Twitter, Instagram, and More Ready to Pay $5.3M Settlement to Users in 5-Year-Old Privacy Case

A proposed settlement revealed in court documents this week could lead to a collection of eight companies — Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare, Kik, Gowalla, Foodspotting, Yelp, and Path — contributing a grand total of $5.3 million to a collection pot for consumers claiming the companies violated their privacy in the early years of the iOS ecosystem (via Fortune). The settlement is the bookend to a lawsuit that began in 2012 and centered around the contact-finding feature of some iOS apps called “Find Friends.”

Find Friends allows new app users to quickly and easily discover if any of the contacts in their iPhone are also using the same app. According to the lawsuit filed by a group of disgruntled consumers in 2012, these apps — and Apple itself, which was also targeted in the lawsuit — violated their privacy in that it never informed them that their contact lists would be transferred and saved onto company servers. The $5.3 million payout is aimed at people who used these apps between 2009 and 2012.

For five years the companies have tried to fight the lawsuit by attesting that Find Friends could never work without users’ contact lists being stored on servers. In response, the court ruled that even if that was the case, the companies should have been more upfront to customers about where their contact lists were going. Now, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar must approve the settlement before it officially takes effect and customers can reap the rewards.

As Fortune pointed out, it probably won’t be a huge sum considering the amount of people and the three-year time frame.

As for consumers, no one is going to get rich from the settlement since there are likely millions of people who downloaded the apps in the specified time periods described in the court documents. But as many eligible people are unlikely to apply for the money at all, it’s likely those who do will get a few bucks.

Of the 18 original defendants, today Apple and LinkedIn remain the only companies targeted in the lawsuit who are challenging the settlement offer, with all other defendants ready to settle. As is usual in such cases, eligible users will be informed of the settlement via email.

Tag: lawsuits
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Marvel RPG will let you play as Spidey or Hulk on consoles

Marvel Heroes 2016, the free-to-play role-playing and MMO hybrid is coming to the PS4 and Xbox One consoles as Marvel Heroes Omega this spring, developer Gazillion revealed. As with the PC version, it’ll let you play as Spider-Man, Captain America, the Hulk and 38 other heroes, or the entire Avengers or Defenders teams. It features a nine-chapter story campaign that’ll see you defending Manhattan and taking on Doctor Doom, Loki and other super villains.

In a Q&A, the developer said it has “no plans” to let you bring characters or progress from the PC version, and console users won’t be able to play with PC players. The game will launch in a closed beta “scheduled to begin soon” on PS4, with the Xbox One beta coming later on. There’s also an early access program on Playstation 4 that’s set to begin around the end of the closed beta.

Marvel hasn’t yet said when Marvel Heroes Omega will launch widely, but it did reveal one piece of good news: The console version will be free-to-play. As with the PC version, however, there’s an in-game currency if you want to spend (real) money on new costumes, skins and other content.

Source: Playstation Blog

Samsung’s second-tier ‘MU’ 4K TVs are an alternative to QLED

With prices beginning at $2,500 for the most basic model, Samsung’s QLED 4K TVs are likely out of reach for a lot of people. The good news is that the company hasn’t forgotten customers who can’t drop that much for a TV and has released a series that includes more affordable alternatives. Samsung’s MU series of smart 4K (Ultra HD) TVs have variants that are almost as cheap as Vizio’s new 4K offerings. It’s composed of four models that come in different sizes, with the smallest (40 inches), most basic one priced at $549.

All four models are HDR compatible, loaded with Samsung’s new smart TV user-interface and come with the manufacturer’s smart remote control with voice capabilities. The MU 7 Series (40 to 65 inches) is more advanced than the most basic MU 6 (40 to 75 inches), however, with its wider range of colors. MU 8 Series (49 to 82 inches) has even more colors and exhibits extreme contrast between the darkest darks and the lightest lights.

The MU 9 Series with its anti-reflective coating, over a billion colors and extreme contrast is the most advanced but also the most expensive of the bunch, though. With prices for its 55-to-75-inch variants starting at $1,999, they’re just a bit more affordable than the brand’s QLED TVs. All of them are now available from select retailers and from Samsung’s US website, where you can also check out the prices for specific models and sizes.

