Table of contents for September 2020 in Tech Advisor

If you’re a fan of Windows 10’s Storage Spaces, Microsoft offered you a piece of advice: don’t update to the Windows 10 May 2020 Update yet. Storage Spaces is a feature that was introduced years ago, dating back to Windows 8.1. The nifty storage technology takes a collection of internal and external hard drives and/or SSDs and creates a shared ‘pool’ of storage between them. It essentially offers some RAID (Redundant Array of Disks) protections, mirroring content on one drive to another to help save it in case it fails. Granted, Storage Spaces (or RAID) might not be as critical in an age of cloud backups, digital licenses, and reliable storage. But for those who still use them, you should hold off upgrading to the Windows 10 May 2020 Update.…

Apple’s news that it will be dropping Intel’s x86 CPUs for its own ARM chips can mean only one thing to anyone who doesn’t want to be left behind: don’t buy a Mac. You may think this is another Internet-baiting hot take that will argue that x86 is better than ARM. Or you might think the math doesn’t add up that Apple – despite its near-infinite loop of resources and cash – can outwit AMD, Intel and Nvidia. But there’s a practical, real reason why you shouldn’t drop £1,500 or £4,500 on a new Mac: you’ll be abandoned. During the announcement, Tim Cook said Apple will continue to support Intel-based Macs for “years”. But as we know, that could mean two years or two hundred years. If the past is…

Smart light bulbs – LED-based bulbs that can be controlled by a hub or smartphone app – are no longer a new idea. What is new is how far this technology has come since its advent just a few years ago. Also new: Products from companies such as Nanoleaf (fave.co/2NYcJ5z) fundamentally change the light-bulb concept. Smart LED bulbs aren’t quite a commodity, but they are getting close to maturity as far as the market goes. Today’s bulbs are more compact, much brighter, have better colour representation, and, for the most part, feature control apps that do more than ever and are easier to set up. Prices have also come down, with some no-name colour-tunable bulbs now available for less than £10 each. (Buyer beware: you get what you pay for.)…

Whether you rent or own, you want the best security camera system for keeping an eye on your home while you’re gone. That used to entail signing on with a professional – and pricey – security service like ADT. 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 set-ups 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…

Price: £2,499 (inc VAT) from fave.co/2BA1yxp I’ve tested a lot of gaming laptops over the years, but the newly refreshed Acer Predator Triton 500 is the best one I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing on. For many years, you could only coax enthusiast-class performance out of mammoth gaming laptops that threatened to throw out your back while you carried them around in your bag. The introduction of Nvidia’s energy-efficient Max-Q technology resulted in more portable play-worthy notebooks, but the truly notable ones usually topped out with graphics options below the upper echelon of performance. Gaming on the go always required some sort of compromise. No more. The Acer Predator Triton 500 brings it all, pairing a 6-core, 12-thread Intel Core i7-10750H processor with Nvidia’s potent new GeForce RTX 2080…

If you see a version of Skype quietly disappear from Windows, don’t be surprised: Microsoft is finally taking action to clear Windows of some of its redundant software. Microsoft is consolidating its Skype for Windows 10 and its Skype for Desktop into a single app, the company is disclosing in a support document (see fave.co/2NTDc4s). While the (formerly) two versions will now look a lot alike, Microsoft is also terminating a couple of features for right now until it can develop the new app further. It will still be known as Skype for Windows 10. Here’s what’s new in the Skype for Windows 10 app, thanks to the legacy Skype for Desktop: • Updated close options so you can quit Skype or stop it from starting automatically • An improved…

One way to build out a smart home is to buy lots of components – sensors, smart bulbs, security cameras, speakers and whatnot – and connect them all to a hub that helps them communicate with each other and with you, via your smartphone. But let’s be real: that can involve spending a lot of money and investing a lot of time. And for some people, it’s just overkill. If your wants and needs are simpler, just a few relatively inexpensive products will deliver most of the conveniences a high-end smart home can deliver, and on a much more modest budget. And if you make sure those smart home products are compatible with each other, you’ll build a solid foundation that you can expand over time. The key is knowing…

You don’t need to live in a smart home to benefit from smart speakers. Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri, and other digital assistants can help you in dozens of ways, and you don’t have to lift a finger to summon them – just speak their names. If you’ve already decided you want a smart speaker, turn to page 49 for our top recommendations. But consider your decision carefully. In a perfect world, these devices would be interoperable, so you could buy one brand because it’s better for music, another brand because it’s the best for smart home control, and a third because it’s superior for retrieving general information from the Internet. That’s not how it works in the real world. Once you commit to one platform, you’ll want to stick with…

