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Some simple steps to prevent your laptop from overheating, and a guide to getting it running again if it does

If your laptop switches off for no reason, the likely cause is overheating. You should be able to tell if this is the case by touching the bottom of the machine. If it feels very hot, here are the steps to follow to get it running again. It should take you about thirty minutes. You’ll need a Philips head screwdriver, a flat-head screwdriver and a soft brush.

The first step to avoid overheating in the future is to ensure that the vents underneath the laptop are not blocked. You should keep it on a hard, flat surface or worktop. In spite of its name, it’s never a good idea to use your laptop on your lap, or on the bed or sofa. If you want to use it like this, you can buy a laptop support or stand that provides a flat surface for it to rest on and allows air to circulate underneath it and keep it ventilated.

If your laptop has already overheated, you’ll need to clean the fans inside.

Note: Opening your laptop voids the manufacturer’s guarantee. Please do so at your own risk. If you have insurance or your laptop is still under warranty, please contact the manufacturer or return it to the shop you bought it from for further help.

The inside of your laptop can get very dusty, so it will need a clean from time to time. To clean your laptop, follow these steps:

1. Unfasten the screws and open the back of the laptop.
2. Be careful to avoid touching anything in the laptop other than the fans.
3. Using a cotton swab or small soft brush, gently wipe away any dust caught in the fans.
4. Once you’re finished, place the cover back on and fasten the screws again.

Watching DVDs or having lots of programs open at once can consume more processing power –which can lead to overheating. If this is the case, you should change your laptop’s power settings so it’s not running on full performance. This can be done in Control Panel > Power Options.

Viruses and Spyware running in the background can also take up a hefty amount of power. To ensure your laptop is clean and not overheating for this reason, run a full anti-virus scan.

Leaving the problem can damage your laptop, which can include corrupting your hard drive. If your laptop is overheating, make sure you take the correct steps in fixing it or if you’re unsure of what to do, contact the manufacturer for help.

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Discover how to keep your PC free from dust and other dirt in this simple step-by-step guide

The build-up of dust and dirt in your PC does more than simply make it look scruffy. Over time it can affect its reliability and performance too, as the dirt clogs up your airways and fans, your PC runs hotter and components wear out faster and struggle to perform at their best. In this tutorial, we’ll reveal ways of safely cleaning out the dirt to keep your PC running at its best for longer.

1. Assemble your toolkit

Start by putting together the tools you need for cleaning. Start with an anti-microbial cleaning cloth for cleaning the outside of your computer – PC World stocks an ESSENTIALS washable cloth that’s sensibly priced. Hard-to-reach areas can be cleaned using a can of compressed air, like this FELLOWES Mini Turbo Air Duster. You may also need a small handheld vacuum cleaner and a small, soft brush that won’t shed its hairs easily – a make-up brush or soft paint brush is ideal.

2. Prepare to clean

Switch off your computer and unplug it from the mains before removing any other cables from the main chassis. Leave it a good 20-30 minutes to cool down, particularly if you plan to open it up to clean the inside. Place it on an accessible, clean surface such as a table.

3. Clean the outside

Use your vacuum cleaner to carefully remove obvious dust from the vents and various ports (USB , network, monitor and so on). Try to avoid spinning the fans in the wrong direction when vacuuming near them to prevent possible damage – for this reason don’t use a can of compressed air. Once complete, use your anti-bacterial cloth to give the PC’s exterior a good clean, removing any additional dust and grime you find. Earbuds are a good cleaning tool for crevices, grills and other small gaps.

4. Clean the keyboard

Don’t forget to clean your laptop’s keyboard – the can of compressed air and soft brush can help dislodge the worst of the dirt that’s fallen down inside it. Cleaning the keys themselves might require a brush with harder bristles to gently scrape off the dirt. If you plan to use a cleaning solution, use isopropyl to moisten a paper towel or damp rag to clean the tops of the keys, and a moistened ear bud to clean between them. Do not pour the solution directly on to the keyboard!

5. Clean other devices

Use the cloth to clean all your cables and peripherals such as printers, removing any obvious dust and grime. Use your soft brush to clean inside any small holes to help dislodge any dirt inside. Look for dedicated cleaning products for certain elements, such as monitor screens.

6. Clean inside your desktop

If you’re a confident user, comfortable with opening up your desktop PC, you can go further and carefully clean its insides too. We strongly recommend you wear an anti-static wristband, which should be clipped to the side of your case after removing the cover.

