TechLife的April 2022目录

I’m going to say this out loud – there’s something really enticing about getting a brand new piece of hardware, or a big, juicy new software update to sink your teeth into. I got myself a new phone last year, for instance, and just taking the shiny slab of nigh-indestructible glass and metal out of the fancy Apple-designed box was just a tiny bit thrilling... But new hardware can also be a little bit daunting, especially if it comes with a new operating system and features, and that is exactly the case with the new iPhone 13. There’s a lot to get to grips with if it’s been a few years between upgrades, and if the popularity of the iPhone is anything to go by (it’s the most popular phone…

Despite Apple discontinuing the original HomePod last year, and shifting focus to the HomePod Mini, a number of leaks and rumors have suggested that a HomePod 2 could be coming soon, with some new features. One of these upgrades is believed to be a screen, which would result in a device along the lines of the Amazon Echo Show 10 and the Google Nest Hub 2. Now, Siri seems to have confirmed this, with several users reporting that the voice assistant told them that information they requested was “displayed on [their] HomePod” (via What HiFi). Given that the current HomePod models lack any kind of display, unless this is some kind of malfunction on Siri’s part it suggests that we could soon see a HomePod 2 with a screen. However,…

$655, onyxbook.com It may use the same E Ink technology made famous on the Kindle, but the Note Air 2 is all about productivity. Sure, you can read books on it – in any one of 17 different file formats, no less – and even via the Kindle app. However, this large 10.3-inch screen is for editing. It isn’t quite going to display A4 documents in their native size, but it does show them big enough to both read and edit comfortably. Design Weighing 420g and measuring 229.4 x 195.4 x 5.8mm, the Note Air 2 is near-identical to its forbear, the Note Air. It has the same spine down one side for holding it in one hand (something that works really well) and is similarly bereft of any buttons.…

Over 100,000 Battlefield 2042 players are demanding their money back from EA via a petition. In February a new petition went live on Change.org, relating to Battlefield 2042. The main aim of the petition is for publisher EA to allow refunds for the shooter on all platforms, and urges others to “please sign this petition if you feel you deserve a refund for Battlefield 2042.” Since then, the number of signatures has surged, resulting in over 100,000 people signing the petition on Change.org. At time of writing, approximately 109,000 people have signed the petition, which according to its founder, is enough to have attracted the attention of a class-action lawyer to assist players in their refund requests. It’s worth noting that in spite of player complaints, the relevant refund policies…

$89.95, PlayStation, Xbox, PC dl2.dyinglightgame.com Techland may have panicked at the bad reaction to their promise of 500 hours to 100 percent completion but it’s absolutely that game. The studio quickly backtracked, saying you could clear the story and side missions in about 80 hours, which matches my final completion time for the campaign and a range of side stuff. Even completing it with a varied chunk of stuff under my belt, and having seen plenty, I still feel like I barely dented it in places. As I continue to mop up and explore, there are bits of foggy map I’ve barely touched. It’s an enjoyable open world zombie game that realises that core fantasy well as you try to survive its corpse-infested city: exploring, seeing what you can find,…

$599, online.acer.com.au The Acer Chromebook R11 combines the versatility and affordability of a Chromebook with the style and design of a more luxurious laptop. Chromebooks aren’t like other laptops. Historically perceived as a direct route to the Google Chrome browser, their functionality was once limited to what you could accomplish on the web. That’s changed, however. Most Chromebooks are now compatible with Android apps via the Google Play Store, and the Acer Chromebook R11 has followed suit. That’s while drawing inspiration from the MacBook Air’s stylish chassis. Design One of the big benefits of the Chromebook R11 is its size and weight. The R11 weighs just 1.25kg, with a relatively small frame of 29 x 20.3 x 1.9cm (W x D x H). This comes in slightly smaller than the…