Source: Samsung

Microsoft’s ‘Project Scorpio’ Xbox promises true 4K gaming

If you’ve been wondering just how powerful Microsoft’s ‘Project Scorpio’ Xbox will be, dream no longer. A series of pieces co-written by Eurogamer and Digital Foundry have listed the full specs for the living room console, and suffice to say it’s shaping up to be a bit of a beast. Inside each system will be a CPU featuring eight custom x86 cores, clocked at 2.3 GHz, a custom GPU with 40 customised compute units clocked at 1172MHz — an “unprecedently high clock speed for a console,” Eurogamer writes — and 12GB of GDDR5 RAM. Players will also have 1TB, 2.5-inch hard drive to play around with, and a 4K UHD Blue-ray Drive. Take that, PlayStation 4 Pro.

So what does that mean for gaming? Well, the two outlets saw a Forza Motorsport demo running at native 4K and 60 frames per second. That doesn’t mean every game will run this way — or consistently — but it’s a promising indicator of the console’s power. “True” 4K gaming is tricky, and the PS4 Pro isn’t capable of pulling it off. (Instead, it uses an upscaling technique to leverage all of those extra pixels on your TV.) If Microsoft can deliver that level of performance across a range of titles, including first and third-party offerings, it would be a huge differentiator from Sony.

Microsoft first talked about the Scorpio at last year’s E3 press conference. The selling point is simple: this, Microsoft claims, will be the “most powerful console ever,” eclipsing the current Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro. The reveal was so premature, however, that Microsoft was unable to show the hardware or any gameplay footage. Attendees had to make do with a compilation of developer endorsements, filled with buzzwords like “innovation” and “no boundaries.” It was also a bold move given Microsoft announced the slimmer, HDR-ready Xbox One S at the same show, potentially overshadowing an equally important product.

Project Scorpio is a bold bet by Microsoft to catch up with the PlayStation 4. Xbox One sales, from what we can tell, have been respectable — impressive, even — but they pale in comparison to the numbers posted by Sony. The company will be hoping that a superior home console will be enough to galavanize interest in the Xbox brand. Success will hinge on game support, both from first-party exclusives and independent, third-party developers. Sony has a similar challenge with the PlayStation 4 Pro, persuading studios that it’s worthwhile to support the higher spec sheet.

Would a Scorpio-ready Halo, Forza and Gears of War be impressive? Absolutely, however those franchises might not be enough to change the company’s momentum. At E3 this year, Microsoft’s mission will be to show it has meaningful software to support its fancy new console this holiday.

Source: Eurogamer

Comcast jumps into wireless with Xfinity Mobile

Last September Comcast confirmed rumors by announcing its plan to launch wireless service this year based on a combination of its 16 million Xfinity WiFi hotspots and the Verizon network, and today we’re getting all of the details. With the launch of Xfinity Mobile, Comcast will offer its customers TV, home internet, home phone and wireless service under one umbrella. With companies like AT&T and Verizon offering TV packages over the internet that compete with cable, now Comcast is moving into their area, although that doesn’t guarantee they’ll have success.

According to execs, one of the things that will define success is “customer loyalty,” and how this can improve customer retention. On a call (still ongoing) this morning with investors, Comcast noted that there are already 130 million mobile lines within its footprint, and it wants a piece of that market.

According to a slide in the presentation, it will offer “the most popular mobile phones,” naming Apple, Samsung and LG, while also promising (without specifics) that bundled pricing will save customers money. It’s also making it possible for customers to automatically discover and connect to Xfinity WiFi hotspots as they move around, without needing to log in each time. We’ve seen what Google has been able to do with Project Fi, and based on an extensive network of hotspots that includes customer modems, Comcast may have similar reach.

Now we’re getting pricing details, and for Xfinity Mobile, Comcast is promising no line access fees, with unlimited talk and text on up to five lines. All you will pay for is data usage. Combined with its internet service, it will have “unlimited” mobile data access available for $65 per month, per line, while its “best” bundle package brings the price for unlimited access down to $45 per month.

