Tech Advisorの February 2016 の目次

Companies that build social networks do not have an infinite number of chances to get things right before users lose interest and flee. Google likely ran out of time to achieve its original goal with Google+ (to become the end-all, be-all social network), but the company recently made a significant move to salvage what remains of its once grandiose vision for social. Google+ has been redesigned, or “reimagined” as the company put it, to focus on the four-year-old social network’s strengths. Communities, Google’s new take on its former Groups feature, and Collections, the platform’s new format for organising posts by topic, are now the most prominent elements of Google+. An average of 1.2 million users join new Communities each day, according to Google, and Collections is growing even faster. The…

From £749 inc VAT Contact microsoft.com/en-gb Specifications 12.3in (2736x1824, 267ppi) PixelSense display; Windows 10 Pro; up to Intel Skylake Core i7; up to 16GB RAM; up to 512GB storage; USB 3.0; Mini-DisplayPort; microSD card reader; 11ac Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 4.0; 5Mp front camera; 8Mp rear camera; Surface Pen included; 292x201x8.45mm; 766g Microsoft’s latest tablet, the Surface Pro 4, has been designed to replace your laptop. Here we look at whether the tech giant has succeeded. Price and competition Starting at £749, it’s more expensive than its predecessor, but Microsoft has pretty much gone to town when it comes to improvements and upgrades. Although this is the entry-level price, you can spend up to a whopping £1,799 for a top-of-the-range model. That’s a lot of money, especially since you’ll have to…

£1,099 inc VAT Contact toshiba.co.uk Specifications 15.6in (3840x2160, 282ppi) IGZO gloss touchscreen display; Windows 8.1 (free upgrade to Windows 10); 2.2GHz Intel Core i5-5200U (2.7GHz Turbo) 2C, 4T; nVidia GeForce GTX 950M with 4GB DDR3 RAM and Intel HD Graphics 5500; 12GB (1x 8GB, 1x 4GB) 1600MHz DDR3 RAM; 1TB 5400rpm SSHD; gigabit ethernet; 802.11ac, 1x1 MIMO; Bluetooth 4.0; BD-RE/DVD±RW, tray-load optical drive; 3x USB 3.0; HDMI; Kensington Security Slot; SDXC card slot; stereo speakers; 0.9Mp webcam; built-in mic; 3.5mm headset jack; 44Wh lithium-ion battery, non-removable; 90W mains charger with IEC C5 inlet; 380x257x23.7mm; 2.33kg Toshiba’s P50T bears the Satellite name of its cheapest consumer laptops, but this model has price and components that place it toward the top of the mid-range category. It’s a 15in model with a…

£228 inc VAT Contact zuk.hk Specifications 5.5in full-HD (1920x1080, 401ppi) IPS display; CyanogenMod 12.1 (based on Android Lollipop 5.1); 2.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor; Adreno 330 graphics; 3GB RAM; 64GB storage, no microSD support; 13Mp IMX214 5-lens rear camera with OIS and dual-LED flash, 1080p video recording; 8Mp front camera; dual-SIM dual-standby, with 4G on both nano-SIM slots, supports 1800-, 2600MHz UK 4G LTE networks; 802.11ac Wi-Fi; GPS; OTG; Bluetooth 4.0; fingerprint scanner; headphone jack; non-removable 4100mAh battery with Quick Charge; USB-C; 155.7x77.3x8.9mm; 175g The Z1 is the first phone from Hong Kong-based ZUK, which is backed by Lenovo. A Chinese phone, the ZUK Z1 is available in the UK through sites such as Coolicool.com, where it currently costs £228. Coolicool has stocks in its EU warehouse, which…

£149 inc VAT Contact nvidia.co.uk Specifications Android 5.1 Lollipop; GeForce Now game streaming; nVidia Tegra X1 processor with a 256-core GPU and 3GB RAM; 4K playback at 60fps; 16- and 500GB storage options; 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1; HDMI 2.0; 2x USB 3.0; Micro-USB 2.0; microSD slot; 210x130x25mm; 654g NVidia is the latest company to enter the media streamer market, with its Shield TV. It’s aimed at a different market to its competitors, though, and comes with a gaming controller alongside the standard remote. Indeed, it’s been designed to allow you to stream your gaming collection from your PC to your TV, and even stream games via GeForce Now for instant gaming. Design Visually, the Shield is one of the best-looking media streamers you can buy, and it’s not…

