A great mouse mat is a must for gamers, reducing wear on wrists during hours of intensive play. Many modern ones use chemical coatings or specially engineered surfaces to improve sensor accuracy or reduce drag?a boon if you?re doing repetitive motion that requires high accuracy.

(Don't mistake mouse mats for the smaller mouse pads, once an absolute necessity in the era of mechanical mice. Because optical and laser mice can work on so many different kinds of surfaces, the humble mouse pad has largely disappeared.) 

Plenty of mouse mat manufacturers exist, but few provide clarity or consistency in describing their products. For example, most don?t report how much friction you?ll encounter when using their mats with the most popular mice. To help you find the best mouse mat for your needs, we?ve tested several from a few different companies that represent a range of surface types (metal, plastic, or cloth) and usage cases (business or gaming).

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Saint?s Row?s Achilles heel was always combat. It hid this fact by peppering each game with a handful of absurd weapons, from a recliner that fired missiles to the Dubstep gun to the iconic purple dildo bat?still the weapon I most associate with the series.

But even armaments that creative couldn?t hide the fact that combat was often a by-the-book affair. Enemies were brainless, and each encounter involved simply trying to get through it as fast as possible without dying. It?s telling that most of the memorable moments in Saint?s Row had nothing to do with combat, be it the Tron-esque ?Deckers Die? mission, singing Biz Markie in a car with your friends, or an Aerosmith-backed rocket ride into space.

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Choosing a gaming keyboard is a matter of personal taste. One person could be into Cherry Browns and white backlighting. Another might favor Razer Greens and a rippling RGB glow. Gigantic wrist pads, compact shapes, numeric keypads, macro keys, volume controls?a plethora of keyboards exists because everyone wants a different mix of features.

To help you sort through the many options, we?ve sifted through the latest and greatest planks to come up with our top recommendations. All of these are mechanical keyboards, and for good reason?they?re simply more comfortable to use over the long haul. But we?re open-minded, so if we encounter an alternative that works well, you may see it appear on this list. We?ll keep updating it periodically as we test new keyboards.

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Everyone needs a USB hub, especially if your laptop is lacking in the ports department. Unitek's portable USB 3.0 4-port high speed hub can help, and today it's just $3.50 using the code WDIE5BZURemove non-product link. That's a sharp discount from its $8 list price.

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iCloud Photo Sharing lets you create albums from your images and videos and then share them to invited parties, or create a link that anyone can access. It?s a great way to leverage your existing photo libraries without having to set up sharing on other services.

However, Macworld reader Grace ran into one of the downsides: if you delete a shared album, there?s no way to restore it. MacOS and iOS warn you when you try to delete, noting that the shared album will be deleted from all your linked accounts and all of those with whom you shared photos. But once you confirm, poof! It?s gone.

IDG

Since the earliest days of iOS, Apple has kept tight control on its users? relationship with apps. The very first iPhone, of course, only shipped with a dozen or so preinstalled software programs: you couldn?t add more, you couldn?t delete the ones you had.

Over the years, Apple has loosened those strictures a bit. First you could add new third-party apps. Later, developers were even able to create and sell software that competed with some of those default options. More recently, you?ve even been able to delete some of those built-in apps. (Adios, Stocks!)

But more than a few restrictions have remained nonetheless. Most obviously, the prohibition on installing software from anyplace other than the company?s own App Store. I don?t take particular issue with that; the prevalence of malware and security breaches these days means you can?t be too careful, and Apple?s approach has had proven merit.

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