May isn’t traditionally known for its laptop deals but the official Dell Store has some absolutely awesome choices right now across its entire range of machines.
For example, not only are there great cheap Windows machines starting at just $299, but you can also pick up a Dell XPS 13 for just $599. That’s the cheapest price we’ve ever seen for this premium Ultrabook – although it is on the relatively basic Core i5 configuration with a 256GB SSD.
If you want something more powerful, consider this compellingly priced mid-range Dell XPS 13 for $799 (was $999). This one features a much bigger 512GB SSD storage drive, 16GB of RAM, and a Core i7 chipset. That means it should speed through all but the most intensive of tasks.
Finally, we’d recommend Dell’s excellent range of gaming laptop deals today, which include this Dell G15 with an RTX 4060 for just $849, this Dell G16 with an RTX 4070 for $1,299, and this high-end Alienware x14 for $1,499.
You can read more about all these deals just down below or head on over to our main laptop deals page for recommendations from other retailers.
Almost a million people around the world have fallen victim to a highly organized fraud campaign, which scammed them out of some $50 million in the past couple of years.
According to a report from SRLabs, a group of cyber-criminals, supported by a wider network of affiliates, were organized into a crime ring dubbed BogusBazaar. This ring automated the creation and rotation of thousands of fake shopping websites – 22,500 domains, to be exact.
Through these shopping sites, the criminals did two things – steal credit card and other payment data, and steal money.
Well-organized group
Stealing credit card information is as straightforward as one can imagine with fake shopping sites – a person would try to purchase something off the site, they would submit their payment information, and never get the item they ordered. PayPal and Stripe data was stolen from the victims in the same manner.
Stealing money worked in a somewhat different way. Some of the victims actually received an item, albeit not the one they ordered, but rather a cheap copy, or a knock-off.
“The operation of fraudulent webshops is a seemingly small but well-organized crime,” Matthias Marx, a security consultant at SRLabs, told The Register. “As each fraud case has a relatively low volume, the fraudsters seem to have managed to evade the attention of the law enforcement authorities despite earning millions.”
The majority of the victims were located in Western Europe, Australia, and America.
Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!
The worst part is that the campaign is still ongoing, and is decentralized and automated in a way that makes it difficult for law enforcement to fully eliminate. As soon as one website gets taken down, another one takes its place. The attackers often use expired domains with good standing, making spotting fraud even harder at start.
The majority of the fraudsters seem to be operating out of China.
The internet is filled with scammers and fraudsters, looking to steal people’s money and sensitive information. The best way to stay safe is to always make sure you’re buying from trusted sources and official websites. If you know the shop’s website, type the address in the bar instead of searching for it on Google or other search engines.
If you are being redirected to a website, double check the address and make sure it doesn’t have any weird typos or strange-looking characters.
And finally, always use common sense. If something is too good to be true, it most likely is.
Boeing has revealed it refused to pay a $200 million ransom demand from ransomware hackers who stole a tranche of sensitive data in 2023.
The US Department of Justice recently unsealed an indictment against one Dmitry Yuryevich Khoroshev, who is being accused of being the one to develop and maintain the dreaded LockBit ransomware, a piece of malicious software that was used in numerous hacking attacks with devastating consequences.
In the unsealed indictment, among the mentioned victims was an unnamed multinational aeronautical and defense corporation that was asked for $200 million, a figure described as “extremely large”. Boeing later confirmed being that company to CyberScoop, but declined to answer any additional questions.
Testing the waters
The company suffered a ransomware attack in November 2023, and at the time, said that the incident impacted elements of its parts and distribution business, but that flight safety was not compromised.
LockBit’s affiliates walked away with 43 gigabytes of data, for which they later demanded an obscene amount of money.
The data seemed to be backups from different company systems and included configuration backups for IT management software and logs for monitoring and auditing tools.
While hackers targeting major corporations are no strangers to enormous ransom demand, in this case they most likely took a blind shot.
Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!
The indictment against Khoroshev labels him as LockBitSupp, the persona that administers the LockBit encryptor. This person subsequently left a message on the RaaS’ messaging platform, saying the law enforcement had the wrong person. They did, however, confirm that Boeing was the compromised company.
Thanks to yesterday’s Apple event, which unveiled the newest iPads, Amazon is having a massive sale on older model Apple products. You can score record-low prices on some of Apple’s best-selling devices, including AirPods, iPads, Apple Watches, and MacBooks. I’m rounding up today’s seven best deals just below, with prices starting at just $79.99.
While Apple deals are a regular feature on Amazon, today’s prices are some of the best we’ve seen, with discounts that match Black Friday and drop even further. Some highlights include the best-selling AirPods Pro 2 on sale for $179.99, the 10.9 iPad on sale for $349, and the Apple Watch 9 down to an incredible price of $299.
Keep in mind that all of the deals listed below are best-ever offers, and we typically don’t see prices like this outside of holiday sales. If you’re interested in the newest iPads, you can also check out our iPad preorders page for all the best deals around the web.
During Western Digital’s recent Q3 earnings call, CEO David Goeckeler disclosed that the ever-growing need for higher capacity and speedier data access from customers across the world is pushing the company to expand its solid-state capacities.
The company chalked up a profitable quarter, with revenues soaring over forecast to $3.46 billion, a 29% YoY rise. The company managed to turn around a streak of losses, reporting a $135 million profit. These achievements are in stark contrast to rival Seagate, which posted an 11% YoY reduction in its revenues to $1.66 billion.
Goeckeler underlined that Western Digital’s improved financial performance was a result of the company’s efforts to offer a more diversified product range. He also said that WD was committed to delivering larger SSD capacities off the back of growing demand for AI-related applications. He said customers “want them [SSDs] in much bigger capacity points, 30- and 60-terabyte capacity points.”
HAMR HDD technology
Reporting on the third quarter results, Blocks & Files wrote “WD currently ships DC SN640 TLC PCIe gen 3 SSDs with up to 30.72 TB capacity and PCIe gen 4 SN650 and 655 drives with 15.36 TB. We now expect 60 TB SSDs to be announced by WD later this year.”
Without going into details of the exact capacities being worked on, Goeckeler said the company was expanding the size of the drives in line with what customers were demanding, stating WD is “increasing capacity and going through a qualification on that. So, we’re in that process with customers.”
He also discussed hard-drive recording (HAMR) technology, including the issues surrounding it, stating, “we’ve been working on HAMR for quite some time. We understand HAMR extremely well. We understand all the issues with HAMR, and what it takes to get it qualified. Clearly, we’re doing that all behind the scenes, because we have a product portfolio with the best TCO we can offer in the market today, and we can do that all the way up to 40 terabytes.” Western Digital’s rival Seagate recently announced the results of an experimental test that showed one of its hard drives using HAMR could run continuously for over 6,000 hours.
More from TechRadar Pro
Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!
I search the web almost every week and pick out the best laptop deals that are available and worth buying for multiple budgets and needs. There’s usually a small selection at any one time, but Amazon is in the middle of a big laptop sale right now with dozens of great devices to choose from. I’m here to help narrow them down, with the seven top laptop deals I recommend at the mega-retailer.
The first and best option for most is this affordable Asus Vivobook 15 for $259.99 (was $329.99). It’s a great price for a standard everyday laptop that will easily handle your basic computing needs, such as web browsing, sending emails, light admin work, streaming media and more.
If you’re after more power then you’ve got several good options. The highlight is the MacBook Air M2 for $849 (was $1,049), which is a return to the record-low price for Apple‘s highly-rated premium laptop. For those who would prefer a Windows machine, this Samsung Galaxy Book3 Pro is down to $919.99 (was $1,449.99) – that’s another lowest-ever price for a slick and powerful laptop with a stellar AMOLED display.