Start by using your vacuum’s nozzle to remove the worst of the dust inside, but make sure it doesn’t touch any of the components. For a more thorough clean, use short bursts of compressed air (any longer and you might introduce moisture) in conjunction with your soft brush or cloth to shift more stubborn dirt. Advanced users may also wish to take out expansion cards and cables to clean them, but make sure you know exactly where they came from!

Once you’ve finished cleaning your laptop or desktop PC, you should find it runs smoother, quieter and cooler – all without upgrading or repairing it.

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You’ve heard of a watch, right? And you’re likely fully aware of smartwatches, and how the two differ. But you may have also read about hybrid smartwatches. Confused as to what a hybrid watch does? We’re here to explain everything, from what a hybrid smartwatch is and what they can do, to a few examples of the best out there.

What is a hybrid smartwatch?

A hybrid smartwatch is a fusion between a regular mechanical watch and a smartwatch, in that it combines some connected features with traditional watch mechanics. It doesn’t have a touchscreen, doesn’t usually require charging up every day, and doesn’t look like a piece of technology. It looks like a normal watch. If the Apple Watch, Samsung Gear Sport, or touchscreen Android Wear watches like the Emporio Armani Connected, don’t appeal because they don’t really look like watches, then the hybrid is your gateway to the smartwatch world.

Show, don’t tell

The best way to understand what a hybrid smartwatch does is to see and play around with one. The above photo shows off the Fossil Q Crewmaster. We chose it as our example because the design is based closely on an existing Fossil watch, which the company chose to augment with smart connected features. You can see it has an analog dial, traditional watch styling, and it’s slim and stylish.

It’s smart because it has Bluetooth connectivity built-in, and it pairs with your smartphone through an app. The app is available for iOS and Android, which means there’s a high chance whatever phone you have works with the watch. It’s not like the Apple Watch, which only works with the iPhone.

What does a hybrid smartwatch do?

The vast majority of hybrid smartwatches share similar functionality. A hybrid watch will track your steps, while the app works out calorie burn and activity time. Some watches will also track your sleep, but it’s not as common considering most people are unlikely to wear the watch 24-hours a day. The watch will alert you of notifications on your phone with vibrations, and some kind of visual hint about which app is alerting you.

The method for notification alerts varies. Fossil, for example, makes the watch hands zip around to point at a single number, which you designate to a certain app or contact when you first set up the watch.

For example, if email notifications are linked to the number 3, the hands will move to 3 o’clock on the watch and will linger there long enough for you to take a glance. Other watches do it it different, such as the NYSW GTS Activity Tracker, which has a dedicated sub-dial for notification alerts. Hybrid watches from Guess and Martian have a small LCD screen for alerts.

You can also expect features like alarms, world time zones, and a programmable button that can be configured for different functions. This can include working as a remote shutter for your phone’s camera, for music control, or to make your phone ring in case you can’t find it.

Don’t expect most hybrid smartwatches to run apps, have watch faces you can change, or include more complex features like a heart rate sensor (though there are some like the Nokia Steel HR).

No charging?

Because most hybrid smartwatches don’t have a touchscreen, they don’t consume anywhere near the same degree of energy as one that does. Paired with Bluetooth Low Energy, a hybrid smartwatch can usually survive on a coin-cell battery, and therefore doesn’t require nightly charging.

The battery can last up to six months before it needs replacing, which can be done at home, and for a very low price. This makes hybrid smartwatches perfect for anyone that wants to avoid owning yet another device to recharge every day.

Anything else?

Because a hybrid smartwatch doesn’t deviate very far from traditional watch styling and design, you get many of the benefits associated with mechanical watches. Almost all are water resistant, and usually down to at least 5ATM (underwater up to 50 meters), not just a simple IP68 rating (limited to about 1.5 meters), and the standard size lugs mean you can pick and choose your own straps. Also, because the designs are more watch-like, there’s greater choice for women in the hybrid smartwatch world.

Finally, because hybrid smartwatches aren’t as technically complex as a full smartwatch, they’re often much cheaper.

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Beware the signs of a potentially malware-infested PC: slower-than-usual performance, the recent occurrence of lots of pop-ups, and other weird issues. It’s possible your system has been infected by a virus, spyware, or other nefarious entity—even if you have an antivirus program installed. Yes, out-of-the-ordinary behavior is sometimes the result of hardware issues, but it’s best to first rule out malware if your PC is acting up. Here’s a step-by-step guide for taking action.

