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Qualcomm declared a “full victory” in its ongoing litigation with Arm, as a judge tossed out the remaining claim outstanding between the two companies in Arm’s suit. Qualcomm, meanwhile, has previously sued Arm for breach of contract and interference with customer relationships. That trial is expected to kick off in March 2026, the company said in a press release. The litigation goes back to Qualcomm’s agreement to purchase Nuvia in 2021, which would give Qualcomm access to a team of engineers that the company hoped would improve its Snapdragon 8-series chips into something more competitive. It did, producing the Snapdragon X Elite design in 2023. Arm didn’t see it that way. It sued Qualcomm in 2022, arguing that the company, via Nuvia, was illegally using Arm’s intellectual property. In October 2024, Arm notified Qualcomm that it would terminate its architectural license. (Although Nuvia’s license was terminated, Qualcomm’s independent license continued in effect.) The matter went to court, where a district judge ruled in favor of Qualcomm on all counts, save one: whether Nuvia had breached the architectural license that Arm had granted it. A judge in a Delaware district court has found in favor of Qualcomm, resolving the case. Ann Chaplin, the general counsel for Qualcomm, called the decision a “full and final judgment.” Read...

Amazon’s Prime Big Deal Days 2025 lands October 7-8, but why wait? These early laptop deals let you get a jump on the savings before the main event. (Check out all Prime Day deals here.) Just remember, you’ll need a Prime membership to access the deals. Here’s how to get it for free. If you’re not sure where to start, don’t worry. I’ve got you covered with a curated list of the best early laptop deals in the leadup to October Prime Day. Why should you care about what I’ve got to say? Fair question. I oversee all laptop and Chromebook review coverage at PCWorld. I also maintain our best laptop deals roundup daily, along with our best laptops of 2025 roundup weekly. That means I’m hunting for the best laptop discounts online every single day, so I’m pretty well-attuned to the landscape, while my hands-on knowledge helps me unearth the true gems. Best early October Prime Day deals on budget laptops HP 14 Laptop, Intel Celeron N4020 processor/14-inch 1366×768 display/4GB RAM/64GB storage, $170 ($59.99 off at Amazon) Acer Aspire 15, Intel Core 3 N355 processor/15.6-inch 1920×1080 display/8GB RAM/128GB flash storage, $299.99 ($50 off at Amazon) Acer Aspire 3, AMD Ryzen 3 7320U processor/15.6-inch 1920×1080 display/8GB RAM/128GB SSD, $326.33 ($23.66 off at Amazon) Our top pick: The Acer Aspire 3 is the best deal, even though the discount isn’t massive. You’re getting a 15.6-inch 1080p display, 8GB of RAM, and a zippy AMD Ryzen 3 processor, which is a noticeable step up (performance-wise) from both the the HP 14 and the Acer Aspire 15. Best early October Prime Day deals on mid-range laptops Dell Inspiron 5441, Snapdragon X Plus processor/14-inch 1920×1200 display/16GB RAM/512GB SSD, $614 ($185.99 off at Amazon) HP OmniBook X Flip, AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 processor/16-inch 1920×1200 display/16GB RAM/1TB SSD, $799.99 ($200 off at Amazon) Apple 2025 MacBook Air, M4 chip/13.6-inch 2560×1664 display/16GB RAM/256GB SSD, $899 ($100 off at Amazon) Our top pick: The Dell Inspiron 5441 is a sweet spot pick. For under $650, you’re getting a fast Snapdragon processor, 16GB of RAM, and a roomy 512GB SSD—plenty of firepower for work, streaming, and multitasking without spending a ton. Best early October Prime Day deals on premium laptops Apple MacBook Air, M4 chip/13.6-inch 2560×1664 display/16GB RAM/512GB SSD, $1,072.19 ($126.81 off at Amazon) Microsoft Surface Laptop (2024), Snapdragon X Plus processor/13.8-inch 2304×1536 display/16GB RAM/512GB SSD, $1,079 ($120.99 off at Amazon) Dell 14 Plus, Intel Core Ultra 9 288V processor/14-inch 2560×1600 display/32GB RAM/1TB SSD, $1,155.03 ($244.96 off at Amazon) Our top pick: The Dell 14 Plus is a top pick if you want a premium laptop that actually keeps up with everything. It’s got 32GB of RAM, a speedy Core Ultra 9 processor, and a crisp 2560×1600 display all