If you’d prefer to pay only for the data you use, it will offer a $12 per GB plan, which customers can switch to and away from within the app, even in the middle of a month.

Developing…

Western Digital Debuts First My Passport Portable SSD

Western Digital today announced the launch of its first portable SSD, bringing solid state storage to its popular “My Passport” lineup of storage devices.

The new My Passport SSD is Western Digital’s fastest portable drive yet, offering transfer speeds of up to 515 MB/s. Designed for USB-C devices like the MacBook and MacBook Pro, it features a USB Type-C port and ships with both a USB-C to USB-C cable and a USB-A adapter.

“The WD brand is focused on delivering fresh, new personal storage devices that offer amazing performance in a beautiful, yet durable design,” said Sven Rathjen, vice president of marketing, Client Solutions, Western Digital. “Our fastest portable drive yet, the My Passport SSD is a powerful solution for people who need to move content quickly and easily wherever life takes them.”

The My Passport SSD, available in capacities ranging from 256GB to 1TB, is palm-sized and easily portable, plus it is 6.5-foot drop tested and able to withstand 1500G of force.

Western Digital’s My Passport SSD is available from Best Buy’s website and will be available from select retailers starting this quarter. The 256GB model is priced at $99.99, the 512GB version is priced at $199.99, and the 1TB version is priced at $399.99.

Tag: Western Digital
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Polar’s new M430 packs an ultra-accurate heart-rate sensor and an AI trainer

Why it matters to you

Looking for a great running watch? Look no further than Polar’s M430.

Polar’s no stranger to fitness accessories — the 40-year-old company’s activity-tracking wearables range from the affordable (the Loop 2 fitness band) to the high-end (the V800). The newest addition to its lineup, the M430, sits somewhere in the middle, and focuses squarely on high-intensity athletics.

“There are plenty of products that track heart rate or GPS metrics, but […] a unique portfolio of capabilities distinguishes the M430 in the sports watch category,” Tom Fowler, President of Polar, said in a statement.

More: Polar’s new fitness tracker helps you get off the coach and on the road

One thing’s for certain: The M430 certainly isn’t wanting for features. It’s fully waterproof and boasts a lightweight, “breathable” wristband that deflects sweat away from the skin. It tracks sleep, core running metrics like calories and distance, and recovery times, and pairs to a smartphone to deliver helpful phone, text, and app notifications. It packs an integrated GPS that charts out your runs on a top-down map in Polar’s companion app. And it offers a range of power modes that extend battery life to nearly 30 hours.

But the M430’s standout is its heart-rate sensor. That’s not surprising — Finland-based Polar developed the first wireless heart-rate monitor in the late ’70s, and hasn’t strayed from fitness training and monitoring equipment since.

Polar said the M430’s heart-rate monitor, which uses a proprietary optical design involving 6 LEDs, is fine-tuned with “industry-leading” algorithms “designed and tested” for reliability. “We’ve put 40 years of experience, research and development into creating the most accurate technology on the market,” Fowler said. “If you care about accuracy, and you should, the M430 really stands out.”

More: The new, $200 Polar A360 fitness band may provide best-in-class heart rate monitoring

Those fitness and activity metrics sync to the Polar Flow app for smartphones, which uses them to generate interval guidance, identify your optimal heart rate, and build a personalized running program.

The M430 taps Polar’s intelligence software, Smart Coaching, for even greater personalization. An adaptive training feature plots out weekly goals, and live guidance lets you know when you’re reaching — or falling short of — benchmarks. You’ll get a reminder to “walk for 50 minutes or jog for 20 minutes” if you’re short of your daily fitness goal, for example.

Smart Coach goes further, though. A Running Index component shows you the efficiency of your running; Fitness Test lets you gauge fitness levels and see workout progress in real time; and Training Benefit, provides an after-workout debrief.

More: Get the Polar H7 Bluetooth heart rate sensor & fitness tracker for 56 percent off today only

The M430 starts at $230, which puts it between the $120 Loop and $445 V800. It’s available for pre-order in dark grey, white, and orange at Polar.com, and will begin shipping in May.

