Inhoudsopgave van July 2023 - Tech Advisor

Live commands, 2FA copying and content-aware brightness settings: Microsoft may be releasing these features for a Windows 11 test build, but they should soon arrive on your PC. It recently released Windows 11 Build 22621.1776 (KB5026446) to the Windows Insider Release Channel. That’s a signal that, unlike many of Microsoft’s test features, the changes that the new build brings about will actually land on your PC before long. The firm has said that it will release bundles of new features in ‘moments’ in between official major feature releases, and this looks like it could be the next one. We’ve seen many of these new features crop up in earlier test builds, but they’re worth recapping here. And there are a ton. Here are some of the highlights of the new…

Microsoft said that it’s rolling out more visual features to its Bing Chat AI chatbot, including mobile, where Microsoft’s AI vision is now becoming more cohesive. It’s a quiet effort to essentially phase out the traditional search box and make search more conversational. In many ways, the evolution of AI has been like the evolution of the Internet: largely text-based, with later additions of graphics and then video. So, too, is Bing: Microsoft originally planned to add visual cards, ads and graphics, but scaled them down after launch – possibly because users didn’t like them. Microsoft also took a similar approach with the more creative elements of its Bing chatbot: it leaned strongly into the creative elements at launch, dialled them down significantly after long, weird conversations, than slowly turned…

Google released its first selfbranded Android phone in 2010, and has been releasing steady new models at least once a year since then. Its history with tablets is more tumultuous: After getting early hits with the affordable Nexus series, Google tablets have lost out to Samsung and Apple at every turn, and it’s been almost five full years since the ill-fated Pixel Slate. The £599 Pixel Tablet, fully revealed at Google I/O 2023 last month after a year of waiting, is taking a new approach by playing on Google’s smart home prowess. WHAT’S NEW The Pixel Tablet is both a conventional, media consumption-focused slate, comparable to the iPad Air, and a smart home management station, a la Google’s own Nest Hub or Amazon’s more premium Echo devices. Pull the thing…

I’s hard to trust Google’s new AIpowered search vision when it can’t even correctly summarize the details of its own products. At its recent I/O developer conference, Google laid out the foundation for revamping its iconic search engine, which has followed the same basic formula for years. The company aims to power Google search up with conversational and generative AI – and, most importantly, put those responses before traditional links and everything else. For the most popular search engine in the world, this is a monumental change. The problem with that approach is that AI chatbots often make confident-sounding mistakes – and, true to form, Google couldn’t even get the details of its latest Google Pixel Fold and Pixel Tablet products exactly right, including the price. We used Google Bard…

Price: £3,099 from fave.co/3BNu22m The Dell XPS 15 is an elder of the laptop world. It carries itself with a stately, reserved manner, and wouldn’t dream of troubling itself with trivialities like a radical new colourway or different badging. This year’s XPS 15 keeps the pomp but delivers one major improvement: it’s a lot quicker than before. DESIGN Dell’s XPS product line settled on a design language in the middle of the last decade and hasn’t changed since. It’s a bit dull, to be sure, but shows a hard-won confidence in the fundamentals of the XPS design language. It may look the same as past XPS 15 models, but it’s also handsome and feels durable. That’s what matters. Looks aside, the XPS 15 is rather slim and light for its…

Price: £449 from fave.co/42MCjiz Few phone brands make midrangers like Google does these days. Its Pixel A-series phones are direct descendants of the company’s flagships, with so much shared DNA that at times they feel like flagships in their own right. That’s never been truer than with the Pixel 7a, which once again shares the chipset of the flagships it follows, but now throws in the same display tech and wireless charging to complete the illusion that this is a Pixel 7 in all but name. A slight price hike isn’t enough to disrupt the value on offer here – if nothing else, it’s within the bounds of the last year’s inflation – and the Pixel 7a does enough to put every other mid‑range phone out there on notice. DESIGN…

If you’re accustomed to long-time Windows creature comforts such as the ‘Never Combine’ taskbar, upgrading to Windows 11 can be a big adjustment. Microsoft changed or eliminated a lot of those features in pursuit more modern, streamlined interface, and in doing so made it harder for some of us to get work done. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With a free, open-source program called Explorer Patcher (fave.co/3OB7kSG), you can bring back many older features of Windows without missing out on Windows 11’s benefits. It only takes a few minutes to set up, and is brimming with options that can improve your Windows 11 workflow. Here’s how to get started: INSTALLING EXPLORER PATCHER Explorer Patcher is a free download on the developer’s GitHub page (fave.co/3OB7kSG), though the actual…