$799, www.razer.com The Razer Iskur Fabric is the next iteration of the Razer Iskur line of gaming chairs that the company introduced in 2020, which was already one of the best gaming chairs around. Now, with a more comfortable fabric upholstery that breathes better during extended gaming sessions, the Razer Iskur Fabric improves on its predecessor in just about every way. The Iskur Fabric isn’t all that much different from the Razer Iskur that we reviewed last year, and it has all the same features and design as that chair, so it does come with some of its downsides too. Chief among these is that it comes with the same hefty price tag of $799, but this can cut either way. If you’re the type who believes that PVC leather…

$1,799, store.netgear.com.au This latest version of the Orbi sticks with Netgear’s familiar white obelisk design, although Netgear says that it has now added a black option as well, in response to customer demand. The Orbi 6E is larger too, measuring 280mm high, 190mm wide and 84mm deep, reflecting the fact that this new Wi-Fi tech requires each Orbi to squeeze in no less than 12 internal antennae to provide extended range and speed. The use of Wi-Fi 6E also means that this top-of-the-range mesh system can now offer quad-band Wi-Fi, using the 2.4GHz band, two 5.0GHz bands, and the new 6.0GHz band. This allows the Orbi to provide a top speed of 10.8Gbps, and a range of 7,500 sq.ft - compared to 4.2Gbps and 6,000 sq.ft for the standard Wi-Fi…

The Garmin Fenix 7 is designed for anyone who gets a thrill from competition and wants to push themselves to hit a new high – whether it’s a cycling sportive, a half marathon, an Ironman, or the gruelling sweat of a CrossFit competition. The Fenix 7 doesn’t assume that you’ve already nailed down a full training plan and know exactly how to balance work and recovery though – it gives you tools that will help you understand your current fitness level, set a realistic goal, and train in a way that will help you achieve it. It packs the same advanced workout tracking and training tools that made the Fenix 6 the best multi-sports watch around back in 2019, but also introduces some new features that make it all more…

Which Macs work with Monterey? All M1 Macs (all features) iMac Late 2015 and later iMac Pro MacBook Early 2016 and later MacBook Air Early 2015 and later MacBook Pro Early 2015 and later Mac mini Late 2014 and later Mac Pro Late 2013 and later THE LAST FEW years of macOS upgrades brought some trauma with their advances. We’ve lost 32-bit apps, gained a new file system ideal for SSDs and Time Machine backups but unsuited to hard disks, and previously simple startup volumes have been split to lock the System away in a snapshot. Monterey is a welcome chance to get your breath back. On Intel Macs at least it makes no deep changes, and even Time Machine will back it up in continuity with existing Big Sur…

Imagine a new type of computer 158 million times faster than the most sophisticated supercomputer we have in the world today. A device so powerful that it could do in four minutes what it would take a traditional supercomputer 10,000 years to accomplish. This is the promise of new technology known as quantum computing. For decades our computers have all been built loosely around the same design. Whether it’s the huge machines at NASA or your laptop at home, they are all essentially just glorified calculators, and crucially they can only do one thing at a time. The key to the way all computers work is that they process and store information made of binary digits, called bits. These bits only have two possible values: a one or a zero.…

Officially, Windows 11 has some fairly demanding requirements. We say ‘officially’ because it’s possible to install Microsoft’s latest operating system on machines that, technically, shouldn’t be able to run it. By ‘technically’, we mean computers that have failed Microsoft’s PC Health Check app test. You can launch the test by clicking Start, typing health and clicking ‘PC Health Check’. If it isn’t there, you can get it from www.snipca. com/40760 (the download starts automatically). Simply click the blue ‘Check now’ button (see screenshot below) to run the test. As well as evaluating your PC’s battery, storage capacity and backup status, and checking when Windows last looked for updates, the app tells you whether or not your PC can upgrade to Windows 11. The specifications it checks to reach its verdict…

Windows 10 & 11 Turn Command Prompt into an aquarium This tip doesn’t exactly make Windows better, but it’s a lot of fun. Using the Telnet feature in Windows, you can turn Command Prompt into an aquarium created in ASCII. In Windows search type turn Windows features, then click ‘Turn Windows features on or off’. In the box that appears, scroll down and tick Telnet Client, then click OK. Close this box, then open Command Prompt by typing cmd into Windows search, then clicking Open. Next, type telnet telehack.com and press Enter. Now type aquarium and press Enter. You should now see fish, whales, swans, and ducks gliding across your screen. We even enjoyed a rare sighting of the Loch Ness Monster, too . Windows 11 Install WinRAR so it…