Acer Aspire VX 15 gaming laptop review

Research Center:
Acer Aspire VX 5-591G 5652

Budget gaming laptops are something of a contradiction. Gaming, by its very nature, requires powerful hardware, and budget laptops usually forego power for affordability. But over the past year, we’ve seen many gaming systems buck that trend, offering reasonable power for a reasonable price.

The Acer Aspire VX 15 appears to be one such budget gaming laptop. Starting at just $800, it undercuts some of the least expensive gaming notebooks. But did Acer cut too deep to hit that price point?

Oversized, and under-engineered

This is a budget laptop, and it feels like it. When you first lay your hands on the Acer Aspire VX 15, it’s easy to be impressed by the gently striated exterior — but once it opens up, the feeling fades quickly. The display is flanked on all sides by over an inch of cheap, hollow plastic.

More: The best laptop you can buy

Below, it’s supported by a flimsy plastic hinge that looks like it was spray-painted silver. The interior features another striated metal plate that wouldn’t be out of place on a 90’s era boom box.

This is a budget laptop, and it reminds you every time you touch it.

By comparison, the Dell Inspiron 15 Gaming, which is also a budget gaming system, features a slick and attractive design, and sturdy chassis. The Aspire VX 15 feels too large for its components — the excess plastic flanking the display on all sides makes the screen look smaller than it is.

The Aspire VX 15 is overlarge, weirdly shaped, and despite weighing in at 5.51 pounds, it doesn’t feel very substantial or sturdy. To be brutally honest, it feels like a knock-off version of the comparatively rock-solid (and more expensive) Acer Predator 15.

Portly, in a good way

Ports are more important than ever, since we’re in the middle of a transition period, and thankfully the Acer Aspire VX 15 won’t have you carrying around a bag of dongles and adapters to get through your day.

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

It features two USB Type-A ports on the right-hand side, alongside a USB Type-C port, an HDMI port, and an Ethernet jack. On the left-hand side there’s an SD card slot, power port, another USB Type-A port, and a headphone jack.

Essentially the Acer Aspire VX 15 has every port a user could need, and with the inclusion of a USB Type-C port its connectivity will serve you well even as manufacturers move away from the traditional USB Type-A ports.

Mushy keys, but a precise touchpad

Laptop keyboards are rarely noteworthy, but the Aspire VX 15’s keyboard is, and not for a good reason. The keys themselves feel a little flimsy, like you could pry them up with ease. Typing is satisfyingly clicky, without too much of the mushiness endemic to membrane keyboards. But there’s a problem, and it’s a problem you shouldn’t have to deal with: Some of the function keys don’t make sense.

More: The best gaming laptop you can buy

Take brightness, for instance. The keys for turning up and down your brightness are ambiguously labeled, making it unclear which one turns up your brightness and which one turns it down.

Okay, to be fair, it’s not a huge deal. You get used to it very quickly, but you shouldn’t have to. Your function keys should be clear, unambiguous, and simple. They’re not new contrivances manufacturers are trying to figure out, they are solved problems, and this design error just indicates a lack of quality control that doesn’t bode well for the laptop.

Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Moving on to backlighting, the Aspire VX 15 comes with a backlit keyboard which reliably lights up your keys in the dark, but that’s about all it does. It’s not particularly bright, and it’s not customizable — no RGB lighting here – though it doesn’t suffer any unsightly light leakage, which is a plus. It’s just as good as any other keyboard backlight on a non-gaming system, more function than flair.

At least the trackpad doesn’t feature any such ambiguity. It’s right where it needs to be, and does just what it needs to do. Featuring support for Windows 10’s Precision Touchpad gestures, it’s smooth and accurate. It’s a little snappier than the trackpad on the Dell Inspiron 15 Gaming, but not quite as luxuriant as the trackpad on the Asus ROG Strix, which had a pleasant silky-smooth texture.

The display falls flat

Laptops are defined by their displays, but budget laptops need to cut corners somewhere, and often those cost cuts impact display quality. The Acer Aspire VX 15 features a 1080p display panel with a decent contrast ratio of 770 to 1, meaning it can reproduce dark blacks and bright whites at reasonable levels, and it can. However, it has trouble with color.

