-known retailer like Newegg or Amazon; however, you’ll want to check their return policy on software.

You may be more hesitant to buy from key reseller website like Kinguin. Many question their legitimacy or morality behind such deals. To learn more about its Office 2019, we spoke with Kinguin directly.

“Only the original developer or publisher of a digital product can generate keys, so all of the Office 2019 keys come from this source. From there, either a seller buys them directly from the publisher or from the wholesaler, who also got them directly from a publisher, and sells them on Kinguin for a fair market price,” Michał Puczyński, PR Manager at Kinguin, told Tom’s Hardware in September 2019.

Puczyński admitted there are “a few bad apples” in its marketplace but said this is inevitable since there are “tens of thousands of Office 2019 keys sold by thousands of sellers on Kinguin.” However, he claimed that only one out of 700 postings aren’t legitimate, and an even smaller percentage of shoppers actually get scammed.

“Our fraud prevention team manages to stop nearly 100% of these attempts before they take place. When a scammer is detected through our custom fraud technology, that person is banned for a lifetime from selling on Kinguin,” Puczyński explained.

Kinguin also offers a $5.69 “Buyer Protection, ”which guarantees you a refund if you get a bum key.” However, even if you don't buy this protection, Kinguin is willing to work with you for a potential refund if your key doesn’t work.

“We always put the customer first and work to find a solution for any problem the customer has encountered, which may include issuing a refund,” Puczyński said. “The Kinguin Buyer Protection is an optional feature designed to provide added protection while purchasing in our store, as well as additional services, but that doesn’t mean the customer will get inadequate treatment without it. Kinguin does reserve its right not to accept any returns of already delivered items or game keys to protect itself from scams.”

Regardless, we've heard of customer complaints regarding slow customer service or the company offering refunds rather than dealing with individual complaints. We haven't been able to get in touch with Kinguin for a response. 

Get Microsoft Office Free: Online and Mobile Apps and More

As its name implies, Microsoft Office Online doesn’t live on your PC. Instead, you can only access these services with an internet connection. You also have to have a Microsoft account. You can get to Office Online by signing in with your Microsoft account here. Once you do so, you have access to free Office tools. 

The service is a good alternative to G Suite, especially if you don't like some of that platform’s limitations. Your files will still be at the mercy of the web, but you’ll be able to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, OneDrive, Skype, Flow, Forms and Sway without paying any money. Plus, since everything is internet-based, you can access it from any computer connected to the web.

As of November, Microsoft consolidated Word, Excel and PowerPoint into a single mobile app on both Android and iOS smartphones. The app is available on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.

Free Office Online may not be a good fit for your largest or most complex projects, since features are more limited than what's offered in Microsoft 365. It has less menu options. For example tabs like Draw and Design are missing from Word online. 

The free Office Online does come with 5GB of OneDrive storage, but that’s actually skimpy compared to the 15GB of free storage you get with Google Drive.

Similarly, there are free iOS (varies from iPhone to iPad) and Android (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, Outlook, OneNote and SharePoint) versions of Office software that are also available for free but with fewer features.

Note that you may also end up getting Microsoft 365 for free through a sale. For example, from now until April 18, LG is offering a 12-month subscription of Microsoft 365 Personal for free if you buy a 2021 LG Gram laptop. 

Buy Microsoft 365 From Microsoft: $69.99 or $99.99/year

On April 21, Microsoft renamed Office 365 to Microsoft 365. In addition to a new name, Microsoft 365 brings new features, including artificial intelligence, new templates and content and "cloud-powered experiences," according to Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President, Modern Life, Search & Devices at Microsoft. 

Microsoft 365 Personal, which is for one person across multiple devices, is $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year. You can use Microsoft 365 Home for free through a one-month trial. Microsoft 365 Family, for up to six people, is $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year. 

Microsoft 365 is a great option if you don’t mind paying for your productivity suite on an annual or monthly basis. It won’t be long until you’ve paid more for Office 365 than you would have for Office 2019, but it does come with more apps than Office 2019. In addition to Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, Office 365 includes Outlook, Publisher, OneDrive and Skype. PC users also get Publisher and Access. 

Perhaps the best part is you can install Microsoft 365 on an unlimited number of devices and log into your subscription on up to 5 of those devices simultaneously. Additionally, Office 365 Personal subscribers get 1TB of OneDrive storage for up to 1 user, and Office 365 Home users can share their cloud storage with 6 users. You also get 60 minutes of Skype calls to real phone numbers for 1 or 6 users, depending if you get Office 365 Home or Personal. 

Another advantage Microsoft 365 has over traditional Office 2019 is its monthly updates, which vary but can include new features, functionally and security updates, “ and often it is all of those each month,” Microsoft’s Vargas told us in September 2019. 

“Most importantly, Microsoft 365 is connected to the cloud, so you can access your content from any device, co-author with anyone in real-time (regardless of whether or not they’ve purchased a copy of Office) and use the power of artificial intelligence to create more impactful content with less effort,” he added.

You can get a free trial for Office 365 Home (only), but it’ll last a mere month.

Buy Microsoft 365 From a Third-Party: $49.99 or $79.99/year

You can also buy or renew your Microsoft 365 subscription from a third-party retailer in one-year packages that are cheaper than what Microsoft charges for its one-year subscriptions.

At the time of writing, Newegg has a 15-month Microsoft 365 Personal subscription for $69.99 if bought with another product or $60 for a 12-month Office 365 subscription, (note that you won't get the features of the current Microsoft 365), which will have to be delivered. 

Amazon has Microsoft 365 Personal for $40 but is charging the same price as Microsoft for Microsoft 365 Family. It doesn't offer the older Office 365. 

Note that you still get free Microsoft technical support for the duration of your subscription, even if you buy your subscription outside of Microsoft. But Microsoft won’t handle subscription or billing issues, such as cancellations or refunds. This is because “Microsoft has limited access and visibility over subscription purchased through a third-party retailer,” according to Vargas.

Get Office Free: Microsoft 365 Education for Students, Teachers

If you’re a student or teacher, you can actually get an Microsoft 365 subscription for free, if your school qualifies. The subscription includes SharePoint, Sway, Forms, Stream, Flow, PowerApps, School Data Sync, Yammer, which aren't included in regular Office 365 subscriptions. However, you miss out on Outlook, Publisher and Access.

To see if you’re eligible for free Microsoft 365 Education, head to Microsoft’s website.

Bottom Line

Microsoft Office is a productivity staple. If you insist on the traditional procurement method of buying and owning the software for life and don’t need the software to be updated monthly, you should stick with Office 2019, just know that EoL will eventually come. You can also buy a legitimate key from a key reseller for as low as about $45, saving you around $105 from Microsoft’s pricing.

If you’re not doing big projects but instead just basic documents, spreadsheets, presentations etc., you may be able to get away with free Office Online or mobile apps. Just be sure you have an Internet connection.

But for heavy-duty productivity, the world is moving toward subscription-based software. Microsoft 365 comes with more offerings than Office 2019, monthly updates, the ability to share among multiple devices, plus a heaping 1TB of free cloud storage. You can get it for cheaper if you buy it outside of Microsoft, for as little as $50 for a year. But make sure it’s a retailer you trust, in case of billing or subscription questions. If you’re okay with making monthly or annual payments to continue creating and editing files, Microsoft 365 -- is tomorrow’s productivity suite.

When you work with large amounts of data in Excel or Google Sheets, even the simple task of removing all blank cells in your worksheet could become a daunting chore if you have to do it manually. A quick and painless way to clean up your spreadsheet in Excel is to use the Go To Special feature. This tool will help you identify all the empty cells in your document and delete them all at once. While this makes it an easy option to use, beware that it may cause a misalignment in your document. To be safe, you should always save a backup copy of your document before you start deleting cells. It is also better to delete entire rows or multiple columns to avoid screwing up the order of your data. 

If you’re using Google Sheets, you can use Filter to delete blank rows or blank cells in a column; this method also works in Excel. 

How To Delete Blank Cells in Excel using Go To Special 

1. Select cell range. Highlight all the cells you want to filter. 

2. Select Go To Special from the Find & Select menu. You’ll find the Find & Select Menu on the Home tab in the Editing group. You can also hit F5 then click the Special button. 

3. Select the Blanks option in the popup menu. All the blank cells in your document will be highlighted. 

4. Delete selection. Right-click on any one of the highlighted cells and click Delete. Choose from the delete options in the popup menu, then click OK. 

How To Delete Blank Rows in Excel using Filter 

1. Select data set range. Highlight all the cells you want to filter. 

2. Navigate to the Sort & Filter menu. On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click Sort & Filter and select Filter (funnel icon).  

3. Filter all Blank cells. Click the arrow icon from any column. In the dropdown menu, uncheck Select All and check the (Blanks) option. This will sort together all the blank rows in the range you chose. 

4. Delete selection. Right-click on any one of the highlighted cells and click Delete. Your table will look empty. Once again, click the arrow icon from the column you chose and select Clear Filter. All your data will reappear without the blank cells. 

Note: The same process applies to delete blanks cells in a column. 

Unfortunately, the Go To Special command is not available in Google Sheets. 

How To Delete Blank Rows In Google Sheets 

1. Select data set range. Highlight all the cells you want to filter.

2. Turn on Filter. Click the Create a filter option from the Data tab. Filter icons will appear on each header row column.  

3. Filter all Blank cells. Click the filter icon from any column. In the dropdown menu, click Clear, then check the (Blanks) option. This will sort all the blank cells in the range you chose. 

4. Highlight blank rows.

5. Right-click on any one of the highlighted cells and click Delete rows. The spreadsheet will look empty. 

6. Select Turn off filter from the Data tab. This will display the rest of your data. 

Microsoft announced Monday that it's combining Word, Excel and PowerPoint into a single Office app on mobile devices. The products will remain separate on desktops--even Microsoft wouldn't dare confuse Windows users by consolidating its Office suite into a single app--but will be lumped together on Android and iOS.

"The new Office mobile app represents our vision for what a productivity solution would look like if first built for mobile devices," Microsoft said in the blog post announcing this change in approach. "In designing this new experience, we first considered how people’s expectations differ when using a phone versus a computer, so we set out to optimize for simplicity, efficiency and common mobile needs."

Bringing the Office suite together into a single Office app helped achieve most of those goals. The apps had their own mobile optimizations already: Word and Excel could both create editable documents from pictures, for example, and PowerPoint could use pictures taken directly from the phone's camera roll. This isn't the first time Microsoft's tried to make the Office suite a bit easier to use on smartphones.

But the new Office app will feature other changes too. Microsoft introduced a new Actions pane that's supposed to make it easier to create PDFs, scan QR codes and more. The company also tried to provide easier access to Sticky Notes, and the integrated Office Lens features enable users to "create automatically enhanced digital images of whiteboards and documents."

The new Office app is currently available as a public preview on Android. The iOS version reached the 10,000 user limit Apple imposes on pre-release software distributed via its TestFlight platform the same day it was announced. 

Microsoft said the new app will initially be exclusive to smartphones, but it plans to bring it to tablets some time in the future (it didn't provide a date). 

Users of the Word, Excel and PowerPoint mobile apps needn't fret about their apps going away yet. Microsoft said it will "continue to support and invest in the existing Word, Excel and PowerPoint mobile apps" because it believes "everyone should decide which experience works best for them on their phones." 

But we'll see how long the redundant apps will remain available once people get used to the idea of a single Office app.

Microsoft unveiled its second audio offering, the Surface Earbuds, here at its Surface Event in New York City today. They'll release for $249 sometime later this year.

The devices support Windows, Android and iOS with hand gestures that you make upon the hardware for each operating system. I saw the earbuds in Glacier White, but there's a gray color coming later this year.

I got to try the Surface Earbuds on at the event, and let me tell you this: they're surprisingly comfortable. There are three potential tip sizes: small, medium and large, and each of those inserts comes in the box. Medium worked well for me. You just put it in with the tip facing down and twist it towards your ear canal. Control gestures were simple; one example is swiping up and down to increase or decrease the volume.

Microsoft claims 24 hours of battery: 8 hours of charge and two additional charges in the case.

The sound, in my limited test, was surprisingly good for an earbud. Rock anthems, acoustic strings and even a live Coldplay concert stood out with details and ambience.

Microsoft Surface Earbuds Specs

Office Support

The cool part for big Windows users will be Office 365 support. I was walked through how this works with PowerPoint specifically. Microsoft showed off live subtitling, which has about a 1 second delay. When I did it and turned the language to Spanish, it took an additional second to translate my speech. It was accurate, and I could totally see using this while giving a presentation. You can also use the earbuds to switch slides.

I was not shown how the Surface Earbuds work with Word, Excel or Outlook, but I'm told there will be details on those later. Functionality with the productivity suite should come with an update to Office 365 later this year, I was told.

On iOS and Android, there will be a mobile app, mostly for tuning, but you can also use it to access Cortana.

By now we've accepted that we'll never receive a letter from Hogwarts, but Intel has the next best thing with the Easy Streaming Wizard, a new program meant to simplify the Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) setup process. It's still not quite the swish-and-flick of a simple charm, but Intel claimed the Easy Streaming Wizard could save streamers hours of fiddling with OBS to ensure the highest quality broadcast their systems can support.

OBS is to streaming like Word is to word processing and Excel is to spreadsheets. There are plenty of similar programs, but OBS is essentially the default option for people streaming on services like Twitch for the first time. While its many settings can be daunting at first--especially since the user interface isn't particularly welcoming--OBS was the first app to give PC gamers a relatively straightforward way to capture their gameplay.

Here are the benefits Intel claimed the Easy Streaming Wizard could provide:

• It helps to set up a PC for streaming in minutes, not hours or days.
• It automatically configures and tunes the streaming service (Twitch, YouTube, Mixer) within the wizard.
• It optimizes Intel Core processor for encoding, sound, bandwidth and other features to determine the best streaming quality possible.
• It scales with more cores and threads to improve quality of the livestream.

The first point seems like an exaggeration, but properly configuring OBS often involves a lot of trial and error. Continuing with the Harry Potter metaphor, setting up OBS is like finding a wand, in the sense that everyone needs something different. Streamers use a variety of hardware, play different games and broadcast to disparate platforms. There isn't a one-setting-fits-all OBS configuration that can perfectly serve all those functions.

Introducing the Easy Streaming Wizard also gives Intel another way to market its processors to streamers. The company already touts its gaming performance, and last year it partnered with Streamlabs on classifying some PCs as being ready to stream. Helping people set up OBS--so long as they own an Intel processor and use Windows 10--makes it that much easier to convince first-time streamers not to buy their processors from AMD.

The Easy Streaming Wizard is available now via Intel's website. In addition to requiring Windows 10 and supported Intel processors, a full list of which is available on the program's download page, it also requires at least 8GB of memory and some kind of GPU. Intel said the program supports Twitch, YouTube and Mixer; anyone hoping to stream to other platforms will have to find their own wand. Erm, we mean, set up OBS by themselves.

Microsoft appears to be testing out a new “Office key” on their in-house keyboards. This new key sports the Office logo and seems to replace the existing Menu key - the often overlooked key nestled between the Function and Alt keys. According to the prominent Microsoft leaker @WalkingCat, Microsoft sent a survey to testers who were using a keyboard with the Office key running on a May 2019 update of Windows 10. Questions included if the users had tried any of the Office-based shortcuts, if they enjoyed using the key and if they would want to see it implemented on a laptop.

