Tackling climate change is a team sport, and we all have to be in it together if we want to win. So, not only should we hold companies to high standards as far as mitigating their environmental impact, we should also laud them when they make positive steps in the right direction. With almost 190 million laptops expected to ship throughout 2024, laptop manufacturers are some of the companies we should be forcing to do better — and fortunately, many of them already are. From using recycled cardboard for packaging and ocean-bound plastic in laptops themselves, to relying on renewable energy on company property and closed-loop industrial practices. Here’s what the top laptop manufacturers are doing to go green and help save the world. Dell Dell has been a household name in laptops for decades, having become one of the top five manufacturers by market share since the late 90s. The company expanded over time and acquired brands (like the gaming-focused Alienware), while also supplying some of the most iconic product lines in the industry (like its XPS line of premium laptops). As with many modernizing brands, Dell has taken on several eco-driven initiatives that help reduce its carbon footprint: the reduction of non-recycled and non-recyclable materials in laptop construction; improving the repairability of its devices; and making it easier to recycle its products once they’ve reached the ends of their lives. Dell continues to drive up the repairability of its devices, in an effort to extend their lifespans and reduce transport and manufacturing costs for new devices.Dell Dell incorporates several different sources for its recycled materials, too. Some of its laptops use plastics recycled from post-consumer devices, while others utilize recycled ocean-bound plastic, while still others use recycled steel, magnesium, and cobalt. Recycled materials don’t just reduce their impact on landfills and ocean-dumping, but cut down on the carbon output that goes into producing those materials (since metals and plastics don’t need to be harvested and refined to the same extent). Dell makes it easy to recycle your laptop as an individual and for businesses to do the same. It’s an incentivized scheme, too, which ensures destruction of sensitive company data and leads to money back on future purchases. Overall, it helps cut down on laptop e-waste. In the company’s sustainability brochure (PDF), Dell promises that “100 percent of [their] packaging and more than 50 percent of [their] product content will be made from recycled or renewable materials” by 2030. Lenovo By sheer volume of PCs and laptops sold, Lenovo has been the biggest computer manufacturer in the world for over a decade — so any eco-friendly initiatives by this company will not only have a huge impact, but could also encourage its competition to do the same. Like its contemporaries, Lenovo is utilizing more and more recycled materials in its laptop designs, including ocean-bound plastic, closed-loop post-consumer plastics, and recycled metals. Its goals aren’t quite as ambitious as Dell’s, but in Lenovo’s 2024 Sustainability Report (PDF), it has pledged to have 100% of its products contain some post-consumer recycled materials by 2025. It claims around 14.6 million net pounds of plastics containing recycled content were used in 2023. Lenovo continues to expand its renewable energy initiatives at its facilities to reduce its energy-based carbon footprint.Lenovo Lenovo also offers a “reduced carbon transport” service to business customers. They can also pay for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) credits, which helps offset the CO2 output by transporting the laptops and other devices to the customer. While that does rely on customers paying for the reduced carbon transport option, Lenovo is investing in that itself, too. As part of its net-zero-by-2050 commitment, Lenovo is utilizing more rail and sea freight as lower-carbon shipping options, as well as pushing for the use of SAF in Europe and South America. It also has targets to reduce transport costs in its repairs, with a pledge that by 2026 over 84 percent of all repairs of Lenovo products will take place at a repair shop, without the need to ship it to a service center. HP HP has one of the most ambitious green goals for its business, aiming to achieve net-zero emissions throughout its entire value chain by 2040 — that’s a good 10 years ahead of most of its competitors. In its 2023 sustainability report (PDF), HP claimed to have already reached a 27 percent reduction since 2019, with over 184,000 tons of CO2-equivalent emissions avoided in 2023 alone through its partnerships and energy efficiency programs. HP’s upper-tier laptops still feel luxuriously premium even as they rely on increasingly more recycled materials, proving that greener production can still be great.tech kiga / Unsplash The company is also innovating on its products, making them smaller and leaner with less wasted materials, all while using more and more recycled materials in their construction. Its newest print cartridges are 30 percent smaller while also using 35 percent recycled content. Some of its laptops, like the EliteBook 1040, are made from over 90 percent recycled magnesium and have 50 percent recycled plastics in its keycaps. Since 2019, HP claims to have used over a billion pounds of recycled plastics in its devices. Pretty impressive, if you ask me. HP’s certified refurbished systems provide cheaper and more environmentally friendly pathways for companies looking to upgrade their computer systems, too. The HP Device Life Extension program (PDF) offers corporations the option to have their devices cleaned and updated with newer and faster components, extending the life of existing hardware and reducing the need to buy entirely new systems. HP is also working to eliminate single-use plastics in its packaging, having reached a 62 percent reduction between 2018 and 2023, on track to reach 75 percent by 2025. That should coincide with a complete removal of all landfill waste solutions for HP operations that same year. Asus Asus offers tons of in-depth data on its carbon footprint reduction initiatives, so if you want to really dig into the numbers on what it’s done and what it’s doing, there’s