£92 inc VAT Contact epson.co.uk Specifications Print resolution, 5760x1440dpi; Scanner resolution, 1200x2400dpi; Connectivity – Wi-Fi; USB; Apple AirPrint; 100-sheet A4 paper tray; 390x341x138mm; 6.2kg Most inkjet printers under £100 use four coloured inks for printing documents and photos. These low-cost printers also tend to use just two ink cartridges – one cartridge for the black ink, and a second ‘tri-colour’ cartridge that holds the cyan, magenta and yellow inks for colour printing. Epson’s Expression Premium XP-530 is an exception to that rule. It’s still very affordable, at around £90 but, as the name implies, it’s also a ‘premium’ printer that uses five inks to enhance the quality of your photo prints. There’s a conventional black ink cartridge for printing simple text documents, but the cyan, magenta and yellow cartridges…

£119 inc VAT Contact microsoft.com/en-gb System requirements 1GHz) or faster x86-bit or x64-bit processor with SSE2 instruction set; 2GB RAM; 3GB disk space; 1280x800 screen resolution; DirectX 10 graphics card; Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7 Service Pack 1, 10 Server, Server 2012 R2, Server 2012, or Server 2008 R2; internet connection; Microsoft account Office 2016 is a major upgrade, but not in the way you’d first suppose. Just as Windows 10 ties notebooks, desktops, phones and tablets together, and adds a layer of intelligence, Office 2016 wants to connect you and your coworkers together, using some baked-in smarts to help you along. Collaboration in the cloud is the real difference with Office 2016. Office now encourages you to share documents online, in a collaborative workspace. Printing out a document…

£15 inc VAT Contact lifeisstrange.co.uk System requirements PC; Sony PlayStation 3/4; Microsoft Xbox 360/One When Telltale first released The Walking Dead, we thought that the dialogue and/or choice-driven stories worked pretty well when the stakes were life-and-death, but didn’t think that it would be nearly as compelling without the threat of the apocalypse. Life is Strange is the game that tries to prove us wrong. You play as Maxine ‘Max’ Caulfield, a teenage girl at the prestigious Blackwell Academy – a private boarding school in a small town, Arcadia Bay. The game draws its inspiration from Telltale’s style of adventure game – half the game is walking around and listening to Max comment on her surroundings, while the other part is made up of lengthy choice-ridden dialogue sequences, complete…

Whether we rent or own our home, we all want to know that it is secure while we’re gone. That used to mean signing on with a professional – and pricey – security service. But the boom in wireless security cameras is putting home surveillance into our own hands. These close cousins of webcams require minimal installation and offer flexible setups and a range of security features. Indeed, the offers vary widely from camera to camera, and navigating them all gets more daunting as this category grows ever more crowded. To help you find the best security camera for your needs, we’ve outlined the key features to consider and tested six of the newest, most high-profile models. Whether you’re looking for an easy way to check on your children and…

Android 6.0 Marshmallow is here, and if you’re lucky enough to have it on your phone, you’ve probably already spent plenty of time poking around and exploring every nook and cranny of Google’s latest mobile OS. To help you out, though, we’ve complied this list of 10 tips for getting more out of Marshmallow. 1 Take control of notifications with Do Not Disturb 2 Get to Android Marshmallow’s hidden file manager 3 Use Bluetooth to improve your GPS location accuracy 4 Make sense of Marshmallow’s new memory manager 5 Change your default web browser and phone apps 6 Turn off heads-up ‘peeking’ notifications for individual apps 7 Delete apps without leaving the home screen 8 Turn off Doze Mode for specific apps 9 Customise Android Marshmallow’s Quick Settings tray 10…

Of all the programs in Microsoft Office, PowerPoint is easily the one that requires the most artful usage. Novelists might use Word, but you’d never be able to tell that based on what you read on the page. The difference between a good presentation and a bad one, however, has a lot to do with what you see on that PowerPoint deck, and how it was put together. We can’t help you find that perfect cartoon or meme to kick off your talk, but we can help you work more efficiently and easily within PowerPoint. Take a look at these 16 helpful keyboard shortcuts to gain more control over PowerPoint – and how polished your presentation looks for next week’s meeting. These shortcuts will work with PowerPoint 2013 and 2016:…

