The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recently released an update to the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) image format, one of the most popular image formats for web content. Tom’s Hardware writes that this is the first time the W3C has updated the file format since 2003. The PNG image file format was originally launched in 1996, but this is only the third version ever. New features in the latest version include support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) images, animation via animated PNG (APNG) files, and storage of EXIF metadata. The W3C decided to update the file standard after another group within the consortium—working on time-based text such as subtitles, captions, and audio descriptions—realized that PNG files needed HDR support. The newest version of PNG is already supported by popular web browsers including Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, as well as creative editing software such as Adobe Photoshop and Da Vinci Resolve. Read...

The 2025 school year may be ending, but students who return in the fall will have a new AI tutor: Google Gemini for Education. At the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference, Google launched its new AI teaching tool. “Gemini for Education provides default access to our premium AI models, soon with significantly higher limits than what consumers get at no cost, plus enterprise-grade data protection and an admin-managed experience as a core Workspace service — all included in your Workspace for Education plan free of charge,” Google said. Google is pitching the ability for educators to roll their own “Gems,” or AI experts, which can help students learn new concepts. Google NotebookLM also provides a repository for students to upload documents into and then hear an audio summary, via Audio Overviews. Google recently added Video Overviews, too, which adds a visual element. Google Gemini for Education will be free, though Google is offering a paid Google Workspace with Gemini add-on for $18 per user per month, though with some educational discounts. That program includes the ability to include some 8-second video clips using the Veo 3 text-to-video generator, which will help teachers up their meme game to connect with kids. Of course, there’s a bit of irony in all of this, since teachers are mortally afraid of AI’s ability to help their students cheat — even as they don’t want to deny them the ability to use it, either. It’s a big moral quandary, especially when it comes to testing. The upshot last year was that teachers might use AI to teach, but the safest way to avoid AI cheating was to go back to pen and paper at test time. Gemini will get its own tab in Google Classroom.Google Google, meanwhile, seems to want to make AI as ubiquitous as a laptop. We’ll see what happens in the fall. Read...

If you’re having trouble getting your Windows PC to connect to a NAS, you’re not the only one. A recent update in Windows 11 Pro 24H2 introduced introduced security settings that block certain types of file sharing, specifically guest access. This can result in confusing error messages when trying to access shared folders. Fortunately, there are ways to work around this while staying safe on a private network. For example, the message reads: You cannot access this shared folder because your organization’s security policies block unauthenticated guest access. These policies help protect your PC from insecure or malicious devices on the network.The network path was not found. You might get system error 3227320323 or see codes like 0x80070035 or 0x800704f8. But don’t worry, you can still connect Windows 10 PCs to the NAS. In most cases, the problem stems from new security restrictions introduced in Windows 11 24H2. For instance, Microsoft has now disabled guest access to shares. In the past, it was possible to connect to a share or NAS without entering a username and password—but this is no longer allowed in Windows 11 Pro 24H2. Check whether or not the signing of SMB connections is already set to “Disabled” on your computer. IDG There are two logical solutions to this problem: Either you do without guest access to your NAS drive and set up one or more user accounts with a password. In the interest of data security, this is the recommended method. As the steps required to create a user differ from NAS system to NAS system, we will not go into further detail here. Alternatively, you can partially override the changes in Windows 11 Pro 24H2 and deactivate the user login requirement. Attention: You should only select this option on a private network where you do not store any confidential data on the NAS. This is how you proceed. First, check the signing of the SMB connection to your NAS device. SMB is the protocol that lets you access shared folders on a network. To check it, open Group Policy Editor by typing gpedit in the taskbar search and clicking “Edit group policy.” Then go to: Computer configuration > Windows settings > Security settings > Local policies > Security options. On the right side, find the policy “Microsoft network (client): Digitally sign communication (always)” and make sure it’s set to “Disabled.” If not, adjust the setting and confirm with “OK.” Now make sure that the guest login works again. “Computer configuration” > “Administrative templates” > “Network” > “LanMan Workstation.” On the right side, double-click “Enable insecure guest logins,” select “Enabled,” and click “OK.” Access to the NAS should now also work in the latest version of Windows. Nevertheless, a warning once again: You should only change these default settings if there’s no other option. There is no Group Policy Editor in the Home version of Windows, so you must make the changes in PowerShell instead..IDG In the Home version of Windows 11 24H2, guest access is still active by default. If there are still problems accessing a NAS device because the setting has been changed for some reason, do the following: Since Windows Home doesn’t have Group Policy Editor, you’ll need to use PowerShell. Just type “powershell” in the taskbar search, then click “Run as administrator” on the right. Now enter the command: Set-SmbClientConfiguration -RequireSecuritySignature $false Press Enter and confirm with Y for “Yes.” You have now deactivated SMB signing. For guest access, enter the following command: Set-SmbClientConfiguration -EnableInsecureGuestLogons $true Then press Enter and confirm again with Y. Read...