loads to chew on. Want to see an exact breakdown of its CO2 emissions? It’s here. A breakdown of how it audits the recycling companies it uses for end-of-life devices? That’s here. As for its more digestible data points, Asus claims that over 11,600 tons of CO2 have been reduced by its use of recycled materials in its products since 2017. This includes ocean-bound plastics, post-consumer plastics, and post-industrial recycled magnesium and aluminum. Asus is pushing for more recyclable materials in its packaging and a greater recycling rate for all of its products, plus more responsibly sourced materials in general.Joachim Pressl / Unsplash The company has also managed to use 90 percent recyclable materials in its laptop packaging, while also prioritizing lighter packaging to help cut back on transport costs and fuel usage. Some of Asus’ goals for 2025 include: reaching 100 percent recyclable materials in its laptop packaging; reaching a 20 percent recycling rate for all Asus products; and expanding its use of responsibly sourced materials like cobalt to 100 percent. By 2030, Asus also plans to reduce company-wide global carbon emissions by 50 percent and reach 100 percent renewable energy usage in all Taiwan-based operations. Apple Apple stands among these companies taking aggressive action to reduce their carbon footprints. In its 2024 sustainability report (PDF), Apple claims a 55 percent reduction in overall emissions since 2015, and that doesn’t include carbon credits either. It’s all part of Apple’s ongoing drive to reduce the company’s global emissions to carbon neutrality by 2030 — by far the most ambitious of all emissions goals on this list. On the road to that lofty goal, Apple has: reduced emissions from transporting its products by 20 percent since 2022; cut back the energy use of its product ranges by as much as 70 percent since 2008; and increased its stock of refurbished devices to nearly 13 million globally. In 2023, Apple increased the quantity of recycled materials in its products, now using 100 percent recycled cobalt in the Apple Watch and iPhone batteries, as well as 25 percent recycled gold across all product lines. It also now uses 100 percent recycled aluminum in the chassis of its Mac, MacBook, and iPad lines. Apple helped pioneer the elaborate unboxing experience, and now it’s helping to drive out plastic with a 100 percent fiber-based Apple Watch packaging design.Apple By 2025, Apple will have 100 percent fiber-based packaging for all of its products, and the company will continue increasing the quantities of recycled metals and minerals in its various lines. Apple is also driving environmental changes up the chain, too. For example, Apple has secured over 320 suppliers who have committed to sourcing their electricity from renewable sources. Although Apple doesn’t expect to eliminate emissions entirely from its production and transportation lines, it will use carbon offsets to get the last leg of the way towards making Apple a carbon-neutral company by the end of the decade. Acer Acer has set its sights on 2050 to make its entire business carbon-neutral, innovating within and encouraging suppliers to join in on its ambitious climate goals. In Acer’s 2023 sustainability report (PDF), the company highlights several key achievements along this road so far, with plans to expand its initiatives as we head into 2025. So far, Acer has managed to reach a 48 percent usage of renewable electricity throughout its business, with a goal to reach 60 percent in 2025 and 100 percent by 2035. It has also managed to get 76 percent of its suppliers to agree to a similar goal, with ongoing efforts to get that number up to 80 percent of critical supplies in 2025. Acer is still playing catch-up to the other major laptop manufacturers when it comes to carbon neutrality, but it’s making steady progress.Raphael Brasileiro / Unsplash Acer is slowly introducing more and more recycled materials into its products, too. Its 2024 Aspire Vero 16 used 60 percent recycled plastics, representing a doubling since the 2021 model. The kinds of innovations that make this possible are set to be introduced in other Acer product lines going forward as well, with a goal to reach 30 percent post-consumer recycled plastics in all Acer products by 2025. As much as 90 percent of Acer’s packaging is now made from recycled pulp, which is itself entirely recyclable, but the company hasn’t quite eliminated the use of plastic in all packaging yet. Acer also continues to expand its device recycling operations, with over 61,000 tons of e-waste recycled between 2018 and 2022. A greener future for laptops Some companies are certainly working harder than others in their efforts to reduce their impact on the global environment, with Apple and HP apparently the most aggressive in their goals so far. There’s plenty of room for those other companies to catch up, though. Ultimately, fighting climate change is a goal that the entire world needs to work towards together. To that end, it’s always nice to see giant megacorporations doing something even if they could be doing more. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Solar-powered design eliminates frequent battery swaps Smart detection features included without a subscription Easy installation and user-friendly app Cons Limited to 1080p resolution, which may not satisfy some users Performance heavily depends on Consistent sunlight for charging Cloud subscription required for some features Our Verdict The Tapo SolarCam C402 Kit is an affordable and eco-friendly security solution that’s perfect for low-maintenance outdoor monitoring, though its reliance on sunlight to recharge its battery and its 1080p resolution won’t meet every user’s needs. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Tapo SolarCam C402 Kit Retailer Price $44.