The concept is simple: A smoke alarm that tells you there’s a fire nearby is a great, but a smoke alarm that tells you there’s a fire no matter where you are is even better. Smart smoke and carbon monoxide (CO) detectors are one of the most useful categories of smart home gear on the market, mainly because they offer a clear advantage over ‘dumb’ versions of the same product. And if you have a second home or travel frequently, the additional peace of mind they can provide is invaluable. Once installed and powered up, you download the relevant app and connect to the device wirelessly. Then, when the alarm goes off, not only do you receive an audio alert – many include helpful voice instructions instead of just a…

Forget remasters. Gone are the days where developers could stretch new textures over old games and call it a day. These days it’s all about remakes, raiding the late ‘90s and early ‘00s for games that need more than just a new coat of paint. Resident Evil 2 set the bar pretty damn high, allowing old fans to relive a beloved game the way they remembered it, while also creating a thoroughly modern horror game for newcomers. It’s not on PC (yet), but by all accounts Square’s Final Fantasy VII Remake (fave.co/3gmHbm7) does the same. Activision created slightly more faithful remakes with Spyro (fave.co/2ZBb6jE) and Crash Bandicoot (fave.co/2NSHqct), and is doing the same with the upcoming Tony Hawk 1+2. The Black Mesa Project (fave.co/3itTQFG) injected new life into Half-Life. 2K’s…

Microsoft has thrown in the towel in its fight against Twitch, saying that it will wind down its Mixer livestreaming service and redirect users to Facebook Gaming instead. The death knell will sound on July 22, when the redirect to Facebook Gaming will officially occur. Microsoft didn’t say how many users Facebook Gaming has, though each month more than 700 million people play games, watch gaming videos or engage in gaming groups on Facebook, it said. It’s an ignominious end for Microsoft’s streaming aspirations, which took flight in 2017 when it transitioned its Beam streaming service into the modern Mixer platform. Microsoft tried to build a user base with features such as Sparks and other ways for users to interact with fans, including an early feature where viewers could even…

You’ve figured out the basics of setting up your smart home, now it’s time to raise your game. I’ve spent years installing, configuring, and tweaking dozens of smart home products in virtually every product category. Along the way I’ve figured out a lot of the secrets they don’t tell you in the manual or the FAQs, ranging from modest suggestions that can make your smart home configuration less complex, to essential decisions that can save you from having to start over from scratch a few years later. Here’s how to optimize your smart home. 1. Choose a master platform at the start There are three major smart home platforms on the market, and your smart home will probably have at least one of them installed: Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant,…

The best smart thermostat will have an outsize impact not only how comfortable you are in your home, but also on your household budget. Heating and cooling your home accounts for nearly half of the average home’s utility bills, according to the US Department of Energy. A programmable thermostat can help reduce those costs by turning your HVAC system on when you anticipate being home, and off when you don’t think you’ll need indoor climate control. A smart thermostat goes far beyond relying on a simple schedule. It will not only enable you to create more sophisticated schedules for every day of the week, and give you complete control over your HVAC system, even when you’re away from home. What to look for when shopping Ease of installation: A thermostat…

There’s a reason that unboxing videos and the phrase ‘new car smell’ are firmly ensconced in the public group mind. New stuff is exciting. New stuff is (theoretically) better. New stuff is just plain cool. But new stuff also costs an arm and a leg – at least if you’re talking about a new PC. And you might not even truly need a new PC to accomplish what you’re looking to do, because most everyday tasks don’t require much processing power, especially now that so many services have moved onto the web. Fortunately, there are a slew of ways to breathe new life into an older PC that’s starting to feel a little pokey. Even better: Most are outright free, a couple of (still low-cost) hardware upgrades aside. Sure, these…

A recent Xbox event introduced the first batch of next-gen games coming to the Xbox Series X console launching this year. But what I want is something that straddles those two worlds and solidifies Microsoft’s position as a driving force in gaming – and yes, that includes PC gaming. I want an Xbox gaming laptop, built with the same attention to detail as the Surface line-up, but focused on highlighting the best of Microsoft’s gaming innovations and what’s possible on the PC. Diehard PC enthusiasts may scoff – it’s hard to look past the epic failure of Games for Windows Live – but hear me out. Why Xbox matters for PC gaming Under Phil Spencer’s stewardship, Microsoft’s Xbox division has doubled down on PC gaming, introducing new features that improve…