REQUIRES DaisyDisk 4, OS X 10.6 or later YOU WILL LEARN How to find out what’s taking up space on your hard drive IT WILL TAKE 15 minutes As your Mac’s internal storage starts to fill up, it can become quite the job identifying what’s taking up the most space – and, crucially, where it resides on its hard drive or SSD. The solution lies with a tool that helps you visualize your Mac’s storage drive in such a way as to help you identify where those large files are. That tool is DaisyDisk (US$9.99, free trial available). As the step-b-step guide reveals, DaisyDisk’s sole purpose is to help you drill down through your drive to identify large files you can look to move or, better still, delete to free…

It’s no secret that scammers and cyber criminals have made serious money in the largely unregulated wild west of cryptocurrencies. A great many cryptocurrency users have little understanding of the technology and systems behind blockchain and cryptocurrency, and have been victimised by savvy scammers looking to take advantage of them. According to crypto analytics firm Chainanalysis, crypto criminals reaped US$14 billion in cryptocurrency globally in 2021. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission revealed in December that crypto scams in Australia had exceeded $100 million for the year – and that was just the officially reported numbers, with many more likely to have gone unreported. It’s not just criminal scams that users have to be worried about, either. A number of hacked distributed blockchain apps (dApps) and exchanges last year also…

Neural Filters are part of a new wave of image-editing tools that make use of machine learning and artificial intelligence. These tools analyse the content of the image and are able to recognise people, animals and other objects. Such tools now allow for automated processes that we could only dream of a few years back. Depth Blur does away with all that pesky masking work. Instead, it’s able to recognise and isolate the subject for you, then soften the areas furthest from it. One of the most interesting Neural Filters to photographers is Depth Blur. It allows you to alter the depth of field in your photos and create both background and foreground blur, with realistic fall-off in-between. Previously, this could be done by carefully isolating the subject, then applying…

The Parker Solar Probe, which launched in 2018, conducted seven flybys of the Sun before dipping into the corona during its eighth flyby on 28 April 2021. It made three trips into the Sun’s atmosphere, one of which lasted for five hours. In the upper reaches of the solar atmosphere, where temperatures average about 1 million degrees Celsius – hotter than the light-emitting surface of the Sun, which is only 5,500 degrees Celsius – the spacecraft collected atmospheric particles with a special instrument called the Solar Probe Cup. By entering and sampling the Sun’s atmosphere, the Parker Solar Probe accomplished a scientific achievement akin to landing on the Moon. “Imagine yourself sitting on a beach and staring at the ocean, wondering what lies beneath the surface. This is basically what…

The Sony A7 IV is the best mirrorless all-rounder you can buy right now. It isn’t as powerful as the Sony A1, as fast as the Canon EOS R6, or as affordable as the Fujifilm X-T4, but it does offer a brilliant blend of photographic power and video versatility. By effectively combining two cameras in one, it’s the best example so far of the hybrid convenience that modern mirrorless cameras can offer. Three years on from the classic A7 III, the A7 IV brings improvements across the board, including a new 33MP sensor, Bionz XR processor and significantly upgraded video skills. It also offers the best autofocus system we’ve seen outside of pro sports cameras. Whether you’re shooting photos or video, the A7 IV does an unerringly good job of…

I’m on a health kick. What gadgets do I need? Jamie Adams Oh man, this question. Every time, every year, on the dot. Allow GaGu to give you his unhelpful and overly irked answer: dummy, you don’t need gadgets. You need mental fortitude and a plan that suits you. This advice comes from bitter, hard-earned experience by a Guru who spent his thirties ballooning further after every brief period of kale and Couch to 5K. You need something sustainable and achievable, something that isn’t a one-and-done blast but can instead be done across the year. And forgive yourself for indulging. You are (GaGu presumes) a human. You’re allowed. Do you need an Apple Watch Series 7 to keep tabs on your health when a cheap alternative will do? Should you…