for just over $1,150, making this one of the smarter buys in the premium category. Best early October Prime Day deals on gaming laptops Lenovo LOQ 15, AMD Ryzen 7 7435HS processor/RTX 4060 graphics/15.6-inch 1920×1080 display/32GB RAM/1TB SSD, $1,139 ($60 off at Amazon) Asus ROG Strix G16 (2025), Intel Core i7-14650HX processor/RTX 5060 graphics/16-inch 1920×1200 display/16GB RAM/1TB SSD, $1,399.99 ($100 off at Amazon) Lenovo Legion 5i, Intel Core i7-14700HX processor/RTX 5060 graphics/15.1-inch 2560×1600 display/32GB RAM/2TB SSD, $1,555.19 ($443.81 off at Amazon) Our top pick: If you’re hunting for serious gaming power without breaking $1,500, the Lenovo LOQ 15 is a total steal. Inside you’ll find 32GB of RAM, a Ryzen 7 CPU, and RTX 4060 graphics, which is perfect for gaming or heavy multitasking. Other great early October Prime Day deals These aren’t the only Prime Day deals being tracked by the PCWorld team. If you’re looking to supercharge your home setup with the juiciest tech sales, hit the links for only the best expert-curated picks we’ve found. Best early Amazon October Prime Day tech deals: Great sales chosen by experts Best early October Prime Day laptop deals: Gaming notebooks, 2-in-1s, and more Best early October Prime Day deals on SSDs and storage Best early USB flash drive deals for October Prime Day Best early monitor deals for October Prime Day: OLED, home office, and more Best early October Prime Day deals on Thunderbolt docks and USB-C hubs Best early October Prime Day mini PC deals: Big savings on tiny computers Best early October Prime Day deals on battery chargers and power banks Best early October Prime Day deals on Chromebooks Best early October Prime Day deals on office chairs and standing desks Best early October Prime Day PC computer deals FAQ 1. What kind of laptop should I get? Well, it depends on your needs and lifestyle. A 2-in-1, for example, is a good fit for someone who travels often. You can swing the screen back 360 degrees and use it in tablet mode for taking notes or you can prop it up like a tent for watching movies with friends. If gaming is a top priority, then you’ll want to look into a laptop with powerful graphics hardware and a display with a high refresh rate. For those of us who need a basic laptop for general web browsing, a low-powered Windows laptop should do you just fine. 2. How can I tell whether a laptop is a good October Prime Day deal? I always use CamelCamelCamel, a free tool that tracks Amazon price history, to spot early discounts and plan for Prime Day events. Just create an account, enter a product’s ASIN (found in its Amazon URL and starts with the letter B), and you’ll see a graph of its price history over time. It’s an easy way to spot the good stuff and to also know if you’re getting the lowest price. 3. Do laptop brands matter? Not really, as long as you stick to well-known brands. Big manufacturers like Acer and Dell make solid machines and often offer steep discounts on their websites. You might have a personal preference, though, like maybe you’ve historically stuck with HP machines. 4. How much memory do I need in a laptop? I always tell my friends and family to aim for at least 8GB of RAM. Anything less, and you’ll likely notice things starting to slow down. If you can go higher than 8GB, even better. The more RAM you have, the snappier your laptop will feel, especially for everyday tasks like web browsing or working in spreadsheets. For more demanding work, 16GB is a solid choice for productivity and gaming, while 32GB and beyond is ideal for video editing and other intensive tasks. 5. Is now a good time to buy a laptop? Will tariffs affect laptop prices? Yes! Early October Prime Day often offers some of the lowest laptop prices of the year even before the main event begins. Prices on premium and gaming laptops may fluctuate once the main sales launch. As for external factors like tariffs, there are currently no major new tariffs affecting laptops in the U.S., but this can change fast depending on international trade decisions. Manufacturers hike the prices up later in the year, especially if supply chain issues pop up again, so if you’re thinking about pulling the trigger on a new laptop, now’s a good time to do it. Read...