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket The Tapo SolarCam C402 Kit ($59.99) offers a simple, wire-free solution for homeowners looking to secure their outdoor spaces without the hassle of battery swaps or complicated installations. Powered by a solar panel and built to withstand the elements, it provides eco-friendly, low-maintenance monitoring. Its compact, weather-resistant design and user-friendly setup make it a convenient choice for just about anyone. Design and features The bullet-style SolarCam is built to handle outdoor environments while maintaining a modern and compact design. Rated IP65 for weather resistance, our IP code guide indicates it’s impervious to dust ingress and protected from water jets coming from any direction. It can operate in diverse climates, at temperatures ranging from minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit to 113F (-20C to 45C). Its minimalist black-and-white aesthetic allows it to blend seamlessly into most outdoor settings, whether mounted on a porch, a fence, or a backyard wall. The solar panel is designed for easy placement, with mounting hardware that supports various angles–or even mounted separately from the camera–to maximize sunlight exposure. Once installed, the panel works to keep the camera charged without the need for manual intervention, offering a nearly maintenance-free experience. This makes it especially appealing for hard-to-reach installations where changing its batteries would be a chore. The camera delivers 1080p video resolution, ensuring clear capture of faces, license plates, and other critical details. Its 125-degree diagonal field of view provides wide-area coverage, making it well-suited for driveways, large porches, or expansive backyard spaces. Dual spotlights, which can be set to activate upon motion detection, illuminate dark areas up to 30 feet, helping to deter potential intruders. These spotlights also enhance the camera’s color night vision, allowing it to record vivid, full-color footage even in low-light conditions. For additional versatility, the camera includes infrared black-and-white night vision. The bullet-style camera has a compact, modern design and is built to withstand the elements. Michael Ansaldo/Foundry The SolarCam’s smart features take its functionality up a notch. With person, vehicle, and animal detection—all available without a cloud subscription—the motion detection system effectively filters out false alerts from irrelevant movements, like swaying foliage, so you can focus on genuine security concerns. The camera also integrates with Google Assistant and Alexa, enabling voice commands for tasks like checking the live feed. Two-way audio provides a simple way to communicate with visitors or ward off intruders, all in real-time. For storage, the Tapo SolarCam offers both local and cloud options. You can insert a microSD card (capacities up to 512GB, though none is included) for on-device recording, or you can opt for Tapo Care’s Premium subscription service. Priced at $3.49 per month or $34.99 annually, it covers covers up to 10 cameras and adds 30 days of video history, rich notifications, and Smart Sort, which lets you classify your recorded videos with different tags. A 30-day no-obligation free trial of the plan is included with purchase of the camera Setup and performance Setting up the Tapo SolarCam C402 Kit is easy. Once you’re logged into the Tapo app, tap the “+” icon to add a new device and follow the on-screen instructions to pair the camera. The app will guide you through connecting the camera to your Wi-Fi network and optimizing its placement. The kit includes all the necessary mounting hardware for both the camera and solar panel, along with clear instructions to guide you through the process. The adjustable mount for the solar panel allows placement flexibility, helping you capture optimal sunlight regardless of your outdoor setup. A power drill is recommended for secure installation, but the process is otherwise simple and can be completed in less than an hour. Video quality is quite good, considering its limited resolution. The daytime footage I recorded was crisp and detailed, capturing clear images of faces, vehicle plates, and other key details. Night vision is equally impressive, delivering sharp, well-lit footage in both color and monochrome modes. The two-way audio is reliable, offering clear sound for both communication and deterrence purposes, though windy conditions can introduce minor interference. The Tapo app has clear menus for accessing live feeds, adjusting settings, reviewing recorded footage, and setting smart actions. Michael Ansaldo/Foundry I had good results with the various motion detection options. Person detection worked well to filter out irrelevant activity, minimizing false alarms from things like tree limbs, animals, or passing cars. If you want to be notified about animals or vehicles, those detection modes also performed reliably in my testing. Push notifications were quick, keeping me informed of potential security events almost in real time. The Tapo app interface is intuitive, with clear menus for accessing live feeds, adjusting settings, and reviewing recorded footage. Customization options for motion detection are plentiful, including detection zones that allow you to monitor targeted areas and adjust the sensitivity to suit the environment. Notifications can also be tailored to reduce unnecessary alerts, making the system less intrusive while still effective. The solar panel’s performance is critical to the system’s appeal, and it largely delivers on its promises. In sunny conditions, the panel kept the camera’s battery charged consistently, even with regular use of live view and motion recording. In cloudy or low-light conditions, the camera draws its internal battery down, but efficient power management ensured it continued to operate without interruptions. Under typical usage conditions, the battery can last up to 180 days on a single charge according to TP-Link. Should you buy the Tapo SolarCam C402 Kit? The Tapo SolarCam C402 KIT is a good choice for anyone seeking a low-maintenance outdoor security solution. Its solar-powered design minimizes upkeep while providing continuous coverage, and its high-resolution video ensures you won’t miss important details. The durable, weather-resistant build makes it a practical option for most outdoor environments. That said, it’s not for everyone. Those in regions with limited sunlight might find the system less dependable, as its performance hinges on consistent solar charging. But overall, it’s a great option for those prioritizing ease of use and sustainable design. Read...