Microsoft appears to be looking for even more ways in which to integrate their software with their hardware, as the advent of a dedicated Office key could come as a welcome addition for  power users. The value of this key would likely be determined by how and if one uses Word, Powerpoint, Excel and other Office programs. Currently, the Menu key languishes on the keyboard of many PC users, while third party manufacturers have sometimes switched it out for function keys of their own.  

If Microsoft goes through with the proposed changes, the keyboards will presumably debut on Microsoft’s own peripherals or Surface laptops and 2-in-1s. It’s unclear whether or not this modification will make any difference to most PC users, though it does seem like a solid attempt at updating the keyboard for those locked into the Office Suite.

When reached for comment, a Microsoft spokesperson said that the company "doesn’t respond to rumors or speculation."

Updated June 18, 3:35 p.m. ET with comment from Microsoft.

Qualcomm first showed off its 8cx processor at its Snapdragon Technology Summit in 2018, but here at Computex in Taipei, it’s showing how the chip holds its own. The company showed Tom’s Hardware some expected benchmark numbers using PCMark 10, and allowed us to run some of the same tests ourselves to verify them.

There is, of course, the rub: When I was allowed to verify the tests, they were in a room set up by Qualcomm, under their conditions. And notably, the competition's test machine wasn’t present for us to run tests on. The other note is that these machines had slightly different specs and were running different versions of Windows 10 (see below). Also, the Snapdragon laptop wasn’t running emulated benchmarks, so it’s not totally apples to apples.

The tests  included UL’s new PCMark 10 application benchmark, running Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word and Edge; as well as an ARM native version of 3DMark Night Raid.

I was provided with scores for a PCMark 10 battery test running the Office test, playing local video and sitting idle, but was not able to replicate this benchmark on my own.

Qualcomm 8cx Application Performance

For all of the tests, we used a reference Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx machine with 8GB of RAM, 256GB of NVMe storage and ran the Windows 10 May 2019 update (1903). The competitor machine (which looked like a Dell XPS 13 in some slides) had an 8th Gen Intel Core i5-8250U, 8GB of RAM, 256GB of NVMe storage and ran the Windows 10 October 2018 update (1809).

On the Office application benchmark, the Qualcomm 8cx came out slightly ahead of the 8th Gen Core i5 CPU overall, though it didn’t win in every single test. In fact, from an overall standpoint, Qualcomm was conservative. it earned scores higher than the projections for a total score, and I heard some representatives behind me considering updating their numbers.

Qualcomm 8cx Graphics Performance

The graphics test consisted of 3DMark Night Raid, which has a native ARM version. The same laptops were used. In these tests, Qualcomm and UL’s results showed that the Snapdragon 8cx’s Adreno 680 integrated graphics outshined those in the 8th Gen Intel Core i5:

Qualcomm 8cx Battery Life

This is one area that I couldn’t see myself, but Qualcomm and UL provided expected scores for both the Intel laptop and Snapdragon reference unit. It’s certainly unsurprising to see that the Snapdragon outperformed on each of these tests - that has been a benefit of the ARM chips - but it should be noted that Qualcomm’s design has an FHD display, while the competitor had a 2K panel.

Based on those numbers, when idle, the Snapdragon PC came just a little over half an hour short of a full day, and ran many hours longer than the 8th Gen Intel Core i5.

Testing Conclusions

From these numbers, it seems like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx will rival, if not be more powerful than the 8th Gen Core i5. Of course, these tests all took place under Qualcomm’s supervision and without the Intel laptop present.

Still, that’s a promising sign for upcoming Snapdragon-based laptops, one of which, Lenovo’s “Project Limitless,” also featuring a 5G modem, was announced at Qualcomm’s press conference here at Computex.

But Intel will continue to produce its own chips, and it’s entirely possible that, by time Snapdragon 8cx shows up in laptops, there will be stronger Core i5 chips.

When the first devices release, we’ll also want to run our own usual suite of benchmarks, as well as our proprietary battery test.

Other Snapdragon Improvements

Besides the chance to see some benchmarks, Qualcomm also had a few demos to show what the 8cx is capable of.

Perhaps most impressive, I saw what I’m told are ARM native versions of Chromium, Microsoft Edge (the upcoming version based on Chromium) and Firefox. A representative told me Firefox was using multithreading.

The company also had it set up powering three screens: two 4K monitors and the reference design’s built in FHD display, while running Photoshop, PowerPoint, Excel (with pivot tables), local videos, Edge and, in the background, Word.

The worst thing about spreadsheets is data entry. Who actually likes clicking through each cell, entering the appropriate data, and repeating the process until something resembling a table emerges? Microsoft acknowledged that the answer is "probably no one" with an upcoming feature for Excel on Android devices.

Microsoft said the feature would allow people to take a picture of something, let Excel work some artificially intelligent magic on it, and then correct any mistakes in the resulting spreadsheet. This is perfect for printed receipts or handwritten recipes that are already well-organized but also tedious to digitally recreate.

Similar features abound in other apps. Many banking applications will let their users deposit checks this way. Some note-taking apps can use optical character recognition (OCR) to extract text from scanned documents. And translation apps can use similar tools to offer real-time, or close to real-time, translations of text.

It's only natural, then, for Microsoft to bring this functionality to Excel. The company's placed increasing emphasis on the quality of its mobile apps to match the rest of Silicon Valley in the rush to build AI into its products and wants to push Office 365 subscriptions. This feature would help it realize all those goals.

Microsoft didn't say when Excel on Android would receive this functionality. "We'll continue to optimize these features over the next several months," the company said. "When they're ready, we'll release them to all Office Insiders, and Office 365 subscribers." Until then, well, grandma's goulash recipe won't digitize itself.

You can see the feature in action on Microsoft's website.

Getting Light Text on a Dark Background

By default, most software shows dark text on a white background, much like old-fashioned ink on paper. However, many prefer the exact opposite, light-colored text on a dark screen, and find it easier on the eyes. Who wants to stare at a bright white screen in a room with the lights off?

From Windows' setup menu to all three major web browsers to social media sites like Twitter, many programs and web tools offer ways to change into what they call either Dark Mode, Dark Theme or Night Mode. Here's how to get light text on a black background in over a dozen popular PC and web-based apps.

Turning on Dark Mode in Windows 10

To enable dark mode in Windows 10, right click on the desktop and select Personalize. Click Colors in the left pane. Then scroll down and select Dark under Choose your default app mode.

Settings Menus

Entering Windows 10's dark mode makes all of the operating system's setting menus have light text on a dark background. You can control the color of the icons by choosing an accent color in Settings->Personalization->Colors.

File Explorer

In current Windows 10 Insider builds, enabling dark mode in the settings menu also turns it on for File Explorer. However, if you don't want to run an Insider Build of the operating system, you'll have to wait for the next major update.

Microsoft Office Menus

If you want all of your Microsoft Office apps to turn dark, all you need to do is open one of them (ex: Word), navigate to the File tab, click Account and then select Black from the Office Theme menu. These settings will affect the menus in Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more.

Word Documents

Even if you change the Office theme to black, the actual documents will still show black text on a white background. If you want to change the editing area for all new documents, first open the Normal.dotm file, which is likely located in C:Users[YOURID]AppDataRoamingMicrosoftTemplates.

Navigate to the Design tab and select black from the Page Color pulldown. The text will automatically be white. Save the file. Then navigate to File->Options->Advanced and check "Show background colors and images in Print Layout view."

Existing documents that other people send you will still be black on white, unless you head over to the Design tab and select black from the Page Color menu each time.

High-Contrast Mode for Windows

Windows 10's dark mode changes the menus on the settings menu, File Explorer (in Insider builds) and a few other places, but it doesn't affect the vast majority of traditional apps people use. When you really, really want all of your programs to have light text and dark backgrounds in their menus, you can enable Windows' high-contrast mode.

Keep in mind, though, that high-contrast mode is a blunt instrument and makes a lot of things in UI look very ugly. For example, the live tiles in the Start menu look just awful. However, if you decide you want high-contrast mode, navigate to Settings-> Ease of Access -> High-Contrast and switch it to on.

Skype

Skype has a built-in dark theme. To activate it, navigate to Settings->General->Themes. Then choose Dark. It's that simple.

Twitter Night Mode

Twitter's dark mode is called Night Mode. To activate Night Mode, click on your profile picture and select it from the menu.

Dark Mode for Web Pages in Chrome / Firefox

No matter how dark the rest of your apps appear, most web pages will still have dark text on a black background, unless you use a browser extension to solve the problem.

Download Dark Mode for Chrome or for Firefox. It puts a switch into your browser toolbar and, if you toggle it to on, all web pages change to white on black. It also offers a variety of custom dark modes or modes that are made just for popular sites such as Google, Amazon and Reddit.

Dark Themes in Your Browser

To make the tabs, address bar and toolbars in your browser turn to the dark side, you need a new theme, and there are many options. Chrome's store has a huge listing of dark themes. The Morpheon Dark theme is my favorite. 

Firefox users have a built-in dark theme they can active by navigating to Customize from the settings menu and then selecting Dark from the theme pulldown on the bottom of the screen.

In Edge, navigate to Settings and select Dark from the Choose a theme menu.

Gmail Dark Theme

It's easy to change the color scheme in Gmail so that your inbox listing has light text on a dark background. However, the individual emails you open or write will still be black on white.

To change the theme in Gmail, navigate to settings by hitting the gear icon in the upper right area of the screen. Then select Themes, scroll down and pick the onewith the black background.

YouTube Dark Theme

When you go to the movie theater, they turn the lights off to help you see the movie better, so why would you want a white background surrounding your video player? To turn the lights down in YouTube, click on your picture, select Dark Theme and toggle the switch to on.

Visual Studio Dark Color Theme

If you're writing an app for Windows, chances are that you're using Microsoft Visual Studio. The development environment makes it easy to go into dark mode. Just navigate to Tools->Options->General and select Dark from the Color Theme pulldown.

You can also choose custom background and foreground colors by navigating to Tools->Options->Fonts and Colors.

Notepad++ Dark Themes

My favorite development tool, Notepad++ is a text editor on steroids. This must-have piece of freeware lets you view files side-by-side, do advanced search/replaces and get all kinds of visual cues to help with your coding. 

By default, Notepad++ has light text on a dark background, but the software comes with a ton of preinstalled themes, including many different dark ones. Navigate to Settings->Style Configurator and then choose a theme from the list. I recommend Bespin or Blackboard.

Reddit Night Mode

When you're sitting in a dark room, combing through the posts on Reddit, you don't necessarily want a bright white screen staring back at you. Fortunately, the social network makes it very easy to change to a dark theme. Just click on your username (or a down arrow if the screen is too narrow) in the upper right corner of the screen and then select Night Mode.

VLOOKUP is more than a spreadsheet function; it's how you become a workplace hero. When you have two spreadsheets with different, but related sets of data like a list of customer addresses and a separate list of customer purchases, you can combine the data into one sheet. It's not hard to learn how to create a VLOOKUP formula, but most of your coworkers probably don't have this knowledge (and you don't have to tell them).

Over the years, I've used VLOOKUP to remain indispensible at all of my jobs in web publishing, because we often have a list of article URLs we want to track and then a giant CSV of all traffic data by page from Google Analytics. Here's how to use VLOOKUP in Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. While the screenshots here are from Excel, the process works exactly the same way in Sheets.

1. Put both sheets into the same file, but in separate tabs. If you have the data you want to combine in separate files, create a new tab in one of them and copy over the data from the other.

For example, I started with a list of articles we wrote at Computex then downloaded a spreadsheet with traffic data from Google, which I moved over to a tab on the first sheet (numbers here are fake).

2. Navigate to the tab where you want to import the numbers and click into the first cell where you want them to appear. In my case, it was the tab with the list of Computex articles.

3. Type =VLOOKUP( then enter the cell number for the field you want to match followed by a comma. Since the article URL is the common field in my case, I'm selecting cell A2. 

4. Select all the cells that contain data you want to import on the other tab. I recommend selecting the entire columns. Excel or Sheets will fill in the tab name and cell range (ex: 'All Traffic'!A:E). 

5. Highlight the cell range in the formula and hit F4. The application will put dollar signs on the cell range to signify that these are absolute addresses, which means that you won't need to redo this part of the formula if you paste it into another cell.

6. After inserting a comma, enter the column number of the data you want to copy over to the primary sheet. In our case, the Page Views column we want to copy is second from the left (column B), so it is number 2. Note that the column number you need is the one from the data sheet, not the primary sheet.  

7. Enter comma followed by the word FALSE and then a close parenthesis. Entering FALSE ensures that VLOOKUP accepts only an exact match. That's your complete formula.

8. Copy and paste the formula down the entire column.

If you want to import other columns, copy the formula over to a cell in another column, but be sure to change the destination cell (in our case, from 2 to 3 or 4) and keep the matching cell at what it was (A2 in our case).

Dual-screen laptops are the white whale that the tech industry has been trying to slay for a long time. We've seen a number of valiant attempts to make the concept work over the years, from the slide-out second panel on Lenovo's behemoth ThinkPad W701ds to the clunky Acer Iconia 6120. Asus' Project Precog is different.

A prototype, bendback 2-in-1 that Asus showed at its Computex press event, Project Precog uses the power of artificial intelligence and deep software integration to take full advantage of its two full-size displays. In introducing the Precog, Asus Head of Marketing Marcel Campos explained that, thanks to an on-board Intel Movidius-powered camera, the system knows exactly where you place your hands and can make a virtual keyboard appear appear right under your fingers.

He showed a series of screenshots detailing how Project Precog can be used. If you launch an office app like Excel, you can see your spreadsheet on the top screen and Microsoft's chart suggestions on the bottom screen, just above your virtual keyboard. The system also knows that, if you're using it with an external keyboard and move the keyboard away, you'll need the virtual keys.

It's easy to imagine all of the potential use cases for a dual-screen device, but Asus laid a few examples of its own. It showed how you can do serious work on the top screen while watching videos and chat windows on the bottom one. Because the screens can bend back a full 360 degrees, Campos explained that you can use it like a book with two pages showing in landscape mode or lay it flat on a table and play a game with the person sitting across from you.

Obviously, the lack of a physical keyboard is as big drawback for this device as it was for Acer's Iconia and Lenovo's Yoga Book, which has a Wacom tablet instead of a second screen. If you like typing on a flat surface or want to pair the device with an external keyboard, though, you won't mind too much.

Details about the hardware were scarce -- the glossy screens appeared to be somewhere between 13 and 14 inches -- and the body appeared to be metal. The back surface and hinge area are a striking glossy color that appeared purple from some angles and blue from others, at least under the light at the press conference. Asus didn't mention specs because this is a prototype and any final shipping product is likely to change a lot before hitting the market. Still, it's fascinating to imagine the possibilities.

In the same presentation where Microsoft discussed the range of specifications for the upcoming wave of mainstream PC-tethered VR HMDs, we got more details about the requirements for the PCs that will power them.

Although we recently learned about the minimum PC specifications at an earlier WinHEC announcement, Microsoft’s session revealed quite a bit more.