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Just like Windows, Microsoft’s Office programs offer a dark mode that is easy on the eyes in poor lighting conditions and reduces power consumption. Let’s start with Word: To switch to dark mode, click on File -> Options and then make sure that you are in the General tab. Under “Personalize your copy of Microsoft Office” you’ll find the option “Office Theme”. Set this to “Black”. If you have already set Windows to dark mode, you can also select “Use system settings”. Then confirm with “OK”. By default, the Word menus are now black, but the desktop still appears white with black text. To change this, delete the tick in front of “Never change the document page color” and click “OK” again. The background is now black and the font is white. You will find the same setting in the same place in classic Outlook. Here the option is called “Never change the background color of the message”. In the new Outlook, go to General -> Appearance in the Settings and next set the option “Dark” under Dark mode. The program automatically colors the background of mail black, there is no option to select this. In Word, you can select whether the background of the workspace should also appear black or always remain white in dark mode. Sam Singleton Finally, although PowerPoint and Excel allow you to switch to a black office design, they are not able to darken the background of a presentation or spreadsheet. At least there is a temporary solution for Excel: Open the Paint image editor included in Windows, click on Selection in the toolbar and draw a rectangle measuring approximately 250 x 200 pixels. The dimensions are displayed at the bottom of the status bar. Then click on the Crop icon in the “Image” section of the toolbar. Then click on the Edit palette icon in the “Color” section, set 80 next to “Red”, “Green”, and “Blue” in the following window and confirm with OK. Then switch to the “Tools” section, click on the Fill tool and then on your rectangle. Paint will then colour it a dark grey. Click on File -> Save and save the rectangle as a PNG file in a folder of your choice. Now open your spreadsheet file in Excel. Switch to the “Page layout” ribbon, click on Background -> From a file and select the PNG file with the grey rectangle. Press the key combination Ctrl-A to select the table. Then right-click within the selection. Two context menus will open. In the smaller one, click on the downward-pointing arrow next to “Font color” and then click on the white square under “Design color”. You have now created a manual dark mode with a white font color. Please note: The setting only applies to this one spreadsheet. Every new sheet that you create will appear in the standard color again. And if you save the spreadsheet and pass it on, it will also open on another computer with a white background—but the white font will remain. You or other users will therefore see white text on a white background, in other words: nothing at all. To change this, you must change the font color. Incidentally, dark mode has no effect on the printout of a spreadsheet. Read...

Perplexity’s Comet is the most advanced AI browser right now, and it’s actually pretty cool. You can watch the browser’s built-in AI perform actions in real time, like clicking buttons on web pages and navigating between links. Yet while Comet might be a foretaste of the future of web browsing, it’s not quite what it’s hyped up to be. I’ve been playing around with Comet on Windows for a few weeks now… and it leaves me wanting. You can use Comet right now with a Perplexity Pro subscription for $20/month, but read this before you spend cash on it. Comet’s AI can browse the web for you Comet’s hallmark feature is unique among AI browsers right now. Yes, it does have “standard AI browser” features like an AI sidebar that summarizes content, a voice mode that lets you speak with Perplexity’s LLMs, and a Perplexity chat box on the New Tab page. But the core feature here is that you can open Comet’s chat experience and then say something like: “Hey, control my web browser and do something.” Research flights, plan travel, find products to buy—nearly anything is possible, and Comet will actually do it for you. Chris Hoffman / Foundry There’s something weirdly magical about opening Google Maps, telling Comet to research and plan a route for you, and watching in real time as it reasons through the process of clicking buttons, typing text, and interacting with the web page. You can see it all happen right before your eyes—and when the AI is controlling a page, you’ll see a blue border around it to let you know. You’ll see how the AI reasoning model talks to itself as it walks through the task, and you can interrupt