Virtual private networks, or VPNs, are one of the most effective ways to keep your data private and secure while online. They encrypt and hide our confidential web activity and are a key component in helping us to navigate safely while connected to the internet. As VPN usage continues to increase globally these apps are quickly becoming a cornerstone of our online security. Due to this importance, it’s worth looking at what’s in store for the next-gen VPNs to see how they’ll continue to provide us privacy and security into the future. From VPNs utilizing blockchain to new encryption standards even quantum computers can’t break—and maybe even anonymity for your smart appliances—here are the coming advancements in VPN tech I’m most excited for. Further reading: Best VPN services 2024: Top picks for speed, price, privacy, and more Blockchain technology is coming to VPNs The decentralized node structure of a dVPN may be the way of the future.NordVPN Decentralized VPNs, or dVPNs, offer a new twist on VPN technology and they are quickly growing in popularity. By distributing network functions across many nodes rather than routing traffic through one company’s centralized servers, they can theoretically afford better privacy and security to users. A dVPN runs on a peer-to-peer network that leverages blockchain technology. Decentralized nodes, operated by volunteer hosts, eliminate single points of failure and ensure that no single entity has control over every user’s data. Due to a dVPN’s more democratic functioning, they are also seen as being more resistant to censorship and government data sharing. Just over the last year or two, decentralized VPNs have started to gain traction in the global market. So does this mean crypto bros are about to take over your VPNs? Not likely. While dVPNs certainly seem like an attractive offer, more so with all of the hype surrounding everything crypto and blockchain nowadays, this decentralization doesn’t inherently mean a better experience.  With a traditional VPN, you have to put your trust in just one company. But this company, assuming you choose wisely, will run regular audits to prove it’s trustworthy, has a vested interest in keeping its network secure, and has the financial backing to continually make improvements to its applications. Using a dVPN on the other hand means that you have to trust each volunteer node host. Depending on how the dVPN company operates, these hosts may not be required to prove their trustworthiness or the privacy of their nodes.  So, while dVPNs are sure to become a popular choice for those seeking decentralized privacy, there will still be a place for traditional VPNs in the future. What is most likely is that you’ll see two separate markets develop, one for dVPN services and another for traditional centralized VPN services. It will then be up to you as the user to choose which you believe is best suited to protect your data. The post-quantum encryption revolution is upon us Post-quantum encryption will become the new standard for VPNs in the near future.Pixabay In August of this year, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) made history by releasing the first quantum-resistant encryption standards. Outside of a few overly enthusiastic cryptographers, this news might not have made a splash but it’s set to have huge implications for the future of online privacy and security. Researchers and tech companies are racing to build quantum computers that will have the capability to crush the encryption standards of today’s machines in mere minutes—something currently impossible. So, how does this relate to VPNs? Well, VPNs are heavily reliant on cryptographic protocols for securing communication on their networks. When you connect to a VPN, it encrypts your traffic by scrambling the data into an unreadable form, thereby preventing third parties from viewing and understanding that data. If a quantum computer with vastly greater computational power were to get ahold of this same encrypted data, it could decipher it with ease. These new ‘post-quantum’ encryption standards will not only set the bar for VPN providers in the coming years, but also provide a roadmap to help them become more secure. “Post-quantum” encryption will become a selling point that VPNs will advertise and market to consumers. For users, it might seem like a boutique feature now, but once quantum computers are up and running—most experts believe it could be within the next decade—you’ll absolutely want your VPN to be using these new standards. We’re already seeing some VPN providers offer ‘post-quantum’ encryption. Just recently NordVPN took the initiative and launched an app with post-quantum support. Others such as ExpressVPN and Surfshark have also implemented their own versions as well. It’s only a matter of time before this becomes the new norm for all VPNs.  VPNs will soon protect your refrigerator, too The all encompassing internet of things, or IoT, refers to a network of connected devices that communicate and share data with each other. For most people, this takes the form of smart home devices such as thermostats, TVs, lights, refrigerators, and home security systems. Thanks to IoT devices we now have more control over our environment than ever before. When it comes to cybersecurity however, smart devices are generally some of the most vulnerable and least protected pieces on your home network. Cybercriminals love to exploit IoT devices and in many cases, simply hacking one device will give them access to everything else. VPNs are out to change this in the near future. By providing fully integrated home network security, a VPN can encrypt and protect communications for all of your devices. Unlike the typical personal VPN that requires you to connect each individual device, IoT VPNs extend across an entire network to safeguard all devices. At home this can already be done via a router VPN.  Unfortunately, there are still a few drawbacks to using a router method. Many VPN providers still impose simultaneous device connection limits that can be taken up quickly by all of your IoT devices. Router VPNs also create a single point of failure meaning you need to make sure failsafes, such as an automatic killswitch, are set up correctly. This all requires a bit of technical know-how which the average layperson may not have. Routers with built-in VPNs, like Aircove from ExpressVPN, are just one of the ways that next-gen VPNs will protect all of the devices on your home network. ExpressVPN VPN companies are working on new and innovative solutions for at-home IoT coverage. More and more services are switching over to unlimited device connection models. Others such as ExpressVPN have even started selling their own routers, ready to go right out of the box, with the VPN built into them. VPNs are likely to begin offering configurable IoT options in their mobile apps as well. This will allow users to easily control which devices on their home network are connected through the VPN, all in a centralized hub. So in the future, even the AI-generated grocery list from your smart fridge will be encrypted and secure from prying eyes. Read...

