Inhoudsopgave van November 2022 - Tech Advisor

It’s been three years since Microsoft debuted Windows Terminal, its official upgraded interface for programs like Command Prompt and PowerShell. While the open-source command line tool isn’t necessarily setting the world on fire, it’s earned its fair share of fans. It might get a few more now, because the latest version includes a ton of handy customization options. The new features are baked into the beta version, labelled Windows Terminal Preview and available via direct download on Github (fave. co/3DuW7NT), on the Microsoft store (fave.co/3QICs05) or via winget. The big news is the new theme options, which allow for custom background colours or images, text colours, and even a few tab and window variables. Custom themes can be built with a JSON file – it’s not as easy as standard…

Not surprisingly, Intel has followed USB4 into the 80Gb/s generation, showing off a prototype 80Gb/s Thunderbolt demo in its Israel facility. Intel is the key developer of Thunderbolt, which was co-developed with Apple. The I/O specification is the foundation of a small but growing ecosystem of Thunderbolt docks, which connect to a USB-C/Thunderbolt port on a PC and use the I/O bandwidth to connect to various peripherals, including displays and storage. Displays, not surprisingly, suck up the most bandwidth. The current Thunderbolt specification, known as Thunderbolt 4, allows for 40Gb/s data transfers, typically enough for a pair of 4K displays running at 60Hz apiece. Connecting additional peripherals, however, can cut into that bandwidth – docks with integrated Ethernet ports and connections to high-speed external SSDs can see hiccups if many…

Microsoft spent years trying to make its own mobile operating system work, but that’s in the past, and now it’s all-in with Android. Microsoft makes Android-powered Surface phones, helps you connect Android devices to Windows, and you can even install Android apps in Windows 11. However, the partnership with Amazon’s Appstore provides access to only a handful of useful Android apps. If you want more Android power in Windows 11, you can ‘sideload’ other apps in just a few steps. GETTING SET UP Before you develop any fanciful ideas about running every Android app under the sun, you should check your system specs. The Windows Subsystem for Android requires at least 8GB of RAM, but 16GB is recommended. Your PC also needs a relatively modern processor in the form of…

Price: £1,069 from fave.co/3QF4byE In the world of business laptops, there are some companies that hog all the attention. Lenovo, HP and Dell are typically the brands an enterprise will issue its workers. What about smaller firms, maybe those without full-time IT departments? That’s where Dynabook is looking to get its foot in the door. The Dynabook Portégé X40 is a premium business machine in a fetching blue metal finish, with Intel’s hottest ultrabook chip, plenty of ports, and a standard three year on-site repair warranty. That’s right – no shipping this elsewhere for service for a long time. If Dynabook doesn’t sound familiar, it might be because the brand hasn’t existed long. Previously, these computers were marketed under the Toshiba name, but in the past few years Dynabook has…

Price: £1,649 from fave.co/3wZOBGF Samsung has revealed the fourth generation of its big screen foldable, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4. Rather than reinventing the wheel, the company has taken the past year to refine the design of the foldable, with the aim of making it more durable and thus more appealing to the wider smartphone market, while also improving its performance and cameras. The question is, with competing foldables from the likes of Oppo, Xiaomi and Huawei all revealing huge leaps forward in foldable tech in 2022, has Samsung rested on its laurels for too long? Well… DESIGN If you were hoping that Samsung would throw out the rule book and completely redesign its big-screen foldable in its fourth iteration, you’ll be disappointed. In fact, at a quick glance, it’s…

Android 13, Google’s latest and greatest Android version is here and is in the midst of rolling out to current Pixel devices as we speak. That means if you’ve got a Pixel 4 or higher, it should be showing up any moment now. And that, in turn, means you’ve got some spectacular new features to explore. For everyone else – well, time will tell. It’s up to each device-maker to process and deliver Android updates to its customers, and not all phones are created equal. Android 13’s most prominent Pixelaffecting additions may seem subtle, given the software’s focus on tablets and foldables, but don’t let the familiar-feeling interface fool you. All under-thehood enhancements and security-aimed improvements aside, Android 13’s got some absolutely awesome stuff to be found – if you…

It seems like we’ve been waiting a dog’s age for Intel to release its Arc series of desktop graphics cards, with only one sporadically available in western markets at the time of writing. Intel still insists that they’re coming in the latter part of the year, even as that part continues to dwindle away. The latest titbit of information comes in the form of a series of basic specs now made official, specifically for the midrange and high-end cards we’d only seen named before. In addition to the semi-released budget card the Arc A380, we now have more concrete details for the mid‑range A580 and the high-end A750 and A770. The number of Xe GPU cores is one of the bigger differentiators: going from the A380 to the A580 the…

Did you know Google makes laptops? Unless you’re a hardcore fan of the company’s platforms, you might have missed it entirely. Since 2013 Google has made four different Chromebooks, designed to show off the operating system to the fullest. The Chromebook Pixel, Pixelbook and Pixelbook Go were all well-received by critics, but generally ignored by consumers. According to a new report, that’s pretty much over: there’s no new Google-made Chromebook on the horizon. The Verge reports that the internal Google team responsible for laptop designs has been split up and reassigned elsewhere. While a refreshed Pixel laptop was apparently in the works for next year, it’s been scrapped. Google’s current focus as far as hardware is concerned is Android, as it beefs up the Pixel phone line with its very…