A second season of the Halo TV show has been confirmed ahead of the first season’s March 24 premiere. As revealed by Paramount and 343 Industries, season 2 of the Halo TV show is due to stream exclusively on Paramount Plus just like season 1. The upcoming live-action adaptation stars Pablo Schreiber (Orange Is the New Black) as series protagonist Master Chief, Natascha McElhone (Californication) as Dr. Halsey, Jen Taylor (Halo series voice actor) as Cortana, Olive Grey (EastEnders) as Dr. Miranda Keyes, and Bokeem Woodbine (Fargo) as a previously unseen Spartan named Soren-066. “Halo takes us into a dazzling world that we believe will enthrall audiences as much with its electrifying visuals as its bold, character-driven storytelling,” said Paramount Plus chief content officer David Nevins. “This second-season pickup reflects…

$79, PlayStation, www.playstation.com Horizon Forbidden West is a world of beautiful distractions. It doesn’t matter that the world is being killed and Aloy is the only one that can save it because the Salt Bite cook needs some eggs, someone else’s father has gone missing, and there’s a rowdy Thunderjaw threatening a small village. The Forbidden West may have been forbidden just because it needs you so much - and I’m totally here for it. It builds on what was offered by Horizon Zero Dawn - an open world filled with quests to catch your attention, a strong story of post-post-apocalyptic life, robot dinosaurs, and technological mysteries. There was almost a concern that this sequel may feel too familiar, just teleported to a new map, but the opening hours alone…

Crashlands+ SURVIVE THE WILDLANDS. Subscription (Apple Arcade), iOS The difficulty in developing survival games on mobile devices is that the ability to drop the game at a given time must be baked into the design. Elements like day and night cycles, shelter, skill progression, and more, intrinsically have less impact when you can simply drop in and out at a moment’s notice. In this world you are the abstractly named Flux Dabes, a galactic courier – ala Fry in Futurama– who is blown out of the sky(space) and forced to recover your packages under threat of a monstrous fine. Oh, and survive a wild and untamed alien world to boot. Crashlands+was designed from the ground up to be a mobile-focused title – everything from the tap-based movement, the simple structure…

$369, anbernic.com You may not have heard of Anbernic, but for several years the gaming hardware manufacturer, based out of China, has been quietly amassing an army of fans thanks to the excellent retro handhelds it has been developing. From the RG350 to the RG280V and many more inbetween, it’s built a solid reputation for putting out superb, affordable Linux-based handhelds purpose built for retro gaming, with build quality far beyond expectations. Its latest device, the Anbernic RG552, is its most advanced and ambitious yet – a high definition touchscreen portable that can dual-boot between a gaming-focussed Linux OS and full blown Android. With more powerful internals than Anbernic has put out before, and capable of emulating games ranging from the early noughties to decades prior, as well as handling…

$549, www.andaseat.com The AndaSeat Navi Edition is a gaming chair you’ll either find lovably gaudy or a vivid eyesore, thanks to its bright yellow PVC leather-wrapped design. It’s a seat no one will be able to take their eyes off – but that isn’t always a good thing. Even if you opt for the black-clad option for the Navi Edition this also features bold colour and pattern choices that scream ‘gamer chair’ from a mile off. If you’re hoping to get away with this in an office environment we’d recommend thinking again. That said, if you’re after a seat that will deliver a splash of fun to your gaming space this is exactly the kind of chair that you want to go for. Because not only is it flashy but…

From its massive power amplifiers to its relatively small DACs, there is a Chord Electronics ‘look’ that’s obvious from across the room. Mind you, even though Mojo 2 is only 23 x 83 x 62mm and 185g, it’s still touch-and-go as to whether that makes it as usefully portable as the company seems to think. ‘Mobile Joy’ may be the derivation of its model name, but consider this: Mojo 2 needs hard-wiring to your smartphone, and it needs to be used with wired headphones. So you need to put your smartphone, your Mojo 2 and all related wiring into one pocket - which means that pocket had better be a big one. Like the original, Mojo 2 makes more sense as a big upgrade to your desktop audio system. It’s…