Color gamut is usually the part most displays get right, or right enough that you wouldn’t even notice. Green looks green, blue looks blue, and so on. Looking at the numbers here, though, you can see that the Acer Aspire VX 15’s 1080p display panel manages a decent, middle-of-the-road contrast ratio, but the color gamut is way, way off. Capable of reproducing only 47 percent of the AdobeRGB spectrum, the Aspire VX 15’s display can handle a very narrow range of content.

Bright lime greens become dull, drab yellow-green, the color of dead grass in autumn. Everything, in fact, acquires a kind of yellow cast. This display would be great if you only ever needed to look at pictures of old phone books. It captures those colors very well.

Acer’s Predator 15 and the Asus ROG Strix GL553-VD both had displays that were acceptable, if not eye-catching, with decent contrast ratios and stock-standard color gamuts. Dark shadows might have been a bit gray, but colors were vibrant and recognizable. The same cannot be said of the Acer Aspire VX 15, which mangles colors until they’re unrecognizable, cruel parodies of their former selves.

Unsurprisingly, our color accuracy tests further described a display nearly incapable of accurately reproducing color. Professional-grade monitors, the kind used for photo editing, usually have average color error scores around .80, or .60, anything under 1.00 means that any errors the display has when it reproduces color are likely invisible to the human eye.

Laptops usually land around 1.70 or slightly above. Meaning there is noticeable color error but not enough to throw off your entire display. The Asus ROG Strix hits 1.76, which is very good for a gaming laptop, while the Acer Predator barely managed to edge out its budget cousin with a score of 3.48, to the Aspire VX 15’s 3.56.

It’s not the worst average color error you’re likely to see on a laptop, but coupled with a disappointing color gamut, there’s not much this display gets right.

Headphones not required, but recommended

The Acer Aspire VX 15 features a set of built-in stereo speakers that aren’t likely to fill a room with lifelike sound, though they could be worse. For games, they get the job done. Voices are clear, background music is present, and sound effects don’t sound muddy or distorted. For music or movies, though, they’re a little less than adequate. The speakers strip out much of the definition and depth from music, and the same goes for film scores, which end up sounding lifeless.

That said, the speakers on the Aspire VX 15 are far from the worst we’ve ever heard on a laptop. Compared to the dry, brittle sound from the Acer Predator 15’s speakers, the Aspire VX 15 is appreciably better but not by much. They’re adequate, but after a while you’ll want to put your headphones back on.

A scrappy performer

Enough about the exterior — let’s check out what’s under the hood. The Acer Aspire VX 15 features a quad-core Intel Core i5-7300HQ processor clocked at 2.5GHz, which manages to hold its own against the CPUs inside similarly-priced and much more expensive gaming laptops.

More: Gigabyte’s GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card uses three fans for extreme cooling

In everyday use the Core i5 is nimble, quick enough that you won’t notice any major performance issues but standard CPU benchmarks indicate it isn’t exactly a top-performer. It is a quad-core processor, but because it’s an i5 processor it doesn’t feature Hyper-Threading, which means those cores can each only handle a single instruction thread at a time.

By comparison, an Intel Core i7 with four cores can handle up to eight threads at once. It’s a difference that’s tough to notice in everyday internet browsing, while multi-tasking, the extra threads can give a Core i7 a performance boost over a Core i5. But this is a gaming laptop, and a quad-core i5 is more than adequate for most games.

Looking at the single-core Geekbench results, you can see how the Aspire VX 15’s Core i5 processor keeps up well with the Acer Predator and Asus ROG Strix, and their quad-core i7 processors. The Aspire VX 15’s a little slower than the Strix, but a little faster than the Acer Predator, with its 6th-generation Skylake processor.

Move on to the multi-core results, and the Aspire VX 15 doesn’t fare as well against its nearest competitors. The Predator and the Strix easily eclipse the Aspire VX 15’s Core i5 with their multi-core processing capabilities — in part because of their ability to use hyperthreading.