A Range Of Specs For A Range Of Applications

It’s funny, but it seems that there are things we instinctively know to be true about PCs that we don’t think about in the XR world. One of the most obvious is the notion that XR users will have a wide variety of needs and use cases, and therefore, there will be a commensurate array of PCs and HMDs to accommodate.

This is the same reason why some people need high-end gaming desktops, some are happy with a $200 Chromebook, and everyone else is everywhere in between. Higher-end PCs cost more and can do more; the same is true of HMDs.

And so, just as Microsoft and Intel have developed a range of specifications for the HMDs, they’ve developed a range of specifications for the PCs that will power them, as well. As we mentioned in an earlier article: “HMDs [...] will be used to do all sorts of different computing tasks, from casual computing (such as web browsing) to communications (Skype) to serious productivity (Excel and PowerPoint floating in front of you) to passive entertainment (watching movies) to active entertainment (such as gaming).

Understanding PC Requirements: A Second Axis

The minimum and recommended specifications for the range of XR HMDs are actually not quite straightforward. To really understand it all, you have to think in two dimensions--on both X and Y axes, if you will. We’re looking at what a range of PC hardware can support, but also what a range of HMD hardware demands.

If you wanted to, for example, play a certain game at a certain resolution, you would need to look at just one axis (let’s say the X axis): Weaker PC hardware means you can get less out of the game, whereas high-end PC hardware will deliver an optimal experience.

With these HMDs, you still have that same X axis; as we’ve discussed, people will be using their PC-connected HMDs for tasks as tame as light web browsing, but also applications as intense as AAA gaming. Therefore, weaker PC hardware is still at the far left of the X axis, and the more powerful PC hardware is on the far right.

However, you can think of the range of HMD hardware as a Y axis. At the very bottom of the Y axis, you’ll have a bare-essentials HMD; at the very top, you’ll get an HMD with the most, and best, features.

Therefore, when you think about PC requirements, you have to consider what applications and HMDs will demand.

If you squint, you can see the X/Y axis present in this slide:

On the far left, the XR experiences are pretty tame: You can use Universal Windows Apps within the Holographic shell (which could potentially be fairly amazing, if the experience is strong enough), play casual games, and view 360-degree images and video. That’s about on par with what you get from a Gear VR-level HMD (with the exception of the apps-in-the-shell business).

On the far right, though, is where the Y axis comes into play. Starting from the left, Microsoft suggests that you get more bang for your PC hardware buck by adding discrete graphics, a better CPU, more memory, and “higher-end input”--all of which is obvious. According to the slide, at the high end (all the way to the right), you’ll also get to play higher-end games and enjoy “premium content.” But also note that “Premium HMD” is listed there, too.

What Microsoft is trying to say is that in order to get all the best stuff, you need robust PC hardware and one of the highest-end VR HMDs. Remember, those HMDs are going to come with a wide range of specifications.

Your task as a consumer will be to balance the capabilities of your PC with those of your HMD. For example, don’t expect to get superb VR performance out of your beastly gaming PC with an entry-level $300 VR HMD, nor with your Ultrabook and one of the best VR HMDs.

PC Requirements: Is There A Time Warp?

Here’s a key slide, but even this one isn’t quite as clear as we’d like (we’ll explain in a moment):

This slide lists the minimum PC requirements for both laptops and desktops. We’ve seen the former before, but not the latter. Note that the requirements are identical, save for the CPU--which mainly has to do with form factor (e.g., an Ultrabook-class chip goes in an Ultrabook, not a desktop). But, hey, apparently we’ll be able to get away with running VR off of a Core i3 (Skylake or Kaby Lake) or an AMD FX4350.

But there’s a wrinkle: These are specs that will run this gear as of “Holiday ‘17.” An adjacent slide shows different specs--primarily around the graphics. Gone is the integrated graphics minimum spec; this one says you’ll need a discrete GPU--a GTX 965M (GTX 960 on the desktop) or AMD RX 460 or equivalent. That means Ultrabooks won’t be able to offer what Microsoft considers an XR experience once the Windows 10 Creators Update lands.

Thought of one way, that’s perhaps disappointing given what we were previously told about the minimum PC requirements; but the Creators Update seems like a big deal, so it follows that perhaps the new capabilities demand better hardware.

Except...the Creators Update is scheduled to land in the spring of 2017. That’s many months before the “holidays” of 2017, but the “holiday ‘17” minimum specs are lower than those required by the Creators Update.

To be honest, we do not know what Microsoft is thinking here. Our assumption is that there will perhaps be further stratification based on the operating system: Windows 10 minimum specs and Windows 10 Creators Update minimum specs.

That’s a lot of juggling--you have to balance the PC hardware with the HMD hardware with the version of Windows 10 that you’re running. (Don’t worry folks; we on the Tom’s Hardware editorial team as well as our wonderful forum members will be here to help you sort these things out when the time comes.)

It’s also possible that, in part, the Creators Update specs are mainly intended as guidance for OEMs who are planning to show off these XR capabilities on their systems. The WinHEC crowd consists of a lot of companies that make things--less so developers (which is what events like IDF and Build are for), and even less so journalists--so Microsoft may just have provided those specs to help ensure that OEMs are using sufficient PC hardware to show off their HMDs.

There’s a final bit that Microsoft shared, concerning ways that OEMs can differentiate their PCs for various XR experiences:

Note that the “move to” dual-channel DDR4 RAM is advisable, which means that the minimum specs require just DDR3. Unsurprisingly, SSDs over HDDs are preferable, and it seems that there are plans for Bluetooth “interactive” accessories. That could mean 3DoF or 6DoF hand controllers.

It’s refreshing to finally get some answers from Microsoft and Intel about mainstream HMDs and PC requirements for them, but even so, there’s much we do not yet know--and I believe that’s because no one yet knows exactly what the market will look like, what people will actually want and use, who will make what, and what it will all cost.

However, make no mistake: If two of the most important personal computing companies in the world believe that XR is the future, it will be, one way or another. And you, the consumer, will help shape it.

At today’s Apple event, the company unveiled its new lineup of 13- and 15-inch MacBook Pro laptops. For the most part, the layout of the MacBook Pro remains the same, but the company added a new feature: A thin touch-based strip called the Touch Bar.

A Digital Bar

The Touch Bar replaces the row of function buttons at the top of the keyboard. However, you can still bring back the old function buttons, as well as the escape button and brightness and volume controls, on the digital bar. The Touch Bar also works with many programs. If you’re using the Safari web browser, for example, you can use the Touch Bar to access your favorite websites or search for new topics. For video editing on Final Cut Pro X, you can use the Touch Bar to scrub through the video timeline, add clips, or fine-tune multiple traits in a shot.

However, the Touch Bar capabilities aren’t just restricted to Apple’s first party software. The company revealed that apps such as Photoshop, Affinity Designer, and even a few Microsoft Office programs (Word, Excel, and Powerpoint) will have Touch Bar functions available. At the end of the bar is a space reserved for Touch ID, so you can use your fingerprint to log on to your profile or purchase items online with Apple Pay.

Three Models

The new MacBook Pros come in silver and space gray. The larger touchpad still uses the Force Touch feature, and the keyboards utilize a second-generation butterfly switch. For I/O, there are four Thunderbolt 3 USB Type-C ports (that support numerous display protocols such as HDMI and DisplayPort) as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack. Apple said that both models have a battery life of 10 hours.

In addition to the two models, Apple also created another version of the 13-inch MacBook Pro without the new Touch Bar. The company made this version specifically for those who prefer the even more compact size of the MacBook Air. Even though this Touch Bar-less MacBook Pro still weighs the same as a MacBook Air (three pounds), the company said that it’s thinner and has less volume, making it the smallest MacBook Pro to date.

All three models use Intel's Skylake lineup of CPUs. In terms of graphics, the 13-inch models use Intel Iris graphics, but the 15-inch variant has AMD's Radeon Pro GPUs, which are based on the Polaris architecture.

You won’t have to wait long to get your hands on one of the three models. The 13-inch MacBook Pro without the Touch Bar starts shipping today, whereas the other two new laptops will come out within the next two to three weeks. However, you can place a pre-order now on Apple’s website.

Microsoft released the latest "Patch Tuesday" updates, which fix some serious vulnerabilities in Windows, as well as in some of its flagship products such as Office, Skype, Internet Explorer and Edge.

Internet Explorer

As perhaps expected by now, Internet Explorer still has bugs. The new set of bugs allow for remote code execution against IE users who visit a web page that’s been developed specifically for Internet Explorer. An attacker could use the vulnerability to get the same user rights as the user who visits the site.

This means that if a user is logged in as Administrator, which includes most Windows users, the attacker could take full control of the system. The attacker could install new apps, delete data, and even create new Administrators accounts. However, if the user is on a Limited account, then an attacker wouldn’t be able to do too much to the system without the user knowing about it.

Edge

Edge is Microsoft’s new and more secure browser, thanks to its sandboxing architecture, but it’s still far from invulnerable. The latest bug also allows remote code execution, and an attacker would gain the same user rights as the current users. Limited account users should be less impacted by the bug than those with administrative rights.

Office

Office is one of Microsoft’s most attacked programs because of its legacy code, but also because it’s used by hundreds of millions of people around the world who often share many Word and Excel documents with each other. The potential for attacks increases through document sharing, as the attackers could load them up with malware and then send them to unsuspecting Office users.

Graphics Component

Microsoft also patched some security vulnerabilities in Windows’ graphics software, which affected Windows, Office, Skype for Business, and its Lync enterprise messenger. The vulnerability allows for remote code execution against users who visit a specially crafted web page or open a specially crafted document.

Windows Kernel-Mode Drivers

One of the bugs affected the Windows kernel-mode drivers and allowed for escalation of privileges. An attacker would need to have already gained access to the system, for instance, through one of the above vulnerabilities. If the user was operating a Limited account, then the attacker could use the kernel-mode driver bug to gain administrative privileges, as well.

Secure Boot

Two security researchers have already reported multiple Secure Boot vulnerabilities to Microsoft. The bugs would allow an attacker to bypass Windows security features. The company seems to have fixed one of these bugs for this Patch Tuesday, but according to the researchers who found these vulnerabilities, not all of them have been patched in this update. Therefore, Secure Boot remains vulnerable for now.

Other Bugs

Some other vulnerabilities, which got fixed in this update, allowed escalation of privileges on systems that were connected to the same domain. Another vulnerability could allow bad actors to attack users that would open specially crafted PDF files and then take full control of their system. A bug was also found in the ActiveSyncProvider, which could allow information disclosure when Universal Outlook fails to establish a secure connection.

RC4 No More

As part of the cumulative updates for Internet Explorer and Edge, Microsoft also removed support for the old and insecure RC4 cipher. Microsoft has already been recommending websites to disable support for RC4 for the past three years, after multiple practical attacks against it were proven to work.

For the websites that must absolutely still support RC4, Microsoft offers an option to enable it through Windows’ Internet Options and by changing some registry settings. However, the company strongly recommended against following that path. The current best practice is for websites to support TLS 1.2 and beyond, and use the AES-GCM mode for encrypted connections.

On May 19, Microsoft released Office for Android phone preview, and just five weeks later the company has made the apps available for general release. The company said it received feedback from users all around the world, and the software was tested in over 83 countries and on 1,900 different phone models.

During that period, Microsoft heard from thousands of users and said that much of the feedback has been incorporated into the current release. One such change is easy access to third party cloud storage such as Dropbox and Google Drive, in addition to the company's own OneDrive solution.

The Android phone version of Office integrates directly into the cloud to sync up with Office365 accounts. Microsoft said that transitioning from a PC to the phone will pick up right where you left off.

Word will let you read and edit documents, and easily add or change comments. Excel lets you create charts easily, and formulas have been optimized to use touch control. Power Point allows you to run a full presentation, complete with animations and transitions, directly from your phone.

Microsoft has been working with partners around the globe to sell phones with Office apps pre-installed. Over 30 OEMs including Samsung, Sony and LG will be selling phones later this year with Office already included.

Word for Android, Excel for Android and PowerPoint for Android are available now, at no charge, in the Google Play store.

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Jared Spataro, general manager for Microsoft's Office 365 marketing team, recently updated the Office blog with news that Microsoft has unleashed new Office for Android Preview apps for smartphones. Confused? Don't be. The previous Office for Android Preview launched back in January was for Android tablets only.

To check out the new apps on an Android smartphone, testers must first be enlisted in the Microsoft Office for Android community. After that, users can click on the "Become a tester" button and download and install Word, Excel and PowerPoint from Google Play. However, potential testers may not be able to retrieve these apps immediately.

"After 'Become a tester,' your access permissions to preview builds becomes active only after a few hours while Google Play replicates your access permissions," the FAQ said. "So, please try downloading the Apps after ~4 hours from the same links. In the absence of access permissions to preview version of apps, Google Play store app shows you currently publicly available Android Tablet version which isn't compatible for Phone devices."

Microsoft also provided a list of devices that are not compatible with the new Office apps for phones. This list reveals devices provided by Asus, Google, Hewlett Packard, LG, Lenovo Mobile, Samsung, Sony and a number of others. The fine print says that Microsoft is "working towards enabling support for many of the large screen phone devices."

Microsoft Word was the only app that could be downloaded for this article (the other two are waiting on permissions). After the initial sign-in process, the app asks for the user's Dropbox credentials. Once that's done, users are provided with a screen that lists documents under "Today," "Last Week," "Two Weeks Ago" and "Three Weeks Ago."

However, at the top, Word offers a choice of opening a doc or creating a new one. Hit the "Open" option and users can grab documents from "Recent," "This device," OneDrive, Dropbox and "Other cloud storage." This last option shows the "Downloads" folder, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. Users can also add a place to retrieve files: OneDrive Personal, OneDrive Business, Dropbox or a SharePoint location.

All in all, Word is really slick on an Android smartphone. Once a document is opened, users can zoom in and out with one tap, save a document and share the file as a link or an attachment. A menu tucked away on the left side provides additional options such as "Save As," "Share," "Print," "Close" and even "Feedback."

As of this writing, the "Print" feature saves the document as a PDF or sends it to Google Drive (Cloud Print). There's also an "All Printers" option, which presumably shows the local printer along with an option to save to Google Drive.

"Bringing these apps to Preview first provides you with an early look at the apps, while enabling us to gather critical user feedback helping us shape and improve the app experience on a wide range of Android phones across the world," Spatoro said. "The feedback we received from the Office for Android tablet Preview in January was critical to ensuring a high quality and consistent Office experience across Android tablet devices."

To join the Microsoft Office for Android community, head here.

Follow Kevin Parrish @exfileme. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

Microsoft on Wednesday finally released a version of Office 365 for Android smartphone users. Unfortunately, if you're in the UK, you won't be seeing any of that action. Not to worry, though, you're not alone. Microsoft's Julia White wrote in a blog post that the application is currently for Android users in the United States. 

Similar to the launch of Office 365 for iOS, the app is for Office 365 subscribers only, which means you'll have to get a subscription to Microsoft's Office 365 Home Premium and ProPlus before you can use the app. If you don't have an Office 365 subscription and don't fancy forking over the cash just to try the app, you can get a 30-day trial of Office 365 on office.com and take the app for a spin as well. 

The app will give you mobile access to the likes of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, SkyDrive and more. Though you'll have to be in the USA to enjoy Office for Mobile on your Android phone right away, Microsoft has promised to release the app in other countries over the coming weeks. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long.