>>> STARTING UP FROM EXTERNAL DISKS WITH M1 Monterey changes the way to set Secure Boot policy for bootable external disks on M1 Macs. To drop from Full Security, you have to start up from the external disk, shut down, then start up in Recovery mode by holding the Power button. That takes you into the Recovery system on that external disk, where you can change its policy using Startup Security Utility. When started up from the Recovery system on the internal SSD, you can only set policy for that disk, not external disks. Most laptop models gain an optional new Low Power Mode, to reduce display brightness and slow hardware clock speed when needed to prolong the battery. Should you want to remove all personal data, for example when…

In some ways, standard computers are pretty dumb. They can do what they are told to do well enough if they are fed the right computer program by a human. But when it comes to predicting things? Not so smart. This is why the weather forecast isn’t always right. There are too many variables – too many things changing too quickly for any conventional computer to keep up. Because of their limitations, there are some computations that an ordinary computer may never be able to solve, and others that might take it a billion years. Not much good if you need a quick prediction or piece of analysis. But a quantum computer is so fast – seemingly infinitely so – that it could respond to changing information quickly and examine…

Random BSODs I’m suffering from a weird problem that I hope you can help me fix. I am getting random blue screen errors when copying or moving files, and once in a while when I open too many browser tabs. I had one when I was syncing my Ancestry.com family tree to Family Tree Maker, when scanning a large downloaded file with McAfee, when trying to create an OS backup with Macrium Reflect Free and even while downloading a Linux ISO to create a live disc to boot from. This problem has existed since I built the PC in October 2020, starting when I copied files from the old computer’s drives to this one. It happens when copying files from external hard drives or flash drives to internal SSDs or…

If you decide you don’t like Windows 11, you can revert to Windows 10 within 10 days of upgrading. Open Settings, then click Windows Update, followed by ‘Advanced options’, then Recovery. Scroll down to the ‘Go back’ block, and click the ‘Go back’ button (see screenshot). If that button is greyed out, Windows 11 has deleted the recovery file, and you’ve missed your chance to revert to Windows 10. You can still reinstall Windows 10 from scratch by downloading the Windows 10 installer from www.snipca.com/40763. However, doing so will erase your programs and files, so make sure you’ve got a back-up copy of anything you need. Assuming the ‘Go back’ option is available, the tool will ask why you want to return to Windows 10. Select an option, then click…

Libreoffice & Microsoft Office Use search boxes to find a specific function If you don’t know where to find a particular tool or function within LibreOffice Calc, Draw or Writer, you can search for it in the Command Popup box. Press Shift-Esc (Escape) to open it, then type what you’re looking for. In our example (see screenshot below), we’ve typed template, which brought up suggestions for the main Templates box, as well as editing and saving a template, and loading styles from templates. It’s a great way of going straight to a function, avoiding having to click menus. A similar search tool has been part of Microsoft Office since the 2016 edition – simply look for the ‘Tell me what you want to do’ box. Microsoft Powerpoint See the word…

So, you want to write and then self-publish a book? Then Linux has all of the tools that you need. In this case, we’re going to cover a workflow using the LibreOffice office suite (www.libreoffice.org) for the writing and the book’s layout. There are two main types of book publishing: print and electronic (ebook), and we’re going to look at an approach that works equally well for both. Fortunately, as long as you produce standards-compliant files, the publisher won’t care if you used open source software on Linux rather than ‘industry-standard’ proprietary software on Windows or a Mac. Rather than write a book from scratch, for this tutorial we’ve grabbed the text from a book that’s now in the public domain, and we’re going to run through everything it took…