The heyday of mobile devices with built-in keyboards is long past, eclipsed by bigger and bigger touchscreens that are now flipping and folding. But if your heart still burns for BlackBerry, the smartphone for anyone who sent more emails than text messages before the iPhone came along, there’s a new DIY project you might want to check out. It’s called the Beepberry, and though it isn’t actually reviving the form factor, it’s trying to give your thumbs the sweet, sweet feel of a tiny phone keyboard. The Beepberry (fave.co/41WwjmA) is a custom PCB with a tiny 2.7-inch black and white LCD screen, a Raspberry Pi Zero W ’round back covering the basic OS and wireless duties, a battery and what looks like a genuine BlackBerry keyboard, including the company logo…

Your dormant Gmail accounts could get wiped later this year if you haven’t logged in for a while – or interacted with any other of Google’s services while logged in. A new update to Google’s policy on inactive personal accounts now puts them on the chopping block after two years, a move the firm says is for better security. According to a blog post (fave.co/43filNy), Google reserves the right to delete the entirety of the fallow account, including your Gmail, Drive, YouTube and Photos content. The purges will begin in December 2023, with ample notice to be provided in advance. Users will receive multiple email notifications to their Gmail address as well as the recovery email address on file (if one exists). Deletions will also happen in waves. The first…

Is Bard back? Google unveiled fundamental new improvements to its AI chatbot during the company’s I/O 2023 keynote, with new Duet AI powers fundamentally improving its Workspace productivity apps as well. AI has been one of the unexpected breakthroughs of the past year, with nearly daily updates from tech giants implementing AI. Even the US government wants to use AI. Google, long the dominant player in search, has had its reputation undermined by AI models such as ChatGPT (fave.co/3MrzIoL) and even generative AI art from Midjourney (fave.co/3Aebast). Google has lagged behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing in terms of AI, launching its own Bard chatbot in February, a day before Microsoft had publicly launched Bing’s AI chatbot. So far, Bard has seemed to prioritize search, ‘knowing’ up-to-the-minute facts. In fact,…

At the recent Google I/O developer conference, the company’s chief executive Sundar Pichai pledged to use AI responsibly, by improving knowledge and learning, boosting creativity, and deploying AI responsibly to help maintain equality. He showed off three apps that will use AI to improve them: GMAIL (HELP ME WRITE) Gmail has been a pioneer in predictive responses, and it’s continuing with a new feature called Help Me Write. Help Me Write uses your previous history to create an email on a given topic, so you can ask for a refund on a travel reservation, using the previous email history to help negotiate a settlement. All you need to ask Help Me Write to craft the email. This feature will start rolling out as part of the company’s upcoming Workspace update,…

Price: £449 from fave.co/3VWhzT4 The Android tablet renaissance is showing no signs of slowing down. Not too long ago, this was almost exclusively Samsung’s domain, but we now have decent slates from the likes of Xiaomi, Oppo, Nokia and Lenovo to choose from. OnePlus is the latest company to join the party with the appropriately named OnePlus Pad. This £449 tablet doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but does provide a compelling experience for the money. Does that mean you should buy one, though? I think yes, but only if you use your tablet in a particular kind of way. DESIGN The OnePlus Pad has the usual blend of glass and aluminium we’ve come to expect from modern tablets, yet it still manages to stand out. That’s primarily due to the eyecatching…

Android tablets are much like iPads. The main difference is the operating system on which they run: Google’s Android platform. Android, as you’re likely to find it on most devices, comes with an app store all its own, called the Play Store. Chances are all the popular apps you’d find on an iPad running iOS will also be available to Android users too, however, there are the odd exceptions or those times where an Android version of an app takes a little longer to appear than it does on iPadOS. As for Amazon’s Fire tablets, things are a little different, as they run on a forked version of Android that’s heavily customized, locked down and employs Amazon’s own app store in place of the Google Play Store. SIZE The first…