Bloomberg reports that the next Surface RT tablet produced by Microsoft will use Qualcomm as the SoC supplier in addition to Nvidia. The news arrives by way of unnamed sources who said the Qualcomm chips will provide fast wireless data connections while Nvidia will supply its new Tegra chip for some versions.

Based on that info, Microsoft likely chose Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800, 600 or 400 at the very least, all three of which provide integrated 4G LTE and Wireless N connectivity. Nvidia's Tegra 4i, which also sports the same connectivity, likely wasn't ready in time to fit within Microsoft's next-gen Surface RT plans – phones based on this chip aren't even expected to arrive until early 2014. It's also not designed for tablet use.

That said, it's believed that one version of the next-gen Surface RT tablet will sport a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC for 4G LTE connectivity while Wi-Fi only models will have Nvidia's Tegra 4. We already know the Tegra 4 is ready for mass consumption, as it's packed in the Shield handheld slated to launch next week and inside a number of tablets arriving this summer.

To be honest, this may be one of the reasons why Microsoft is selling the current Surface RT tablet at a "fire sale" discount to schools and colleges: to flush out the current stock of first-gen units. There's likely a stockpile of unsold units, as Windows RT on a whole commanded less than one percent of the market share in the first quarter compared to 40 percent owned by Apple.

Microsoft hasn't officially announced plans for a new Surface RT device, but has talked up the details surrounding the "blue" update arriving on Windows 8 and Windows RT later this year. For the latter, Outlook RT 2013 will finally make its debut, joining current Office apps Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.

Just recently, sources in the supply chain said that most big-brand vendors have placed their Windows RT plans on hold, and that Microsoft's own Surface RT sequel is the only device in the works. Perhaps then that ODMS are waiting to see how consumers take to a new Surface RT product with Windows RT 8.1 installed, offering a more unified experience than the first-generation model.

Adding Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800, 600 or 400 would be a crucial move for Microsoft, as it would enable consumers and businesses to take the device on the road without the need for tethering. It still doesn't solve the inability to run x86 software on an ARM-based platform, but it does provide a cheaper alternative with 4G LTE connectivity compared to the x86-based Surface Pro model.

Called "Rocra", short for "Red October", which refers to the silent submarine at the center of Tom Clancy's 1984 novel "The Hunt for Red October", the malware is the front line of an espionage work that targeted government, research, nuclear energy, military, aerospace, oil and gas as well as trade and commerce institutions primarily in countries of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, as well as Central Asia.

Kaspersky, which said that it has found first evidence of the existence of Red October, whose complexity and sophistication it compares with the Flame malware, identified more than "60 domain names and several server hosting locations in different countries (mainly Germany and Russia)" as a command and control infrastructure , which is set up as "a chain of servers working as proxies and hiding the location of the true -mothership- command and control server".

According to the security researchers, Red October not only attacks PCs, but also smartphones, including iPhone, Nokia-branded phones and Windows Mobile devices, and can dump Cisco enterprise network equipment configurations, hijack files from removable disk drives, including deleted files via its own data recovery capability, steal e-mail databases from local Outlook storage or a remote POP/IMAP server and pull files from local network FTP servers. It appears that the software is mainly based on the exploitation of three Microsoft vulnerabilities, CVE-2009-3129 (Excel), CVE-2010-3333 (Word) and CVE-2012-0158 (Word).

Kaspersky did not say how many computers may be infected by Red October, but mentioned that it found most systems in the area of Russia (35), followed by Kazakhstan (21), Azerbaijan (15), Belgium (15) and India (15). Six infected systems were found in the U.S. The company said that the exploits used by Red October have been developed most likely by Chinese hackers, while malware modules appear to have been created by Russian hackers.

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Does Windows 8 + x86 + Tablet = Success?

As we made clear in Microsoft Surface Review, Part 1: Performance And Display Quality and Microsoft Surface Review, Part 2: Battery Life, Multi-Monitor, And More, there's a lot we like about the Surface tablet. Its integrated kickstand and Type Cover work well together. But the Surface isn't perfect.

Beyond the performance hiccups we managed to impose on it, Windows RT's restrictive software compatibility story is far from ideal. We had Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Skype, and a respectable-enough email client. What more could we want from a productivity-oriented tablet? Early on, we were forced to accept that everything we needed either came with the Surface or was available through the Windows Store.

Au contraire. Our CMS is optimized for Firefox and Chrome. Being forced to use IE10 made it painfully clear that playing in Microsoft's sandbox doesn't always work out (especially for Tom's Hardware editors who need to put stories into our system on the road).

What's the solution? We're not jumping back to iOS or Android. So, it looks like we're counting on Windows 8. The full version of it, which doesn't restrict what you're able to install. Microsoft's Surface Pro is coming soon, but extra thickness and a significant reduction in battery life (according to Microsoft itself) are going to have a fairly negative impact on our opinion, we're anticipating.

Besides, there are already other Windows 8-based touch-oriented tablets available, such as Samsung's ATIV Smart PC 500T, already available.

What does it mean to go from ARM-based hardware running Windows RT to an x86-based Atom processor able to support Windows 8? Well, to begin, we're looking at a significantly different form factor. Whereas the Surface set out to be a tablet, first and foremost, with a thin little screen cover that just so happened to serve as a keyboard, Samsung's ATIV Smart PC 500T is more of a netbook able to detach from its keyboard.

The docking station is an important part of this story, both for what it does and for what it takes away from the tablet itself. Whereas you can attach the Touch Cover to a Surface and add just 3 mm of thickness and almost no weight, Samsung's dock is a lot more substantial. It incorporates a keyboard, a touchpad, and two USB 2.0 ports. But it lacks a supplementary battery. Consequently, the tablet is heftier than the docking station, making the two pieces a top-heavy, somewhat unsteady combination resting on your lap.

In our hands, the Surface's chassis feels much better-built, although its matte finish shows fingerprints very readily. Samsung employs tons of gloss, so you see nothing but shine when you look at the device itself. However, the more slippery body also feels cheaper.

This is not helped by chintzy plastic port covers plugging up each of the ATIV Smart PC 500T's I/O options. An impressive complement of micro-HDMI, USB 2.0, and microSD connectivity grace the edges of Samsung's tablet and dock. But the fact that you have to pull those covers off and leave them dangling any time a peripheral or cable is attached bothers us.

With its Intel Atom Z2760 (Clover Trail) SoC, the 500T is a lot more portable than any of the slates we've reviewed in the past, which also leveraged desktop-class operating systems as a selling point. Of course, we can't expect it to perform like a Core-based platform, either. This could cause trouble in a flexible environment like Windows 8, where you're free to install any number of applications that simply won't run well on a tablet.

But it's that dual-core, Hyper-Threaded x86 processor that emancipates us from Windows RT. So, even if it means paying a hefty premium, needing to buy Office, and tolerating a thicker, heavier form factor, we're willing to give ATIV Smart PC 500T a shot. This is far from a sexy piece of hardware, but sometimes you need a workhorse to get the job done.

Although Samsung markets its ATIV Smart PC 500T as a 64 GB tablet, a little more than 51 GB is user-accessible. And, once Windows 8 is installed, you're only left with 39 GB. There's another potential problem. Ever tried to use a 60 GB SSD on your desktop? It's just not enough space. Our install was as minimalist as possible, too. Samsung gives you a long list of bundled extras that enthusiasts will want to uncheck (and we did). Some of the install processes crashed, though, and others were actually required before Windows' device manager would recognize all of the tablet's hardware.

Windows 8's On-Screen Keyboard And Handwriting Recognition

We covered Windows 8's on-screen keyboard in The Definitive Windows 8 Review And User Guide. But, as it pertains to a digitizer-equipped tablet like Samsung's, the keyboard is worth covering again. 

There are two on-screen keyboards. The first displays a standard QWERTY layout, adding apostrophe, comma, period, and question mark punctuation keys. Backspace, Enter, Caps Lock, the space bar, and left and right cursor keys are also available. That layout works well enough when the tablet is lying flat on its back like a physical keyboard.

But if you're holding on with both hands, stretching your thumbs across the screen requires a lot more dexterity. Enter the split layout, which lets you type quickly using both thumbs on their respective sides of the display. Even though the keys are smaller, it seems easier to be more accurate. For each keystroke, a larger reverse-color (white with black letters) pop-up appears directly over the keys you press.

If you instead plan to use a digitizer pen, handwriting input is the other layout option you can pick after pressing the lower right-hand keyboard icon.

Handwriting recognition continues to be a learning process. The more you write, the more accurately Windows 8 detects your personal style. During the first few weeks of use, this means manually picking out improperly-detected words and writing out their individual letters. Microsoft does its part to help, though. For example, when you enter a URL into a Web browser, the "http://" and “.com” parts of the link are already written out.

The QWERTY and split-screen keyboards, along with the handwriting panel, share the same space. This lets you switch back and forth between layouts quickly. The input window gets overlaid on top of other programs and applications. Though convenient, this behavior covers much of a smaller tablet's screen, often hiding the fields you're typing into. Hit the maximize button in the application's upper right-hand corner to solve this. It'll resize the window so it populates whatever is left of the display not already monopolized by the input window.

Doodling With The 500T's Active Digitizer And S-Pen

Beyond simple handwriting recognition, the ATIV Smart PC 500T also features a Wacom active digitizer. That's something we've seen from higher-end slates, but typically not mainstream tablets (aside from Samsung's Galaxy Note). The digitizer allows you to use a pen on the device's screen as if you were writing or drawing on paper, and it registers different levels of pressure in kind.

The 500T's digitizer pen slides into the bottom-right side of the tablet; you simply catch it with your nail and tug to pull it out. Although it's smaller than some of the other pens we've used, it's still easy enough to control. Pressing it against the screen once registers a left-click. Holding down the button on the pen and tapping the screen is a right-click. Notably missing is an eraser end, though we've heard reports that other Wacom styli are compatible.

If you're an artist, this functionality is necessary. A great number of digitizers offer 256 levels of pressure sensitivity. However, Samsung confirms for us that the 500T supports 1,024 levels. With that said, we're not creating artwork that would demonstrate a more sensitive digitizer to be an advantage, nor do we expect professional artists to lean on an Atom-based tablet for their work.

The Intuos5 pen tablet I use yields superior results to the 500T, as it should. But it's also not a very portable solution, either. For what Samsung's ATIV Smart PC 500T sets out to do, its functionality is solid. Biology diagrams in OneNote are never going to be a problem (unless you start creating very large files, in which case the Atom is going to hurt performance).

The Atom Z2760: Specs And Theoretical Processor Performance

Samsung's ATIV Smart PC 500T is made possible by Intel's Atom Z2760 processor, formerly known as Clover Trail. Sub-2 W power consumption helps facilitate passive cooling, despite the fact that this SoC employs a pair of cores (with 1 MB of L2 cache) at 1.8 GHz, a dual-channel memory controller, PowerVR SGX545 graphics at 533 MHz, and all of the other north/southbridge components you'd normally find spread across a PC motherboard, optimized for a tablet, of course.

According to Intel's data sheet, the Atom Z2760 employs Burst technology, though we weren't able to observe the SoC speeding up beyond 1.8 GHz using any of the tools at our disposal. Moreover, Intel isn't clear about the circumstances in which Burst is triggered, or how long it can be sustained. The Atom Z2760 supports Hyper-Threading as well, so each physical core shows up as two logical processors to Windows 8.

The SoC's Graphics Media Accelerator component incorporates a handful of features, including Imagination Technologies' PowerVR SGX545 engine operating at up to 533 MHz. Almost three years old now, this is not particularly new hardware. It is, however, D3D feature level 9_3-compliant, giving it Shader Model 2.0 support. Not that you'll be playing many 3D games; the Atom's 3D capabilities are only slightly better than what you'd find in a Kindle Fire HD, and it's slower than Nvidia's Tegra 3.

Intel also endows the GMA with hardware-accelerated video encode and decode support, including 24-FPS H.264 and VC-1 at 1080p (up to 20 Mb/s). It also handles several stages of MPEG-2 decoding in hardware. The company claims MPEG-4 Part 2 is supported as well, but only in software mode. Likewise, Flash decoding is not accelerated.

H.264 can be accelerated in hardware at 30 FPS using a 1280x720 resolution. 

An integrated display controller with two independent pipelines means that Samsung's ATIV Smart PC 500T can drive its own screen and output to a 1080p display over HDMI 1.3a at the same time, too.

Theoretical CPU Performance

Although it's a synthetic benchmark, Geekbench is useful in this case for comparing a number of dissimilar platforms, from Apple's iPad to this new Atom and Intel's higher-end Core i5 CPUs. 

Geekbench would have us believe that the Atom Z2760 delivers 23% of the Ivy Bridge-based Core i5-3320M's performance, 43% of the Sandy Bridge-based Core i5-2467M's score, 52% of whatever an Arrandale-based Core i5-470UM can do, 72% of Qualcomm's S4 Pro, and 91% of Nvidia's Tegra 3. But that's the suite's overall ranking. We can break its analysis down even further.  

It's most important for us to look at the outcome of integer math, since that's most prevalent in mobile-only operating environments like iOS and Android for performance reasons. Of course, you can put whichever applications you want on an ATIV Smart PC 500T.

But the synthetics suggest the Atom is only narrowly faster than Qualcomm's S4 and Nvidia's Tegra 3 in the integer test. Meanwhile, the S4 Pro platform enjoys great floating-point throughput. Given these numbers, we can't wait to see how it does in Windows RT-based tablets.

On the bright side, Intel's Atom Z2760 is a massive improvement over the Atom N450 on our Dell Mini.

The new Atom's two 32-bit memory channels, populated with low-power DDR2-800, should be able to move up to 6.4 GB/s. That puts it under the S4 Pro and Tegra 3 platforms.

Web Browser Performance: SunSpider, Octane, And BrowsingBench

As the tablet space becomes increasingly crowded, we look to compare the performance of multiple hardware architectures supporting iOS, Android, Windows RT, and now Windows 8 as well. That's not easy, since Microsoft and Apple, in particular, are restrictive about the software running on their platforms. As of now, there are no cross-platform benchmarks available for Windows RT.

Right now, Web browser-based benchmarks represent the only way for us to compare the Surface to other devices. We're consequently revisiting these tests to pit Samsung’s Windows 8-based tablet against the competition from Microsoft. 

These tests aren't the last word on performance, though. Browser support varies by operating system, and we know that, even on a consistent platform, performance varies between each Web browser. So, when you consider the many different tablets we're testing today, along with the permutations of software available for them all, these numbers are affected by several variables. Fortunately, Windows 8 lets us test IE10, Chrome, and Safari, creating parallels to other hardware with those same browsers.

Fortunately, we don't have do a ton of extrapolation in SunSpider, since the ATIV Smart PC 500T takes first, second, and third place running the three browsers we wanted to measure. Our results show that IE10 enjoys an advantage in JavaScript performance, something we've seen in past Web Browser Grand Prix stories, too.

Here's one sure to raise eyebrows. The V8 Benchmark Suite was created by Google specifically to test the runtime performance of JavaScript in Chrome, so it's little surprise to see the three platforms running Chrome secure the top spots. Only considering that trio of results, though, our Windows 8-based Samsung tablet takes a very commanding lead. 