Looking what that means in everyday use, the Aspire VX 15 takes a little longer than the Strix and the Predator to encode a 420MB movie file to x.265. Without that extra horsepower, the Aspire VX 15’s Core i5 doesn’t quite perform as well as an i7 would but it does well enough to keep the competition from getting too far ahead.

Quick, but undersized

All right, the processor hangs on. But does the Aspire VX 15 eclipse its nearest cousins in any area? It does when it comes to hard disk speed, as the Aspire VX 15 runs circles around the much more expensive Asus ROG Strix, and is neck-and-neck with the Acer Predator 15.

With a 256GB SSD, the Aspire VX 15 doesn’t offer the most expansive storage, but it is quick. In our CrystalDiskMark tests, the Aspire VX 15’s SSD hit a read speed of 495 megabytes per second and a write speed of 378MB/s. It’s not the quickest SSD on the market, but it performs well against the Acer Predator 15’s SSD, edging it out in write speed and just about matching its read speed.

The Asus ROG Strix is left in the dust, with its super-slow mechanical hard disk, a throwback to a bygone era. Against the Strix, the Aspire VX 15 more than triples its read and write speeds with room to spare. But the Dell Inspiron 15 Gaming, which is around the same price as the Acer Aspire VX 15, pushes past the Aspire VX 15 in read and write speed with its own SSD.

All-in-all, the Aspire VX 15’s hard disk won’t slow you down, though it might keep you from installing too many games at once.

Keeping up with the GTX 1050 Ti

Before anything else, it’s a gaming laptop, so let’s find out how the Aspire VX 15 stacks up to the competition. Running an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 with 4GB of RAM, the Aspire VX 15 features the most affordable GTX card on the market, and it performs well in most games. Not well enough to push 120 FPS out to a 1440p G-Sync compatible monitor, but well enough to run modern games on medium-high settings at the laptop’s native 1080p resolution.

In 3DMark, the Aspire VX 15 didn’t push past any of its nearest competitors, but it did manage to keep up with the Strix, and the Dell Inspiron 15 Gaming, both of which feature cards similar to its own GTX 1050. The Asus ROG Strix, which performed better on the 3DMark benchmarks than the Aspire VX 15, also features a GTX 1050, but its quicker processor and extra RAM — 16GB to the Aspire VX 15’s 8GB — provided a bit of an extra edge.

The Dell Inspiron 15 Gaming features a GTX 1050 Ti, a quicker version of the 1050, and it easily outperformed the Strix and Aspire VX 15. Similarly, the Acer Predator 15 features a GTX 1060, a rock-solid mid-range card, and it outperforms all four of its nearest competitors in nearly every way.

In actual game performance, the distance between the Aspire VX 15 and the Acer Predator 15 is only about 15 frames per second on medium settings in Civilization VI. The gap widens significantly when switching to a more graphically intensive game like Battlefield 1.

On medium settings, the Aspire VX 15 hits an admirable 48 frames per second, which is about on par with the Dell Inspiron and the Asus ROG Strix. The Predator’s GTX 1060 almost doubles those figures though, hitting 93 frames per second on medium settings.

Acer Aspire VX 5-591G 5652 Compared To

Dell XPS 15 9560

Dell Inspiron 15 7000 (2017)

Asus Zenbook 3 UX390UA

Dell Precision 15 3510

Lenovo Ideapad 710S

HP Spectre

Dell Latitude 12

LG Gram 15 Z960

Samsung Notebook 9 Pro…

Asus Zenbook UX501VW-DS71T

Dell Inspiron 15 7000 (Late 2015)

Samsung ATIV Book 9 (2014)

Toshiba Satellite P755

HP Pavilion g6

Lenovo IdeaPad U550

Moving up to Ultra, performance peels off a bit, leaving the Aspire VX 15 around 39 frames per second, with the Acer Predator 15 sitting comfortably in the low 70s.

Overall, the Aspire VX 15’s GTX 1050 performs admirably, and even manages to keep up with the more expensive Asus ROG Strix. It’s not going to play every game at high or maximum detail, but it performs as well can be expected for any budget gaming laptop.

