1+ mon, 1+ week ago (427+ words) Traditional comms satellites rely on intermittent links with ground stations, but Muon Halo satellites will stay continuously connected with integrated Starlink Mini lasers. Muon Space has announced a partnership with Starlink to establish an "industry-first [of] persistent optical connectivity in orbit." In an email to Tom's Hardware, the company revealed that the agreement marks the start of a new era where satellites function less like isolated machines and more like live, Internet-connected platforms in orbit. Traditional communications satellites are hamstrung by a limited window of opportunity to transmit/receive data when orbiting over a ground station link. However, Muon Space will now be able to provide mission'optimized satellite constellations, built on its Halo platform, integrated with SpaceX's Starlink mini laser terminals. Connecting to Starlink's global network will allow Muon's satellites to achieve link speeds of 25 Gbps at distances up to…...

1+ mon, 1+ week ago (408+ words) Bambu Lab launches a printer without the US Market Bambu Lab launched an excellent "refreshed" version of their popular P1S earlier this week, the P2S, but it's not flying off the shelves. At least, not in the United States, where it is nowhere to be found due to "logistical" issues that likely boil down to tariffs. The P2S is tantalizingly in stock everywhere else around the globe: Canada, Europe, Australia, Japan, and the whole of Asia. But you can't get it here from there. Tom's Hardware received a P2S for review in September, delivered right to America's Heartland, along with dozens of other reviewers around the globe. We gave it 4.5 Stars, and we're considering putting it at the top of our Best 3D Printer list. Except it's really hard to recommend a product to our readers that they can not purchase. I reached out to…...

6+ mon, 2+ week ago (473+ words) Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason. Sandisk's CEO, David Goeckeler, has been boasting about a formidable new SSD controller dubbed Stargate. Combining Stargate with the latest BiCS8 Quad Level Cell (QLC) NAND, the company has a "dynamite project" in its hands, teased Goeckeler. ComputerBase reports (machine translation) that this should mean some massive capacity SSDs are on the way, scaling up to 512TB drives in 2027. We don't have much in the way of technical details about the Stargate controller at this time, but we can read between the lines of the CEO's statement, and ponder over previous announcements and roadmaps. "We have a new architecture coming out in the next couple of quarters that we call Stargate, new…...

3+ mon, 3+ day ago (437+ words) SN5100 is over 20% more expensive than the SN5000. Sandisk has announced the release of the WD Blue SN5100, the successor to the WD Blue SN5000, which was introduced last year. The newest SN5100 is still a PCIe 4.0 drive, but it incorporates updated hardware that Sandisk says provides performance enhancements of up to 30% compared to its predecessor. The SN5100 further utilizes Sandisk's latest nCache 4.0 technology to achieve higher performance and power efficiency. nCache 4.0 is a dynamic SLC management system that efficiently writes data at high speeds to SLC blocks before transferring them to QLC during periods of inactivity. It's the same technology that's available on the latest WD Black SN8100 flagship model. The SN5100 sticks to the popular M.2 2280 form factor and single-sided design. The latter ensures that the SSD fits on both desktop and mobile platforms. Sandisk will continue to offer the SN5100 to consumers in four capacities: 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. When…...

6+ mon, 3+ week ago (493+ words) Dallin Grimm is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has been building and breaking computers since 2017, serving as the resident youngster at Tom's. From APUs to RGB, Dallin has a handle on all the latest tech news." If you're old enough to remember when 8MB thumb drives hit the scene, you'll probably remember Clippy, Microsoft's digital writing assistant. Clippy lived in the bottom corner of Microsoft Office from 1996 to 2003, but now he can return to your desktop with a new life as a mouthpiece for AI, thanks to a new project from software engineer "Felix Rieseberg. This odd couple of 90's UI design and the modern-day AI craze provides potential users the ability to set up any locally installed LLM and use Clippy as its mouthpiece. Many of the most popular publicly-available LLMs will function with Clippy, with one-click installation…...

1+ mon, 6+ day ago (253+ words) Access deeper insights, exclusive features, and much more. Earlier this month, Tom's Hardware Premium came out of beta, following its introduction in early August. We've listened to your feedback on the forums and elsewhere, and now we're ready to lift the lid on our brand-new monthly pricing, which won't break the bank. Tom's Hardware Premium enables you to get more coverage out of the site you read every day. We've also listened to feedback and have recently added an RSS feed, so you don't miss out on any new stories that we publish, or you can access our newsletter, Uptime, which breaks down the biggest stories every week, with a foreword from our Editor-in-Chief, Paul Alcorn. All of the content you continue to expect from Tom's Hardware, such as our hierarchy pages, reviews, and news, will remain free to access....

2+ week, 2+ day ago (439+ words) Kunal Khullar is a contributing writer at Tom's Hardware." He is a long time technology journalist and reviewer specializing in PC components and peripherals, and welcomes any and every question around building a PC. After numerous delays, the Analogue 3D finally has a confirmed shipping date. The long-awaited reincarnation of the Nintendo 64 console will begin rolling out to customers on November 18. Formerly known as the Analogue 64, the ambitious remake was first teased in 2023 with an expected release in 2024. However, the company later postponed the shipment of its pre-orders to Q1 2025, followed by yet another delay, due to an unexpected increase in tariffs. Analogue's upcoming console is a 4K-ready version of the classic Nintendo 64, with support for VRR (variable refresh rate). Unlike most retro systems today, it does not rely on emulation. Rather, an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) chip replicates the original…...

10+ mon, 1+ week ago (495+ words) Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote'for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the'Sonic Adventure 2'soundtrack. Earlier this month renders of an Energizer-branded laptop from French company Avenir Telecom first appeared online, and scant details were later given to Notebookcheck. What we now know as Energizer's new EnergyBook Classic line seems targeted at the entry-level computing market, with prices starting as low as $199. We'd be surprised to see USB4 instead of more entry-level USB3, as well, since this entry-level device would likely not particularly benefit from or work well with devices that…...

9+ mon, 1+ week ago (465+ words) Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason. Impossible-Weight485 describes how he played games on his PC when the system shut down without warning after he finished a gaming session and browsed some websites. The Redditor then did what most people would do: restart the PC. However, as the system powered up, "the GPU caught on fire, and smoke started coming out," they claim. Burn marks are evident on both the graphics card and motherboard. On the graphics card, you can see the darkened, yellowed area of the PCB near a suspected blown capacitor. The Redditor also shows a burn mark on the Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero motherboard " just above and between the 'H' and 'E' in the…...

1+ mon, 2+ week ago (450+ words) Targeting a months-old deal for a company that was thought likely to expand Qualcomm's business, not reinforce it. SAMD claims the deal may fall afoul of China's anti-monopoly laws. Although the results of the investigation remain to be seen, it's a curious stance to take since Qualcomm and AutoTalks operate in entirely different industries. Indeed, Qualcomm's initial interest in AutoTalks was seen as a way to diversify its portfolio of businesses and open up new avenues for profit-making. China's investigation into Nvidia's business dealings, as well as claims it installed tracking hardware in its GPUs, were seen as much the same. The tightened export controls on Chinese rare earth minerals China instigated this week, are thought likely to be moves to strengthen China's position during negotiations. It's not all plain sailing for Chinese companies, though. A drive towards having semiconductor…...