We also see that the Atom/Windows 8 combination from Samsung is almost twice as fast as Tegra 3/Windows RT under IE10. Moreover, the ATIV Smart TV 500T gives you the freedom to ditch IE10 altogether and install Chrome to realize that first-place finish. The Surface lacks this flexibility.

Octane is Google's newest JavaScript-based benchmark. It incorporates the eight original tests from V8, along with five additional tests that focus on runtime performance. Regardless of the new content, we don't need to draw any new conclusions. The top three finishers are the same, and for the same reason. Windows 8 and IE10 remain notably faster than Microsoft's browser under Windows RT, likely due to the Atom's advantages over Tegra 3.

Our next test, BrowsingBench, was created by the Embedded Microprocessor Benchmark Consortium, a non-profit organization tasked with developing testing methodology for embedded hardware. While it's meant for testing "smartphones, netbooks, portable gaming devices, navigation devices, and IP set-top boxes," it's just as useful for measuring browser performance in general.

Unlike SunSpider or V8, BrowsingBench evaluates the total performance of a browser: page loading, processing, rendering, compositing, and so on. This helps reflect real-world use, unlike an exclusively JavaScript-based metric.

Again, we see the Samsung ATIV Smart PC 500T demonstrate why an open ecosystem is a good thing, as Chrome on Windows 8 finishes in first place. Two iPads interestingly take second and third place, followed by Samsung's tablet running Safari and IE10. A trio of Tegra 3-based devices bring up the rear.

Can A Tablet-Oriented GPU Handle Desktop Gaming?

If you follow our tablet coverage, you've seen our GLBenchmark charts with Imagination Technologies' PowerVR hardware riding high and mighty up on top. But that's a synthetic, mostly intended to represent tablet-oriented gaming. Can the SGX545 apply those chart-topping GLBenchmark numbers to an entry-level PC title?

This was probably wishful thinking, but since we have an x86 processor with Windows 8, we had to install a mainstream game like World of Warcraft to see if the little Atom could handle it. After all, what good is the freedom to install whatever you want on a device without benchmarks addressing the viability of such a position.

We've seen World of Warcraft run acceptably on netbook-class hardware at the lowest detail settings. Unfortunately, even at 800x600, we wouldn't consider the Atom Z2760 to be powerful enough for a workload like this one.

We are left with a few interesting thoughts, though. First, the single-core PowerVR SGX545 is a little quicker than the older Graphics Media Accelerator 3150 found in Intel's Atom N450. The iPad 2's dual-core SGX543MP2 should deliver close to two times as much performance, while the third-gen iPad's quad-core SGX543MP4 might be expected to increase that result four-fold. Given that Qualcomm's S4 Pro tops both Apple SoCs, it wouldn't be unrealistic for it to drive a game like World of Warcraft smoothly.

Of course, that's all theoretical since those other graphics engines are part of ARM-based SoCs. Intel would need to license a more advanced GPU in order for us to confirm, which would require dedicating more power budget to graphics. More power means less battery life, and we know the direction that goes. Alternatively, AMD could show us a tablet-oriented APU, which would be interesting, too.

PCMark 7: A Look At Storage Performance

The ATIV Smart PC 500T is a tablet with notebook-like aspirations. Its IA-32-based brains and Windows 8 heart mean you can install whatever you want, even if you probably shouldn't. How much slower is an Atom-based platform than one of Intel's Core processors? If you were to believe PCMark 7, it's not altogether than bad, coming close to Asus' Eee Slate with an Arrandale-based CPU. As we'll see on the next page, though, real-world apps don't reflect the same closeness.

But processor, memory, and graphics performance are only part of the story. Storage plays a big role too, and Samsung's tablet is interesting in that it allows us to benchmark an eMMC-based SSD under Windows 8.

If you're not already familiar with the differences between eMMC and the regular NAND found in SSDs, check out page 11 of The Amazon Kindle Fire: Benchmarked, Tested, And Reviewed, where we break them down. In short, eMMC puts block management and ECC onto the NAND itself, which you can see in the slide above.

The storage numbers show us that, in some cases, the 500T's eMMC-based storage can be substantially faster than a mechanical hard disk. That test is full of random reads, though. There are other storage subtests where the 500T is actually slower than the mechanical drive. In short, there are workloads where the Smart PC's storage performance is fairly impressive, and others where it's downright slow.

Benchmark Results: Photoshop, iTunes, And WinRAR

We're able to use one set of tests to compare Samsung's ATIV Smart PC 500T against tablets. But when you drop the Atom-powered device into its docking station, it becomes more of a netbook or lightweight notebook. So, how does it perform in that role? Again, the full version of Windows 8 gives us access to our usual benchmark suite.

It's easy enough to install Photoshop, but using the software in any serious way (here, to apply filters to a TIF file) is painfully slow. Beyond our scripted test, we spent some time actually using Photoshop and found it to be impressively responsive, both with a mouse and the digitizer pen. It's really only when you tax the 500T's limited resources that they buckle.

Even though the Photoshop chart looks bad, the fact that a sub-2 W tablet takes four times longer to finish this workload than a 17 W Sandy Bridge-based notebook is respectable.

This task is a little more realistic on a tablet. It involves converting the Terminator 2 soundtrack from WAV to AAC. Intel's 1.7 W Atom Z2760 again takes the longest to finish up. But when you consider its power footprint, the outcome isn't altogether bad (particularly compared to the 35 W A8-3520).

The numbers in WinRAR are fairly similar, even though this test is better-optimized to take advantage of multiple cores.

Beyond IE10 And Multi-Monitor Browsing

The previous page's performance numbers didn't surprise us. We knew that the freedom to run whatever we want on a Windows 8-based tablet would be weighted down by anemic hardware. Still, the ATIV Smart PC 500T should be expected to handle more common tasks with grace. How does it do browsing around on the Web? How about hooked up to an external monitor?

In our Microsoft Surface review, we had little trouble bogging Nvidia's Tegra 3 down with tabbed browsing under IE10. The same workload is just as hard on Intel's Atom Z2760. Flash- and JavaScript-heavy sites bog the SoC down noticeably, animations stutter, and you'll see screen-tearing on YouTube as you scroll down the page.

Fortunately, Windows 8 isn't married to IE like Windows RT. As it turns out, getting Chrome onto the Smart PC 500T is a big improvement. The experience isn't a completely smooth one, but it's at least quite a bit better. Animations and videos don't stutter as severely. Switching around between tabs is much more responsive.

Using multiple monitors is a good way to help improve productivity, and Samsung's tablet offers a micro-HDMI output to accommodate an external screen. With another display attached, performance during basic tasks ranges from acceptable to marginal. Typing in Word while playing back a YouTube video in the background is usually OK, though frames tend to get skipped during motion-heavy sequences. In contrast, the Surface has a harder time keeping up, and playback suffers as a result.

LCD Performance Analyzed

Between the thick LCD glass and the digitizer layer, we can't get a clear look at the screen's subpixels. However, there's enough definition for us to identify this as an IPS panel.

It's not just any IPS panel, though. Samsung uses the same SuperBright Plus Technology (SPT) that originally debuted on its Series 9 notebooks, and then the Series 7 11.6” Slate. Most IPS screens deliver around 300 nits of luminance, but SPT-enabled displays are purportedly capable of 400 nits without sacrificing 170^o viewing angles.

Rendering ~48% of the AdobeRGB 1998 and ~67% of sRGB gamuts, Samsung's ATIV Smart PC 500T trails the company's Series 7 11.6” Slate, which is surprising considering that they both employ 11.6” SPT screens. Some improvements are apparent, though; we’re finally able to hit ~400 cd/m2 brightness, something the Series 7 11.6” Slate wasn't able to do.

Overall, the 500T's display is really crisp, due in large part to its ability to achieve a high brightness spec. Unfortunately, high-luminance IPS displays are usually handicapped when it comes to contrast ratio. As with most things though, you cannot generalize. The 13.3” Series 9 notebook's contrast ratio was a relatively weak ~689:1, whereas the Series 7 11.6” boasts ~1,136:1. Fortunately, the ATIV Smart PC 500T doesn't seem to have those issues, achieving a 1,220:1 contrast ratio, even besting Samsung’s previous Windows-based tablet.

Battery Life And Recharge Time

Battery Life & Recharge Benchmarks (Background Info)

The ATIV Smart PC 500T's six-hour battery life is unremarkable compared to tablets with ARM-based SoCs. When you compare it to tablet PCs like Samsung's Series 7 11.6" Slate, however, which only run for roughly three hours, it represents a major improvement.

We were naturally dubious of Intel's claims that it could match the battery life of ARM-based architectures, but here we have the 500T just under the Kindle Fire HD in our H.264-encoded playback test.

Let's try another workload less affected by fixed-function resources.

On the back of its two x86 cores, the 500T fares even better in our Web browsing and MP3 playback workload, passing a number of older tablets. Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire HD are both standouts in this test. Aside from those two, the Atom-powered system hangs right in there with the iPads and Surface.

Normalized Brightness Benchmarks (Background Info)

Though it might be common to use your mobile computing device with its screen at maximum brightness, that's not necessarily a balanced way to compare battery life. So, while we continue to include those numbers as an example of real-world use, we normalize to 200 nits for a re-match.

At first, doing this hit the ATIV Smart PC 500T particularly hard, knocking it to the bottom of our stack. It's hard for us to rail too hard on Samsung here; the 500T still delivered more than seven hours of run time in the video playback and Web browsing workloads. However, it's possible to get 10, 11, or 12 hours from competing tablets in the same tests.

Right before we published ARM Vs. x86: The Secret Behind Intel Atom's Efficiency, Intel let us know that new firmware and drivers were available for Samsung's tablet that should help its battery life. In fact, representatives mentioned, vendors continue tweaking their software infrastructures to further optimize what they're able to get from available battery power. So, we went back and updated any driver versions that had been released after our first round of numbers was run. H.264-encoded playback went up by 30 minutes, and our Web browsing workload picked up 23 minutes, just about tying Microsoft's Surface.

Now, that's not quite as impressive as what Intel showed us in its lab using Acer's Windows 8-based tablet. Again, though, the company readily admits that each vendor is doing something different, and our workload involves different power-consuming components, too. It'll take running battery numbers on more devices to get a clearer picture of how the Atom-equipped tablets fall in with the ARM-based competition.

Perhaps as a result of its pared-back graphics engine, Samsung's ATIV Smart PC 500T delivers some of the best battery life available in a gaming environment. Originally, it was bested only by Apple's iPad 2. But after our driver updates, the ATIV Smart PC 500T finishes in first place.

We also noticed that all of the graphics effects (blur, splashes, etc.) that were supposed to be exclusive to Nvidia's Tegra 3 are also present on the ATIV Smart PC 500T. On an Android-based platform, you have to have a device with Tegra 3 inside to get those features. On iOS, you need an iPhone 5 to get them.

Vector Unit, the developer, tells us that Riptide GP normally detects hardware before turning up the detail settings. However, when the company published to Microsoft's Windows Store, hardware detection was removed altogether. As a result, you'll see the nicer graphics on any system running Windows 8, including Samsung's Atom-based tablet.

Recharging

The ATIV Smart PC 500T’s charging time to 90% capacity is just under two hours. To reach a full charge, you only need two hours and thirty-seven minutes. That's slightly faster than Microsoft’s Surface, but significantly faster than the first-, second-, and third–generation iPads.

In short, for every minute you spend charging the ATIV Smart PC 500T, you get a little over two minutes of use (at maximum brightness). With the Kindle Fire HD, every minute hooked up to the wall returns less than two minutes away. The third-gen iPad gets you between 1-1.5 minutes away for every minute of charge. In short, this is one of the ATIV Smart PC 500T's strengths.

We already know that Samsung's docking station contains no supplemental battery, unlike Asus' Transformer family. That means it doesn't matter if you have the keyboard attached or not; recharging time on the 500T is the same. The Transformer Prime's battery life nearly doubles with the docking station connected, but we're not including those numbers here because our focus is on the tablet alone.

On Paper, A Compelling Windows 8 Tablet

There are tablets, and then there are tablet PCs. Thus far, tablets have limited us to mobile-oriented operating systems. They've employed touch almost exclusively for input. And they've typically employed SoCs centering on ARM's processor architecture. The latter category leverages hardware more commonly found in the notebook world. Tablet PCs are most often controlled by digital pens, Samsung's Series 7 11.6" Slate a shining example. 

Both serve distinct purposes. Tablets are lighter-weight devices that typically handle content consumption well enough, but fall short when it comes to getting stuff done. On the road, they don't replace your notebook. In fact, in many cases they actually become a second device to carry around, creating heft rather than alleviating it. 

Before now, Microsoft's Surface came the closest to bridging those two worlds. But, with constant use, we've discovered situations where we needed an app not already on the Windows Store, and not likely to ever appear there. Microsoft's approach is hampering a potentially stellar product, and that's disappointing.

And so we continue the search for a product able to live between the tablet and notebook worlds, endowing us with exceptional battery life, easy navigation, and diminutive dimensions, along with enough performance to run the apps we need, a keyboard, and an open software ecosystem. With its ATIV Smart PC 500T, Samsung has the right idea.

We might be willing to forgive the little system's so-so performance in common desktop apps and outmoded graphics performance, recommending against installing apps that simply demand more than the hardware can comfortably serve up. We're less happy about the glossy, cheaper-feeling tablet and very much plastic docking station, which, together are both thicker and heavier than the Surface. Moreover, while the 500T is sold with 64 GB of storage space, a baseline Windows 8 install immediately takes you down under 40 GB. Samsung is asking more than $750 for this thing with its keyboard, and we'd have a hard time living with the compromises it makes as a product.

Conversely, the ATIV Smart PC 500T emerges as a conceptual victory, giving us most of the attributes of a tablet, and a notebook's biggest productivity-oriented advantage: a keyboard. It simply falls short of perfection. Samsung manages to overcome much of what, after weeks of use, bothers us about the Surface, but in a form factor that's two times heavier, almost twice as thick, and not a whole heck of a lot faster. Yes, the docking station is easy to pop off when you don't need it. However, as far as we're concerned, once you leave the house with tablet and dock connected, that's the device you're lugging around all day.

Too bad tablets can't get drunk and hook up; we'd love to see what the kids of Samsung's ATIV Smart PC 500T and Microsoft's Surface would look like.

Microsoft has made dramatic changes to the Windows operating system with its upcoming Windows 8 platform; it seems one change includes re-branding its editions.  Simply put, Microsoft has decided to ditch its old branding (Home Premium, Ultimate, etc.) and condense them. The company is introducing three main editions: Windows 8, Windows 8 Pro, and Windows RT -- but only two of these will be available as upgrades from Windows 7.

The edition known as just Windows 8 condenses what was Home Premium and Home Basic previously. A notable change however is the addition of Language Packs, which were available exclusively on Enterprise/Ultimate editions in the past. The Windows 8 edition will be available as an upgrade from Windows 7 Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium.

Windows 8 Pro contains functionality you would find in what was Professional and Ultimate editions in the past. Exclusive features include Bitlocker, VHD Boot, Client Hyper-V, Domain Join, File Encryption, Group Policy, and Remote Desktop (host). The new “Windows 8 Pro” also comes with an available Windows Media Center add-on. This edition is upgradeable from Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate editions.