Find all of these offers and more below, including a super-cheap Chromebook and budget gaming laptop that I’ve picked out from the Amazon sale.
Lenovo has taken the wraps off its sleek, lightweight, and power-packed ThinkPad P1 Gen 7.
The new laptop supports up to a Core Ultra 9 185H CPU and users can choose between integrated Intel Arc graphics, Nvidia RTX 1000/2000/3000 Ada Generation GPUs, or an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060/4070 GPU, allowing it to handle most AI processing needs.
The ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 is the first mobile workstation to come with LPDDR5x LPCAMM2 memory, with a capacity of up to 64GB. It can accommodate 2 x PCIe 4×4 M.2 2280 SSDs for up to 8TB storage.
Crafted from premium aluminum, the laptop comes with a 16-inch display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, and narrow bezels providing a 91.7% screen-to-body ratio. Lenovo offers a choice of three displays – FHD+ IPS, QHD+ IPS, and UHD+ OLED Touch.
Connectivity comes in the form of Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3, and the laptop sports 2 x Thunderbolt 4 ports, 1 x USB-C (10Gbps), 1 x USB-A (5Gbps), an SD Express 7.0 card reader, HDMI 2.1, and an audio jack.
The new device features a liquid metal thermal design (in select configurations) which Lenovo says “enhances cooling performance and long-term reliability, catering to critical workflows when complex tasks require maximum performance for extended periods.”
Battery life is always important in laptops, and the ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 has a 90Whr customer replaceable unit.
Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!
“Lenovo’s latest ThinkPad P series mobile workstations are taking a significant step forward by featuring cutting-edge Intel Core Ultra processors equipped with a dedicated neural processing engine,’ said Roger Chandler, Vice President and General Manager, Enthusiast PC and Workstation Segment, Intel.
“Designed to enhance AI PC capabilities on laptops, this technology also improves performance, power efficiency and enables superior collaboration experiences, allowing users to be creative for longer periods without the need for constant charging.”
ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 will be available from June 2024, with prices starting at $2,619.
Ampere Computing unveiled its AmpereOne Family of processors last year, boasting up to 192 single-threaded Ampere cores, which was the highest in the industry.
These chips, designed for cloud efficiency and performance, were Ampere’s first product based on its new custom core leveraging internal IP, signalling a shift in the sector, according to CEO Renée James.
At the time of the launch, James said, “Every few decades of compute there has emerged a driving application or use of performance that sets a new bar of what is required of performance. The current driving uses are AI and connected everything combined with our continued use and desire for streaming media. We cannot continue to use power as a proxy for performance in the data center. At Ampere, we design our products to maximize performance at a sustainable power, so we can continue to drive the future of the industry.”
AmpereOne-3 on its way
Jeff Wittich, chief product officer at Ampere, recently spoke with The Next Platform about future generations of AmpereOne. He told the site that an updated chip, with 12 memory channels and an A2 core with improved performance, would be out later this year in keeping with the company’s roadmap. This chip, which The Next Platform calls AmpereOne-2, will reportedly have a 33 percent increase in DDR5 memory controllers and up to 50 percent more memory bandwidth.
However, what’s coming up beyond that, at some point in 2025, sounds the most exciting.
The Next Platform says the third generation chip, AmpereOne-3 as it is calling it, will have 256 cores and be “etched in 3 nanometer (3N to be precise) processes from TSMC”. It will use a modified A2+ core with a “two-chiplet design on the cores, with 128 cores per chiplet. It could be a four-chiplet design with 64 cores per chiplet.”
The site expects the AmpereOne-3 will support PCI-Express 6.0 I/O controllers and maybe have a dozen DDR5 memory controllers, although there’s some speculation here.
Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!
