I’ve pinned a whole lot of stuff to my Windows Clipboard — so much stuff that I’d forgotten that there were screenshots of ID cards in Clipboard history for a license renewal I did once. I nearly fell off my chair when I realized how much of a security risk that was. Suffice it to say, if I’m hacked, those credentials are likely to be easy pickings for nefarious individuals that steal identities. To prevent that happening, I’ve now deleted my Window’s Clipboard history in Windows 11. I did it to keep my ID cards safe, but it’s a wise move if you work with any kind of sensitive data and use the Clipboard functions. There are multiple ways to clear Clipboard history. The following is one of the easiest ways, relying on just a simple Windows 11 shortcut. What to do: Type Windows+V to open your Windows Clipboard. You can scroll down on the right and view what you have copied or pinned to your clipboard. If you wish to delete everything that’s stored but not pinned in your clipboard history, hit the Clear All button on the right. To delete individual items in your history, including items that are pinned, click the three dots next to each item on the right and then select the bin icon. If you’re not keen on having to clear out your Windows Clipboard history regularly, you can also turn off the Clipboard history feature. To do that open Windows Settings then navigate to System > Clipboard and toggle Clipboard history to off. Dominic Bayley / Foundry That’s all there is for this straightforward tip. If you’re digging these tips and want more sent your way every week, be sure to subscribe to our PCWorld Try This newsletter. Read...

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I review a lot of laptops here at PCWorld, and I’m always surprised when I unbox one without biometric hardware. Fingerprint readers and infrared (IR) cameras for facial recognition are both great—and some laptops even have both! But then you have those that skip the biometric hardware entirely, which is a huge loss these days. I would never give it up if I had the choice. It’s so important that I won’t buy a laptop if it doesn’t have it, and I go out of my way to add it to my desktop PCs. Why? Because Windows 11 has a security feature called Windows Hello that lets me log in with my face or a fingerprint scan. It’s more secure and more convenient. In 2025, you shouldn’t accept any laptop that lacks Windows Hello support. You should avoid typing PINs in public Most laptops—unfortunately, not all laptops—now have built-in biometric hardware. You have two options here: a fingerprint reader (usually somewhere on the keyboard) or an IR camera that’s integrated alongside the normal webcam. Some laptops have both. Chris Hoffman / Foundry With biometrics, you don’t need to type your PIN or password whenever you sit down in front of your laptop. That’s good news because typing your PIN or password in public is a security risk. If someone is “shoulder surfing” and watching what you type, they could pick up on it—and PINs are particularly easy to steal. I can’t stress the security angle enough. Your PIN is the key to device encryption on your PC. With that PIN, a thief or attacker could bypass your PC’s encryption and gain access to all your data. It’s better to skip PIN entry altogether and use biometrics instead. Biometric hardware isn’t just for signing in Windows Hello is best known for its secure sign-ins, but Windows—and the applications you use—can do a lot more than that with it. For example, if you use a password manager, you can unlock your password vault with Windows Hello. I use 1Password myself, and I have a seamless experience unlocking my own password vault on modern PCs with Windows Hello. On PCs without Windows Hello, I’m stuck typing my master password every time. Chris Hoffman / Foundry Windows can also store passkeys for quickly signing into websites, but you have to authenticate before using them. Without biometrics, you have to type your PIN every time you want to use passkeys; with biometrics, you authenticate with a fingerprint or your face. Learn more about ways to use passkeys instead of passwords. Why laptop makers skip biometrics Whenever I review a laptop that lacks Windows Hello hardware, I always list it as a strike against that laptop. Manufacturers may omit the hardware to save money and hit lower price points, which makes sense on budget gaming laptops where non-essentials can be cut for performance. But I sometimes see it missing on surprisingly expensive laptops, too, and there’s really no excuse for that—especially when many of the best budget laptops still offer Windows Hello hardware. Clearly it’s possible, so it’s becoming harder to justify when it isn’t there. Before you buy any laptop, there’s a lot you need to consider. It’s one thing to make sure you don’t go below bare minimum specs, but it’s also vital to check for key features like fingerprint readers and IR cameras for Windows Hello. When we review laptops here at PCWorld, we always cover “Biometrics” in each laptop’s