There’s almost no end of audio effects that can be applied to guitars, and many other instruments too. Here are a few others that are commonly considered important parts of the rock musician’s arsenal. Written descriptions don’t do justice to them, though, so do try them out in GNU Radio Companion or Audacity. First up is overdrive and while it might appear to be very similar to fuzz, in that it’s a form of distortion, it’s generally considered to be quite different. As the name suggests, it emulates the effect of driving an amplifier too hard, so it starts to flat-top the waveform. However, it’s not as hard as the clipping in fuzz, so it produces fewer harmonics, and is considered to be a less-aggressive effect. Next we come to…

We have talked 0ver the last couple of months about tools that you can use to get the best positioning for 4G and 5G mobile reception in your home. This month we thought we’d take a look at some of the tools you can use to diagnose your internal Wi-Fi network: to map out the reception, to find the right settings, and even find out about other Wi-Fi networks that overlap yours. This list by no means exhaustive, but should provide a guide on some that we have used and had good experiences with. Let’s jump right in. Fing www.fing.comWindows, MacOS, Android, iOS Free The Fing app, from the makers of the Fingbox, is a great tool for scanning your own Wi-Fi network. It will tell you what devices are…

Luckily, this update is only available to members of the Windows Insider Program, so there’s no need to worry about it being automatically downloaded and installed onto your own laptop or PC. Microsoft has made the KB5010414 update available to the Insider Program: it’s a fairly significant patch for the Windows 11 operating system, though some users have already noted that issues are appearing on their systems after installing it. These include overheating due to excessive CPU loads, and new printing issues that are unrelated to those that previously plagued both Windows 11 and Windows 10 users, neither of which were reported prior to this update being downloaded. Luckily, this update is only available to members of the Windows Insider Program (a beta-testing platform for early adopters), so there’s no…

You wouldn’t want to meet an ichthyosaur while taking a dip in the early Cretaceous seas. That goes double for Kyhytysuka sachicarum: this newly identified, 130-million-year-old marine reptile is now known from fossils in central Colombia and had larger, more knife-like teeth than other ichthyosaur species – and that’s saying something, as ichthyosaurs are famous for their long, toothy snouts. These big teeth would have enabled K. sachicarum to attack large prey, such as fish and even other marine reptiles. “Whereas other ichthyosaurs had small, equally sized teeth for feeding on small prey, this new species modified its tooth sizes and spacing to build an arsenal of teeth for dispatching large prey,” said palaeontologist Hans Larsson of McGill University’s Redpath Museum in Montreal. Ichthyosaurs were a large group of marine…

Muse S $435 choosemuse.com The Muse S is billed as a “digital sleeping pill,” but you wouldn’t want to swallow one. Instead, it’s a smart headband that offers meditations, sleep tracking, and some fancy neuroscience that, it claims, will help you fall asleep more easily. Once paired with your wireless headphones, the Muse S helps you relax through guided meditations and sleep preparation exercises. That alone could help you get a more restful night’s sleep. But beyond that, the band also tracks your brain activity using a built–in EEG. Not only does this give you a breakdown of how you slept when you wake up the next morning, but the device will detect restless periods during the night and automatically start playing relaxing audio snippets to guide you back to…

$59, www.sifugame.com, PlayStation, PC Sifu isn’t just a fighting game, but an engrossing lesson in risk versus reward. It’s a stylish single-player action brawler, where every punch, every kick, block, parry, dodge, and glass bottle crunched into the skull of its scores of hostile adversaries matters. It’s a thinker, like old-school arcade beat ‘em ups, and it’s effortlessly cool, like any one of the myriad Chinese martial art films it’s inspired by. Button-bashers beware, though: Sifu will eat you up and spit you out faster than an ankle-snapping Ground Counter swiftly followed by a Crooked Foot takedown. These expert manoeuvres may not mean much to the uninitiated, those green-horned half-pints to whom age is just a number. But to the grizzled digital Kung-fu veterans among us – those who’ve earned…