it at any time. I may have gripes with Comet, but none of them take away from how cool it is to see this agentic AI browser in action the first time. This is a glimpse of the future. Nearly every web browser—apart from Vivaldi—will be following in Comet’s footsteps, whether we like it or not. Comet’s AI browsing can be pretty slow Once you get over how magical the technology seems, the limitations quickly become apparent. This is true for large language models in general, but it’s especially true with Comet. As I watch every task completed by the agentic AI, I realize how much faster it would be to just do all the clicking and navigating myself. Watching the AI use Google Maps is fun, but it quickly loses its luster when you’re one minute into a task and get outputs like: “Oops, I entered the address, but I didn’t hit backspace first to clear the box. I’ll need to erase the text in the box, and then type the address again.” It can be surprisingly slow. You’d save time by doing the browsing yourself, or even just using a more traditional AI chatbot that isn’t built into your web browser. Prompting ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, or even Perplexity itself for information can be faster—it’s just smoother to let the AI focus on compiling and synthesizing data instead of commandeering the browser and navigating user interfaces. In a nutshell, agentic AI is cool but not quite as useful as it sounds. The typical AI chatbot experience still comes out ahead. The AI can access your websites… as you Many websites block access to AI tools, so the conventional AI chatbot search experience can’t always get the job done. But when the AI model has access to your browser, it can use those websites on your behalf. Even if a website requires you to sign in, Comet can use it—as long as you’re sign in to the site before Comet starts navigating it. That’s a huge advantage over the classic AI chatbot search experience. An AI browser can do a lot more with the web, and you can see exactly what it’s doing and take over whenever you like. But it also means that any exploit could directly affect your browser and your data. Comet is vulnerable to LLM exploits Large language models are vulnerable to something called “prompt injections,” which can happen whenever the LLM is made to process and interpret text. The problem is that when text is fed into an LLM, it isn’t always clear whether that text is from you or elsewhere. For example, an LLM might process and analyze the source code of a web page to perform some kind of task. But the source code of a web page could potentially include hidden prompt instructions designed to hijack an AI that’s analyzing the source code. The LLM can’t distinguish the hidden prompt in the source code from the source code itself. In other words, that hidden prompt was injected into the source code, and the AI will be none the wiser. Hence, prompt injection attack. Chris Hoffman / Foundry Security researchers at Guardio found that Comet was vulnerable to attacks like this, and that it could be tricked into falling for phishing scams while online shopping. Security researchers from Brave also found that Comet was vulnerable to indirect prompt injection attacks. Here’s the wildest part from Brave’s blog post: “The vulnerability we’re discussing in this post lies in how Comet processes webpage content: when users ask it to ‘Summarize this webpage,’ Comet feeds a part of the webpage directly to its LLM without distinguishing between the user’s instructions and untrusted content from the webpage. This allows attackers to embed indirect prompt injection payloads that the AI will execute as commands.” Did you catch that? It’s not that Comet’s protections against prompt injection were bypassed, but rather that Comet (in its initial release) didn’t even have prompt injection protections that tried to distinguish between trusted user instructions and untrusted web page data sent to the AI model (at least with the summarization function). This sort of thing is a known problem with large language models. While Comet now has better protections against this, it’s unclear how good those safeguards are. Comet hasn’t been properly battle-tested. Other agentic AI browsing solutions—like ChatGPT’s agent mode—interact with websites by loading those websites in their own browser in the cloud apart from your data. Even when those LLMs are exploited by prompt injection attacks, at least the damage is somewhat limited. But when the AI has access to everything in your browser—as is the case with Perplexity’s Comet—the risk goes up by quite a bit. From what I can tell, it seems like Perplexity is “moving fast and breaking things” while competitors are at least paying attention to security