Summer is fast approaching and due to the coronavirus outbreak, many of us have made the transition from a typical, corporate office environment to a hasty setup at home to keep us working, albeit remotely. With warm weather on the horizon, you may find your home office is becoming now a stuffy, intolerable place to work effectively for long periods. Cameras, microphones, and monitors may be key in making sure you can carry on in your job outside of company grounds, but they can do nothing to regulate the temperature -- and few of us want to look hot and sweaty on our frequent Zoom and Microsoft Teams company calls. To help, ZDNet has created a guide listing useful gadgets and accessories to keep you cool during the coming months, as well as products that can help stop your laptop or tower PC from overheating and disrupting your workday. Ozeri Brezza III desk fan If you intend to spend a lot of time at your desk at home, working remotely and attending virtual meetings, you may want to consider a desk fan to take the edge of the heat.
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A team of physicists from China have built a quantum computer that casts a long shadow over Google's boasts of a Quantum Supremacy breakthrough in 2019. The Chinese team's new Quantum Computer completed a calculation 10 billion times faster than Google's prototype could muster, or 100 trillion times faster than the world's fastest supercomputer would be able to accomplish. As Nature magazine explains - "the team achieved within a few minutes what would take half the age of Earth on the best existing supercomputers" (an estimated 2. 5 billion years of processing on the on Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer). Jian-Wei Pan, from the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, told Nature that the new quantum computer solved a boson-sampling problem – calculating the probability distribution of many boson particles - with potential practical applications in graph theory, quantum chemistry and machine learning. Interestingly the researchers, lead by Pan and Chao-Yang Lu, chose to use photons as their qubits and their photonic quantum computer worked at room temperature.
Purism, a San Francisco social purpose company that emphasises privacy and free software, today flung out its latest notebook: the Librem 14. This latest device succeeds the previous Librem 13 laptop, which ran for four generations, and includes a slightly bigger display, a hexa-core Ice Lake Intel Core i7 processor, gigabit Ethernet, and USB-C. As the name implies, the Librem 14 packs a 14-inch, 1920x1080 IPS display. Purism said this comes without increasing the laptop's dimensions thanks to smaller bezels. You can find the full specs here. Click to enlarge Crucially, it is loaded with the usual privacy features found in Purism's kit such as hardware kill switches that disconnect the microphone and webcam from the laptop's circuitry. It also comes with the firm's PureBoot tech, which includes Purism's in-house CoreBoot BIOS replacement, and a mostly excised Intel Management Engine (IME). The IME is a hidden coprocessor included in most of Chipzilla's chipsets since 2008. It allows system administrators to remotely manage devices using out-of-band communications.
14 storage capacity. If you don't have the means to hook it up to the mains, a USB-based power bank can be used as an alternative. When the weather changes, the fridge can also be used to warm up food and drinks, too. $50 at Best Buy NXT Technologies air duster When we consider heat levels in our home office, we can't forget tower PCs are also susceptible to overheating. Inbuilt fans and other cooling systems can be hampered when dust and dirt collect over time in tower shells, and if this debris builds up enough, overheating is almost a certainty, thereby impacting PC performance. To combat this, you should consider picking up an air duster -- such as those offered by NXT Technologies -- which are dual-purpose: featuring a straw to gently remove debris from sensitive electronics while compressed air blows away the dust and mess threatening to disrupt your home PC. $32 at Staples Hydro flask The final offering you should consider to stay cool as you work remotely is a flask to keep your drink to hand and icy cold.
But it's also controversial in the security community since it's somewhat of a black box. How to build a totally open computer from the CPU to the desktop READ MORE There is little by way of public documentation. Intel hasn't released the source code. And, to add insult to injury, it's also proven vulnerable to exploitation in the past. In May 2017, the Electronic Frontier Foundation described the Intel Management Engine as a "security hazard", saying: "The design choice of putting a secretive, unmodifiable management chip in every computer was terrible, and leaving their customers exposed to these risks without an opt-out is an act of extreme irresponsibility. " Put simply: it's a computer within your computer that you can't fully control nor easily remove or disable. And while there are ways to wipe out much of its functionality, no manufacturers we know of, save for Purism, sell machines with it mostly deactivated by default. Pre-orders for the Librem 14 opened today priced at $1, 199.
We guess you can put a price on privacy. ® Specs Processor: Core i7-10710U (Comet Lake) Display: 14″ matte (1920×1080) Battery Life: Roughly 7 to 9 hours Graphics: Intel UHD graphics Memory: Up to 32GB, DDR4 at 2133 MHz Storage: 2. 5″ SATA + NVMe-capable M. 2 slots Video: 1 HDMI port (4K capable @60Hz max) USB Type-C video out (4K) USB ports: Two USB Type-A 3. 1 ports, one USB Type-C 3. 1 port Audio: 3. 5mm audioJack (mic-in & headphone-out combo) Networking: Gigabit Ethernet adapter with integrated RJ45 Connector Atheros 802. 11n w/ 2 antennas Power: 1 power button, DC-IN Jack USB-C power delivery port Dimensions: Width 322mm, height 17mm, length 220mm, weight 1. 4kg
$80 at Best Buy Nanoleaf Shapes A fun way to decorate a home office Image: Nanoleaf Instead of boring wall decorations, Nanoleaf's Shapes line can add some color and interaction to a home office. You can even have the light-up panels react to music or mirror the colors of whatever is on your computer screen, a fun setting for those who like to take afternoon breaks to get a quick gaming session in. $199 at Nanoleaf (7 panels) HyperJuice GaN 100W charger There's nothing wrong with having more power Image: Hyper Instead of having multiple devices plugged into a power strip, the HyperJuice GaN charger is capable of putting out a total of 100W of power to four devices, and only taking up a single plug. That's enough to charge a MacBook Pro or Surface laptop and still have enough power to charge a phone or tablet. There are two USB-C ports and two full USB ports. $99 at Hyper Anker 4-port USB hub You can never have too many ports Image: Anker Trying to recreate an office setup with multiple devices and accessories plugged into a laptop can get messy when you run out of ports.
The Ozeri Brezza III desk fan will not take up much space -- coming in at 14x10x14 inches -- and the dual oscillating motors will keep you cool with a minimum of noise. As a bonus, the fan comes with a remote control for users to select the flow and direction of cooling air they prefer, with four different speeds on offer. $45 at Amazon Luma Comfort 2-in-1 portable cooler For something stylish and cooling in the coming months, consider the Luma Comfort 2-in-1 portable cooler. This space-saving option is versatile as it can be used in or outdoors and features built-in casters, three fan speeds, and a programmable timer. As an evaporative cooler -- with a water tank capacity of 1. 6L -- this device uses less electricity than traditional AC units, making it a cost-effective product. The washable air filter contributes to easy maintenance. $131 at Home Depot Aicheson laptop cooling pad Sweaty palms and foreheads are not the only consequences of temperatures rising -- our devices can suffer, too.