Sir Peter Skelton - who was also an Environment Canterbury Commissioner - has been made Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to environmental law. Read...

Egypt`s environment ministry says the attack occurred in `deep waters outside of the designated swimming area`. Read...

A free New Year’s eve shindig on a downtown Invercargill street will feature 1000 prize giveaways and cater for families in an alcohol-free environment. Read...

The next generation of Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 8, is currently being developed behind closed doors. This time, the emphasis isn’t on pure speed, but instead on improving the user experience. Wi-Fi 8, known right now as IEEE 802.11bn Ultra High Reliability, still remains years away. Wireless technology is in a constant state of improvement: Each progression in the evolution of Wi-Fi takes several years to discuss, approve, and then deploy. Wi-Fi 7, the “current” standard, hasn’t even been formally ratified quite yet. But that’s not stopping the development of Wi-Fi 8 behind the scenes, and we already know some details. MediaTek’s Filogic wireless division has released some of what you can expect, with the caveat that final details won’t be nailed down until the final specification is released around Sept. 2028. The key phrase that you should think of in the context of Wi-Fi 8? Not peak throughput, but effective throughput. Further reading: The 5 most dangerous Wi-Fi attacks, and how to fight them Wi-Fi 8 will look a lot like Wi-Fi 7 According to the Wi-Fi Alliance and MediaTek, the United States isn’t the driving force behind the wireless evolution. Instead, it’s China: The country has 650 million broadband subscribers and more than a quarter have 1Gbps broadband connections to their homes. Overall, the average connection speed is 487.6Mbps, which grew 18 percent in a year’s time. MediaTek Theoretically, 802.11bn / Wi-Fi 8 set out (Word document, via the IEEE) to provide enough wireless bandwidth to accommodate your broadband gateway supplying a few gigabits per second, and factoring in the ability of Ethernet to provide even more. EverythingRF interpreted that 2022 document, known as Project Authorization Request (PAR), as one that would provide a minimum aggregate throughput of 100Gbps. Since then, the PAR was approved in 2023, and the working group has begun hammering out more details. As of Nov. 2024, MediaTek believes that Wi-Fi 8 will look virtually identical to Wi-Fi 7 in several key areas: The maximum physical layer (PHY) rate will be the same at 2,880Mbps x 8, or 23Gbits/s. It will also use the same three frequency bands (2.4, 5, and 6GHz) and the same 4096 QAM modulation across a maximum channel bandwidth of 320MHz. (A Wi-Fi 8 router won’t get 23Gbps of bandwidth, of course. According to MediaTek, the actual peak throughput in a “clean,” or laboratory, environment is just 80 percent or so of the hypothetical peak throughput, and actual, real-world results can be far less.) MediaTek Still, put simply, Wi-Fi 8 should deliver the same wireless bandwidth as Wi-Fi 7, using the same channels and the same modulation. Every Wi-Fi standard has also been backwards-compatible with its predecessors, too. What Wi-Fi 8 will do, though, is change how your client device, such as a PC or a phone, interacts with multiple access points. Think of this as an evolution of how your laptop talks to your home’s networking equipment. Over time, Wi-Fi has evolved from communications between one laptop and a router, across a single channel. Channel hopping routed different clients to different bands. When Wi-Fi 6 was developed, a dedicated 6GHz channel was added, sometimes as a dedicated “backhaul” between your home’s access points. Now, mesh networks are more common, giving your laptop a variety of access points, channels, and frequencies to select between. How Wi-Fi 8 will improve Wi-Fi technology MediaTek sees several opportunities to improve the coordination between access points and devices. (To be fair, we’re identifying these as MediaTek’s efforts, only because we can’t be sure that they’ll eventually be approved by the 802.11bn working group for Wi-Fi 8 as a whole.) Coordinated Spatial Reuse (Co-SR): This technology was first implemented in Wi-Fi 6 as Spatial Reuse. The problem occurred when there was a difference in transmission power between an access point “talking” to a nearby device, and simultaneously communicating with a second access point a great distance away. If the first access point reduced its power to communicate with the nearby device, it couldn’t be “heard” by the access point. Wi-Fi 8’s Co-SR is a “maturation” of the Spatial Reuse technology, and will solve the problem by allowing the access points to talk to one another and coordinate their power