specifications list. I prefer facial recognition, but fingerprint readers are just as good I prefer facial recognition, which requires an IR camera. If you’ve used Face ID on Apple, you know how convenient it can be. All you have to do is open up your laptop and it automatically wakes up, detects your face, and signs in for you. No waiting around. With a Windows Hello webcam on my PC, I can do the same thing. Convenience-wise, facial recognition beats fingerprint scanners. With the latter, you have to physically swipe your finger to log in or run that Windows Hello authentication check. It’s one extra step that slows things down. But security-wise, it’s just as good and works just as well. Note: A recent Windows update disabled facial recognition in dark environments. If you frequently use your laptop or PC in a dark room, you may want to use a fingerprint reader for that reason alone. How I add biometrics to my desktop PCs Windows Hello is so convenient that I added it to my desktop PC, too. Since I prefer facial recognition, I went with a Dell UltraSharp webcam (model WB7022). It’s a high-end 4K webcam that’s great for filming podcasts and video meetings, and it has a built-in IR camera. Dell UltraSharp 4K Webcam (WB7022) Best Prices Today: $159.09 at Amazon | $175.99 at Dell Home There are more budget-friendly Windows Hello webcams out there if you don’t need to show up to your Zoom meetings in 4K. Check out our roundup of the best Windows Hello webcam for other great options. You can also get USB fingerprint readers that work with Windows Hello. I explored these many years ago before Windows Hello-compatible webcams were widespread. I’ve had a solid experience with Kensington USB fingerprint readers like the Kensington VeriMark Gen 2. Kensington VeriMark Gen2 Best Prices Today: $57.38 at Amazon However, like I mentioned above, unless you have a good reason to use a fingerprint reader, I recommend taking the Windows Hello webcam route. It’s just more streamlined and convenient overall. And, since you’re already spending the money, you might as well make yourself look better on video calls at the same time. Before buying a laptop, always check for biometric hardware Hopefully I’ve convinced you why it’s so essential to get a laptop with Windows Hello biometrics built into it. You can’t easily add it in after the fact, unless you want an external biometric device hooked up to your laptop’s USB port all the time. (Not ideal!) While many stores have great laptop return policies, you should always check a laptop’s specs carefully before buying it. This is the kind of feature that’s easy to miss on a spec sheet but really matters when you’re using the machine day in and day out. At the end of the day, I won’t buy another laptop without biometric hardware. I don’t think you should, either. Further reading: Is Windows 11’s built-in antivirus enough for laptops? Read...

There’s no doubt that dragging and dropping files using Windows Explorer is a super convenient way to copy and move files. But the sad truth is that these transfers are pathetically slow compared to what modern 15GBps NVMe SSDs are capable of. On many systems, 3GBps max is what you’ll see in the latest Windows 11 24H2. Want 8- to 9GBps file transfers? Read on. Why are Windows Explorer transfers so slow? I’m not privy to all the technical reasons, but I do know that the code uses only a single dedicated thread and queue even though it appears otherwise in the Windows performance monitor. NVMe storage offers multiple queues that may of course be accessed by multiple threads. Furthering the mystery is the existence of Microsoft’s command-line program Xcopy, which is roughly two to three times as quick as Explorer. Why? Don’t know. But my working theory is that someone using it at Microsoft decided to fix it. Good on ya’, mystery person. As hinted at, Windows Explorer appears to use six cores of my Intel Core Ultra 225 CPU, while Xcopy only uses four, and the soon to be discussed FastCopy only two. According to the author of FastCopy (Shirouzu, Hiroaki) Explorer looks like it’s using six cores because “thread affinity” isn’t implemented and the single process drifts across cores making it appear as if they are completely involved. Note that I’ve been told that the Windows Server 2025 has a far superior NVMe driver. Perhaps it will make it into consumer Windows eventually. Wouldn’t it be nice. (Queue the Beach Boys). What file transfer program should you use instead? XCOPY I’ve already mentioned Xcopy, and I use it extensively via batch files, but how many mainstream users want to open a command prompt to type in xcopy commands? Not many. Note that it’s not nearly as bad or as tedious as you might think once you’re used to it. But I liked punch cards, so… Also, batch files will eliminate the drudgery of repeated operations. There are even command switches that facilitate sync and backup operations. Indeed, it’s a handy little utility for all file operations. There are also a couple of graphic interfaces out there for Xcopy, but