“We have been moving pretty fast on the on the compute side,” Wittich told the site. “This design has got about a lot of other cloud features in it – things around performance management to get the most out of all of those cores. In each of the chip releases, we are going to be making what would generally be considered generational changes in the CPU core. We are adding a lot in every single generation. So you are going to see more performance, a lot more efficiency, a lot more features like security enhancements, which all happen at the microarchitecture level. But we have done a lot to ensure that you get great performance consistency across all of the AmpereOnes. We are also taking a chiplet approach with this 256-core design, which is another step as well. Chiplets are a pretty big part of our overall strategy.”
The AmpereOne-3 is reportedly being etched at TSMC right now, prior to its launch next year.
Meta has announced that its Meta Horizon OS will no longer be exclusive to its Quest headsets (such as the incredible Meta Quest 3), and this might be the most important news we’ll see in the XR space this decade.
It’s an announcement I’ve been expecting for years – for reasons I’ll outline below – but the short version is Meta has started to turn its Horizon OS into the Windows of the spatial computing era; it’s even complete with a rival Apple OS (the Apple Vision Pro’s VisionOS) and a dash of irony given one of the first three non-Quest systems will be Xbox branded (Xbox is Microsoft’s gaming department for those not in the know).
This means big things for us users, hardware makers, and VR game and app creators alike. But while this announcement is likely bigger than any Quest hardware announcement Meta could make – like a Meta Quest Pro 2 or Meta Quest 3 Lite reveal – it might end up being a double-edged sword.
To get you up to speed, a Meta blog post has revealed that three third-party companies are working on devices built using Meta Horizon OS. Those are ASUS, Lenovo and the aforementioned Xbox.
From this announcement alone it sounds like we’re getting three very different pieces of hardware, with a “performance gaming headset,” “mixed reality devices for productivity,” and a more Quest-like headset being promised by the three companies respectively.
For me, this is the best thing about Horizon OS being opened up to third-parties: hardware diversity. Rather than having to put up with the two Quest types – which are the regular budget-friendly line, and the high-end, productivity-centric Pro line – other brands can explore different types of headset to suit a broader range of needs while still offering access to the Horizon OS: the best standalone XR headset OS.
I say that because of Horizon OS’ amazing selection of virtual and mixed reality games and apps, as well as its solid feature set, and its general ease of use. Compared to others I’ve tried from the likes of HTC and Pico, Horizon OS is a clear cut above.
Get the hottest deals available in your inbox plus news, reviews, opinion, analysis and more from the TechRadar team.
Take your Quest 3 games with you to other headsets (Image credit: Meta)
There’s also an advantage in the form of you now getting a cross-hardware library. Currently, if you want to transition to a new VR headset from a different brand you’ve previously had to say goodbye to your game and app collection.
Now, if you pick up a Quest headset and decide you want to get a more specialist gaming machine you could opt for Asus’s upcoming high-end VR gaming hardware without the risk of losing your digital library – instead, you can kickstart your new gaming experience with a whole suite of your favorite titles.
It also makes it easier for VR software creators to get their apps into more players’ hands. Rather than having to devote resources to several different OS’, they can build one Horizon OS build that can be enjoyed by a huge selection of players across a range of different devices – similar to how one Android app can be downloaded on a whole host of different phones.
This Horizon OS announcement feels like a big win for VR accessibility, and giving people access to the hardware they actually crave rather than forcing them to make do with what’s out there.
But why is Meta sharing its OS after years of exclusivity?
Cash is king
Well, the short answer is money, and while I’m not personally invested in Meta’s financial performance (and I expect many of you aren’t either) Quest users do have a reason for caring about the profitability of Meta’s Reality Labs division.
It’s an open secret that Reality Labs has been hemorrhaging cash. In the most recent earnings report at the time of writing, Meta said its Reality Labs had an operating loss of $4.65 billion (via CNBC) – and in total it’s lost over $42 billion since the end of 2020 which is when figures became publicly available.