You might need a bigger bag

Gaming laptops aren’t known for their svelte frames, and as we mentioned, the Acer Aspire VX 15 is a big laptop — but it doesn’t feel like it. At 5.51 pounds, it’s about a pound heavier than your average MacBook or Dell XPS, but it’s distributed well enough throughout the ample chassis that it never feels too heavy.

In a bag with a few other everyday items, though, the extra weight can add up quickly, making the whole package unwieldy in a backpack or messenger bag. So, this one’s probably not a good choice as a daily driver.

That said, the Aspire VX 15 has impressive battery life for a gaming laptop, well more than its nearest competitors. With a 54 watt-hour battery, it’s still a bad idea to do any gaming on battery life alone, but the battery lasts long enough to get you through a short flight or partial workday if you’re careful.

On the Peacekeeper browser test, which is typically the most demanding battery test we run, the Acer Aspire VX 15 managed a little over four hours, easily pulling ahead of the Acer Predator 15 and Asus ROG Strix. The video loop test is typically the most forgiving benchmark we run, and on that test the Aspire VX 15 managed an impressive nine hours.

To be clear, that’s not nine hours of battery life, it’s nine hours of looping the same video with the brightness turned down to a little below 50 percent. It’s impressive though, especially for a gaming laptop.

No, I don’t want to update

It’s 2017, we shouldn’t have to worry about bloatware. Sure there will be a couple branded utilities, and an app or two you don’t really want, but it’s rare to see a laptop with lots of extraneous programs pre-installed. The Acer Aspire VX 15 is, unfortunately, one such laptop.

Out of the box it comes chock-full of Acer branded utilities that run in the background, clutter up the system tray, and constantly ask you to update them or register your computer. It’s a minor headache, but it’s inexcusable these days.

Warranty information

The Acer Aspire VX 15 features a standard one-year warranty for any manufacturer defects, including parts and labor. It’s a little short, the Acer Predator 15 features a two-year warranty, but it’s one of the concessions you sometimes make with a budget laptop.

Our Take

It’s not the best gaming laptop on the market, and at $800, nobody really expected it to be. But with all its faults, is the Acer Aspire VX 15 worth the money? That’s a tough question, in part because the Aspire VX 15 performs reasonably well in a few key areas.

Is there a better alternative?

The DT Accessory Pack

SteelSeries Arctis 5 gaming headset

$90

Razer DeathStalker Essential gaming keyboard

$38.49

SteelSeries Rival 700 gaming mouse

$78

Samsung CF390 Series Curved 24-Inch FHD monitor

$200

Yes, there are better alternatives. The Dell Inspiron 15 Gaming has its own unique flaws, but with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti under the hood, it performs a bit better and has a much more attractive exterior design than the Aspire VX 15. The Dell’s display is rough, but so is this Acer’s. The Asus ROG Strix feels expensive for what it offers, but it does beat the Acer in performance and display quality by a fair margin.

How long will it last?

The Acer Aspire VX 15 doesn’t seem like a very well-built product. The interior components will likely age better than the exterior will. Nvidia’s GTX 1050 is a good bet, and the Intel Core i5 is a 7th-generation chip, the latest on the market. Chances are, your CPU and GPU will outlast that flimsy plastic-and-metal-plate exterior. Not to mention, the Aspire VX 15 already looks dated, even for a gaming laptop.

Should you buy it?

The Acer Aspire VX 15 is not worth buying. Sure, it’s inexpensive compared to most gaming laptops, but you would be much better off spending a little more to buy the Dell Inspiron 15. It offers better design and a more powerful graphics card. Or, better yet, try to save up a few hundred more. Budget gaming laptops make major sacrifices to achieve low pricing.

Apple bails out family after 11-year old goes on $7,500 in-app purchase spending spree

Why it matters to you

It’s very easy to end up with a massive bill on iTunes, as this family found out, but there are safeguards you can put in place to stop it happening

Despite the many warnings, and the safeguards Apple and Google have put in place to stop it happening, people still manage to rack up impressively high bills paying for in-app purchases. The latest is from the U.K., where due to his father’s credit card being linked to the account, an 11-year old spent almost $7,500 on in-game micro-transactions through iTunes.