the ones I tested weren’t particularly compelling. If you know of one, by all means send it my way. The successful run of a 48GB file copy via batch file like the one shown below. @echo off echo %Time% xcopy x:\48GB r:\48GB /E /J /Q /I echo %Time% pause The Switches shown above: /E — Copies directories and subdirectories, including empty ones; /J — Copies using unbuffered I/O. Recommended for very large files. /Q — Do not display file names while copying; /I — If destination does not exist and copying more than one file, assumes that destination must be a directory. Open a command prompt and type “Help xcopy” to see all of them. Some of the Xcopy switches. Now for some bad news for you few who haven’t skipped over this section. I’ve heard tell that Microsoft might deprecate (remove) Xcopy in favor of Robocopy which offers far more options. Alas, in my testing of Robocopy, it wasn’t anywhere near as fast as Xcopy, and much more in line with Explorer. Maybe Microsoft just doesn’t want you to enjoy the full fruits of NVMe. There are command-line switches for buffer size, etc. that might improve Robocopy’s performance, and Microsoft might optimize it at some point, but for now, I can only vouch for Xcopy. FastCopy If the command line holds no appeal for you, there’s another, much, much easier solution — FastCopy. And it’s free for personal use. While not quite as convenient as Explorer drag-and-drop for quick operations, FastCopy does integrate into Explorer’s context menus and offers a very efficient (if not modern in appearance) graphical interface. Simply select the appropriate FastCopy command from the context menu, choose the destination from the popup dialog, click on execute, and FastCopy takes care of the rest. This, folks, is a speed you’ll never see using Windows Explorer for copies — nearly 9GBps. FastCopy was a bit inconsistent early on in my testing — sometimes no faster than Explorer, but at its best and as of version 5.10, it was extremely reliable — faster than Xcopy at times and fast all the time. Sweet. The early inconsistency remains a mystery and as it no longer holds, there’s no way to further troubleshoot. Another reason to use FastCopy is a slew of options that turn it into a lean, mean file-syncing or backup machine. See the image above. It requires a fair bit of expertise and the documentation isn’t the best I’ve seen, but it’s exceedingly handy, and faster than just about any sync or backup program I’ve tested. Exactly how fast are Xcopy and FastCopy compared to Explorer? I found Xcopy to be universally 2 to 3 times faster than Explorer. As mentioned, FastCopy was mysteriously inconsistent in my first test sessions, but as of the latest sessions it had settled in at a most remarkable 3.5x pace. Below are the transfer times between two PCIe 5.0 NVMe WD SN8100 SSDs mounted in a HighPoint 7604a 4-slot M.2 adapter card. These results beg the questions: Why is Explorer so slow, Microsoft? And why aren’t all of us using Xcopy or FastCopy? What transfer method should you use? There’s no denying that Explorer is the handiest way to transfer files. Use it for small-fry, everyday operations. But if you’re doing remotely heavy-duty file transfers, look to FastCopy. Or Xcopy if you want to feed your inner nerd. Related content The best Windows backup software: Protect your data! Best SSDs: From SATA to PCIe 5.0, from budget to premium Why two SSDs are better than one in your PC The best external drives: 9 top picks for portable storage Read...

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TL;DR: Get a Grade A refurbished iPhone 15 Pro Max 256GB (unlocked) for just $769.99 — that’s $329 less than new — and enjoy titanium durability, a 5x telephoto zoom, and blazing A17 Pro performance. If you’ve been eyeing the iPhone Pro Max model but holding back because of the price tag, consider this your green light. For just $769.99, you can get a premium Grade A refurbished iPhone 15 Pro Max 256GB (unlocked) — a $1,099 flagship for hundreds less. The titanium build is both stronger and lighter than stainless steel, giving you durability without the hand fatigue. That’s good news if you plan on spending time capturing far-off subjects with the new 5x Telephoto camera, exclusive to this model. The A17 Pro chip delivers console-level graphics for mobile gaming while keeping everyday tasks buttery smooth. For creators, the upgraded USB-C connector with USB 3 speeds means you can transfer large ProRes videos or RAW photos up to 20x faster. This Grade A refurb arrives in near-mint condition, so it looks and feels close to new, with minimal to no visible wear. You’re getting top-tier Apple innovation, long-term iOS support, and cutting-edge hardware — just without the full retail price. Get this premium refurbished iPhone 15 Pro Max for $769.99 (MSRP: $1,099) while stock lasts. Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max 256GB – Unlocked (Premium Refurbished)See Deal StackSocial prices subject to change. Read...

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