$7,999, www.msi.com For years, the MSI Raider GE76 has been a great gaming laptop for showcasing what the latest mobile hardware from Intel and Nvidia is capable of. And now, in 2022, with the launch of the Intel 12th-generation Alder Lake processors and the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, we have a laptop that’s basically on the level of a full-fledged gaming PC, but fits in a (large) backpack. While the high power of this gaming laptop means it doesn’t have the best battery life in the world – only reaching about five hours – it is one of the first gaming laptops we’ve used that we would genuinely call a ‘4K gaming laptop’. In fact, with DLSS, this laptop should have no problem playing even Cyberpunk 2077 with high…

$879, www.hp.com Slick design has long been the differentiator for HP’s Z-line of products and the HP Z27K G3 definitely delivers that signature premium aesthetic and feel. For starters, it’s a genuine slim-bezel monitor on all four sides of the panel, where many screens have big, ugly chins. The quality of the aluminium stand is also exceptional, both in terms of the cool alloy feel and the polished engineering of how it clips into the rear of the panel chassis. The stand is also fully adjustable, including rotation into portrait mode. Overall, the HP Z27K G3 looks very expensive without being showy and would complement pretty much any work environment. What it’s not, however, is a monitor aimed at high-end content creation. It has a decent 4K 27-inch IPS panel.…

$13,499, leica-camera.com Leica’s M-series cameras may date back to the 1950s, but the Leica M11 is the most modern and feature-packed model to date. It still has the exceptional build quality and minimalist design that you’d expect of this style (and price) of camera, but it also packs in a new 60MP full-frame backside-illuminated sensor and other innovations, like 64GB of built-in storage. This makes the Leica M11 the highest-resolution model in an M-series camera to date – in fact, it may even use the same sensor as the one we’ve seen in the Sony A7R IV. This is quite a jump from the 40MP Leica M10-R and allows much larger prints to be made, but the downside is that such a high resolution is unforgiving when it comes to…

First things first: the Bose SoundLink Flex, unlike quite a few nominal rivals, is an authentically portable Bluetooth speaker. Some brands seem to think being battery-powered and light enough to pick up makes a speaker ‘portable’, but Bose understands what’s required. So the Flex is small enough (just 9 x 20 x 5cm), light enough (600g) and, crucially, robust enough to fit the bill. The chassis (available in black and ‘smoke’ white as well as the ‘stone’ blue of our review sample) is mostly of soft-touch silicone with quite a lot of ‘give’ in it, while the front grille is of powder-coated steel. There are little moulded feet to allow the Flex to lie on its back or stand upright in ‘landscape’ mode, while a durable fabric loop at one…

There are many hidden features and new tweaks that you can discover on your iPhone and while some are very minor, they do all add up to make your daily iPhone experience easier. One such change is the ability to make incoming calls dominate and fill the entire screen to ensure that you notice them. 1 A hidden setting? Go to Settings > Phone and look for the ‘Incoming Calls’ option. It is not exactly hidden, but it’s not an obvious setting to look out for in daily use. 2 Go full screen All you need to do is tap ‘Full Screen’ and all of your future calls will display that way. The banners are less obtrusive, but they can be missed when on silent. 3 A new look Incoming…

One of the challenges for quantum computing is that qubits are super sensitive. In order for them to be usable they have to remain in their quantum state, but this is easily disrupted by coming into contact with heat, electromagnetic fields or collisions with air molecules. Superconductors are the answer. But even with a good conductor, some charge is still lost due to resistance. Because superconducting materials operate according to the bizarre rules of the quantum realm, they don’t have any resistance, allowing a charge to flow through them without any of it dissipating and creating an endless flow of charge that doesn’t disrupt the qubits.…

WHAT YOU NEED AskAdmin TIME REQUIRED 30 minutes There are various tools you can use to do this, but one of the most effective is AskAdmin. Tell it what software you want to restrict, and it will prevent it from launching, without you having performed any complex configuration behind the scenes. And, should you later want to authorise a program you need to use, rolling back your changes is very straightforward. 1 Visit www.snipca.com/40813 and, if AskAdmin doesn’t start downloading automatically, click Direct Download. When the download is completed, switch to File Explorer and click Downloads in the sidebar. Double-click ‘AskAdmin. zip’ to expand it, then open the AskAdmin folder and click the ‘AskAdmin_x64.exe’ file. Windows SmartScreen may warn you that AskAdmin comes from an unrecognised developer, but it’s perfectly…