before launching. Comet is minimal and uncluttered… Comet is focused on AI browsing—and that’s it. You’re getting a clean, uncluttered Chromium browser. It has AI integration, yes, but aside from that it’s stripped down and doesn’t get in your way. Chris Hoffman / Foundry It’s not like using Microsoft Edge, for example. Microsoft’s Edge browser is built on the same Chromium codebase that powers Google Chrome and Comet, but Edge packs in a lot of its own bloat: a New Tab page cluttered with viral junk, a sidebar with links to MSN web games, various shopping tools, and so many other features that I personally can’t stand it. I greatly enjoy the lightweight, stripped-down Chromium experience presented by Comet. Apart from the AI, it’s pretty sleek. …but maybe too minimal? Right off the bat, you’ll notice that Comet doesn’t come in mobile app form. Want to use the same browser on your PC and your phone? With Comet, you can’t—at least not yet. But the problem goes further than that. Even with Comet installed on multiple PCs, it doesn’t yet offer the ability to sync data between multiple PCs. For someone like myself, who regularly switches between desktop PC and laptop while also reviewing many laptops for PCWorld, this is a huge shortcoming and obstacle for daily use. It’s 2025. I need my web browsers (and AI tools) to sync my data between devices, and I can’t be bothered to manually copy or migrate data. I don’t want to be asking myself “Wait, which PC did I have that conversation on?” if I need to dig up an AI chat log. Is that too much to ask for? I mean, I don’t think so… Even if I thought Comet was perfect aside from this—and I don’t—the lack of cross-device sync means Comet just isn’t an option as a day-to-day driver for me yet. Perplexity is working on it, but if sync is important to you, save your $20 until they eventually get it rolled out. Here’s my current verdict on Comet Comet doesn’t feel designed to be your day-to-day browser—as it is right now, it’s more of a flashy demo. Whether it’s the animated video intro or the way Comet was vulnerable to known LLM exploits at launch, it feels like it was primarily made to position Perplexity for acquisition by an even bigger company (like Apple, maybe?). Even the $5-per-month Comet Plus subscription that gives revenue back to publishers who are affected by AI feels more like a PR move to warm up feelings around Perplexity’s brand than a serious long-term solution. (That might sound overly cynical, but I stand by the statement.) Comet is incredibly cool, don’t get me wrong. It’s the first time you can experience agentic AI browsing in action on your PC. But it just isn’t ready to replace the web browser you already trust with everything you do online. It’s a gimmick and it wears off quickly. If you’re interested in Comet, you should give it a try—as no more than a secondary browser. It may be the future, but it isn’t there yet. Subscribe to Chris Hoffman’s newsletter, The Windows Readme, for more Windows PC tips, tricks, and experiments. Read...

Qualcomm’s scintillating new Snapdragon X2 Elite chips have prompted a ton of conversations in the past few days. Can they make it? What do you like about them? And so on. While I can’t say whether or not the Snapdragon X2 Elite and Elite Extreme will eventually succeed, I can offer you an inside look at what people are talking about–at least what I’ve heard and overheard–at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii. If you want to catch up on all the news, the Snapdragon X2 and X2 Elite offer more cores at up to 5GHz speeds, includes optional embedded memory, and preserves the performance on battery from the first generation. The good: eye-watering performance If you want a general-purpose productivity laptop, the first-generation Snapdragon X Elite was nearly perfect. The new X2 Elite Extreme looks to be even better, with (controlled) benchmarks that simply blow away Intel’s Core Ultra (Lunar Lake) and AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 chips, from CPU to GPU to the AI-enabling NPU. Qualcomm is really doing almost everything consumers are asking of it in this space. The CPU benchmarks look particularly juicy. Compared against rival chips in today’s laptops, the Snapdragon X2 Elite absolutely smokes all comers in the Cinebench benchmark beloved by reviewers, in both single- and multi-core tests. Mark Hachman / Foundry And the Snapdragon X2 Elite’s NPU offers a whopping 80 TOPs, leaving the competition in the dust. Whether consumers are asking for more TOPS from an NPU, though, is a question mark. Roughly doubling the TOPS from the first version looks great on paper, and certainly bigger numbers are better. But there’s a lot being bet on whether consumer