We’re big fans of Windows 10, but Microsoft hasn’t rested on its laurels. Better messaging, improved device activation and media casting comprise several significant improvements within the first major patch to Windows 10 since its release in July. We’ve picked our favourite five improvements. Cortana To boost Cortana’s usefulness, Microsoft has taught it three new tricks: it can track your movies and other ticketed events automatically, via your email; it can read ‘handwritten’ notes via a Surface stylus; and you can now ‘Ask Cortana’ for additional context within PDFs. Ticket tracking is a nice twist on the flight-tracking capabilities that Google Now, Cortana and Siri already offer, and the ability to understand scrawled notes will be handy for those who use a Surface tablet frequently in an undocked mode. Microsoft’s…

Gartner is predicting a grim future for Microsoft’s Windows mobile OS, saying it won’t make its mark in consumer smartphones, remaining relegated to enterprise users. Microsoft’s Windows 10 mobile OS is just now reaching devices, but prior versions didn’t fare so well. Windows Mobile was in just 5.87 million handsets shipped during the third quarter this year (capturing 1.7 percent market share), declining from 9.03 million (3 percent) in the same quarter a year earlier. That pales in comparison to Android, which was in 298.8 million units shipped during the third quarter (84.7 percent market share), increasing from 254.35 million (83.3 percent) a year earlier. Apple’s iOS was shipped in 46.06 million handsets (13.1 percent), rising from 38.19 million (12.5 percent) in the year-earlier quarter. The Windows operating system is…

At a recent event in central London, Sky made one of its most important and biggest announcements of recent years. Sky Q is the company’s new premium service and there’s a lot to it. What is it? According to Jeremy Darroch, chief executive at Sky: “Sky Q is a brilliant new way for customers to experience TV on their terms. We wanted to reimagine TV, so that it’s flexible and seamless across different screens, and to put a huge choice of entertainment at their fingertips.” Availability Sky Q will launch in the UK and Ireland early 2016. It won’t replace existing products, such as Sky+ and Now TV, but will launch alongside them as a premium option. No announcement has been made concerning the price, though it’s thought it might…

An analysis of hundreds of publicly available firmware images for routers, DSL modems, VoIP phones, IP cameras and other embedded devices uncovered high-risk vulnerabilities in a significant number of them, pointing to poor security testing by manufacturers. The study was performed by researchers from the Eurecom research centre in France and Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, who built an automated platform capable of unpacking firmware images, running them in an emulated environment and starting the embedded web servers that host their management interfaces. The researchers started out with a collection of 1,925 Linux-based firmware images for embedded devices from 54 manufacturers, but they only managed to start the web server on 246 of them. They believe that with additional work and tweaks to their platform that number could increase. The…

From £679 inc VAT Contact apple.com/uk Specifications 12.9in (2732x2048, 264ppi); Apple A9X processor; 4GB RAM; 32-/128GB onboard storage; iOS 9.1; LED-backlit IPS LCD, capacitive touchscreen, 16M colours, pixels, Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band with MIMO; Bluetooth 4.2; 8Mp, 1.2Mp cameras; 307.7x220.6x6.9mm; 713g (723g Wi-Fi plus cellular) The iPad Pro was rumoured for more than a year: a bigger tablet that would let you multitask properly, with the space to run two apps side by side. A device on which you could be productive, creating and not simply consuming content. Price and availability As well as being the biggest, this is also the most expensive iPad ever. Prices starts at £679 for the 32GB model, and jump to £799 for the 128GB option. There’s nothing in between, so if you think…

£549 inc VAT Contact acer.co.uk Specifications 11.6in (1920x1080, 190ppi) IPS gloss touchscreen; Windows 10 Home; 800MHz Intel Core M-5Y10c (2GHz Turbo) 2C, 4T; Intel HD Graphics 5300; 4GB DDR3 RAM; 128GB M.2 SATA Revision 3.0 SSD; 802.11ac dual-band; Bluetooth 4.0; 1x Micro-USB 2.0 (tablet) 1x USB 3.0 (keyboard); Micro HDMI; microSDXC card slot; stereo speakers; 0.9Mp front camera, 2.1Mp rear camera; single mic; 3.5mm headset jack; detachable UK tiled keyboard and buttonless trackpad; 35Wh lithium-ion polymer battery, non-removable; 45 W mains charger with IEC C5 inlet; 298x205x23.8mm (9.3mm tablet); 1.57kg (761g tablet and 808g keyboard) Following Microsoft’s blueprint, Acer has been loyally building convertible tablet/laptop hybrids for Windows 8, when the operating system’s developer became hell-bent on making Windows touchable in a postiDevice world. The Aspire Switch 11 V…