Got a minute to spare? Let’s add some pep to your Windows PC by preventing it from launching unnecessary apps at start-up. Slimming down your start-up process will of course lead to faster boot times, but it can also help unclutter your taskbar or menu bar, while also freeing up processing power from programs you seldom use. You don’t even need expensive system cleaner apps for this brief bit of PC maintenance. All it takes is a quick trip to your Windows settings menu, where you can decide which apps to launch straight away. Here’s how to disable start-up apps: • Click the Start menu and select the Settings icon. • Head to Apps > Start-up. • Uncheck any apps you don’t need when your computer boots (1.). WHICH START-UP…

Price: £927 from tinyurl.com/tb9zrf2w Prosumers and professionals looking for a laptop with a powerful processor and discrete graphics have many choices, but high pricing can be an issue. Lenovo’s Slim 7 Pro X attempts to deliver great performance in a mid-sized form factor while keeping the price in check. The machine itself is lightweight and portable and the design is both durable and sophisticated. While we liked the strong performance, battery life is less-than-stellar and connectivity options are lacking. That said, we feel the pros far outweigh the cons. Read on to learn more. FEATURES The Lenovo Slim 7 Pro X is an impressive machine on paper. It has an AMD Ryzen 6900HS processor with eight cores and 16 threads as well as a Nvidia RTX 3050 graphics solution with…

You might know your version of Windows (Windows Home or Pro), and hopefully you knew how to get Windows for cheap or even free, but do you know if it’s a retail, OEM, or volume licence? That distinction affects your ability to move the key to a different computer. Retail keys are the most flexible type of licence. You’re allowed to reuse such a key on different computers. (However, you can’t use a single licence on multiple computers simultaneously.) So if you build a whole new PC, you can move the licence over to it with no hassle. OEM keys are used by manufacturers to activate a new PC. They’re intended for just one computer only, so they’re tied to the hardware of the system (usually the motherboard) that the…

No matter what type of Android phone you carry or how you usually use it, one thing is a near-universal constant: You’re going to spend a lot of time sending and reading messages. Google’s Android Messages app has become surprisingly good over the years. That’s no big secret. If you’re only relying on what you see on the surface within Android Messages, though, you’re missing out on some of its most powerful and underappreciated efficiency-enhancing options. Here, we’ll explore the Android Messages app’s most effective out-of-sight features. They may not be able to cut down on the number of messages you send and receive on your phone, but they will help you spend less time fussing with them. And they might just help you have a more pleasant experience, too.…

Hiring a shot back at AMD official Ryzen reveal, Intel officials said the upcoming 13th gen ‘Raptor Lake’ desktop CPUs will hit 6GHz. Intel’s boost clock of 6GHz for its upcoming chip was revealed at a press event at the company’s Haifa design centre in Israel, according to numerous press reports. Much of the briefing is under embargo for the launch of the CPU later this year, but company officials did confirm some performance claims which was covered by Paul Alcorn of Tom’s Hardware (fave.co/3S1lpap). Alcorn reports that the 13th gen Raptor Lake is touting a 15 percent improvement in single-threaded performance and an eye-opening 41 percent increase performance in multi-threaded performance using SPECintrate_2017. Many consumers may not be familiar with the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation, but it’s a decades-old…

Two new releases of Windows 11 may end up right on top of one another, according to tweets from a noted Microsoft leaker. Microsoft Windows 11 22H2, at the time of writing, was scheduled for 20 September. It’s reported that the first ‘Moment’ of Windows 11 22H2 could drop in October, according to a tweet by ‘Albacore’ (fave.co/3qDxnvc), which has disclosed details about Microsoft’s road map before. ‘Moments’ may be Microsoft’s new, incremental additions to Windows, and they’ll occur much more frequently, and without a (public) set schedule. They were part of an adjustment to Microsoft’s road map that will see major feature releases scheduled for every three years, implying that Windows 12 will be due in 2024. Windows Central, which disclosed the changes, noted that the ‘Moments’ would be…

Laptops have thwarted the attempts of tablets to take over and remain a staple of the tech world, especially in the new hybrid working era brought about by the pandemic. There are almost endless amounts to choose from with a complicated range of models and specs so we’ve reviewed and ranked the best right here. We’ve tested and ranked the best laptops you can get right now, so you don’t have to. Plus, if none of the laptops we’ve listed here is quite right for you, we arm you with the knowledge you need to help you choose what laptop to buy. You’ll find extensive buying advice that covers everything from what processor is suitable to how much storage you’ll need and whether or not you should be looking for…

Price: £999 from fave.co/3etxUNG Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip3 marked a massive step forwards for the company’s foldable line. It was a revolution in design, practicality and pricing that took the compact folding phone from niche tech nerd fantasy to a mainstream proposition. Twelve months on, it’s fair to say Samsung hasn’t got the same scale of upgrade up its sleeve again. Perhaps understandably, the Z Flip4 is a comparatively minor upgrade, more iteration than revolution. That’s not to be critical though: I gave the Z Flip3 a glowing review last year, and the Flip4 is quite simply even better. Most importantly, while Samsung’s upgrades are few, they’re also focussed, and the company has improved both the battery life and camera – two of the only areas where the last Flip…

Who doesn’t love a good deal? Especially if it’s on something that’s basically new or lightly used. We’ve been devoid of any such deals on graphics cards for the last few years, thanks to a combination of supply shortages, logistics woes, and booming cryptocurrency demands, but there’s finally good news. The GPU market has taken a nosedive, meaning that brand new retail Nvidia and AMD graphics cards are cheaper than ever. They’re still expensive, however, and GPU miners hurting from crypto’s crash are trying to sell off their hardware at significant discounts. So we now turn our attention to the used graphics card market. There are deals to be found with used GPUs, but there are risks involved too. And is it even a good time to be shopping? We’re…