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…...

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…...

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....

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…...

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…...

2+ mon, 3+ day ago (504+ words) Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he's not working, you'll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun. Even though SSDs have largely eclipsed mechanical drives in today's PC landscape, they still hold an important position when it comes to mass storage " specifically for archival duties, such as a NAS. Usually, even hard drives can soar in cost when you scale the capacity; that's why scoring a deal can be really enticing in these one-and-done sort of purchases. We've spotted one such offer for you: Western Digital's 22TB WD Red Pro hard drive for just $400 on Amazon, a solid $50 less than its list price. With its 512 MB…...

2+ day, 5+ hour ago (221+ words) Limited-time offer gives you more of the Tom's Hardware content you love. You can get up to 50% off an annual subscription, or try your first month for just $5.99 (regional pricing may vary). This offer only runs until December 2. After this period, we can't guarantee when you'll see this price again. Don't miss out on this Tom's Hardware Premium Black Friday offer with 50% off the yearly subscription, or pay only $5.99 (33% off) for a month of access. Get deeper news analysis, deep dives into specialist topics in the semiconductor industry, as well as access to Bench, the largest benchmarking database around. So, all-in-all, you get access to Bench, deeper dives into the hottest news, exclusive features, such as hardware roadmaps and architecture breakdowns, and access to our roundup newsletter, Uptime, with a letter penned by our editor-in-chief, Paul Alcorn. We've dropped a…...

6+ mon, 7+ hour ago (496+ words) Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he's not working, you'll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun. Mozilla Firefox 139.0.1 includes a crucial fix for an irritating bug that caused artifacts with Nvidia GPUs in certain setups. This bug was introduced with version 139.0, likely because Mozilla disabled a blocklist that prevented DirectComposition from being used with Nvidia GPUs, and multi monitor setups with different refresh rates. Mozilla launched Firefox 139.0 on May 27th, introducing a slew of new features, such as custom new tab backgrounds, full-page translation for supported extensions, just to name a few. However, shortly after the update went live, forums and Reddit threads were teeming…...

9+ mon, 3+ week ago (415+ words) Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He's been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he's been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics. Microsoft's Bing search engine (via PCWorld) presents a clickbait result when you ask how to uninstall Microsoft Edge. While it shows a video with instructions and features the question, "Why can't I uninstall Microsoft Edge?" the top article is titled "How to Uninstall Microsoft Edge," with the URL indicating it's an official Microsoft page. However, clicking the link directs you to the Microsoft Edge homepage, which highlights everything positive about the browser and doesn't answer your initial query. Google Chrome is still the leading browser, with StatCounter reporting a 67.08% market share. Safari is at 17.95%, but it's only available on Apple devices. Microsoft Edge is in third place, with…...