The boy, Alfie Dobson, apparently became curious about what he could get after paying for the more expensive in-app purchases, having apparently become used to paying for the smaller, $0.99 in-app goodies. His curiosity saw a total of 50 separate in-app purchases made, resulting in the $7,500 bill.

More: How to turn off in-app purchases in iOS

Father Roy Dobson explained how quickly the money was spent, saying it took five minutes to spend 700 British pounds, and another 30 minutes to spend 1,100 British pounds. Alfie was also only allowed to use the iPad at the weekend, and the total amount was spent over the course of two weeks. Mother Jill Dobson said she was unaware individual in-app purchases could cost so much, and that Alfie told her the game was so good he couldn’t stop, and thought he only pressed the button a few times.

The good news for the Dobson family is Apple has agreed to refund the money, meaning Alfie’s weekends of fun haven’t ended up costing his parents the same as a decent used car. The name of the game Alfie played hasn’t been revealed, and the parents say they were still signed in to their iTunes account when he was spending away.

More: How to disable in-app purchases in Android

Avoiding a similar fate is quite easy, and Apple has a wide range of options available, all of which are found under Settings, General, and Restrictions in iOS. Forcing iTunes to require a password or passcode each time a purchase is made, or after every 15 minutes, is the easiest and least restrictive option.

Alternatively, set up Apple’s Family Sharing feature, so only certain members of the household can make purchases. This is found under Settings, tapping the name of your account, and selecting Family Sharing. If you use an Android device, all the purchase restriction settings are found in the Google Play store, by tapping the Menu button, then Settings, and finally Require authentication for purchases.

It’s worth doing, because Apple and Google won’t always be there to pay for an expensive mistake.

High-tech trackable backpack does a lot more than just hold your laptop

Why it matters to you

We often keep all our gadgets in a backpack, and this high-tech model keeps them all safe, and even charged up

Knomo, a mobile accessories brand known for its cool designs, wants to make a high-tech backpack to overcome the frustrations felt by anyone who travels around for work, or just loves to take all their gadgets out and about. That means it needs to give power, keep everything inside safe, and make it very difficult to mislay. The result is the #LiveFree — yes, the name really is a hashtag — and it’s waiting for your backing on Kickstarter now.

It’s the #LiveFree’s wireless charging feature that’s really interesting. It’s Knomo’s own system called DropGo, and it’s not built into the backpack as such, avoiding complicated internal systems, and is a wireless power bank that slips inside a special pouch in a side pocket. That means it’s easy to take out and charge. It’s compatible with Samsung phones using the Qi wireless charging standard, or an iPhone wearing a special Qi charging case. Put your phone in the dock, and it charges automatically. Sadly, it’s not a universal system, so you have to order a bag that’s right for your phone.

More: 25 awesome laptop bags for everyone

The bag has a special compartment for a laptop up to 15.6-inches in size, a pocket for a 10-inch tablet, cable management pockets, various mesh pockets and storage spaces for headphones and all kinds of other accessories. Filled with all your equipment, you really won’t want to lose the LiveFree (sorry, the hashtag is just too much) backpack. In partnership with Chipolo, the LiveFree has Bluetooth tracking, with a tiny disc that slips into a specially made holder inside the bag. The bag’s last known location shows up on an in-app map, and an alarm can be sounded to help locate the bag if you mislay it, or warn off a potential thief. Knomo’s LiveFree backpack is made from a water repellent material, and even has RFID blocking to keep your bank cards safe from snoopers.

All this technology and security comes at a price, which varies depending on the specification of the bag itself. A version with only the Bluetooth tracking costs 190 British pounds (about $237) at the time of writing, but this is an early bird offer and is limited. Miss out and you’ll pay 203 British pounds (about $253). Early bird offers are also available on LiveFree bags with both Bluetooth tracking and wireless charging, with prices starting at 222 British pounds (around $277) for the Samsung version, and 251 British pounds (that’s around $313) for the iPhone version, which comes with a case.

The project is live now, and is close to its 50,000 British pounds ($62,300) target. If it’s funded, the bags are expected to ship in September this year.