After a long day of staring at a screen, your eyes can feel tired. Luckily, Windows offers several tools for those who have trouble seeing, either because of simple fatigue or a disability. Taking advantage of these features can ease eye strain, making you feel fresher and more productive. Accessibility is a major strength of the Windows operating system. Both Windows 10 and 11 offer numerous ways to make working easier on the eyes. Keep in mind that all eyes are different! Some forms of assistance might be useful while others might not be. All of our tips are free, though we’re going to offer one hardware-based suggestion that you will need to pay for. 1. BUY A BETTER MONITOR More and more, laptop makers and display manufacturers are offering…

Farewell, simple CPUs. AMD is moving toward a future where generic CPU cores will be replaced with performance cores, efficiency cores and accelerators, much like Intel. Tom’s Hardware (fave.co/3q5CIOQ) cornered AMD chief technical officer Mark Papermaster at a Belgium supercomputing conference, where Papermaster agreed to answer questions on a number of subjects. But it was Papermaster’s admission that AMD is moving to a hybrid architecture that most piqued our interest. “What you’ll also see is more variations of the cores themselves, you’ll see high-performance cores mixed with power-efficient cores mixed with acceleration,” Papermaster replied to a question from Tom’s deputy managing editor Paul Alcorn. “So where, Paul, we’re moving to now is not just variations in core density, but variations in the type of core, and how you configure the…

Samsung has had almost no competition for its Galaxy Z Fold phones in the West even though that line is now into its fourth iteration. Thankfully Google is here to rectify that, finally entering the fray with its first ever foldable: the aptly named Pixel Fold. A big screen, book-style foldable, the Pixel Fold has been built to be slim and lightweight. Google is also promising that its unique software position makes the Pixel Fold the best option around for apps optimized to use the larger display format. RELEASE DATE At the time of writing, you can pre-order the Fold now from Google’s online store (fave.co/3MdzYGS). The phone won’t actually ship until June, so there’s not long to wait before you can get your hands on one. PRICE While there…

Google’s search engine has remained relatively unchanged for decades. With the advent of AI, look for that to change – and you can test the new-look Search today. Google Search’s familiar interface, with a search box and a list of responses, is being overhauled to look more like Microsoft Bing’s chatbot now does, with AI stepping in to provide supplementary information it never offered before. (In Bing, you can perform a ‘traditional’ search, with a list of links and a Bing Chat box to the side; you can also conduct the search entirely within the Bing Chat interface by selecting Chat from a list of options, or scrolling/swiping up on the Bing Search page). Google is trying something a bit different with its updated search engine, bringing in recommendations as…

You’ve heard of AI art, and AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing. Now you can try out AI music, compliments of Google’s MusicLM. Originally announced in January, MusicLM is now available for you to play with, compliments of what Google calls its AI Test Kitchen. Though you can jump directly to the MusicLM site to try it out, Google may throw up a pop-up requiring you to sign up for AI Test Kitchen first. You’ll need to provide a Gmail address, and agree that whatever prompts you provide may be reviewed by human members of Google’s team, though anonymized. Google announced the opening of MusicLM at its Google I/O developer conference, where it also unveiled a service to protect your email from the dark web, as well as AI improvements…

Price: £699 from fave.co/3I5iH11 Handheld consoles have been around since the late 1980s, but it recently feels like we’ve entered a new era with home console gaming coming to portable devices. From the Nintendo Switch being the only realistic option for such handheld quality a few years ago, we now have credible competitors from the likes of Valve, Logitech and Onex. These are consoles that don’t play traditional physical game cartridges, cards, or discs, but instead stream or download games from services such as Steam or Xbox Game Pass. But with the ROG Ally, Asus wants to take things to the next level. Unlike rivals, it runs a full version of Windows 11, meaning you can play the same range of games as any PC. Alongside dedicated AMD flagship processors…

Spring is here and that means weeding, cleaning, packing away winter clothes… and tuning up your PC. Optimizing your PC’s performance isn’t as complicated as it sounds, however. Just a few tweaks here and there and you’ll have your PC running faster than ever. Improving your PC’s efficiency can take a little effort, though some processes can be automated. Your PC is like a Roomba in that streamlining your laptop or desktop often happens when you’re not looking. Below, we’ve listed several ways to improve the responsiveness and overall speed of your PC and to preserve its longevity, too. Some may be familiar, others not. And if you’ve already taken care of these, good for you. After all, why buy a new PC if you don’t have to? APPLY WINDOWS…