Tech Advisorの March 2018 の目次

£1,999 inc VAT from fave.co/2kehxp9 The Gigabyte Aero 15X is one of the most interesting gaming laptops we’ve seen. It has an Nvidia GTX 1070 GPU, making it a full-blooded gaming machine to compete with a high-end desktop. It is, however, just about small and light enough to be used as a portable everyday machine. Add in fantastic battery life and a meaty keyboard and, well, you start to wonder why you wanted an Alienware 15 in the first place. Given its semi-lifestyle angle it could do with a smoother look. But we imagine some of you will disagree. The one part we can all agree on is that the fans get a bit loud at times, but not to an extent that puts us off this remarkable machine. Price…

£399 inc VAT from fave.co/2jgqcpM BlackBerry continues to morph into its true second phase in 2017. The KeyOne was a minor success in tech circles, with people enjoying the classic aesthetic, physical keyboard and up to date Android experience. The Motion continues that revival as part of BlackBerry Mobile’s licensing deal with TCL. The former markets, the latter manufactures. On this evidence, it is doing a pretty great job. The Motion is a solid, austere slab of smartphone at an affordable price point, but when you look at the specifications, there are high-end options out there for less than £100 more. Design BlackBerry is remembered for its mid-2000s heyday when handsets like the Bold 9900 were strictly business looking and felt close to indestructible. The Motion is going to pick…

The Razer Phone is a bit of a puzzle. It’s not surprising that it exists, given that Razer, best known for PC hardware and peripherals, acquired smartphone maker Nextbit in January of 2017 in order to produce this device. Nor is it surprising that, based on our hands-on time with the device at a recent briefing, the Phone seems to be equal parts Nextbit’s Robin and Razer’s laptop line, touting impressive specifications at a reasonable price of £699. What’s confusing is what it isn’t. Razer says this isn’t meant to be a gaming phone. Rather, it’s a phone for gamers, Razer fans, and Android enthusiasts, meaning it’s intended to deliver a great experience for all kinds of ‘content consumption’, not just gaming. But it’s a weird message when Razer’s core…

If you’re the type of person who detests autoplaying video ads with sound, Google’s Chrome provides some help. The beta of Google Chrome 64 allows you to mute a site permanently, so even if a video pops up – and Chrome can block some of those, too – it won’t blow you out of your seat. The feature is expected to roll out to the general public sometime in January. Google’s Chrome 64 beta ships with a stronger popup ad blocker, which automatically prevents some dodgy ads from either appearing or re-routing you to other sites on the web. But it also applies some site-by-site controls, so that when you visit a website, you have better control of what media to allow and disallow. All of the per-site controls reside…

£329 inc VAT from fave.co/2kGNt4V Acer’s Swift 1 is one of the cheapest laptop you can buy that looks a little like a MacBook. It’s slim, and has a metal frame with plenty of bright aluminium on show. Whereas MacBooks start at £949 for the arguably out of date Air 13, the Swift 1 costs £349 in the variant we’re using. Let that sink in: just over a third the price of Apple’s cheapest alternative. Low CPU power and minimal storage make the Acer Swift 1 suitable for only light jobs like writing documents, surfing the web and streaming video. However, given the price, its impersonation of a £700-to £1,000 slim and light laptop is almost convincing. Price Our review unit, priced £329, has an Intel Pentium CPU, 4GB RAM…

£199 inc VAT from fave.co/2B0q6dL The Echo Show is not just Amazon’s best smart speaker, it’s the most capable mainstream smart home assistant on the market. An Intel Atom x5-Z8350 processor and a 7in colour touchscreen pumps its price tag up to £199, but the display is worth the added cost to have at least one in a smart home with other Echo speakers. And the Show’s eight-element far-field mic array is stronger than the ones on Amazon’s other Echos, which for me eliminated the need to have an Echo Dot in an adjoining room. Amazon takes full advantage of that display, providing not just useful visual feedback, but also an in-home intercom – with video, if two Echo Shows are used – and a VoIP-type videophone system. I’ll elaborate…

Microsoft Office is the king of office productivity suites, but it doesn’t inspire warm, fuzzy feelings in all users. Parsing the ever-expanding list of features can feel like stepping into a cockpit without a pilot’s licence. The ribbon interface, introduced a decade ago, has many fans, but others pine for the static menus of the early aughts. And then there’s Office’s hefty price tag. Fortunately, alternatives abound, ranging from web apps to freemium and open-source desktop installations, many of which are compatible with Microsoft Office docs. We compared six of the most popular free office suites to see how well they replicate the most commonly used features of Microsoft Office. What to look for When evaluating Office alternatives, don’t look to replicate every feature, just the ones you need and…

When your laptop’s touchpad stops responding to your fingers, you’ve got a problem. Have you ever tried to use a Windows PC without a mouse, touchpad, or other pointing device? It’s all but impossible. If the problem just started, reboot your computer and see if that fixes it. (Yes, I know that’s painfully obvious, but we all sometimes overlook the obvious.) If that doesn’t work, try these solutions. First, make sure you haven’t accidentally disabled the touchpad. In all likelihood, there’s a key combination that will toggle the touchpad on and off. It usually involves holding down the Fn key (which is probably near the lower-left corner of the keyboard) while pressing another key. But what other key should you press? It’s probably one of the function keys (F1 through…

£269 inc VAT from fave.co/2k0UUno After the jaw-dropping Xiaomi Mi Mix back in 2016, phone manufacturers quickly started launching ‘bezel-less’ phones. And many decided to cram in a larger screen rather than make a physically smaller phone. They did this by making it taller with an 18:9 aspect ratio instead of 16:9. 18:9 is super fashionable, but until now with the 7X, was out of reach for those on a budget. Even the OnePlus 5T costs £449, which is the very top of mid-range. The Honor looks a lot like Huawei’s Mate 10 Pro, but saves on cost to bring the price right down. Design Let’s start with the screen, as it’s the most obvious feature. On paper the specs – 5.93in, 18:9 aspect, 2160x1080 resolution – could fool you…

The long-awaited iMac Pro is finally here. Late last year, Apple’s new workstation-class Mac became available on the company’s website. The 8- and 10-core iMac Pro ships immediately, while the 14- and 18-core models ship in January. The release of the iMac Pro is significant for Apple. The Mac Pro, released in 2013, has had only one minor update in four years, and Apple earlier this year admitted that the machine is a mistake. And while the company could say that a top-of-the-line iMac has plenty of processing power, it’s not the workstation-level computer that demanding professionals want. This machine is a sign that Apple still values pro users and wants to offer a Mac that can meet their demands. During an iMac Pro media event, company executives and third-party…

Wi-Fi is everywhere and built into everything. It’s like oxygen for Internet access, media streaming, gaming, and all types of networking. And it should just work all the time – right? If you’ve had an average experience with Wi-Fi on mobiles devices, laptops, game systems, and more, you know that while a solid Wi-Fi connection might be the norm, those times when it’s not can leave you tearing your hair out. Here, I look at a number of common scenarios that cause Wi-Fi problems and how to solve them, whether you’re running your own network or trying to connect to someone else’s using any platform. Wi-Fi basics Before we get started, a very quick primer on a few Wi-Fi terms I’ll bring up repeatedly. 802.11: the name of the IEEE…