£419 inc VAT Contact htc.com/uk Specifications 5in AMOLED Full HD; Android 6.0 Marshmallow; Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 octa-core processor; 2GB RAM; 16GB internal storage; microSD card slot (up to 2TB); 13Mp camera with OIS and dual-tone LED flash; UltraPixel front camera; NFC; fingerprint scanner; 4G LTE support; 2150mAh non-removable battery 145.8x70.8x7.3mm; 143g HTC has unveiled a new smartphone to sit alongside its flagship model, the One M9. The Taiwanese firm doesn’t have an official price for the One A9 on its website, instead it points visitors toward retail partners. The odd thing is that they all have different prices, ranging from £419 all the way up to £479. A £60 price difference at launch is a bizarre situation, but worse is that this is a much higher price than we’d…

£8.80 inc VAT Contact umidigi.com Specifications 1.2m cable; 13mm speaker dimension; 100+/-3dB speaker security; 3mW power input (max); 3.5mm connector plug; 16g The Umi Voix is a super-cheap–inear binaural headphone set with microphone. With a standard 3.5mm jack, the Umi Voix works with virtually all smartphones, tablets and audio players, offering a good value option for those who like to listen on their daily commute. The Umi Voix is not widely available,ut head over to Tomtop (tinyurl.com/p54u2g7) and you can pick up the Umi Voix for the low price of £8.80. Elsewhere we found them retailing for £13 or £14. But availability is limited. If you can get it, though, there is value to be had here. Because although the Umi Voix are far from stellar, they are a…

£106 inc VAT Contact misfit.com Specifications Compatible with iOS and Android USB power adaptor Beddit is a smart sleep tracker that’s designed to help you monitor your sleeping patterns, so you’ll know whether you had a good night’s sleep, and get tips about how you can improve your sleep quality. Connect it to your smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth, and every morning, you’ll get a sleep score on the dedicated app, also available for Apple Watch. That score is based on seven categories: amount of sleep, time to fall asleep, sleep efficiency, away from bed, awake, restless sleep and snoring. It’ll measure your heart rate and respiration throughout the night, too. The narrative that is supplied with the Beddit data is informative, but maybe a bit too much information…

£35 inc VAT Contact fallout4.com System requirements PC; Sony PlayStation 4; Microsoft Xbox One If you want to know what Fallout 4 gets right, look no further than its predecessor. Or any Bethesda game, really, but Fallout 3 is the most pertinent. As you emerge from Vault 111 for the first time, momentarily blinded by the harsh sunlight and clad in familiar blue-and-yellow jumpsuit, there’s that familiar sense of possibility. You check the map, walk for a minute, check the map again, and then you estimate how long it would take to walk across the whole thing. It’s an intoxicating feeling, and makes up for a burdensome main story. Fallout 4 has some interesting ideas, but it’s mostly a convoluted mess. There’s a chance, if you join more than…

£18 inc VAT Contact transformersgame.com System requirements PC; Sony PlayStation 3/4; Microsoft Xbox 360/One Despite the tagline ‘Robots in disguise’, subtlety isn’t normally a word we associate with Transformers. And yet here we are – Transformers: Devastation is one of the most introspective games we’ve played all year, with the kind of quiet character development we associate with small, experimental indie games. We’re kidding, of course. Transformers: Devastation is a loud, unabashedly dumb brawler, full of the fist-pumping machismo that was a hallmark of the 1980s cartoon. It’s a loving tribute where robots punch and shoot other robots for five hours, and then Optimus Prime says something overly melodramatic or Megatron laughs menacingly. And if you’re a Transformers fan, chances are that’s enough. Roll out On the surface, there’s…

The UK government has launched a dedicated cybercrime unit to tackle the Dark Web, but what is it? Here we explore the internet’s hidden recesses. What is the Dark Web? The Dark Web is a term that refers to a collection of websites that are publicly visible, but hide the IP addresses of the servers that run them. Thus they can be visited by any web user, but it is very difficult to work out who is behind the sites. And you cannot find these sites using search engines. Almost all sites on the Dark Web hide their identity using the Tor encryption tool, which can be used to hide your identity and spoof your location. When a website is run through Tor it has much the same effect. Indeed,…