Microsoft recently published a new blog post that confirms what has been suspected since March: the next version of Windows will be called Windows 11 25H2 and it will be more of a minor update. Microsoft compares Windows 11 25H2 with version 23H2, which was way more manageable than the mess of 24H2. But “minor” doesn’t mean it won’t have any new features. On the contrary! What’s new in Windows 11 25H2? Even though the Windows 11 25H2 update is expected to be only around 1 MB in size, Microsoft is still preparing a few adjustments for Windows 11 with it. These adjustments include a new Start menu with a grid and category layout, as reported by Windows Latest. Users will then be able to categorize their apps themselves into specific groups—for example, creative apps, games, streaming, social media—to access them more quickly. However, a certain number of apps must be present in a category for it to be visible. Windows Latest There will also be a new feature that throttles your CPU usage when you’re idling or away from your PC for a long time. The main goal here is to reduce power consumption and extende battery life. The first Windows 11 Insiders can already test 25H2 via the Canary Channel. Previously, there were some serious bugs that affected the OS’s stability, causing Microsoft to pause testing for a while. The good news is, updating to Windows 11 25H2 is a lot simpler and more straightforward than it has been in the past. You only need to restart your system once to get the new version. Still, Microsoft recommends updating to 24H2 first before stepping up to 25H2. Why is Windows 11 25H2 a minor update? As Windows 11 25H2 doesn’t contain any far-reaching changes for the operating system, Microsoft is not calling it a complete feature update. That would set expectations too high. It’s also natural that the next Windows 11 version update would be somewhat smaller again, given how tumultuous the 24H2 update turned out to be, causing numerous problems for users that had to be repeatedly rescued via emergency updates and rollout blocks. All the new features introduced in 24H2 will, of course, be included in 25H2. Users who are lagging behind will therefore receive a large package anyway if they haven’t been keeping up to date. It’s likely that Microsoft will finalize and deliver Windows 11 25H2 to users in October 2025. Support for Windows 10 was supposed to end at that time, but Microsoft also recently announced an extra year of free Windows 10 security updates… with a catch. Read...

SquareX warns that Browser AI Agents now pose greater security risks to firms than employees, due to their limited awareness and lack of training in spotting threats. Read...

Tech platforms could be forced to prevent illegal content from going viral, under more online safety measures proposed by Ofcom. Read...

Arvind Krishnan has joined Alteryx as Chief Technology Officer to lead the firm`s AI analytics platform and global engineering team. Read...

James Lee Williams, 32, found fame after winning the first series of Ru Paul`s Drag Race UK. Read...