REQUIRES Automator YOU WILL LEARN How to create Quick Actions IT WILL TAKE 20 minutes If there are tasks you frequently perform with files in Finder, save time and effort by creating Quick Actions. For example, you may move downloaded files to your Documents folder, a folder on iCloud or another drive. You may strip the text out of PDF documents so it can be used elsewhere or you might combine PDFs into one long document. All these tasks and many more can be Quick Actions, which are tasks, sometimes multi-step ones, that can be performed with a click of the mouse or trackpad. Ctrl-click one or more files in Finder and hover over “Services” or “Quick Actions” to see Quick Actions. Roland Waddilove Create Quick Actions 1 Choose an…

1 The Menu Bar It’s quite the labyrinth of features with some long menu-entry names! 2 The Styles Pull-Down Menu. We’re going to spend quite a lot of time with this as we’re big fans of using styles to control the look of the text. 3 Formatting Toolbar. Use this to make on-the-spot changes to the look of the text, but always consider creating or modifying a style if you can. 4 The Navigator. This is a section browser and fairly essential for zipping around a long document like a book. Press F5 to switch it on. 5 The Main Text Area. LibreOffice Writer is a “what you see is what you get” environment, giving you some feedback on what your changes will look like. 6 The Status Bar. The…

Each publication service has its own requirements for cover image specifications. For EPUB files, a 1.6:1 ratio is typical, and 1,600x1,000 is a reasonable minimum because many reader devices now have a high-resolution display. Things become more complicated when it comes to print book covers, because most publishers expect a single, wrap-around image. The problem is that the number of pages dictates the width of the spine of the book, therefore affecting the overall size of the cover image. Consult the documentation provided by the publishing service to be sure. If you don’t have a suitable image, consider integrating a royalty free image downloaded from a site such as https://pixabay.com or https:// unsplash.com. The truth is that people do often judge a book by its cover, and something professional looking…

In our article last issue we aimed for an ideal set up on a new Google Pixel 6 Pro smartphone. This is an ongoing process, with configuration tweaks and idiosyncrasies to iron out, but the Pixel has now taken over all the functions of separate work and personal phones. One of those phones is a Samsung Galaxy Note8, a flagship model from 2017, of similar size and appearance to the Pixel 6 Pro. So here we have very similar flagship phones with similar pricing that are over four years apart in technology. What are the differences, and should you pay up to trade one for the other? Curve-edge display Both phones have a distinctive curved-edge screen and, front on, look pretty much the same when not lit up. In 2017…

In this age of social media, online marketing and web design, the flat lay shot has become an incredibly popular style. Arguably, stock photography has gained a new purpose with the advent of ecommerce, and online advertising; the appetite for image content bound for web page headers, blog posts, social media marketing campaigns and newsletters seems insatiable. The top-down perspective image fits these uses perfectly for several reasons. Firstly, the lack of depth is undistracting, allowing the image and written content to work seamlessly together without either overpowering the other. Secondly, any objects placed in the shot are all equally visible, which is ideal for product-based scenes. Shots can also be quite conceptual in nature, meaning they are generally interchangeable between pages, posts and stories. Finally, they can be easily…

Huawei FreeBuds Lipstick We wonder if Huawei will even be able to give away its FreeBuds. $399 | consumer.huawei.com/au/audio/freebuds-lipstick Have you ever woken up and thought that you could be the woman in the red dress from the original Matrixmovie? If only you had the ear buds to match. Sadly the Apple PRODUCT RED label that donates proceeds to fund HIV programs doesn’t do the AirPods range, but Huawei makes an awesome knockoff that comes in a package that you’ll mistake for your lipstick whenever you need them. In addition to getting mixed up in your handbag, these headphones come with the added bonus of clashing with everything else in your wardrobe. The only solution is to buy a pair in every colour. Uncrate Supply Whiskey Vault Mini For containing…