How to Set Up and Use Find My Device in Windows 10

Until now, PC owners had no built-in Windows tools to track down a misplaced or stolen computer. But Microsoft has updated Windows 10 with a Find My Device feature, which pinpoints a device's location on a map.
This new feature was a part of a major update to Windows 10 in November, and it works for laptops, desktops and tablets. To enable the feature, users need to be signed into a PC with a Microsoft account, logged in with a local administrator account and have location settings enabled.

How to Set Up Find My Device in Windows 10

1. Tap on the Windows icon to open the Start menu.

2. Select Settings.









3. Tap Update & security.

4. Select Find My Device. If you don’t see this option, tap on Windows Update, select Check For Updates and install all available updates.

5. Tap Change. If this box is greyed out, tap on "Turn on location settings to use this feature," and enable location settings in the following menu.
6. Switch "Save my device’s location periodically" on.

How to Use Find My Device to Track a Missing Windows 10 Device

1. Visit https://account.microsoft.com/devices on any computer, and select Sign In.

8. Sign in with your Microsoft Account name and password.

9. Select Find My Device.

And now you’ve found that missing computer! Unfortunately, Find My Device doesn’t let you ping, lock or erase your device, but we hope to see those features added in a future update.

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Laptops with the Longest Battery Life

 
No matter how stacked its specs are, a laptop is useless if it can't hold a charge. Fortunately, there are plenty of notebooks that go the distance. Using our Laptop Mag Battery Test (continuous Web surfing over Wi-Fi), we've identified the longest-lasting notebooks on the market. We're talking more than 11 hours of endurance, which should more than suffice for that cross-country fight, long day of meetings or multiple, back-to-back classes.

Lenovo ThinkPad T450s (15:26)

Our favorite business laptop lasts for 15 hours and 26 minutes on a charge with its extended battery, which is long enough to last through a flight from New York to Taipei. During that time, you'll enjoy the 14-inch ThinkPad T450s' sharp 1080p display, durable chassis, speedy Intel 5th Generation Core Series processor and best-in-class keyboard. Lenovo's Power Bridge technology even lets you swap out the battery without powering down first.

From $935.10

Lenovo

Lenovo ThinkPad X250 (15:12)

Some ultraportable laptops skimp on endurance by using slimmed down, sealed-in batteries. The ThinkPad X250 bucks this trend by lasting 15 hours and 12 minutes with its six-cell battery on board. With a starting weight of under 3 pounds (using the extended battery adds 0.4 pounds), this 12.5-inch notebook is small and light enough to take anywhere, but functional enough to use as your productivity workhorse. A snappy keyboard, full-HD display and hot-swappable batteries complete the X250's impressive package.

From $836.10

Lenovo

Acer Aspire One Cloudbook (14:43)

When it comes to price per hour of battery life, Acer's $199, 14-inch Aspire One Cloudbook has every other system beat. On Laptop Mag's Battery Test, the Cloudbook lasted a staggering 14 hours and 43 minutes on a single charge, 2.5 hours more than the next-closest budget machine, the Asus X205. You also get a big 14-inch screen, a sturdy body, a full-sized keyboard and Windows 10 instead of Chrome OS. So if you're looking for an affordable system that doesn't need to be tethered to an outlet, this is the laptop for you.

From $249.00

Toshiba Portege Z20t (14:37)

Lasting 14 hours and 37 minutes in laptop mode (and 7:29 when docked), the jet-black Toshiba Portege Z20t is among the machines with the best endurance on record. The slick design — which combines a sleek tablet and a slim keyboard into an elegant 2-in-1 — is nothing to sneeze at, either. We love the bright and crisp 12.5-inch, 1080p display, as well as the included Wacom-powered stylus that made it a breeze to use the multitouch display.

From $1699.00

Amazon

Apple MacBook Air 13-inch (14:00)

The latest MacBook Air keeps the same sleek design as its predecessor and adds a 5th-gen Intel Core i5 processor and even faster flash storage. And, with a 14-hour runtime, it lasts nearly 2 hours longer than before. Add in OS X and its useful Continuity features, and it's easy to see why the $999 Air is one of our favorite ultraportable values.

From $999.00

Amazon

Dell Chromebook 13 (13:25)

With its soft-touch carbon fiber lid, magnesium alloy deck and full HD display, this 13-inch system certainly doesn’t look like a Chromebook. It also boasts a backlit keyboard, Intel Celeron processor and 16GB of storage, making it powerful enough for all cloud-related tasks. But its best attribute is its 13-plus hour endurance, better than any Chromebook we’ve tested.