Perhaps the most interesting edition is Windows RT, which comes preloaded on devices running ARM processors and will not be available as an upgrade. Windows RT includes a bundled, touch-optimized desktop version of Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. This edition is designed to offer the fullest experience of Windows 8 on x86 processors, on devices with ARM chipsets.

Microsoft also made note of a Windows 8 Enterprise edition, which expands upon the Windows 8 Pro edition by including features for PC management, security, and more.

According to the blog post, we can expect pricing details and promotions in the coming months.

OnLive announced on Thursday that iPad owners no longer have exclusive dibs to its Desktop app, as the service is now available on Google's Android Market.

As with the iOS version, the free OnLive Desktop app for Android tablets streams a virtual Windows desktop to the device, packing full "installed" programs like Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint software and Adobe Reader for PDFs. Users also get 2 GB of free cloud storage for storing desktop documents.

For the uninitiated, OnLive Desktop actually resides on remote PCs in the cloud that are connected by Gigabit Ethernet to the Internet. Using the same tech that OnLive uses to stream PC games to PCs, tablets and smartphones, the OnLive Desktop app acts like a "receiver," providing an instantly responsive, seamless Windows environment and Web experience. The app also includes a full PC on-screen keyboard, handwriting recognition and support for an optional Bluetooth PC-compatible keyboard or mouse.

In addition to the free account, OnLive provides two premium accounts and an Enterprise account. Whereas the free OnLive Desktop Standard account provides as-available access (meaning wait in line), OnLive Desktop Plus ($4.99/month) packs all the features of Standard but gives subscribers priority access. Subscribers also get access to the cloud-accelerated Web browser featuring lightning-fast attachment transfers and full Flash and Acrobat PDF plug-ins.

As for OnLive Desktop Pro ($9.99/month), this model builds upon the Plus version by adding 50 GB of cloud storage (appears as a Documents folder) and the ability to customize the virtual desktop with additional PC applications. There's also OnLive Enterprise which features an IT-managed environment for businesses and organizations. This version is available for custom integration by independent software vendors and consultants.

OnLive collaborative services—including live desktop spectating and desktop sharing with voice chat for small groups or thousands of simultaneous users—are coming soon to OnLive Desktop Pro and OnLive Enterprise, the company says.

"Android tablets are a great platform for OnLive Desktop," said Steve Perlman, OnLive Founder and CEO. "With full HD resolution, PC keyboard/mouse support and available 4G LTE, Android tablets deliver an excellent experience with full Microsoft Office and Adobe Reader PC applications, not to mention gigabit-accelerated browsing through OnLive Desktop Plus—even over 4G LTE."

To Get OnLive Desktop for your Android tablet, head here.

Hot apps is a weekly rundown of the most popular apps according to our sister site, Tom’s Guide. The following list are ranked from first to tenth by total downloads over the last week, making them community picks.

7stacks. Even though Windows 7 won some love for Microsoft, there’s still room for improvement. Alastria Software’s 7stacks emulates the “stack” capability of Mac OS X—sorting document and program shortcuts into easily accessible pull-up menus—for Steve Ballmer’s latest operating system.

GetGo Download Manager. Download managers are a must-have utility in this age of ubiquitous internet, large files, and (unfortunately) dropped connections. GetGo distinguishes itself with its support for FLV video and music downloading, facilitating grabs from sites like YouTube, Facebook, etc.

Smart FLV Converter. Most online videos are encoded as FLV (flash video) files. Smart FLV converter converts these videos into more popular formats, for playback on Windows Media Player, Quicktime, portable media players and smartphones.

Yoono Desktop. Yoono’s instant communication and social networking client resolves all your different online accounts into one neat stream. It features support for popular services like Facebook, Twitter, Google Talk, YouTube, Flickr, and Foursquare.

Business Functions. For those managing their corporate or personal financial empires through Excel, Business Functions is a godsend. The free function library features a powerful set of projection and modeling tools, and is designed to work with Microsoft’s spreadsheet program.

Hornil StylePix. Need a powerful image editor and graphic design tool, but can’t afford Photoshop? Hornil’s free editor provides similar functionality to Adobe’s industry-standard (layers, transparencies, batch processing), with a slight emphasis on helping new users find their inner image manipulator.

AVS Disc Creator. Like download managers, optical disc burning software are a dime a dozen. As a free utility, AVS Disc Creator stands out for its ability to work with Blu-Ray burners. It’s support for a wide variety of disc image file formats doesn’t hurt either.

Easy Duplicate File Finder. Storage space has consistently become cheaper (at least on the HDD front), but wasting space on multiple copies of the same information is still inexcusable. This utility searches your drives for duplicate files. But the free version is crippled by a ten duplicate group limit.

Twitter (for Android). The sole mobile—and non-Windows—app on this weekly list, this is simply the Twitter client for Android smartphones.

Album Art Downloader. Whether you rip songs off your CDs, or acquire bootleg copies of your favorite tunes, your digital music collection never seems complete without album art. This app helps you find these for your tracks, and assign them directly to your MP3s.

Staff Pick: Hornil StylePix may be a free download and doesn't demand too much from a PC, but it gives Adobe Photoshop a genuine run for its money.

Check out more hot apps on Tom’s Guide. Got an app you can’t live without? Or a better alternative to anything listed above? Share your wisdom in the comments below.

Introduction

If you caught my last article, you should now understand how to prepare a system, set up, and install a fresh copy of Ubuntu Linux, even if you've never touched the operating system before. I also walked you through updates and explained how to install software. Like the G.I. Joe public service announcement goes, “now you know, and knowing is half the battle.”

But what about the other half? Now that you know how to install software, what is available for Linux? Could you really ditch Windows and completely migrate to this foreign OS? If you do everything through Web-based apps, then your operating environment of choice doesn't really matter as much. But without a handful of titles able to replace their Windows counterparts, you'd probably remain tethered to the familiar.

But don't write Linux off that quickly. You may be surprised to find that many of your favorite third-party apps from Windows have native Linux installations. Mozilla Firefox is the second most popular Web browser in the world, for example, and the default in most modern Linux distributions. Sun Microsystems' OpenOffice.org is growing in popularity across all platforms as a viable (free) alternative to Microsoft Office. The VLC Media Player, which is a favorite third-party media player for Windows, is also a top app in the Linuxphere.

Unfortunately, not all of your applications are going to have Linux versions available. Some industry-leading apps, such as Quicken and Excel, do not install natively in Linux. This means you are going to need to replace some of your Windows apps with a Linux equivalent.

The first step in this process is to stop thinking about your computing needs by the specific applications that you use. Instead, begin thinking in terms of the task that you use those apps to complete. Take the aforementioned Quicken and Excel, for example. The tasks that you are completing are personal finances and spreadsheets (respectively). Once you define what you actually use your PC for, you can begin looking for alternative Linux apps. After you find one, make sure that it contains the same critical features as it's Windows equivalent. I've included links to download the Windows and Mac versions of these apps when available, so you are encouraged to try them out for yourself. If the feature sets are comparable, then you are well on your way to getting up and running, free of charge!

For those who believe that there isn't as much software available for Linux as there is for Windows, let me enlighten you. There is a ridiculous amount of software available for Linux. In fact, this piece began as an article and quickly turned into a multi-part series. Even as massive as it is, it still is not a complete listing of every available Linux application by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I had to seriously reign in the scope:

Exclusion #1: Web Apps And Online Services

• Almost every article showcasing Web apps and online services is applicable to Linux as well as Windows, even if not specifically stated.

Exclusion #2: Windows Apps

Though I will include a page on virtualization and emulation, it is to showcase the actual virtualization/emulation software. I do not delve into the details of getting any specific Windows app running in Linux.

Exclusion #3: Preferences

User preferences like the alluring 3D desktop effects, screen savers, and panels/launchers are not covered in this series. There is an upcoming How-To piece for the different preference options, though.

Exclusion #4: Games

Native casual games, free games, indie games, retail games as well as virtualized platforms and emulation will be covered in a future rundown of Linux gaming.

Exclusion #5: Servers

This is a follow-up to the first article and therefore concentrates on Linux as being an alternative OS for consumers. Nothing server-side this time, only client-side.

This is not one of those played-out "Essential Apps" articles, which simply tend to list a browser, a basic office suite, and a media player, leaving the user with only the most basic functionality appropriate for a netbook and nothing more. Besides, I already covered those bases a few paragraphs up. Also, let me be clear that this is a roundup, not a shootout. I didn't do an exhaustive review of every app that appears within. Instead, I spent about a day with each.

What this guide will do in its entirety is highlight traditional, locally-installed applications running the gamut from the ubiquitous Web browser to specialist uses, such as ISO-mounting tools. If all you care about is surfing the Web and recording audio, this series will showcase those apps. If all you want to do is communicate via email, occasionally using VoIP with a webcam, this series will catalog the available software. If you just need a basic office PC with additional project management and flowchart software, it's all here. This guide is intended to be a reference resource, not simply a linear story to be read from intro through conclusion. Each article features an overall category of applications (office apps, for example), and each page features a different type of application (like spreadsheets). So, if you don't care about video editing or DVD encoding, feel free to skip those pages and move on to what interests you.

The first part in our comprehensive Linux App Roundup covers Internet Apps. In this segment, we'll be looking at Web browsers, RSS readers, podcatchers, FTP clients, download managers, BitTorrent clients, and a slew of other file sharing solutions. There's also a spotlight on Miro Internet TV, a piece of software that defies category. This does not include apps used to communicate with other specific people, but simply to retrieve content from the Web. The next segment will feature Communications Apps, and will include those titles.

Standards, Methodology, And Legend

Standards

My previous guide only referenced the most popular Linux distribution (distro), Ubuntu. To include more than one distro in an installation guide would be too much information for one article while still maintaining the linear path of a How-To. This article, however, is an application roundup. To include the best cross-section of apps (and based on popular demand by you, the Tom's Hardware readers), I've opened up the test bed to include the top three distros: Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Fedora.

Free or Open-Source Software (FOSS) applications are always available as source code, but the recent spike of interest in Linux is not because people suddenly want steep learning curves. Quite the opposite. It's because Linux has become easier to use. This is a collection of easy-to-install applications intended for those making, or even thinking about making the switch from Windows to Linux. This essentially means that these applications must fall in line with the realistic expectations of an average end-user in either a home or office desktop implementation. The three main criteria for these apps are: usability, quality, and popularity.

The first hurdle that applications had to overcome was usability. For an app to even appear in this article it has to be available in one of the top three distro's official repos or as a DEB or an RPM from the software vendor's official Web site. Several high-quality applications that only exist as source code or as shell installers had to be left out. For Linux to truly be considered for mainstream use, source/shell just won't cut it. "Granny don't makefile," and to most people, the command line is a step backwards. Obviously, apps that had too many bugs or crashes were also left out under this criteria.

The quality of an app is determined by comparing its feature set to the industry-leading title in that category (whenever one exists). For example, personal finance software was stacked up against Quicken, while image manipulation apps were compared to Photoshop. While this may not seem fair some of the time, I am not here to convert everyone or play the “it's free” card. I'm here to let new users know what they're realistically dealing with when considering Linux as a desktop option; to help you make an educated decision for yourself. In the event that there are no clear industry-leading apps to compare against, don't worry. Anything that looks like it came out of a Win9x time capsule doesn't pass.

The final criteria is popularity. When dealing with Linux software, especially FOSS, popularity isn't simply a badge of honor. It's more an effect of being a good piece of code. The effect of popularity can actually become the cause of an app becoming great. Since FOSS is in a constant state of bug reporting and fixing, the most popular apps will have the most complete sampling of users, in turn producing an even better title. Also, because support is mainly handled by the user community, popular software naturally has more documentation and fewer issues with compatibility. Therefore, popularity greatly influenced the order in which equally usable apps of comparable quality are listed. This includes extra weight given to multi-platform applications.

Methodology

In order to determine Ubuntu compatibility, I used a fresh and updated virtual machine installation of 32-bit Ubuntu 9.04, with the default GNOME graphical user interface (GUI). To determine openSUSE compatibility, I used a fresh and updated VM installation of 32-bit openSUSE 11.1 with the default KDE GUI . To determine Fedora compatibility, I used a fresh and updated VM installation of 32-bit Fedora 11 with the default GNOME GUI. A fresh and updated VM installation of 32-bit Kubuntu 9.04 was used in order to cover the rare .deb/KDE combination whenever needed. If you need a refresher, please reference my previous article for an explanation of package management.

In order to test drive the feature sets of these applications, and to determine 64-bit friendliness, I used a native (non-VM) and fully-updated installation of 64-bit Ubuntu 9.04. When an application was not available for the 64-bit architecture, I used the 32-bit VM installation of Ubuntu. If that failed I would use Kubuntu, then Fedora, and then openSUSE.

Legend:

   An application's logo links to it's homepage (for example, Firefox = mozilla.com/firefox).

indicates availability in the default Ubuntu repos (via Synaptic).

indicates availability in the Ubuntu repos if KDE is installed (still runs in GNOME).

indicates availability in the default openSUSE repos (via YaST2).

indicates availability in the default Fedora repos (via YUM).

links to an available .deb package download.

links to an available .rpm package download.

indicates that the app has no official 64-bit binary (though source/shell may work).

links to an available Windows download.

links to an available Mac download. indicates that the application is a retail product.

After several re-writes, I decided to put the version number that I referenced next to each application's name as well.

Note: the deb and rpm icons used in this article are part of the hydroxygen icon set by deviantdark. It is hosted on GNOME-look.org along with a host of other high-quality theming elements.

Web Browsers: The Best

The Web browser is essential, and to a growing number of users even more important than the operating system itself. As more tasks commonly associated with locally-installed applications are being accomplished using online services, the Web browser will only become more critical in the future. If Firefox seems like the de facto browser for Linux, that's because it is. However, Windows users will remember late last year when Internet Explorer security holes drove them en masse to Firefox, only to later discover similar exploits in Firefox. This incident drove home the need to have multiple browsers installed, if only for emergency backup use.

To put these browsers through a quick (and admittedly unscientific) test, I utilized some of the Internet's most popular Web sites. For starters, I performed a few random searches on Google to gauge page-load speed. Next, I simply navigated to the Yahoo homepage. Believe it or not, that site doesn't support very many browsers. I navigated to my house using the maps at Microsoft's new Bing.com (why not test in unfriendly territory?). And finally, I played the current feature video on Hulu, and the same on YouTube.

Mozilla Firefox (v. 3.0.11)

Mozilla's Firefox is the undisputed king of Web browsers on the Linux platform. No matter what any given distribution has installed by default, the vast majority of Linux users rely on Firefox as their primary window into the World Wide Web. It's popularity is due in large part to the unparalleled number of custom add-ons and plug-ins available. If a feature exists on any browser, there's probably an add-on to enable it in Firefox.

This browser is more stable and secure than Internet Explorer, while still performing similarly on Web site compatibility. With all this going for it, it's no wonder that Firefox holds almost one quarter of the entire Web browser market share. That means about twenty percent of current Windows users prefer it. If you don't already use this browser, regardless of your OS, you should.