If there’s one thing we all need, it’s a bit of extra storage space. Even better when that storage is super-fast! Whether you have a laptop with a small SSD or you just want to rely on the cloud less, getting a portable SSD can be the most convenient step. Last month, Crucial released the super-fast Crucial X10 portable SSD, and you can already snag it at a huge discount: the 2TB Crucial X10 is down to $135 on Amazon (was $250). This is an incredible deal given how fast and compact the brand-new Crucial X10 is. We reviewed it and we loved it, enough to give it a 4.5-star rating and our Editors’ Choice award. The super-fast transfer speeds, the gorgeous design, and the IP65-rated water and dust protection are some of the things we loved the most about it. It’s inching its way towards becoming one of our favorite portable SSDs. We’re talking data speeds of up to 2,100 MB/s. Think about that for a second. With the Crucial X10, you can move two gigabytes every second—an entire movie file in the blink of an eye. In our own tests, we managed to move 48 gigabytes in less than half a minute. That’s a huge step up over nearly all other portable SSDs in this price range. Plus, the Crucial X10 is compatible with just about any device and operating system, including Windows, Mac, Android, iPad, Linux, and even PS5. Snap up the 2TB Crucial X10 on Amazon for its best price yet while you still can! Or if 2TB is too little or too much storage space for you, take advantage of the other models as well: the 1TB drive is $82 (was $140), the 4TB drive is $297 (was $396), and the 6TB drive is $292 (was $559). The 8TB drive is $621 but not on sale. Save a whopping 46% on Crucial`s ultra-fast portable SSDBuy now at Amazon Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Great battery life Good desktop performance Solid build quality NPU for Copilot+ PC features Cons Price feels high when higher-end laptops are often on sale Dull display Tinny speakers Slow GPU Our Verdict Lenovo’s IdeaPad Slim 3x delivers great battery life and capable day-to-day performance, but the hardware makes a lot of compromises. That’s a tough sell when higher-end Copilot+ PCs with faster CPUs and better displays often drop to this price on sale. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x is an ARM-based laptop with the new low-end Qualcomm Snapdragon X chip. Thanks to Snapdragon, this machine has excellent battery life for its class and an NPU for the shiny Copilot+ PC features Microsoft is releasing. It’s the lowest launch price for a Snapdragon X Copilot+ PC I’ve seen yet. The build quality and design are good, too. But the compromises here would feel a lot more justifiable at $599 than $749. Still, this machine beats the Intel variant — no question. The big problem is that this laptop is launching a year after the first Snapdragon X Copilot+ PCs, with slower internals than those in earlier models. At this machine’s initial retail price, it’s competing with Copilot+ PCs with stronger hardware that have been out for months and are frequently on sale for a similar price. Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x: Specs The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x has the same lower-end Qualcomm Snapdragon X X1-26-100 CPU I initially reviewed in Asus’s featherlight $1200 Asus ZenBook A14. It makes much more sense here in this $749 machine than that $1200 machine. (Qualcomm initially said it hoped this CPU would power $600 laptops.) While this laptop’s price makes a lot more sense for this CPU, it’s still worth noting that this is a newer, lower-end Snapdragon X SKU. It’s slower than the Snapdragon X Plus chips that Qualcomm initially released. Here’s the official product matrix. As it shows, Snapdragon X ranks at the bottom of the pack with the slowest CPU (up to 3 GHz) and the slowest GPU (1.7 TFLOPS). Qualcomm talked up GPU performance and gaming a lot when it launched the Snapdragon X platform, and you should be aware the GPU in these machines is much slower than Qualcomm’s marketing might lead you to believe. However, this machine does have the NPU all Qualcomm Snapdragon X PCs come with. That means that, unlike with the Intel variant, you are getting Copilot+ PC AI features on this machine. This laptop has a 256 GB SSD, but it comes with a second SSD slot so you can install another SSD if you need more storage later. Model number: Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x 15Q8X10 CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon X (X1-26-100) Memory: 16 GB LPDDR5x RAM Graphics/GPU: Qualcomm Adreno X1-45 NPU: Qualcomm Hexagon NPU (up to 45 TOPS) Display: 15.3-inch 1920×1200 IPS display with 60Hz refresh rate and touch screen Storage: 256 GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD Webcam: 720p webcam with privacy shutter Connectivity: 1x USB Type-C (USB 5Gbps), 2x USB Type-A (USB 5Gbps), 1x HDMI 1.4, 1x SD card reader, 1x combo audio jack, 1x power connector Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: Fingerprint reader for Windows Hello Battery capacity: 60 Watt-hours Dimensions: 13.52 x 9.51 x 0.7 inches Weight: 3.42 pounds MSRP: $749 as tested At $749, the compromises — the display, speakers, webcam, and GPU in particular — feel like they add up fast. Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x: Design and build quality IDG / Chris Hoffman The 15-inch Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x has a top made of aluminum and a bottom made of plastic. While plastic isn’t the most premium material, it looks good and feels fine. From a distance, the design looks similar to Lenovo’s more expensive laptops to me, especially thanks to the aluminum lid. There’s nothing particularly wrong with a good plastic laptop, and the design and build quality here are both good! There’s no weird flexing as you hold the laptop or open it up. The “Luna Gray” color scheme here looks nice, too — it’s more silver or light-blue than gray in the right lighting. At 3.42 pounds, this 15-inch laptop could be a little more lightweight if it was made of more expensive materials. But the weight is totally fine, and the 0.7-inch thickness is reasonable too. The software is a bit obnoxious out of the box, as it tends to be on consumer Lenovo laptops. For example, McAfee antivirus pops up and encourages you to buy a subscription. You can uninstall this stuff, but the laptop would feel better out of the box without it. Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x: Keyboard and trackpad IDG / Chris Hoffman The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x has a fine keyboard, complete with a number pad. I like having the number pad when there’s room. 15-inch laptops tend to include a number pad since they have more space, but some people might want a roomier keyboard without that number pad. Lenovo makes lots of good laptop keyboards, and this keyboard feels okay, but it’s lower-end and more budget-focused than the options in more expensive premium laptops. As in the Intel-powered Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 model, there’s some mushiness to the keys. When I type, I notice the plastic around the keys push downward into the machine when my finger goes all the way down on a key. It’s not as bad as it sounds, but this is one of the mushiest keyboards I’ve used on a Lenovo machine. It’s one of those touches that makes the machine feel more budget than premium. But it’s usable and comfortable enough. The trackpad feels solid, too. It’s a plastic surface rather than a premium glass one, but it’s responsible and smooth, with a fine click-down feel. It’s positioned further to the left than on most laptops. If you find yourself using your touchpad with your right hand, that may be a little inconvenient. Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x: Display and speakers IDG / Chris Hoffman The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x’s 15.3-inch 1920×1200 IPS display is the weakest part of the experience. At 300 nits, it’s on the dim side on paper. In real life, it feels not just unusually dim, but also dull. I cranked this one up to 100 percent brightness and still want it to go higher. The display does have an anti-glare coating that works nicely to avoid reflections, so it arguably needs less brightness than glossy laptop displays that are more vulnerable to glare. The 60Hz refresh rate is also the bare minimum, here — but 60Hz isn’t a major issue compared to the other problems with the display. This is a touch-screen laptop, too. That’s a nice feature to have. The speakers are lacking, too. They’re on the quiet side, but the biggest problem is that the audio quality is tinny. I listen to both Steely Dan’s Aja and Daft Punk’s Get Lucky on Spotify when I review laptop speakers. The instrument separation in Aja and the bass in Get Lucky were both on the bad side as far as laptop speakers go. I’d get a good pair of headphones if you want to listen to music or watch media. Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x: Webcam, microphone, biometrics The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x includes a 720p webcam, which is a surprise since the Intel variant I recently reviewed included a 1080p webcam. The webcam just isn’t great in 2025 — 1080p webcams have largely become standard. The webcam produces an image that’s lower-detail and more washed out than the average 1080p webcam on a newer laptop. Still, it’s fine — if you just need to participate in an occasional video meeting, webcam quality isn’t necessarily the most important factor on a machine like this. The IdeaPad Slim 3x does have a physical webcam shutter switch above the display — that’s always a privacy feature I’m thrilled to see. The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x’s microphone didn’t do a great job, either. It picked up my voice without background noise, but the sound was unusually quiet and sounded a little low-quality. I would aim to use an external mic in calls and voice chats if you opt for this machine. This machine doesn’t have an IR camera for facial recognition with Windows Hello. Instead, it has a fingerprint reader at the right side of the laptop, below the Enter key on the number pad. The fingerprint reader works fine, and some people will prefer it to facial recognition hardware. That’s a matter of personal taste. Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x: Connectivity IDG / Chris Hoffman The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x has a decent number of ports for a budget-focused laptop, just like the Intel variant does. On the right side, this machine has a USB Type-A port next to a full-size SD card reader. On the left side, Lenovo includes a power connector (Lenovo doesn’t include a USB-C charger, which is a surprise for a Snapdragon laptop) along with a second USB Type-A port, an HDMI 1.4 out port, a USB Type-C port, and a combo audio jack. With so many laptops supporting faster USB speeds and HDMI 2.1 out, the port selection does feel a bit lower-end. Thanks to the Snapdragon hardware here, this machine does support the future-proof Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 standards. (The Intel variant, with its previous-generation platform, doesn’t offer these.) Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x: Performance While the Snapdragon chip here is the lowest-end one available, this machine still performs fine in day-to-day use. While the CPU speed is a bit lower, the biggest performance drops are in multi-core performance (this chip has fewer cores) and graphics performance (the GPU here is substantially slower than on higher-tier Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite chips.) Those aren’t the most important for typical desktop productivity performance. While app compatibility has improved with Windows on ARM, it still isn’t perfect. Personally, all the desktop apps I use regularly run fine — aside from OBS Studio, which has an experimental build that should run. We ran the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x through our standard benchmarks to see how it performs. However, bear in mind that some of our benchmark tools — like PCMark 10 — don’t run on ARM PCs. IDG / Chris Hoffman To get an idea of CPU performance, we run Cinebench R24. Unlike many benchmarking tools, this runs natively on ARM PCs, so we can compare performance across the x86 and ARM platforms without Microsoft’s Prism translation layer getting involved. Cinebench is a heavily multithreaded benchmark that focuses on overall CPU performance. Since it’s heavily multithreaded, CPUs with more cores have a huge advantage. The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x scored 711 in the Cinebench R24 multi-threaded benchmark. That’s substantially faster than the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 variant with the Intel Core 5 210H hardware and not too far behind the Dell Inspiron 14 Plus variant with faster Snapdragon hardware. IDG / Chris Hoffman Next, we run a graphical benchmark. This isn’t a gaming laptop — not even by Snapdragon laptop standards — but it’s still good to check how the GPU performs. First, we run 3Dmark Time Spy, a graphical benchmark that focuses on GPU performance. This particular benchmark runs through the Prism translation layer as it’s not ARM-native. Despite that translation layer slowing things down, the Qualcomm GPU here scored 1063, which was only a little slower than the integrated Intel graphics in the Intel variant. This benchmark reflects how GPU-accelerated apps perform in the real world, as most apps and games aren’t available in ARM-native versions. IDG / Chris Hoffman We also run 3DMark Night Raid, which runs natively on ARM laptops. With the Prism translation layer getting out of the way, the Qualcomm Adreno GPU here produced a score of 16677. That’s substantially faster than Intel’s integrated graphics. However, as you can see in both the Night Raid and Time Spy benchmarks, this is unusually bad compared to other Snapdragon laptops. If you plan on using the laptop for gaming or GPU-accelerated professional applications, I would strongly encourage you to look for a laptop with faster graphics hardware. Overall, the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x did fine, delivering decent desktop performance in the desktop apps many people use all day — browsers like Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, productivity apps like Microsoft Word, and collaboration tools like Slack. But it will lag behind in more demanding workflows — especially anything that needs graphics acceleration. Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x: Battery life The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x has a 60 Watt-hour battery. Combined with a power-sipping Qualcomm Snapdragon X processor, this ARM-powered Windows PC should have great battery life. And it does. IDG / Chris Hoffman To benchmark the battery life, we play a 4K copy of Tears of Steel on repeat in on Windows 11 with airplane mode enabled until the laptop suspends itself. We set the laptop’s display to 250 nits of brightness for this test. This is the best-case scenario for any laptop since local video playback is so efficient, and real battery life in day-to-day use is always going to be less than this. The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x lasted an average of 982 minutes before suspending itself — that’s over 16 hours. While you can get a few more hours of battery with a more expensive Snapdragon or Lunar Lake laptop — those will often have larger batteries, which means longer life — this is a great number for a budget laptop. There’s a good chance it will last for an entire workday — depending on how demanding the applications you use are and how long your workday is! Notably, it’s nearly two times more battery life than the similar Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 and its Intel Core 5 210H processor delivered. That’s a huge improvement. Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x: Conclusion The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3x is a tough laptop to pass judgement on. If this was one of the $600 Snapdragon laptops we were promised by Qualcomm’s marketing push, I think it would be compelling. At $749, the compromises — the display, speakers, webcam, and GPU in particular — feel like they add up fast. On the other hand, this machine is worlds better than the Intel variant I just reviewed. You’re getting a faster CPU, faster GPU, much longer battery life, Wi-Fi 7 support, and an NPU for Copilot+ PC AI features. The laptop runs cooler and quieter. I’d much rather have the Snapdragon hardware in this chassis than that particular Intel chip. While I haven’t seen another Snapdragon laptop or Copilot+ PC with a starting retail price this low, you can often find laptops with more impressive hardware on sale around the $749 price point. Some of the competing models that frequently drop to that price even have beautiful-looking OLED displays. But, on a good sale, this machine could be an amazing deal if you want an inexpensive ARM laptop running Windows. Read...