From $429.00

Dell

Microsoft Surface Book (12:29)

When coupled with its keyboard dock, Microsoft’s first notebook will last up to 12.5 hours. But this “ultimate laptop” also comes with a clever fulcrum hinge, 13.5-inch, 3000 x 2000-pixel display, and a magnetically attached stylus. All this in a minimalist magnesium chassis that will probably end up in MoMA.

From $1499.00

Asus X205 (12:05)

Not only does the Asus EeeBook X205TA offer more than 12 hours of battery life, but it's also cheap. At $199, it gives Chromebooks a run for their money while offering Windows 8.1 and solid everyday computing performance. That's all while being clad in a dark navy blue that shimmers almost purple. The thumping speakers are surprisingly good, too.

From $225.00

Amazon

Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch with Retina Display (12:04)

Not only does the 2015 MacBook Pro 13-inch with Retina display last more than an hour longer than the 2014 model — 12:04 versus an already-excellent 10:44 — but it's also a lot more powerful. Plus, a new Force Touch trackpad can sense pressure, letting you do more things with fewer clicks.

From $1300.00

Amazon

Dell XPS 13 (11:54)

Not only did Dell manage to fit a 13-inch display into an 11-inch, 2.6-pound chassis, but it also squeezed in enough juice to last nearly 12 hours. (The touch version, which has a quad HD display, made it 7.5 hours). Add to that a Core i6 processor, 128GB SSD and 8GB of RAM, a backlit keyboard and a smooth touchpad, and you’ve got one of the best ultraportables of the year.

From $799.99

Dell

Lenovo 100s Chromebook (11:19)

For less than $200, you can get a notebook that lasts more than 11 hours. The highly portable Lenovo 100s Chromebook weighs just 2.5 pounds and has a better than expected keyboard for the price, but typing is a bit cramped on this 11-inch system. Its Celeron CPU will easily get you through email and Web surfing, though. 

From $179.00

Lenovo

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How to Tell If You Can Upgrade Your Laptop

Whether you just bought a brand new notebook that came with a slow-moving hard drive or your three-year-old system is struggling to keep up with today's apps, upgrading your laptop is great way to improve its performance without spending a lot of money. Unlike desktop towers, almost all of which are user-serviceable, many laptops are sealed boxes that are difficult or impossible to tinker with. In some cases, even if you can get at the guts, you'll find the key components drive-soldered to the motherboard.
Fortunately, you don't need to crack open the chassis just to find out if you can replace the RAM or hard drive. Here's how to tell if you can upgrade your laptop and what components it needs.

What Laptop Components Can You Upgrade?

In the best-case scenario, you can replace both your RAM and storage drive. Upgrading from a mechanical hard drive to an SSD (solid state drive) will have an enormous impact on your performance, allowing you to boot, open applications and files, or switch tasks three to four times faster. Adding more memory, particularly going from 2GB or 4GB to 8GB, can make multitasking or working on large media files easier.
Forget about swapping out the CPU, the graphics chip or display. And while it may be possible to replace the Wi-Fi card on some systems, doing so is difficult and probably not worth the effort. If you really want better wireless connectivity, consider a USB Wi-Fi dongle.

Checking a Memory Finder

The best way to find out whether your laptop is upgradeable and what parts you need to upgrade it is with a configurator tool such as Crucial Memory's Advisor Tool. To use it:
1. Navigate to http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/advisor.
2. Select your laptop's manufacturer (ex: Lenovo).

3. Choose the correct product line (ex: ThinkPad T Series).

4. Pick the specific model of your laptop (ex: ThinkPad T450s).

5. Click "find upgrade."

The Advisor will then tell you what type of RAM your system takes and what type of SSDs it can handle. If your laptop can't have its memory or storage upgraded, the advisor will tell you so. Since this particular tool is from Crucial, it recommends Crucial's own products, but as long as you take note of the products' specs, you can buy memory or storage from other vendors. Here's what to look for.

If your laptop has a hard drive right now and you're upgrading it to an SSD, it's almost certain that you'll need a 2.5-inch, 7mm SSD, the most common size. However, if your laptop came with an SSD and you want to replace it with a higher-capacity one, you may need an mSATA or M.2 drive, both of which are chips that slide into a slot on the motherboard. M.2 SSDs come in different lengths (60mm and 80mm are most common), so be particularly careful about checking which one you need.

When buying RAM, find out if it's DDR2, DDR3 or DDR4 type, along with its voltage and speed. Most recent-era laptops take DDR3 RAM that's PC3-12800 speed and either 1.5 or 1.35 volts. Looking through RAM listings, you may also see specs that indicate whether it’s ECC or non-ECC and buffered or unbuffered. Except for a few high-end workstations, most laptops use non-ECC, unbuffered memory.

In the upper left corner of the screen, the Advisor shows you just how much RAM your laptop can handle and how many DIMM slots it has. Some laptops have only a single slot, which comes filled, so you may need to completely replace your existing DIMM rather than just adding to it.