Opera (v. 9.64)

For many years, Opera has been the third wheel at the browser party. Today, it's more like the fifth. Opera has had a long history of innovation, often including cutting-edge features before the competition. By including a thumbnailed bookmarks page, thumbnailed tab previews, and split-screen browsing (not as optional add-ons, but integrated into the default installation), the latest version of Opera is still ahead of it's time.

One of the simple features that I especially like is the ability to have a separate entry in the search bar for each tab. For example, if you search for "fried chicken recipes" in one tab, and open a second tab to search for "cornbread recipes," the search bar in the second tab will not have "fried chicken recipes," but will be blank for a new search. If nothing else, Opera is a solid backup or secondary browser and is available for just about every operating system you can think of. BeOS stalwarts rejoice!

SeaMonkey (v. 1.1.15)

The first thing that you're sure to notice about SeaMonkey Navigator is the Netscape Navigator theme. Of all the browsers in this article, SeaMonkey was the biggest surprise. It is hands-down the best non-mainstream offering on the list, no question. This browser had no problem handling YouTube, Hulu, Yahoo, or even Microsoft Bing Maps. Apart from the theme, being an actual descendant of Netscape makes SeaMonkey very approachable to ex-users of Navigator. When you perform a search using the search bar, a pane appears on the left side of the screen displaying search results. This feature can come in handy if you have the screen real estate to spare on a wide-screen monitor. I really did not expect to find anything decent besides Firefox and Opera, but SeaMonkey is truly a great app; something that will remain installed on my machine long after this article is finished.

Web Browsers: The Rest

Epiphany (v. 2.26.1)

Epiphany is the default Web browser for the stock GNOME GUI. GNOME is the default GUI for popular distributions such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and Debian. While Ubuntu has Mozilla Firefox installed as the primary browser, until recently, Epiphany was also installed by default. Epiphany uses Mozilla's Gecko layout engine and therefore bears a striking resemblance to Firefox.

The best feature of Epiphany is the all-in-one search/location bar, which is unparalleled at discerning the difference between a search term and the name of a Web site. This is a decent browser as far as site compatibility is concerned, and it correctly displays site elements. It is, however, noticeably slower than most of the other browsers; painfully at times. Overall, Epiphany is a decent, fully-featured secondary or backup browser.

Galeon (v. 2.0.6)

Galeon, like Epiphany, uses the Mozilla Gecko layout engine. It is actually the parent project from which Epiphany was formed. Galeon has a strange "myportal:" as it's default homepage, which gives you an error each time you open the app. Apparently it's supposed to create a shortcut page from your bookmarks, but it didn't. Galeon is not as slow as Epiphany, however it did have problems with the Yahoo homepage. If you don't use any Yahoo services and don't mind having to immediately set a new start page, this browser is just as good as Epiphany.

Konqueror (v. 4.2.2)

Konqueror is the default Web browser and file manager for the KDE graphical user interface. KDE is the default GUI for popular Linux distributions like openSUSE, Mandriva, and Kubuntu. Even though most modern distros use Firefox as their default browser, Konqueror is usually installed as a file manager and/or secondary  browser in the KDE distros.

While Konqueror leaves quite a lot to be desired, it is a powerful and fully-featured file manager. One greatly-missed feature when running this browser in GNOME is the search bar. It is there, next to the location bar, when run from KDE.

Konqueror would not play videos on Hulu, nor would it display the Yahoo homepage. It also got hung up during Google searches and would ignore my keystrokes in the search box. The program fetches pages from the Web slightly faster than Epiphany, but the actual program took quite a while longer to load than the others. To be fair, the last three problems were due to running Konqueror in Ubuntu's GNOME GUI instead of it's native KDE. So, if you're using KDE as your GUI, Konqueror won't be that bad in terms of performance, and higher on the list than Epiphany. Though it's occasionally nice to go from a local file to a Web page in the same app, Konqueror is not going to cut it as your primary browser by any stretch of the imagination. 

Arora (v. 0.5)

Arora is the last browser to make the cut, but that doesn't mean it's the bottom of the barrel. There are many, many more Web browsers for Linux that just didn't have enough usability to be featured here.

Arora played Hulu and YouTube videos, but both experienced seemingly random errors that required a reload (and therefore a fast forward back to your position), which could become irritating quite quickly. It also experiences major "scroll-lag" if there is video or ad content on the screen. While this browser supports tabbed browsing, it seems to prefer opening a new window for links more often than not. On the bright side, the speed was excellent and the program loads quickly. Being based on QTWebKit makes this browser worth watching for diversity's sake. But for now, Arora is best as a secondary or even tertiary backup Web browser due to it's (currently) limited functionality and remaining bugs.

Google Chrome?

Google has said that Chrome would be available for all operating systems, yet right now it is only for Windows. So far, the Linux and Mac versions of the new browser are only available as pre-alpha developer releases, and only recommended if you absolutely cannot wait for, or want to aid in the development of Google Chrome.

While many things do not work properly in the development version, it runs exceptionally fast. And due to it's underlying design, it should be the most secure and stable browser available. Recently, Google announced that the 64-bit version of Chrome will be released for Linux first. Unfortunately, we were told that a version would be released in the first half of this year, so I'm no longer holding my breath. Whenever it becomes available, Chrome will very likely move up on this list.

BitTorrent Clients

Though BitTorrent has received a bad rap as the latest vehicle for piracy, it also has legitimate uses. This is especially true when dealing with FOSS. Since many Linux distros and FOSS apps are often developed, curated, and/or hosted by individuals or groups of volunteers, using the BitTorrent protocol can seriously cut down on monthly bandwidth expenditures. Even projects backed by large corporations, like openSUSE (Novell) and Fedora (Red Hat), are utilizing peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing as a way to cut down on hosting fees and save bandwidth. Also, as time passes, more and more movies, music, books, and images are losing copyright protection and entering the public domain, making them perfectly legal to download and share with others.

KTorrent (v. 3.2.1)

KTorrent is not the BitTorrent client for KDE, at least officially. KGet is actually the official KDE download manager, and it also handles BitTorrent files. Despite this, most KDE distributions use KTorrent as their default BitTorrent client. Why? Because it is awesome. What really sets KTorrent apart from the pack is a mind-numbing number of ways to track statistics.

Deluge (v. 1.1.6)

Deluge is like a much more robust version of Transmission (a popular distro-default). Deluge contains many tools for queue management and statistics tracking. If you are a heavy BitTorrent user, yet still enjoy a clean and simple interface, consider giving Deluge a try.

Transmission (v. 1.51 b7963)

Transmission is simple and compact, but definitely still a class above the lightweight clients. Yet, it lacks some of the advanced features of KTorrent, Deluge, and qBittorrent. It doesn't have a ton of options, details, or statistical tools, but if it came pre-installed on your distro and you only do occasional (legitimate) BitTorrent transfers, there is no reason to install a different client. Transmission is the perfect middle-ground, which is probably why it's the default client on many popular distros, including Ubuntu.

qBittorrent (v. 1.3.3)

qBittorrent has a very slick tabbed interface with glossy KDE-esque controls. The best feature of this app is the search tab. Here you can search for torrents on several pre-loaded torrent tracking sites, all from the same search box. You can also customize the search function by adding and/or removing torrent trackers from the list to search. Also, multiple searches can be done at the same time; new searches will simply open in new tabs. With the Pirate Bay in limbo, the search feature makes qBittorrent even more attractive. Other features include RSS support, IP filtering, and proxies. Unfortunately, the bandwidth throttling and upload connection limits are ignored. Otherwise, this app is a serious contender for the top spot.

Vuze (v. 3.1.1.0)

Vuze is actually one of the oldest BitTorrent clients; it began under the name Azureus. The main reason that Vuze is so low on this list is due to Vuze Updater, its version updating system. Once you run Vuze, it will check for updates and proceed to download and install them. In my experience, it cannot seem to complete the updating process to version 4.2.0.4, and continually asks for the same update whenever you run the application. You can ignore the prompt to update in order to get around this (which you must, since it requires a restart to “complete” the update). The problem with that solution is that the user will eventually become accustomed to ignoring updates.

Also, the Linux edition of Vuze is actually an older version than the current version for Windows. As a result, the new Vuze HD Network features are not yet compatible with Linux. All of that aside, Vuze gives new users the option between a beginner, intermediate, or advanced interface and feature set, making it an appropriate BitTorrent client for any user. 

Monsoon (v. 0.21)

Monsoon has a similar interface to Deluge, but without the massive number of options–-think Transmission's options with the interface of Deluge. What really makes Monsoon stand out from the other BitTorrent clients is the inclusion of an RSS manager.

BitTorrent (v. 4.4.0)

The original BitTorrent client is called--surprise--BitTorrent.

If you like your apps lightweight, BitTorrent clients don't come much more discreet than BitTorrent. This app has a minimal number of options. It simply handles torrent uploads and downloads; there are no advanced tracking or queuing features.

Miro Internet TV And Podcatchers

Miro Internet TV (v. 2.0.3 r9307)

Miro is a difficult app to define. It's a BitTorrent client, a download manager, a podcatcher, Internet video index, and an HD video player. All these aspects combine to make an app that is simply fantastic.

Miro is a perfectly capable BitTorrent client with pause/resume and bandwidth throttling options. Though I wouldn't use it for heavy lifting (or content of questionable legality) due to it's limited options, it would make a great first BitTorrent client.

Miro is also a fully-featured podcatcher for both audio and video podcasts. It will automatically download the latest podcasts in a feed, and then mark them as unread. The left pane lists your feeds, separated by audio and video. It lists the number of downloaded podcasts per feed in a blue bubble and the number of active downloads in orange. It will also display the number of unplayed feeds in a green bubble next to the feed, somewhat like email.

Not only does Miro find and download many types of online media, but it also has a built-in HD video player. The player is actually a real surprise, since most built-in players are swill. Miro's can handle almost as many file types as the much-hailed VLC Media Player. There are no slowdown or lip-synching issues, even with many other applications running in the background (on the Linux client). 

Myriad features aside, the Miro Guide, an index of online audio and video content, is the most unique feature in the application. The Miro Guide is an absolutely gigantic catalog of Internet television shows and channels divided by genre and all completely searchable. The technology section alone seems to go on forever. It really brings me back to the Internet TV channels from WinAmp, but in HD.

There is also a nifty video search feature that searches the combined libraries of many popular online video sites, such as YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, and more. After you've found a video you want to watch, Miro will download it like a torrent or podcast.

That's right. Miro also acts as a download manager for Internet videos like YouTube and Hulu. Unfortunately, it currently does not support .swf files, but other file types can be downloaded to be enjoyed later, even if you lose access to the Internet.

Podcatchers

The podcatchers on this page are not readers, but simply aggregators. They do not play the podcasts. Instead, they utilize your system's default audio and video players for content playback, technically making them Internet apps and not audio/video apps. I used the RSS pages of TWiT to test audio podcasts and GameTrailers Reviews to test video podcasts.

gPodder (v. 0.14.0)

gPodder has a clean interface and starts with a selection of suggested podcasts, which makes this app very approachable. The left pane is a list of your podcasts. It automatically adds a cover picture for the feed if one is available. This makes distinguishing between feeds extremely easy, even if you have a ton of subscriptions.

The right pane lists the podcasts available for each feed, along with icons that indicate if a podcast is downloading, has been downloaded, has been played or unplayed, and locked. However, locking or selecting Prohibit deletion on a podcast does nothing to stop someone from deleting the file using a file manager, or via the terminal. This simply adds an extra step so that users cannot accidentally delete podcatsts. To undo, simply select Allow deletion.

If you want to see the details of a podcast as you would in a Web browser, right-click on one and choose Episode details. Another window will appear with the details. There is also a Downloads tab, from which you can see the speed of any active downloads, set bandwidth limits, or cancel transfers. gPodder, however, has no option to pause or resume downloads, and the progress bar always indicates 100%.

PenguinTV (v. 4.0.0)

PenguinTV has four different interface layouts to choose from under View in the menu bar. Unfortunately, switching between views usually locks or crashes the application. PenguinTV gives you the option to download or 'download and open' a podcast. You can also pause, resume, or cancel transfers. PenguinTV allows you to search your subscriptions for keywords to find a specific podcast, and, if you want, save those searches for later.

RSS Software

RSS feeds allow content Web sites to stream up-to-date headlines to subscribers.

Subscribing to an RSS feed is usually a pretty simple process, and typically free. You just need to pull up one of your favorite sites, right-click the little RSS logo and Copy Link Location (or left-click on the logo and then copy the URL), then paste it into an RSS feed reader or aggregator.

Although RSS readers are definitely becoming less relevant due to Web apps/services and browser plug-ins performing their core function, news junkies probably need a fully-featured app. Also, there is no doubt already a lot of extra stress on the browser from all your other Web apps and plug-ins. Why let your RSS feeds become just another victim of a browser crash? I used the RSS feeds from Tom's Hardware, MaximumPC, Digg, and Slashdot to test the RSS feed-reading abilities of our readers. I also used the TWiT RSS to test podcatching abilities (audio-only).

Akregator (v. 1.4.2)

Akregator is the most robust app listed here. The interface is separated by three panes. The long pane on the left side is a listing of your feeds in the file tree-style. The upper-right pane lists the headlines of the feed selected in the left pane. The lower-right pane is where the story is displayed when the corresponding headline is selected from the list in the pane above. If you want to see a full story in it's original form, simply click Complete Story. A new tab will open in the right panes displaying the article from it's original source.

Akgregator also saves your open tabs when it's closed down, so you can pick up right where you left off the next time that you open the app. Akregator only needs the domain URL for each feed; it automatically finds the feed's proper URL and populates the proper name. For example, type 'tomshardware.com' and Akregator will automatically set up the Tom's news feed. This app is pretty fast, despite having the most features out of the apps listed here, as well as being a KDE app run in GNOME. Even is you're not using KDE, Akregator is still the best standalone RSS reader for Linux.

yarssr (Yet Another RSS Reader) (v. 0.2.2)

yarssr is fantastic, for what it's able to do. This app is an aggregator, not a reader. It does not open the full articles so you can read them; it opens a browser for that. Rather, it simply updates the headlines for each feed.

Though not technically an applet, yarssr resides entirely in the system tray and uses almost no system resources. Its icon is normally a white newspaper, which turns red when refreshing feeds and green when new unread headlines are available. You can set the interval to refresh the feeds, how many headings to display, and what browser should open the links. That's it. If you don't want a bulky app for updating your RSS, yarssr is the answer.

Liferea (v. 1.4.26)

Liferea is similar to Akregator's interface. Feeds are listed on the left pane, the upper right pane lists headlines for the feed selected in the left pane. The lower-right pane displays articles for the selected headline in the upper-right pane.

Also similar to Akregator is Liferea's ability to automatically find RSS feeds for a Web site. You simply input the address to the domain in order to get its RSS feeds. The app does not, however, open the source article within Liferea. For that, it opens your browser.

It can also aggregate podcasts, again opening the browser for playback. Liferea is a slow-loading application. In fact, it exhibited the signs of a crashed app.

It also acted this way when adding a new feed. If you are patient, Liferea will eventually come alive. Note that this app was much speedier on the virtualized 32-bit versions of Fedora and Ubuntu than on the 64-bit Ubuntu test system, making Liferea much more attractive for those running 32-bit operating systems.