applications will be able to take advantage of its prowess, including this concept of agentic AI everyone is talking about. No one is still quite sure whether that will happen. UL’s Procyon Computer Vision benchmark tests AI inference performance and can tap into NPUs, unlike some other AI benchmarks.Mark Hachman / Foundry It depends on how you see it: Is local AI still a selling point? Either way, the Snapdragon X2 Elite appears loaded with hardware capable of blasting through most of the tasks you throw at it, AI or not. The bad: Lukewarm PC vendor support, games, and lack of battery life talk I couldn’t help but notice that only Asus and HP endorsed the Snapdragon X2 architecture, and via video to boot — not in person at the Snapdragon Summit. The odd “agentic AI” Humain Horizon Pro laptop (which won’t use the X2, but the X1) was there, but not Qualcomm’s established customers. And where was longtime Qualcomm backer, Lenovo? Sure, new partners could always be announced. But I had questions. Another question: 3D graphics performance. Yes, supposedly the Snapdragon X2 Elite about doubles the performance of the first-gen X Elite platform, which played (some) games at roughly 30 frames per second at 1080p Low performance. Doubling that is, what, 60 fps at the same resolution and image quality? What about all the games that simply refuse to run well on the first-gen Snapdragon chips? On the more enthusiast end of things, “there’s nothing preventing” the Snapdragon X2 from connecting to a discrete GPU like Nvidia’s GeForce RTX, according to Qualcomm’s senior vice president Kedar Kondap…but it doesn’t appear like it has, or will. This is a tough one: Gaming is often seen as a high-profile design win, and proof that a chip like the X2 Elite should be seen as a sexy, high-margin gaming CPU. But doing so would immediately cut into a key Snapdragon benefit: long battery life. Gaming on a phone, weirdly, seems more viable with a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor than on a PC.Qualcomm And that was weird, too: Qualcomm really downplayed the battey life of a Snapdragon X2 laptop, referring it to “multi-day” on a couple of occasions. I’m not sure if that was because the competitive landscape had erased that advantage, or what. But it simply was not a big focus. Again, Qualcomm does have a cross to bear in its Arm legacy, and how that affects application compatibility. This only really affects some weird, dusty old business utilities, the occasional printer, and games. But games are the one area where it can make inroads, though Snapdragon simply can’t offer the “it just works” assurance of its X86 rivals anytime soon. The ugly: A grab bag Naturally, any new launch offers opportunities for criticism. Not only did people take issue with the Microsoft-esque naming scheme — the X2 Elite Extreme, really?! — critics made the very valid point that this was Qualcomm’s first major architecture launch in years. Reviewers got hands-on tests of the X1 Elite two long years ago, in October 2023, ahead of the Snapdragon’s launch alongside Copilot+ PCs in May 2024. Qualcomm followed it up with the cut-down X1 Plus and X in the interim. As one attendee pointed out, “You can’t play on that timetable and expect to win against Intel and AMD,” which launch a new or updated mobile chip architecture on an annual cadence. Intel has been talking about Panther Lake for months…and has already shown more demo systems than Qualcomm has for the X2 Elite.Adam Patrick Murray / Foundry Qualcomm’s X1 Elite also signaled to Intel and AMD that those rivals needed to have their own chips in order. But tying Snapdragon X to Copilot+ and Microsoft’s beleaguered Recall didn’t do much for Qualcomm, if anything. Qualcomm was the flag-bearer for Windows on Arm, and its (now largely undeserved) reputational concerns about app compatibility. Then Intel’s Lunar Lake came along, and offered a very competitive — and maybe even better — chip without any of that baggage. One laptop maker told me that they had bought into the original X1 Elite in part as a bargaining chip with Intel. People had a lot of questions about what that meant for Intel’s upcoming “Panther Lake” chip, which should be unveiled this fall. In my personal opinion, one of the best things Qualcomm ever did was to simply offer a compelling third option to Intel and AMD. That means we all benefited from an competitive market for PC processors that only continues to heat up. Disclosure: Qualcomm held its press briefings in Hawaii, and would not pre-brief reporters in other locations or over video meetings. They paid for my room, boarding, and travel expenses, but did not ask for or exert any editorial control over this story or other PCWorld content. Read...