Tech Advisorの October 2018 の目次

Price: £1,699 inc VAT from fave.co/2Okmo5q Razer is back with a new Blade and a bold claim, describing the 2018 model as the “world’s smallest 15.6in gaming laptop”. It comes with an improved design, 8th-gen Intel chip and Nvidia Max-Q GPU. There’s much more to it than this though, with a number of upgrades and refinements throughout. Design There’s no big departure here from Razer’s design that over the years has become iconic in the gaming market. As you can see, the Blade 15 offers the sleek black and green styling that many adore. The headline design element here is that the laptop offers a full-size 15.6in display inside a chassis that appears to be no bigger than well-known 14in Razer Blade. In fact, in some ways, the new model…

Price: £579 inc VAT from fave.co/2Ks21VR BlackBerry is back again – sort of. The brand has been revived by manufacturer TCL, a company invested in cashing in on nostalgia. The BlackBerry KEY2 is a better phone than 2017’s KeyOne (£349 from fave.co/2IJvnt5), but still a stunted device compared to the rest of the market. It’s an undoubtedly slick smartphone, with a look clearly modelled on 2015’s BlackBerry Passport Silver Edition, a phone that supposedly was meant to run Android until the last-minute change to BlackBerry’s own software. History aside, the KEY2 is a device with limited appeal in 2018. Unless you really, really want a keyboard on your smartphone, this is not the handset for you, despite especially secure Android Oreo 8.1 and productivity-focused keyboard functions. If, however, you are…

PC gaming is often synonymous with performance. Tech specs, frame rates, resolutions, settings menus – we dedicate thousands and thousands of words to these topics, spend hours obsessing over the details. But for every person running Crysis there’s another fending off an upgrade and squeezing the last ounces of power out of their older or low-end desktop PC, or someone valiantly trying to game on a hand-me-down non-gaming laptop. This article is for you. Here, you’ll find a list of games that any PC can play. Into the Breach Price: £11.39 from fave.co/2LZ64FM I liked FTL, but I love this year’s follow-up Into the Breach. A miniaturized tactics game, you’re trying to defend humanity from an onslaught of giant bugs one 8-by-8 grid at a time. It’s like chess meets…

Most how-to articles on a given subject walk you through a series of steps, perhaps with a video attached. Windows 10’s new free help feature, Cortana Show Me, is different: it performs basic Windows tasks for you on your PC while you follow along. Even better, Cortana Show Me strikes a nice balance between showing you what to do, actually performing those steps, and providing an ‘escape hatch’ if you need to slow down. All you need to do is wiggle your mouse, and Cortana Show Me will stop. Microsoft’s free app is part of the Windows 10 April 2018 Update, and includes walkthroughs for many basic tasks – we have a full list below. Let’s be clear, though: most advanced users won’t need to use Cortana Show Me. In…

Price: £1,499 inc VAT We first saw the Swift 7 at CES 2018. Now the world’s thinnest laptop has arrived in the UK and we couldn’t wait to test it. Design As you’d expect, design is the key element here. The previous Swift 7 was already extremely thin at just 9.98mm, but Acer has managed to shave the chassis down to 8.98mm. That’s pretty mind-blowing, especially when you consider it means this laptop is actually thinner than a number of recent smartphones. A thin profile also equates to a lightweight product and the Swift 7 is a true featherweight at 1.17kg – the previous model was 1.13kg. This is because of a few upgrades, but mainly the addition of a touchscreen. Still, it’s one of the lightest laptops around and…

Price: £39.95 inc VAT from fave.co/2K8u9bp Nothing says security and trust like German quality. At least that’s the pitch for Germany-based G Data. The company’s tag line is: Trust in German Sicherheit (safety). The idea being that modern Germany is known for ‘solid German quality’ and its strict privacy laws, which G Data must adhere to, thereby shielding its customers from breach. Besides that, G Data has also been doing antivirus protection for a long time, and its current AV product relies on not one, but two detection engines. The firm has been on the AV scene since 1985; it even claims to be the world’s first antivirus outfit. Similar to other legacy security companies such as McAfee and Symantec, G Data maintains a well-organized suite. Its top product, G…

While Google messes around with your ability to mute and block autoplaying video within the Chrome browser, Microsoft has taken action. Global controls for preventing video from auto-playing within Microsoft Edge are being rolled out. So far, Edge’s new powers are limited to the beta version of the browser that ships with the Windows Insider builds of Windows 10, scheduled for the autumn of 2018. You’ll be able to set global controls as well as per-site exceptions. But by the time autumn arrives, everyone should be able to control which sites autoplay video within Edge. How autoplay controls work within Edge Right now, global controls for autoplaying videos allow you to choose among three choices: block, limit, and allow. Microsoft says it may tweak or add other options in the…

Price: £349 inc VAT from fave.co/2J5ILYN If the ZenFone 5 sounds familiar, it probably should – Asus released a phone of that name way back in 2014. Unsurprisingly, this latest version has had a few upgrades – not least a very familiar notch. It was first announced the phone at Mobile World Congress 2018, but Asus has unusually decided to wait until July to actually release the phone. We’ve spent some time putting the phone through its paces, and here’s what we think of the firm’s latest attempt to crack the smartphone market. Design If you thought the ZenFone 5 sounded familiar, that’s nothing compared to how it looks. No, that isn’t an iPhone X, but you’d be forgiven for making that mistake. Asus was one of the first of…

Whether you rent or own, you want the best security camera system for keeping an eye on your home while you’re out. That used to entail signing on with a professional – and pricey – security service, but a boom in consumer-level smart-home tech is putting indoor and outdoor 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 offerings vary widely by camera, and deciding what to buy gets more daunting as this category grows ever more crowded. But whether you’re looking for an easy way to check on your children and pets, or a full-service sentinel to monitor for intruders, we’ll help find the right product for your needs. What to look…

Use Block Sender frequently Use Outlook’s Block Sender feature to add intrusive spam to your Block Sender List, and then move it to the Junk Email folder. This works fine if you receive fewer than a dozen emails a day. Select the spam email, right-click, choose Junk from the drop menu, and click Block Sender. Or, Select Home > Junk > Block Sender. Outlook marks it and relocates it immediately. Set up a Blocked Sender list If you get a lot of spam from a single ISP or country, or from a phishing group impersonating a legitimate organization, such as Yahoo6.com, epaypal.com, or an email from Wellsfargo with an EarthLink address (hbird80@earthlink.net), you can add these bad actors to your Block Sender list by company, group, country, ISP, or other…