Step 1: Enter Safe Mode

Before you do anything, you need to disconnect your PC from the internet, and don’t use it until you’re ready to clean your PC. This can help prevent the malware from spreading and/or leaking your private data.

If you think your PC may have a malware infection, boot your PC into Microsoft’s Safe Mode. In this mode, only the minimum required programs and services are loaded. If any malware is set to load automatically when Windows starts, entering in this mode may prevent it from doing so. This is important because it can make removing the nefarious files easier since they’re not actually running or active.

You may find that your PC runs noticeably faster in Safe Mode. This could be a sign that your system has a malware infection, or it could mean that you have a lot of legitimate programs that normally start up alongside Windows. If your PC is outfitted with a solid-state drive it’s probably fast either way.

Step 2: Delete temporary files

Now that you’re in Safe Mode, you’ll want to run a virus scan. But before you do that, delete your temporary files. Doing this may speed up the virus scanning, free up disk space, and even get rid of some malware. To use the Disk Cleanup utility included with Windows 10 just type Disk Cleanup in the search bar or after pressing the Start button and select the tool that appears named Disk Cleanup.

Step 3: Download malware scanners

Now you’re ready to have a malware scanner do its work—and fortunately, running a scanner is enough to remove most standard infections. If you already had an antivirus program active on your computer, you should use a different scanner for this malware check, since your current antivirus software may not have detected the malware. Remember, no antivirus program can detect 100 percent of the millions of malware types and variants.

There are two types of antivirus programs. You’re probably more familiar with real-time antivirus programs, which run in the background and constantly watch for malware. (Another option is an on-demand scanner, which searches for malware infections when you open the program manually and run a scan. You should have only one real-time antivirus program installed at a time, but you can have many on-demand scanners installed to run scans with multiple programs, thereby ensuring that if one program misses something a different one might find it.

Step 4: Fix your web browser

Malware infections can damage Windows system files and other settings. One common malware trait is to modify your web browser’s homepage to reinfect the PC, display advertisements, prevent browsing, and generally annoy you.

Before launching your web browser, check your homepage and connection settings. For Internet Explorer right-click the Windows 10 Start button and select Control Panel, then Internet Options. Find the Home Page settings in the General tab, and verify that it’s not some site you know nothing about. For Chrome, Firefox, or Edge, simply go to the setttings window of your browser to check your homepage setting.

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If you’ve noticed any unexpected reboots or PC instability as a result of the recent Spectre patches, there’s a solution: Microsoft has issued an emergency Windows patch that rolls back the recent Spectre mitigations.

Confused? It’s a bit complicated. After the intial Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilites were disclosed, both Intel and Microsoft hustled out patches to mitigate the problem. Unfortunately, Intel’s latest microcode updates—and the BIOS updates from PC makers based upon them—were themselves buggy, causing instability, reboots, and data loss in some PCs.

Microsoft’s latest patch (KB4078130) allows people with affected systems to download the patch via the Microsoft Update Catalog, which disables the mitigations for the “Spectre variant 2.”

Note that the patch notes specifically state that you should run this patch “if you are running an impacted device” (emphasis ours). In other words, if your system is working normally, don’t bother downloading this patch. This is what Microsoft calls an “out of band” patch, and it doesn’t appear that it will be made available via Windows Update, either.

Why should you consider it? Intel has warned previously that the faulty patch can sometimes cause data loss and corruption, and Microsoft is saying the same: “Our own experience is that system instability can in some circumstances cause data loss or corruption,” the patch notes state.

There’s another wrinkle, though. As part of the patch, Microsoft is allowing users to edit the Windows registry to toggle the mitigations on or off. (Instructions are here.) It’s possible to toggle Microsoft’s patch off, and then, when Intel solves its own patching problem, re-enable it. That scenario is actually what Microsoft recommends—again, only if you’ve noticed system instability and want to take action against it.

Toggling the mitigations on and off is also a feature of the latest InSpectre utility.

What should you do? There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. But we can tell you what we’re doing: if a PC is working as expected, we’re leaving it patched and in place. If you’re backing up your data (to the cloud or an external drive) chances are your most crucial data will be saved in case your system goes down unexpectedly. Obviously, install Microsoft’s emergency Windows patch if you’re running into system issues. There’s no perfect solution—if you’re more paranoid than we are, feel free to deploy the patch even if your PC hasn’t hiccuped.

Good luck, and be sure to check out PCWorld’s guide on how to protect your PC against Meltdown and Spectre. Operating system updates are just one part of it.