Smartwatches are becoming more prevalent, but it’s still rare to see anyone wearing one. If you own an iPhone, you might think your only choice is an Apple Watch, but you’d be wrong. You can download the free Android Wear app and pair a Wear smartwatch. However, serious limitations in the way these devices talk to each other means you’ll want to think twice. Which models are supported? There’s no restriction on which smartwatches work with the iPhone, but your device will need to be running the latest version of Android Wear – 1.3 or later. You’ll also need an iPhone 5 or newer running iOS 8.2 or later. You can go to android.com/wear/check on your phone to verify if it’s compatible. Bear in mind that if you have a…

Although details about the chip have been floating around the web for a while, Qualcomm has now revealed exactly what advantages and upgrades it will bring. A company spokesperson told us: “The Snapdragon 820 has been holistically designed around enriching visual quality and audio clarity, as well as developing more intuitive ways to interact with devices, to generate deeply immersive experiences.” Specifications Let’s break down the four main components of the Snapdragon 820 which are the CPU, GPU, DSP and LTE modem. Kyro CPU An important part of any SoC (system-on-a-chip), the Kryo CPU inside the 820 will bring up to twice the performance and double the power efficiency when compared to previous generations. The 64-bit-capable custom CPU is also the first to be made with a 14nm FinFET manufacturing…

No-one expected Apple to announce an iPad Pro at an iPhone launch event, much less that Microsoft would also appear on stage. But it was no dream, and the iPad Pro’s closest competitor is Microsoft’s new Surface Pro 4. Both tablets run Office and both have physical (optional) keyboards, but which should you buy? You may have read our individual reviews already (pages 24 to 29), but here let’s look at how they compare with each other in more depth. Software Let’s deal with this first as it’s the most controversial aspect. Some people will prefer Windows, while others will like iOS 9. There are pros and cons of running a desktop OS on a tablet, which means there’s no obvious ‘winner’ in that sense. Having full-blown Windows on the…

£449 inc VAT Contact google.co.uk Specifications 5.7in (2560x1440) Quad HD capacitive touchscreen; Android Marshmallow 6.0; Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 v2.1 octa-core processor at 2GHz; 32/64/128GB storage; 3GB RAM; 12.3Mp main camera, dual-LED flash, support for 4K video at 30fps; 8Mp secondary camera; 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi with 2x2 MIMO; Bluetooth 4.2; GPS; NFC; 77.8x159.3x7.3mm; 178g When Google launched the Nexus 6, it wasn’t the upgrade that Nexus 5 owners had been looking for. The 5.96in screen made the Motorola-built phone too big and heavy. In 2015, Google has decided to adopt Apple’s strategy and launch two phones, with the aim of appealing to a wider audience. There’s the 5X (page 37), the true successor to the Nexus 5, and the 6P, which we look at here, with a 5.7in screen. Design…

£159 inc VAT Contact mi.com/en Specifications 5in full-HD (1920x1080, 441ppi) IPS touchscreen with Sunlight display; MIUI 7 (based on Android 5.1 Lollipop); 1.8GHz Snapdragon 808 64-bit hexa-core processor; Adreno 418 graphics; Edge tap; 16GB of storage and 2GB of LPDDR3 RAM or 32GB of storage and 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM; dual-SIM dual-standby (both 4G Micro-SIM, but no support for 800MHz 4G); dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi; Bluetooth 4.1; GPS; OTG; IR blaster; 13Mp Sony IMX258 camera with two-tone flash, phase-detection autofocus and 0.1s autofocus; 5Mp front camera; 3080mAh battery; USB-C with Quick Charge support; 138.1x69.6x7.8mm; 132g The Xiaomi Mi 4C looks on paper (and in the flesh) to be a fantastic device, half the price of the similarly specified Nexus 5X (page 37) with performance that can be just as fast.…

From £289 inc VAT Contact huawei.com Specifications 1.4in (400x400, 286ppi) screen; Android Wear OS; 1.2GHz processor; 512MB RAM; 4GB storage; heart-rate monitor; Wi-Fi; Bluetooth; IP67; 11.3mm thick Huawei’s Watch may not have the most inspiring name, but when it looks this good, it doesn’t matter. Our review model (priced £289) came with leather straps, while a watch with metal straps (pictured above) will set you back £329. That’s more expensive than an Apple Watch Sport, which comes with a rubber band, but more importantly, the Huawei Watch is the most expensive Android Wear smartwatch around. This is a bit of a problem because although it’s arguably the best looking, it doesn’t offer anything which rivals don’t when it comes to hardware or software. Design Our review sample had a…

