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25 Oct 2024

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Exclusive: Celonis expands ANZ footprint with bold growth plans
Celonis is expanding its presence in Australia and New Zealand, aiming for growth and partnerships while targeting the broader Asia-Pacific market.

RBNZ thinking about lingering inflation pressures, Orr says in US speech
Goldman Sachs interpreted the comments as reducing the probability of a 75 basis-point rate reduction at the RBNZ’s November meeting.

Exclusive: How Celonis customers achieve sustainability goals through AI application
Celonis is using AI to help clients achieve their sustainability goals by optimising processes and illuminating emissions, amidst rising regulatory pressures.

Get $250 off on this RTX-powered Dell gaming laptop today
We love finding magical deals on gaming laptops, and this one for the Dell G15 certainly qualifies. Now on sale for $850 at Dell.com, you can get the G15 for a solid 23 percent off its original $1,100 MSRP. What makes this deal so magical? Well, this laptop is powered by an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 graphics card, one of the best graphics cards you can get for price-performance without shelling out an absolute fortune. This GPU is powerful enough to push high-quality settings in all but the most demanding of modern games. And those games are going to look good on this laptop’s 15.6-inch 1080p display with a refresh rate of 165Hz for smooth frame rates. The 3ms response time is fast enough for anything but top-level competitive esports, and it supports Nvidia G-Sync for zero screen tearing. That’s further bolstered by its AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS CPU, the 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and the 512GB SSD on board. That’s a strong configuration that can easily handle any task you throw its way, can quickly load all your apps and games, and can store all the documents, photos, and videos you need on hand. (You can later upgrade the RAM to 32GB, too.) Grab this Dell G15 gaming laptop for $850 while you still can because this Dell.com deal isn’t going to last forever. Save $250 on this RTX-powered Dell gaming laptopBuy now at Dell.com

Remotely control your outlets with Kasa Smart Plugs, now 2 for $13
Ever wish you could turn a particular outlet on and off without using a physical light switch? Maybe for an outlet that isn’t even hooked up to a light switch? With smart plugs, you can! And right now, you can grab a two-pack of Kasa Smart Plugs for just $13 on Amazon, which is 35 percent off its normal $20 price. If you don’t want two, you can get the one-pack for just $8. Imagine it’s time to sleep, so you leave the living room and lay down in your bed, get comfy, and you’re ready to drift off — when you suddenly remember that you didn’t turn off the lamp. (Been there, done that, grumble grumble…) If that lamp is plugged into a smart plug, you can remotely disable the smart plug from your phone and call it a night. The Kasa Smart Plugs also support voice commands, allowing you to exercise hands-free control over your home devices via Alexa or Google Home Assistant. (Kasa also has a variant that supports Apple HomeKit and Siri, and that one’s on sale for $18 per two-pack.) These smart plugs also have a nifty scheduling feature that lets you set up timers and routines that automatically turn your outlets on and off. That can be useful when you’re on vacation and you want your lights to turn on at night so your home isn’t an obvious target for burglars. They’re really easy to use, too. Each smart plug fits right into a single wall outlet and doesn’t block space (so you could plug two into a single wall outlet if you wanted to). Simply connect them to your Wi-Fi network using the Kasa app, and each smart plug has a physical power button that you can use to manually turn on and off if needed. Smart plugs are a cheap and effective way to begin smartening up your home without investing a lot in expensive smart home devices. Get this two-pack of Kasa Smart Plugs on sale for $13 and start today! Get a two-pack of smart plugs for just $13Buy now on Amazon

Nice! Windows 11’s monthly updates are now faster and less disruptive
Earlier this month, the massive 2024 update to Windows 11 arrived with lots of new features and improvements along with several removed features and apps. One of the many pain points of that update was just how long it took to install on most PCs. But Microsoft says in a blog post that Windows 11 24H2 is worth installing because it “includes several improvements to how you install monthly updates” which lead to “reduced installation time, restart time, and central processing unit (CPU) usage for Windows monthly updates.” Get Windows 11 Pro for cheap Windows 11 Pro In other words, after updating to Windows 11 24H2, you should experience faster and more efficient system updates going forward. In fact, monthly Windows 11 updates should install 45.6 percent faster and use up to 25 percent less processing power, plus the amount of time you spend in the restart phase could also be reduced by up to 39.7 percent for some computers. Microsoft attributes the faster monthly updating process to three efficiency factors: parallel processing of component manifests, optimized reading and parsing of component manifests, and scalable use of available RAM. It’s just one of the many reasons to consider updating to Windows 11 24H2 — if your device hasn’t been blocked from it. Further reading: Must-know details about Windows 11 24H2