Blam Feed Reader (v. 1.8.6)

Blam has a simple interface, and the application itself is easy to use. It is set up like Akregator and Liferea, with the left pane displaying feeds, the upper-right pane recanting headlines, and the lower-left pane dedicated to stories.

However, properly reading RSS feeds is hit-or-miss with this app. Blam could not open the RSS feeds from Tom's Hardware at all, and the stories from MaximumPC were scrambled. The TWiT feed came in properly, but there was no way to listen to or download the podcasts (not even a link that would open your browser). Feeds from Digg and Slashdot came in properly, but you have to use the exact URL for the RSS. This app cannot find feeds automatically from domains.

Blam also exhibits one of my pet peeves: it resides in the system tray, yet you cannot quit the application from the system tray icon. Instead, you must restore the app in order to use its menu bar and select Quit. In fact, the system tray icon holds no function, other than being the destination for the app when it is closed/minimized.

Download Managers

Download managers are one type of app that came into existence in order to fix a specific problem. As the size of files being sent over the Internet overtook average bandwidth, the need to pause, resume, and recover downloads became very important. Wasting several days of downloading a monolithic Linux distro or game demo because your OS/browser crashed or ISP went down, quite frankly, sucked.

Download managers are now largely useless; most browsers have most of their key features built-in. However, if you still have low-speed Internet access or simply don't trust your browser not to crash, download managers still fulfill the same needs. I used the official direct download link for Linux Mint 7, an up-and-coming distro based on Ubuntu, as my test file.

MultiGet (v. 1.2.0)

MultiGet has a very clean and simple interface, yet is robust enough for even heavy downloaders. It handles regular HTTP and FTP perfectly, but has no support for BitTorrent. MultiGet has a drop icon that works flawlessly, like KGet.

Unlike KGet, MultiGet does not open files using KDE default apps, mainly because it does not have the option to open any files. It's left-hand sidebar divides downloads into software, package, music, image, movie, publish, picture, and unknown categories, which makes sorting through completed downloads a breeze.

Uget (v. 1.4.9.1)

Uget is probably the easiest and most stable lightweight download manager available. I had no crashes or buggy behavior (the same goes for wxDFast and GWget).

While you cannot drag and drop links into this app, simply doing a right-click Copy Link Location within your browser will automatically input the link into Uget's new download address box from your clipboard, without pasting. The only error that I experienced was when pausing the last/only active download, at which point the 'all downloads complete' popup notification appeared, along with an irritating event sound. It's too bad that this app isn't available in more repos or as a deb or rpm package.

Kget (v. 2.2.2)

KGet is the native KDE download manager. This app handles regular HTTP direct downloads, as well as FTP and BitTorrent.

The first thing that you are sure to notice is the floating KGet icon that appears in the middle of your screen.

Simply drag a link from your Web browser to the floating icon in order to begin downloading a file. This will work for any link, be it a regular download, jpeg, pdf, Web page, FTP download, or BitTorrent file. Don't worry; you can move the icon anywhere on the desktop that you wish. If that's not enough, you do have the option to remove the icon and input downloads into Kget by simply pasting URLs into the new download function.

Like all download managers, Kget gives you the ability to pause and resume downloading. One issue I had with Kget was that it used KDE default apps instead of my own defaults. For instance, when you open the destination folder of a downloaded file, KGet uses Dolphin (the new KDE file manager) instead of Ubuntu's Nautilus. When opening a saved Web page, KGet opens Konqueror (KDE's default browser), instead of my default, Firefox. As usual with KDE apps, KGet is going to be much more attractive if you are using KDE as your GUI.

Downloader for X (v. 2.5.7.1)

Downloader for X is a great little download manager for HTTP and FTP. As with any download manager, Downloader for X can pause and resume transfers. You can drag and drop links into the app's main window, along with the obligatory URL paste, to begin transferring files. This app also allows you to create and manage different sets of queues, which is ideal for those of us who download massive quantities of files. My only issue with Downloader for X is a minor one: horrendous Final Fantasy fanfare-like “music” plays when you open the app. You can easily turn sound events off with a single check box in the Options/general menu. 

GWget Dowload Manager (v. 1.0.1)

GWget is simple. This app has the most standard features that you would expect from a download manager: pause/resume, and that's about it.

You must manually type or paste a file's URL into this app. Dragging a link from your browser into GWget causes one of the worst crashes that I've seen on a Linux system in many years. It will lock GWget, your browser, and slow your system to a slideshow for several minutes (longer if you don't hit force-quit quickly, as it will lock your panel buttons too).

Fortunately, it recovers from crashes just fine. But you'll have to restart your downloads from scratch, including remembering to save the files in the same place as before. If you're not in the habit of dragging links into your download manager, GWget gets the job done. Otherwise, avoid it.

WXDownloadFast (v. 0.6.0)

WXDownloadFast, or wxDFast, is a simple and easy-to-use download manager. It handles HTTP and FTP downloads, but unfortunately not BitTorrent. Like many of the download managers featured here, wxDFast will auto-populate the target URL from your clipboard. This app crashes a lot. Resuming and sometimes even stopping a download can cause wxDFast to close. Also, the scheduling feature seems to lock a download into an unchangeable state of 'paused' until you restart the app.

FTP Clients

It has been argued that the Web browser's ever-expanding range of features are sending FTP clients the way of download managers. Separate FTP clients are indeed becoming bulky compared to browser-based plug-ins. But old habits die hard, and having a separate app to handle FTP transfers is a concept as old as the Web itself.

For uploaders, even the best browser with the best plug-ins isn't up-to-snuff for serious work. FTP clients will probably continue running on professional machines, while the use of download managers continues to erode on the low-end. I used an FTP site from Sun Microsystems and a test FTP site that I found online to check connections to and downloads from the remote site.

KFTPGrabber (v. 0.8.1)

KFTPGrabber, the KDE FTP client, takes a somewhat new approach to the dual-paned interface by treating each pane separately. The 'navigation bar' functions that I like to see in an FTP client are present in both the local and remote site panes. The first button in the navigation bars is the Change Site button, from which you can disconnect, enter a new connection, or choose from any of your bookmarks. KFTPGrabber not only closes to the system tray, but a right-click also reveals options for bookmarks and Quick Connect.

My one frustration with KFTGrabber is the Quick Connect window. It essentially serves as the location bar, meaning a separate window opens to enter addresses. Also, you must add sites to your bookmarks from this window, as there is no 'Add to favorites' option directly accessible from the navigation bar or within the menu bar. Whether you run GNOME or KDE, KFTPGrabber remains nimble. Because of its speed and feature set, KFTPGrabber is the top dog.

BareFTP (v. 0.2.3)

As it's name implies, BareFTP is an ultra-light app. It uses the standard two-pane interface with a persistent location bar and only the most necessary options in the menu bar. The bookmarks are handled exactly like they are in a Web browser. All of this make BareFTP perfect for beginners. Unfortunately, it's only available in the Fedora repos, which almost negates it's value as a user-friendly app.

Scythia (v. 0.9.3)

The first thing that you'll notice about Sycthia is the large goblin in the lower-right corner of the interface. If you can ignore him, you'll see that the rest of the interface is very slick. It has the dual-paned design with a 'navigation bar' at the top and a transfers box on the bottom. Scythia handles bookmarks like an IM client handles buddies, and the app closes to the system tray. Other than the goblin and lack of a persistent location bar, Scythia is a great FTP client.

kasablanca
(v. 0.4.0.2)

kasablanca is a light FTP client with a minimalistic interface that stays out of your way.

There are not a ton of buttons in the navigations bar area. Instead, major functions are accessible from the menu-bar. This can be somewhat of a hassle if you often switch between FTP sites. You can, however, create bookmarks for quicker access to your favorite FTP sites. The bookmarks aren't handled like they are within a Web browser, but more like adding a buddy to an instant messenger client.

FOFF (Free Open FTP Face) (v. 0.99.5)

FOFF is a lightweight and fast-starting FTP client. The interface is the classic two-paned view with local files on the left and remote files on the right. FOFF has a browser-like navigation panel at the top which contains just about every function usually found by right-clicking on files or folders.

Unfortunately, there are no browser-like bookmarks in FOFF. Instead, you must Save connection info and look up the URL, port, name, and password in Tools/Sites Manager from the menu bar, and then manually copy the information into the location bar. If you regularly visit more than one FTP site, this can become a pain rather quickly. In fact, the lack of simple bookmarks is really the only thing keeping FOFF from the top of the list.

gFTP (v. 2.0.18)

gFTP's interface employs the classic dual-pane layout, with the 'location bar' always visible above them. However, there is not a 'navigation bar,' and therefore all functionality beside the transfer buttons are buried in the 'menu bar,' giving this app a generally-dated look. One feature that gFTP has going for it is bookmarks, which work in the same way as they do in a Web browser.

FileZilla (v 3.2.2.1)

Connecting to FTP sites and transferring files isn't a problem with FileZilla. You can drag and drop files between local and remote file systems seamlessly. This app also features a history, along with standard bookmarks.

On the other hand, FileZilla takes a good 25 seconds to launch. Though that doesn't sound too bad, keep in mind that Ubuntu 9.04 boots in about 17 seconds. FileZilla's interface is also a mess, cluttered with no less than six panes and really small, nondescript icons in the 'navigation bar.'

P2P File-Sharing

Even though BitTorrent has pretty much completely dominated file sharing, other P2P networks and protocols are still around. You may have once used GNUtella, or even eDonkey, but Direct Connect and SoulSeek are two less-obvious methods for sharing files.

This page is split into sections for each type of transfer protocol/network. Since there are really no clear industry-leading clients for any of these networks/protocols (other than LimeWire, which is here), I ranked the apps by the number of users and general ease-of-use.

GNUtella Network

GNUtella was the answer to the FastTrack network, used by the early popular file-sharing clients like Napster and later KaZaa. GNUtella decentralized the location of the files being shared from a single server to all the clients. This let GNUtella continue operations, while the older networks were being shut down for copyright infringement. The most popular GNUtella client, LimeWire, is still heavily used today, even though BitTorrent has since taken the spotlight.

LimeWire (v. 5.2.13)

LimeWire was perhaps the most popular P2P file-sharing app before the BitTorrent explosion. It is similar to KaZaa, much of which was modeled after the original file-sharing rock star, Napster. Like those applications, LimeWire was plagued by malware. If you still use GNUtella for P2P fileshareing, you should really consider giving Linux a spin. That's right, Linux has LimeWire, and no viruses.

FrostWire (v. 4.18.1)

FrostWire is essentially the same thing as LimeWire. They both take after KaZaa and use the GNUtella network.

FrostWire has a flashier tabbed interface, but it's a noticeably bulkier app. Also, the search results are absolutely inundated with porn files. It doesn't matter what you're searching for, these files will dominate your results.

eDonkey Network

The eDonkey network picked up steam immediately after Napster's destruction and again had a burst of popularity after KaZaa was compromised. However, due to GNUtella clients picking up where the FastTrack apps left off, and having almost identical interfaces, eDonkey's popularity was short lived.

aMule (v. 2.2.4)

aMule has a great interface, and it had large list of servers that were available to connect to right after the installation. Surprisingly, many of these servers were heavily populated by users and files. Unfortunately, my router/firewall prevented me from successfully connecting to any of them.

MLDonkey (v. 2.9.5)

MLDonkey has a fantastic, user-friendly interface. However, it failed to connect to any servers, and, unlike Amule, it didn't even populate a list of available servers. This leaves you to deal with any router/firewall issues before finding out if there are any good servers available.

Direct Connect Network

Direct Connect has been around for almost a decade, but it never really took off. It is a P2P network like GNUtella and eDonkey, but relies on 'hubs' to route the P2P interactions.

The reason Direct Connect never caught on is likely due it's unfamiliar interface and archaic networking settings. Despite being passed over for more user-friendly protocols in it's day, Direct Connect networks now have a healthy number of users.

LinuxDC++ (v. 1.0.2)

Finding and connecting to a Direct Connect hub was not difficult at all with LinuxDC++. The default list of public hubs was full upon installation, and there are peers brimming with available files from all over the globe. The interface is simple and uncluttered, making LinuxDC++ incredibly user-friendly.

Valknut (v. 0.3.13)

Valknut opens a desktop-like outer window, which contains features within their own windows, much like a Java application. The list of public hubs was empty after installation. This app will require you to find hub addresses externally.

SoulSeek Network

SoulSeek is a relative newcomer to file-sharing. It was created in '02/'03, like so many others, with the purpose of picking up where Napster left off. SoulSeek uses centralized servers for handling file searches and communications between users.

Unlike BitTorrent, you must transfer entire files from a single user with SoulSeek. While this clearly limits the number of files and speed of transfers, it fosters the community approach to file-sharing.

Nicotine+ (v. 1.2.9)

When Nicotine+ first starts up, you'll need to input a user name and password in order to connect to the server. After your information has been accepted, you'll be able to enter chat rooms, do private chats, browse other users' shared files, and search for files.

There are actually a surprising number of files available via Nicotine+, but they're mostly music files. SoulSeek offers users the ability to create and join chat rooms whose topics are usually genre-driven, such as “drum'n'bass” and “DEATH METAL CLUB.” This allows users to communicate and share the music being discussed, which could be a good way to find new or unsigned material. Unfortunately, more often than not it becomes another back-and-forth flaming session.

Conclusion

Congratulations, you've reached the end of this first segment in our Definitive Linux App Roundup. By now, Windows power users should have some good options for replacing your Web browser, BitTorrent client, podcatcher, RSS reader, download manager, FTP client, and even P2P software. If you were looking for email clients, instant messaging, or VoIP, then stay tuned for the next installation, where we cover communication-oriented applications.

As I explained in the Introduction and the Standards & Methodology pages, this was not a complete listing of Internet-oriented apps. In fact, it's just a small fraction of the programs available for Linux. If you were to throw in all of the apps that met my usability criteria, but failed in quality, this would be a larger article by up to 100 percent. If you take out the usability criteria, opening up the field for apps available via a shell installer, the article would easily triple in size. If you were to further break down my standards and allow for apps available only via source code, this little roundup would easily enter into Shinobi territory. I just couldn't do that kind of article. This is, after all, a follow-up to an installation guide for Linux newbs. All of these apps are painless to install, making them perfect even for neophytes.

Besides, opening up to the shell installers would require writing a new How-To article explaining that process, and compiling from source code is another can of worms entirely. But that is what makes Linux great. The rabbit hole goes much deeper than it does in Windows. With proprietary systems, you can only go so far until you reach a stop sign--a clear barrier where the realm of the power-user ends and the developer begins. In Linux, that barrier simply isn't there. If you want to be a novice, there are many distributions that cater to you, with all the pre-loaded software conceivable for such a level of expertise. On the other end of the spectrum, if something isn't working the way that you want it to (and you have the expertise), there is nothing stopping you from modifying the code yourself.

Whether you've already made the jump after our previous installation guide or are still using Windows, I encourage you to use the links found in the article to download the software for yourself. Everyone has different needs, and only you can determine whether or not it's necessary to pay for software. Remember, a hardcore PC gamer shouldn't use Linux, period. But there is absolutely no reason that a great many others should have to pay for retail software. Anybody wondering why a software guy, especially a Linux fiend, is writing for Tom's Hardware, allow me to explain. The answer is rather quite simple: because hardware is all that I buy!