Reading the Service Manual

Knowing that your laptop is upgradeable in theory is one thing, but performing surgery on the device is another. If there's one available, check the hardware maintenance manual (aka, service manual) to find what you need to do to access the components.
To locate the service manual, navigate to the support page for your specific laptop model on the manufacturer's website (e.g., lenovo.com, dell.com, hp.com). Look for downloadable manuals, and select the service or hardware guide, not the general instructions.

The maintenance manual should tell you how to open the laptop and replace these parts. In most cases, you can get to the laptop's innards by removing some screws and either opening an upgrade panel or removing the entire bottom surface.
If the manual tells you that the memory or storage drive you want to remove are soldered onto the motherboard, you can't upgrade. Also, if you have to break through anything that is held together by glue or have to remove the entire motherboard, forget about adding RAM or an SSD.

Bottom Line

Once you know that your laptop is upgradeable and what components you need, you can shop around for the best RAM or SSD for the money. For RAM, any compatible DIMM from a reputable brand should be good, but if you have two DIMM slots, you'll get slightly better performance by filling both with identical chips (e.g., 2 x 4GB). For help choosing a solid state drive, check out our list of best SSDs or read the extensive reviews at our sister sites, Tom's Hardware and AnandTech.

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TechCityMall Deals: $9.99 microSD Card, $299 Dell Venue 8 7000

Now that the furor of Black Friday and Cyber Monday have subsided, so have many of the best laptop deals. But we've scoured sales sites, searching for Cyber Week deals, and have come up with some bargains including a 256GB SSD for less than $75, less than $10 for a 64GB Samsung microSD card, less than $15 on both a Logitech Bluetooth keyboard/mouse bundle and a TRENDnet two-port KVM switch.

$9.99 for 32GB microSD card

Retailer: Amazon
Regular Price: $37.99
Sale Price: $9.99
Sale Ends: December 5, 2015
When Released: March 2014
Why This Is a Good Deal: We knew memory was getting cheap, but this is almost ridiculous – less than $10 for 32GB to add to your memory starved smartphone or tablet. This Class 10 card delivers up to 48MB/s transfer speed, plus its water, temperature, X-ray and magnet proof.

From $9.99

Amazon

SanDisk 256GB SATA III SSD for $73.99

Retailer: NewEgg
Regular Price: $89.99
Sale Price:

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Lenovo Announces ThinkPad P40 Yoga, P50s Mobile Workstation

While most of us are thinking about what we’re going to with time off during the holidays, Lenovo is focused on starting the next work year right. Today the leading PC vendor announced three new workstations that are due out in 2016, including the ThinkPad P40 Yoga 2-in-1, the ThinkPad P50s mobile workstation and the powerful ThinkStation P310 desktop.

ThinkPad P40 Yoga

The star of the show is the ThinkPad P40 Yoga convertible notebook which starts at $1,399 and features a 14-inch screen (at 2560 x 1440 or 1920 x 1080), sixth-gen Intel Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, Nvidia Quadro M500M graphics and an included ThinkPad Pen Pro stylus with Wacom Active ES input tech.

Lenovo teamed up with Wacom to create a custom driver for the P40 in order to deliver the authentic ‘pen and paper’ experience that graphics pros want. To that end, the ThinkPad Pen Pro also includes extra pen tips with multiple levels of grip, while the display supports up to 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity. There’s even a slot built into the P40 for storing the pen when not in use.

The P40 also features MIL-spec durability, Lenovo’s Lift’n Lock keyboard which raises the level of the keyboard to help protect the keys in tablet mode, and Lenovo’s single-cord OneLink+ docking connection.

ThinkPad P50s Mobile Workstation

Following its flexible sibling is the $1,299 ThinkPad P50s which swaps out the 360-degree hinge for a larger, non-touch 15.6-inch screen with up to a 3K (2880 x 1620) resolution. The P50s retains the same Intel Core i7 CPU and Nvidia Quadro 500M graphics, but ups the memory to an optional 32GB. Additionally, the P50s features Lenovo’s Power Bridge technology which offers provides both a hot-swappable external battery along and a smaller, internal battery. Lenovo claims battery life could last up to 17 hours with the highest-capacity battery.

ThinkStation P310 Desktop

Finally, the $729 ThinkStation P310 desktop offers two takes on an affordable entry-level machine for those who don’t need to move around too much. The slimmer small form factor variant can be loaded with up to two Nvidia K1200 GPUs while the roomier full tower machine supports anything up to dual Nvidia M4000 graphics cards. Both models support a range of storage options (including 512GB M.2 SSDs), up to 64GB of RAM (twice the capacity of the older P300) and CPUs from Intel Core i3 to an Intel Xeon E3-1200 v5 chip.

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