Buying a graphics card? These are the technical specs you need to know
If you’re buying a new GPU (graphics processing unit), you should definitely have an understanding of how it all works. Although the terms GPU and graphics card are often used interchangeably, technically speaking, they’re not the same thing. We’ll go over all the technical information and break it down in an easily digestible way for you. Read on to learn more. Further reading: 4 things to consider before buying a GPU A typical graphics card contains a GPU die (chip) soldered onto the circuit board and surrounded by memory modules. This is built into a heat sink, cover, and fan, creating the actual graphics card. Companies like AMD and Nvidia use multiple GPU dies in each generation to create different models and customize the specifications as needed. The GPU die designation often follows a system where a lower number on the spec sheet indicates a larger and more powerful die. For example, Nvidia’s AD102 GPU utilizes the flagship RTX 4090 graphics card while the RTX 4080 and RTX 4080 Super use the AD103 GPU. Newer GPUs utilize smaller manufacturing processes to offer more performance in the same physical space. Strictly speaking, GPU is only the name for the graphics processor (here from AMD). Only with other components does it become a graphics card. IDG The computing units on a GPU are often referred to as cores. However, this is misleading, as the cores of a GPU do not correspond to the physical cores of a CPU. GPUs have thousands of small cores or processing elements, which are grouped into clusters and then into compute units. These compute units are labelled differently by each GPU manufacturer–compute units (AMD), Xe cores (Intel), and stream multiprocessors (Nvidia). Faster GPUs have more Cuda cores (Nvidia) or stream processors (AMD) than slower models. However, these specifications are only comparable within the same generation and the same manufacturer. VRAM (video RAM) is a specification that almost every PC user is familiar with. VRAM is the memory on a graphics card that is available to hold the so-called frame buffer, texture information, and other graphical data. If your game settings and video resolution utilize the entire VRAM of your GPU, this can lead to graphics errors and a drop in performance. In addition to the size of the VRAM, other specifications are also decisive such as the memory type (e.g. GDDR6 or GDDR6X), the memory bus width (384, 256 or 128 bits), or the memory bandwidth (in GB/s). Graphics cards are complex units with many technical specifications. To be able to compare them, it helps to familiarize yourself with GPU terminology.IDG Just like a CPU, a graphics processor also has a clock rate both for the GPU core and the memory. The core clock rate indicates how quickly the GPU can process instructions. The memory clock rate, on the other hand, determines how fast the memory (VRAM) can send data to or receive data from the GPU. In general, the following applies: The higher the core clock rate and the memory clock rate of a graphics card, the higher the performance. You can also change the core clock rate and the memory clock rate–this is known as overclocking. Just like a CPU, a GPU has a maximum power consumption, which is referred to as TGP (Total Graphics Power). The TGP value indicates the maximum power that a graphics card may consume during operation and is measured in watts. TGP is an indicator of how power-hungry your graphics card is and also provides information about the expected temperature of the GPU during gaming or other GPU-intensive tasks. FP32 or Floating-Point Single Precision is a mathematical method for measuring the theoretical performance of a GPU. It indicates how many floating-point operations a GPU can perform in one second and is measured in TFLOPS. FP32 is useful for comparing different GPUs, even across generations, although the method does not cover all aspects of performance. Other specifications such as the supported PCIe generation and compatibility with graphical APIs such as DirectX, Vulkan, and Open GL can also be important, especially for designers or developers. Software features such as Nvidia’s DLSS, AMD’s FSR, and Intel’s XeSS differ in performance and gaming support. You should therefore check which upscaling technology and version your GPU supports. The graphics memory (shown here in green) of a graphics card is located in the immediate vicinity of the die to avoid delays in communication. IDG When buying a new GPU, you should always consult real-world tests and benchmarks from reputable sources to make an informed decision. Check the performance figures in the games and applications you intend to use. You should consider checking out Reddit posts, YouTube benchmarks, and reviews from trustworthy publications.