output, MediaTek said. “Our preliminary trials show that Co-SR could increase the overall system throughput by 15 percent to 25 percent,” MediaTek says. Congestion: the throughout killer.MediaTek Coordinated Beamforming (Co-BF): There’s a trend here: Taking earlier Wi-Fi technologies and extending them to multiple access points. Spatial nulling was a feature that was launched in 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5), which allowed the router to basically stop signaling in certain directions. By doing so, the router would send the signals to where they were requested, and avoid jamming devices that didn’t want to talk to the router. This technique attempts to solve a fairly common problem in connected households, or in a public space served by Wi-Fi: two devices that sit very close to one another. Coordinated beamforming allows the access points to talk to one another, figure out which device wants the signal and which doesn’t, and align the mesh access point to “steer” the signal away from the device that isn’t communicating to the network by basically refusing to transmit to the region in which it sits. “The throughput offered by Coordinated Beamforming (Co-BF) in next-generation MediaTek Filogic is significantly enhanced, with increases ranging from 20 percent to 50 percent in a mesh network setup with one Control AP and one Agent AP,” MediaTek said. Dynamic Sub-Channel Operation: You’re probably aware that the latest devices support for the latest wireless standards, like Wi-Fi 7. But certain devices may also have more or improved Wi-Fi antennas that allow them higher throughput. In the past, that information would be passed to the router, and stored there. That wouldn’t be a problem under most conditions. But in a scenario where a number of different devices were downloading the same file, DSO would create a dynamic scenario where a more advanced device would receive a subchannel for downloading the file, faster. The difference between the older approach and Wi-Fi 8’s DSO would be that the access point would be able to decide, “knowing” the capabilities of each device and what they were asking for, and route the data accordingly. Here, MediaTek believes that DSO could push data throughput 80 percent higher than without the technology. A common Wi-Fi scenario: As you move around your home, your wireless data rate adjusts accordingly.MediaTek New data rates: You may not be aware of what’s called the MCS Index, the Modulation Coding Scheme for Wi-Fi. It’s basically a table to help your Wi-Fi router determine what the link speed should be, so that you can actually connect and stream data without errors. If your throughput slows down as you move around your house, that’s in part due to your device and router “deciding” what connection speed your device should stream at. The problem, MediaTek believes, is that the “step” down to slower rates is too profound, and additional gradations should be introduced, such as 16-QAM with a 2/3 coding rate. The idea would not be to introduce sharp drops and increases in throughput as you moved your phone or laptop around the home, but smaller increments. Again, MediaTek believes that these finer MCS divisions can improve overall transmission rates between 5 percent and 30 percent. A change of pace Again, the evolution of Wi-Fi 8 depends on how quickly the standard moves through the regulatory process. Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) was expected to be approved this past September, and it has not, yet. Sony’s PlayStation 5 may not be approved for India because the country has yet to approve the 6GHz wireless channel that the Wi-Fi 7 standard depends upon. That would hinder Wi-Fi 8, too. The probable roadmap for Wi-Fi standards approval. MediaTek Wireless standards take about six years to develop — and impatient hardware makers rarely wait. As MediaTek notes, Wi-Fi 7 products have shipped since the end of 2023, even though the standard hasn’t been formally approved. In part, that’s because the IEEE committee in charge of the standard rarely makes dramatic changes between the approval of the draft standard and the final standard. For Wi-Fi 8, the first products are expected to be available in early 2028, even as the final approval should be due by the end of that year. It’s worth noting, however, that the race to perpetually higher and higher speeds is pausing, for now, in two different segments of the PC market. CPUs have slowed their rush toward higher clock speeds — at Qualcomm and at Intel — in favor of lower power. With Wi-Fi 8, the emphasis now appears to be on improving the overall user experience first and foremost. Correction: Wi-Fi 8 will use the 2.4GHz frequency band, not the 2 and 4GHz frequency bands. The author sincerely regrets that error. Read...