As Bleeping Computer noted, system makers such as Dell and HP also advise rolling back their own BIOS patches to an earlier version, which they’re redeployed. It’s all horrendously confusing for consumers and IT organizations alike. Fortunately, at least, there haven’t been any public cases of these vulnerabilities being exploited, Microsoft says.

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Apple revealed Wednesday a plethora of new features and upgrades coming to the iPhone and iPad with the iOS 11.3 upgrade due out in the spring.

Most notably, Apple is adding setting allowing iPhone owners to disable a performance downgrade meant to prevent unexpected shutdowns in older iPhone models with aging batteries. The features comes after Apple was criticized for meddling with iPhone performance without customer consent; a pair of California residents even filed a class action lawsuit against the company over the issue. Apple has since apologized, lowering the price of iPhone battery replacements from $79 to $29. The ability to turn off this performance-altering feature will be found in the Battery section in the iPhone’s Settings menu.

Apple’s iOS 11.3 upgrade will also have a feature called Health Records, a one-stop-shop for iPhone owners to view their collective health data from participating medical providers. As its name implies, the app keeps track of a user’s health records so that they can see information like allergies, recent or upcoming procedures, medications, and lab results all in one place. Apple says this information is protected by encryption and requires a passcode to view.

Apple is making some improvements to its ARKit augmented reality platform as well, which it launched in the fall with iOS 11. The augmented reality software will now be able to recognize vertical surfaces like walls and doors, whereas it previously could only identify horizontal objects such as tables and floors. It will also be able to learn the position of two-dimensional objects hanging on a wall, like posters and signs, which Apple says developers could use to add interactive augmented reality elements to movie posters or museum exhibits.

iOS 11.3 will also bring changes to Messages, which will allow users to chat with businesses to schedule appointments, make purchases with Apple Pay, or ask other questions. This feature will be launching in beta in iOS 11.3 with support for companies like Hilton, Discover, Lowe’s, and Wells Fargo. Facebook has made a similar push with its Messenger app, particularly by adding a new feature that makes it easier for Messenger users to discover businesses that are active on Facebook’s messaging platform.

Other new features in iOS 11.3 include four new Animoji characters — a dragon, a bear, a skull, and a lion — and updates to Apple Music and Apple News.

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A computer mouse translates the movement you make with the mouse over a surface into actions of the cursor on the computer screen. The original mechanical mouse has given way to optical mice and laser mice. What is the difference between them? For the average user, the answer is there isn’t much of a difference in how it will work for most purposes. It may come down to cost, as an optical mouse is usually less expensive than a laser mouse.

Illumination Source Is the Difference Between Optical and Laser Mice

Optical and laser mice differ by the types of technology they use to track movement. The optical mouse uses an LED light as an illumination source, while the laser mouse, as its moniker indicates, uses a laser for illumination. Both use CMOS sensors, a tiny, low-resolution video camera such as in our smartphones, to take photos of the surface it’s on and to use those to determine movement.

Higher DPI With Laser Mouse

Laser mice have a higher dpi, which means that they can track more dots per inch, which in turn means that they’re more sensitive. But while this may have been an issue in the past, both optical and laser mice are now able to hit high dpi marks, and your average user will never notice the difference. Gamers and graphic designers may still perceive one and have personal preferences for a device. Optical mice have a resolution around 3000 dpi, while laser mice have a resolution around 6000 dpi.

Surface Vs. Deeper Illumination

Meanwhile, optical mice mostly sense only the top of the surface they are on, such as a fabric mouse pad. But the laser light looks more deeply, so it is more likely to sense peaks and valleys in a surface, giving it a jittery movement at slow speeds. It’s picking up too much useless information.

Optical sensors have less than a one percent variation in tracking at different speeds, while laser mice can have five percent or more variation. An optical mouse works well on a mouse pad or any non-glossy surface. A laser mouse will work on any surface. If you plan to use the mouse on glossy surfaces, you may want a laser mouse.

The different performance of a laser mouse at different speeds is noted as acceleration. Your hand movement translates into a different distance of movement by the cursor if you move it at a slower or faster speed. It is the resolution error versus speed as the laser mouse picks up more noise or less noise in the image of the mousing surface at different speeds. This can be annoying for someone who is gaming or trying to draw graphics.

Which Mouse Should You Use?

If you are trying to decide which mouse to buy, an optical mouse is likely to be less expensive. A laser mouse might be preferred if you are going to use it on a variety of surfaces.

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