Its AI smart glasses could be Meta’s focus unless things improve (Image credit: Meta)
While Mark Zuckerberg, and Meta executives seem to have faith that virtual reality is the future – and appear to be banking on these current losses turning into profits and market domination down the line – there’s only so long that shareholders will be content with the poor performance of some Meta divisions hampering the dividends they receive.
Combine that with AI and other seemingly more profitable ventures rearing their heads, there’s a non-zero chance that Meta could scale back Reality Lab’s XR development, or even scrap it altogether to focus funds in other areas – which would kill Quest hardware and the metaverse for good.
By licensing its Horizon OS to other companies for a fee, Meta and Reality Labs can start to scale back these losses – buying the division more time in the eyes of shareholders and keeping Quest hardware alive for a little longer.
Obviously, it’s yet to be seen if this tactic will work. It could backfire and kill Quest anyway if a different hardware uses Horizon OS with a more exciting piece of VR hardware, but frankly, that’s a Meta issue – if we’re getting great VR headsets, who cares who’s making them?
Though that’s not to say Meta’s Horizon OS sharing won’t backfire for us in other ways.
The ugly side
Do we really want a ‘Windows’ of the XR space?
Windows is one of the most – if not the most – despised pieces of software out there. Just look at our Windows 11 coverage and you’ll see article after article complaining about issues with the software. And Windows issues have existed for generations of the OS, yet we keep buying Windows machines – as of March 2024, 72.52% of desktop computers and laptops use Windows.
Windows 11 is bad, but what’s the alternative? (Image credit: Microsoft)
Because, what’s the alternative?
Sure you could jump ship to MacOS but it’s not perfect itself with its own occasional bugs, pricey hardware, and inability to run lots of popular software. Chrome OS also runs into those same software incompatibility issues, and others like Linux and Ubuntu are far from approachable if you’re not tech-savvy.
The lack of competition brought about by Windows’ domination has undoubtedly played a part in the OS’ problems and a general lack of truly exciting innovation in the computer OS space. As more and more hardware makers partner with Meta, we might see Horizon OS adopt this ugly side of Windows.
Apple’s Vision Pro, the Samsung XR headset (which I expect Google to handle the OS side of things for given it’s announced as an official partner for the headset), and HTC’s standalone VR devices are just some of the brands that should serve as competition to Horizon OS – not to mention PC VR hardware from the likes of Pimax and others – and hopefully they’ll help to keep things exciting.
But only time will tell if Meta will follow Microsoft‘s Windows and mimic its issues, or dodge its failings.
If you get an SMS message from a toll service, claiming you owe $12.51 in unpaid fees and that if you don’t move fast, you’ll be fined an additional $50, don’t fret – it’s not real.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a warning concerning an ongoing smishing campaign that seems to have hit thousands of American citizens so far.
“Since early-March 2024, the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has received over 2,000 complaints reporting smishing texts representing road toll collection service from at least three states,” the FBI said.
Do not act
The message reads “(State Toll Service Name): We’ve noticed an outstanding toll amount of $12.51 on your record. To avoid a late fee of $50.00, visit https://myturnpiketollservices.com to settle your balance.”
So far, only certain US regions have been hit, with the FBI speculating this means the scam is moving from state to state, and that drivers in other regions could receive a similar SMS message soon. Should that happen, the law enforcement agency says victims should file a complaint with the IC3, and include the scammer’s phone number and the website listed in the message.
Those suspicious if they really do have unpaid tolls should check their account using the service’s legitimate website (as opposed to clicking on the link provided in the SMS message), or by dialing the toll service’s customer service phone number.
Among those impersonated in this campaign is Pennsylvania Turnpike, which later warned the drivers directly: “Some customers have received phishing-attempt text messages claiming to be from the PA Turnpike’s toll services,” BleepingComputer cited the warning. “If you receive such a text, providing you with a link to pay an outstanding toll, do not click on the link, and delete the text.”
Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!