Thunderbolt 5. The cutting edge of I/O. All of it — monitors, a Thunderbolt 5 dock, and even a Thunderbolt 5 SSD — was perched on my desk. I was pleased, in the way only tech nerds can be when they have a piece of gear few others do. A few days later, I was more than happy to take it apart and return to a slower and more functional Thunderbolt environment. Because I am simply not sure that the Thunderbolt 5 ecosystem is ready for prime time. This isn’t an indictment of Thunderbolt 5, per se. Rather, it’s all about the headaches that can accompany not one, but a multitude of devices, all of which can interact with each other in unexpected ways. Layer on software, drivers, firmware updates, and the like, and it’s tough to point an accusing finger at any one component. This is what testing cutting-edge hardware can mean: struggling with technology that should just work, but doesn’t. Further reading: Best Thunderbolt docks 2024: Extend your laptop’s capabilities Thunderbolt 5: The next generation of I/O Thunderbolt 5 was announced about a year ago, as the next step in the evolution of the Thunderbolt I/O standard. Thunderbolt wasn’t necessarily designed for power users, but the best Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 docks allows users to place a pair of 4K displays on their desk running at 60 Hz. I find this extremely useful for productivity, as I can arrange several windows’ worth of email, chat, calendar, Web browsers, and more on two or more displays. Both Thunderbolt 3 and 4 provide 40Gbps of throughput. Thunderbolt 5 increases that to 80Gbps, and in certain situations up to 120Gbps, too. This extra bandwidth plays right into the gaming and productivity space, as the extra bandwidth supports up to three 4K displays at 144Hz, two 8K displays at 60Hz, or a single 1080p display at 540Hz. (Intel hasn’t nailed down the specifics of these last two resolutions). Intel is also touting the fact that Thunderbolt 5 should be able to power external GPUs, a capability that was passed over in Thunderbolt 4. The problem is that Thunderbolt 5 hardware is in short supply, period. Although some of the earliest Thunderbolt 5 docks were shown off this past January, it’s now October, and about the only dock I’ve seen announced is Kensington’s SD5000T5 EQ, which I went hands-on with a short time ago. There aren’t too many Thunderbolt 5 cables, either. But a hands-on is not a test and I was eager to obtain hardware that I could use to put the Kensington SD5000T5 through its paces: to connect it to three 4K144 displays via a laptop with Thunderbolt 5 connections and, as a bonus, to see if I could find an SSD that could run at Thunderbolt 5 speeds. I wasn’t expecting it to be easy. For whatever reason, devices with Intel’s Thunderbolt 5 host and accessory component (“Barlow Ridge,” or the Intel JHL9580 and JHL9480) have been few and far between. Docks are still scarce, as I said, and only two notebooks to my knowledge ship with a (non-integrated) Thunderbolt 5 controller, a version of the Razer Blade and the Maingear ML-17. Mark Hachman / IDG Luck favored me. The Kensington SD5000T5 remained on my desk, and Maingear agreed to send over an ML-17 for review. A colleague also was in the process of reviewing a pre-release version of OWC’s Envoy Ultra Thunderbolt 5 SSD and agreed to let me test it for a short time in trade for some benchmarking results. Everything seemed to be coming together. Thunderbolt 5 started off poorly, then got worse A few days later, I had cleared the decks of all of my current projects, and sat down to play with the next generation of I/O power. I updated the ML-17 with the necessary Windows updates, Microsoft Store updates, available firmware updates, and so on. Maingear shipped the notebook to me with the Intel Driver & Support Assistant utility updated as well, so I was pretty sure that I had the latest hardware and drivers. The first steps were fairly positive. As most gamers know, gaming notebooks include a hefty power brick terminating in either a barrel charger or the squarish power connector. One of the benefits of Thunderbolt 5, however, is its ability to supply a hypothetical power draw of 240W. Just being able to plug in the gaming notebook into the Thunderbolt 5 dock and power it up without the need for the laptop’s ungainly external power connector left me quite pleased. Well, kind of. I later discovered that the dock would power the laptop on just one of the two Thunderbolt 5 ports, however, and checking it with a USB power meter found that it delivered no more than 87W, even while gaming. Maingear’s Thunderbolt 5 ports aren’t specifically labeled as Thunderbolt 5 ports, just a generic Thunderbolt connection.Mark Hachman / IDG Power delivery of 240W requires explicit support from the laptop, dock, and cable and I wasn’t too surprised that it didn’t meet my expectations. Unfortunately, however, the trend continued. Acer graciously supplied three of its Nitro XV5 (XV275K) 4K displays for a test bed. All three displays run up to 144Hz on the HDMI port and to 160Hz on the USB-C/DisplayPort, which should have been good enough to meet the Thunderbolt 5’s promised to render an image at 144Hz on three 4K displays. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Maingear’s laptop produced an image on just two of the displays plus the laptop itself. (Thunderbolt 4 docks output to two 4K displays, plus the laptop, so I have no reason to believe my interpretation of “three displays” was incorrect.). While one laptop rendered at 4K 144Hz just fine, it was a real struggle to get the other to do the same at 1440p — it took some unplugging and re-plugging to achieve it just once, slowly. I could not consistently repeat this. (Kensington’s dock supplies three upstream Thunderbolt 5 ports. I used Kensington’s own USB-C to HDMI adapter to connect to one display, plus two uni 4K60 USB-C to DisplayPort cables — which are only rated for 1440p165, not 4K — for the others. I was hoping that three displays would light up. They didn’t). Further reading: Is Thunderbolt 5 storage ready? A first look at the cutting-edge tech In fact, the whole setup felt pretty laggy just navigating around the laptop and via a Web browser — not something you’d expect with a top-of-the-line Intel CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU inside. I’m pretty sure the Thunderbolt connection negatively contributed. Streaming a 4K, 60Hz video stuttered badly when run on the external display that was connected to the Thunderbolt dock — well over 30 percent of the frames were lost. Playing back the same video on just the laptop itself wasn’t perfect, but it was much, much better. Maingear blamed this on the Thunderbolt 5 cable. “I haven’t tested a plethora of cables yet, but the Apple TB5 Pro cable has worked consistently for us,” a Maingear representative wrote in an email. “Where Thunderbolt 4 you were able to get away with a decent USB-C cable, Thunderbolt 5 seems to work best with certified Thunderbolt 5 cables.” That may be true, but Kensington’s Thunderbolt 5 cable was labeled appropriately and this should be certified. And why should I need to buy an Apple cable to get my PC docking station to work? OWC’s Envoy Pro FX SSD. This isn’t the Thunderbolt-equipped Envoy Ultra I was loaned. Unfortunately, I forgot to snap a photograph before I sent it back, but the design is basically the same.Mark Hachman / IDG Storage performance suffered as well When I connected the SSD, the performance of my Thunderbolt 5 test setup was just as bad. I typically run PCMark’s external storage benchmark to test a dock. My colleague Jon Jacobi prefers running storage-specific benchmarks to test the performance of the SSD directly. I prefer PCMark, whose external storage test reports the “bandwidth” of the SSD. That’s what I’m aiming for: How much data does the drive have to work with? I also test a second way, by recording the time it takes to copy a folder full of multimedia and other files from the SSD, through the dock, onto the laptop. I do all that by itself and also while streaming a 4K 60Hz video via the Internet over the Thunderbolt cable, just to see whether a background file transfer will affect performance. The experience, quite frankly, stunk. While running the PCMark test with the SSD directly connected, I recorded a score of 1,743 or 252.3 MB/s. But while connected to the dock, the SSD’s PCMark score plunged to just 1,108 or 159.3MB/s. Was that the dock’s fault or the Thunderbolt 5 connection? One of the two, most likely. When I directly connected the SSD to the laptop and copied my folder to the desktop, it took an average of one minute and five seconds. While streaming video, the same task took 58 seconds longer or two minutes and three seconds. That seemed quite extreme. Weirdly, when I connected the SSD to the dock and then performed the folder copy, it finished in 41 seconds — far faster! But performing the folder copy while streaming the video required two minutes and six seconds, again with the SSD attached to the dock. (The Internet connection was supplied by Ethernet, which remained connected. But letting the system use Wi-Fi didn’t seem to make any difference). It’s worth a reminder that when I tested the Kensington dock on a “normal” Thunderbolt 4-equipped laptop and a slower SSD, the dock performed “normally,” as well. In the past few years, we’ve seen the occasional weird result when benchmarking, such as benchmarks of mobile CPUs run on battery power that exceed the performance of the same laptop while plugged in. Still, the wildly varying results, including the heavy stuttering while playing video, told me something’s not quite right. What is it? I don’t know, which is souring me on the whole Thunderbolt 5 experience. Should you buy Thunderbolt 5? Not right now When testing a single device, a good review works to isolate the variable. Desktop CPUs are tested against the fastest GPUs possible, with common motherboards, memory, and storage (if possible), so that any differences in performance can be directly attributed to the new CPU. Maingear’s Windows 11 Settings menu reports the controller as USB4 v2, which should be essentially identical to Thunderbolt. I can’t find any specific mention of “Thunderbolt” in the Settings or in the Device Manager, just USB4.Mark Hachman / IDG In this case, I’m testing a new dock, laptop, and SSD, with new cables running between them. That’s at least three unknowns I can’t really nail down. So Maingear can accuse the cable of being faulty, while I suspect that Maingear’s hardware may be at fault. I can’t know for certain. What I am a bit suspicious about is the relative lack of Thunderbolt 5 hardware, even late in 2024. Intel has cycled through its Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake launches, and neither includes an integrated Thunderbolt 5 controller. Intel gave some good reasons for excluding it — desktop vendors prefer to “upsell” by using discrete components, for example — but the instability that I’m seeing makes me wonder if there’s something more going on. I’m not writing Thunderbolt 5 off at all. An updated driver could potentially solve this problem or it might require a more sophisticated hardware revision to Intel’s Barlow Ridge controller itself. I don’t know. For now, however I would not recommend buying into the Thunderbolt 5 ecosystem. When you buy (or test) bleeding-edge hardware, sometimes you’re the one that ends up with the cuts. Read...

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