£79 inc VAT Contact trendnet.com Specifications 2x 1200Mb/s Powerline adaptors; 1x gigabit ethernet port per adaptor; 128-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard); IEEE 1901/HomePlug AV2; TPL-421 has passthrough power sockets on each adapter unlike the smaller TPL-420 Homes increasingly require fast networks for smart TVs, DVRs such as Sky+ and Tivo, games consoles and the rest. For many of us our Wi-Fi just can’t keep up, and so we need a super-fast wired network to empower all our smart internet-ready devices. Powerline is a technology that’s ridiculously easy to set up, and creates a wired home network in a matter of minutes. It uses your existing home electrical wiring to transmit data from your modem/ router to the room where all your home entertainment and digital devices live. The latest,…

£99 inc VAT Contact kurioworld.com/k/uk Specifications 7in 1024x600 capacitive touchscreen; Android 5 (Lollipop); 8GB storage; 1.3GHz quad-core processor Mediatek MTK8127; 2Mp main camera; 0.3Mp front camera (640x480 max video resolution); 3.5mm headphone jack; Micro-USB sync/charge port; microSD slot (32GB max); Micro-HDMI output; Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n); Bluetooth 4.0; 240x170x60mm; 581g; 1-year warranty Children’s tablets are improving, with many now being ‘proper’ tablets instead of ‘toys’. They have proprietary app stores and none of the apps your kids actually want. Kurio reckons it has come up with the best yet in the Tab 2. We’re always wary of any product that claims to be the ultimate, but Kurio goes even further with the Tab 2, saying it’s also the “safest tablet for kids”. It’s not perfect, but it is one of the…

£44 inc VAT Contact starwars.ea.com/en_GB System requirements PC; Sony PlayStation 4; Microsoft Xbox 360 We’ve largely come to terms with Star Wars Battlefront. It’s not like Battlefront II, but it’s not what we wanted from Battlefront III either. So what is it? Well, it looks great, for one, and it sounds good, too. Neither of those facts should surprise you at this point. It was developed by DICE, and this is what it does. Battlefield has always been (at least audio-visually) a technological marvel, and that talent makes it over intact to Battlefront. Whether you are tromping through the glistening snow of Hoth or the sun-dappled redwoods of Endor, Battlefront looks and sounds like Star Wars, to an incredible degree. Red and green laser beams fire through the air,…

The 4K Ultra HD TV market is picking up speed. First generation sets, which proved less well future-proofed than a Terminator sequel, have given way to a mature new generation of 2160p screens that seem to tick every box. Sales are expected to top one million for the first time in the UK this year. Could the time be right to upgrade your HD flat screen? The latest generation of 4K televisions combine 2160p resolution, that’s four times the pixel density of Full HD, with forward-facing HDMI inputs that are able to handle incoming 4K content sources, such as Ultra HD Blu-ray and media streamers like the nVidia Shield and Amazon Fire 4K TV box. The key specification to look out for when it comes connectivity is a HDMI v2…

To the casual user, the applications that make up Office 2016 – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook are the anchor tenants, of course, rounded out by OneNote, Access and Publisher – will be indistinguishable from their predecessors. But make no mistake about it; Microsoft’s reboot of its flagship software suite is a major update, offering a wealth of collaboration capabilities that integrate more tightly with SharePoint and OneDrive than before. The many tweaks and enhancements across the board can be confusing though, and we peek under the hood to highlight the features that matter most. 1 Real-time coauthoring The capability to work on the same document simultaneously with your colleagues comes to the desktop version of the productivity suite in Office 2016. Workmates can work on the same Word documents…

Windows 10 may well have the most comprehensive software library of any platform in the world, but a trip to the new Windows Store can leave you with a very different picture. Even with the recent addition of Universal Apps that run on the desktop and mobile, developers still seem shy of writing dedicated apps for the Store. Well, now you can do it yourself, for free, and you don’t even need to know anything about coding. In this feature we’ll show you how, using the Windows App Studio. Getting started The Windows App Studio is a web-based system that doesn’t require the installation of any software on your machine. The online nature also means that you can access your app from any PC with an internet connection. Head over…