Gigarefurb Refurbished Laptops News

The buzz continues to build for major changes to Apple’s most affordable MacBook Air 13. Few have any concrete facts on what Apple plans to do, but we’ve got some ideas, freshly ripped from the dozens of beautiful, sexy, stylish and fast PC laptops that have come out since the latest MacBook Air debuted in…2015?!.

While adding touch and 360-degree convertible support might seem like a given—those are the two things least likely to happen to a MacBook today.

IDG

Damn, it’s old: Today’s MacBook Air 13

Apple doesn’t actually give you specs of its hardware because, well no one knows why, but the current MacBook Air 13 (which has received some minor refreshes since its 2015 debut) features:

• Intel 5th-gen Core i7-5650U or Core i5-5350U
• 8GB of LPDDR3/1600 RAM
• 13.3-inch 1440×900 TN screen
• Proprietary 128GB or 256GB SSD

For ports it has:

• Thunderbolt 2 
• Two USB 3.0 Type A (5Gbps) ports
• SD card reader

No, this isn’t a typo, and you didn’t land on a years-old webpage archived at the Wayback Machine. Apple actually sells a laptop for more than $1,000 that’s using parts largely introduced in 2015. Not to say the MacBook Air 13 is a terrible laptop, but today’s iteration would feel right at home in a museum with dinosaurs.

IDG / Mark Hachman

Facial recognition 

Anyone who’s used a Windows Hello laptop can tell you just how great it is to skip typing in your password. Sure, Mac fans like to boast about how you can open a MacBook with one hand (what are you doing with that other hand?). But with Windows Hello and a biometric face reader, you can basically tap your sleeping laptop’s keyboard with an elbow and have it log you in while keeping both hands on your Krispy Krunchy Chicken. Yes, Windows Hello and Krispy Krunchy Chicken are that good. Even better: Windows Hello works even when the entire laptop is turned over into tablet mode. Try that with your iPhone X.

Mark Hachman / IDG

Fingerprint reader

A biometric IR camera isn’t exactly cheap, and we understand a certain company really likes its profit margins. So if a $1,350 MacBook Air 13 can’t get features that are standard on a $400 Microsoft Surface Go, then maybe a fingerprint reader? They’re abundant on the PC today at all prices, and would let a MacBook Air 13 user open the laptop and log in with a single hand.

Gordon Mah Ung

An actual HD screen

You know what’s really not HD? The 1280x800p display on the original MacBook Air 13 from 2008. Sure, it’s technically high-def, but only if you’ve been trapped in a pitch-black cave. You know what’s really not much more ‘p’? A screen resolution of 1440×900—in a refreshed $1,350 MacBook Air 13 sold in 2018. But yup, that’s the standard screen that’s basically been in use in the MacBook Air 13 since 2010. And I’m not even making that up. 

For any business to be successful it’s going to have to rely on effective communication, and with that in mind G Suite comes with a variety of Google Hangouts tools included – the traditional chat box in Gmail as well as variations on Hangouts designed to more directly compete with Slack and Skype.

Those two newer tools are Hangouts Meet for video calls and Hangouts Chat for group discussions. While Google’s various messaging apps and services remain a confusing mess in terms of what the overall strategy is supposed to be, Hangouts remains the best chat app that Google has ever put together – and since the revival of Android Messages, it looks to be one that’s going to be mainly pushed towards business users in the future.

Google Hangouts for G Suite: Hangouts Chat

Let’s start with Hangouts Chat, which builds on the Hangouts you might be familiar with from Google’s consumer products. It’s very much designed to compete with the product that’s significantly changed company messaging over the last few years – Slack – but it only launched earlier this year, and that shows in the rather rudimentary design and feature set that’s on offer.

It’s perfectly adequate, visually, and fits in with the modern Material Design used by all of Google’s flagship apps these days. The screen lets you focus on rooms (which are essentially group chats) or people (one-to-one direct messages), and you can access recent conversations in both through the left-hand navigation bar.

The service integrates tightly with the other parts of G Suite, so you can easily add files from Drive or set up a video call in Hangouts Meet, and everything is kept conveniently in the same window. A little more customization over the layout and configuration of Hangouts Chat wouldn’t go amiss, but Google loves its simplicity, and it’s certainly not difficult to jump between rooms and chats.

The usual Google search bar sits at the top, helping you to jump to rooms, people, conversations and files quickly, and to some extent making up for the rather sparse interface. As in most Google apps, the idea is to search for whatever you’re after rather than spend time in extra menus or screens.

We found the various bots less intuitive to use, but once you’ve got the hang of them, they can be handy – the Google Drive one pings you with updates about your files for example, while the Trello one keeps you in the loop with connected Trello boards. There’s even a bot for Giphy. The selection is fairly limited right now, but we’d expect this to improve (you can code your own bots, if needed).

Google Hangouts for G Suite: Hangouts Meet

Then we’ve got Hangouts Meet, which is where video conferencing happens. Again, all rather basic in terms of design, but it works well enough: launch a video chat and you get a code that other Meet users can input to join the conversation, as well as a phone number than non-G Suite users can use to call in from a regular phone line. You can even connect from other services like Skype for Business.

Whatever Google does in the background seems to be working, because we noticed no problems in terms of the stability or quality of our connections while using Meet. The service doesn’t have many features to speak of, but that does give it the advantage of being clutter-free and easy to get around – after all, you want to be able to focus on the video chatting above everything else.

A couple of useful features are worth mentioning. First, tight integration with other G Suite apps, so you can quickly (for example) organize a video call based on an event saved in Google Calendar. Second, the ability to share your screen with the other people in the conversation, which works well and of course is very handy for business users in all kinds of different scenarios.

In its marketing materials Google talks about a “frictionless” experience with Hangouts Meet, and that’s exactly what it feels like: video conferencing that just works without any complications around people using different platforms (the mobile apps for iOS and Android are also very well polished), or not being able to find the mute button, or having problems joining a video chat late.

Finally, the old-school Hangouts instant messenger still lives on, in the corner of Gmail. Quite how this will fit in with Hangouts Chat and Hangouts Meet in the future remains to be seen (so far messages sent through this channel seem to be kept separate), but for now you can still use it to message other people in your organization and even outside (as long as the feature is enabled in the admin settings).

Google Hangouts for G Suite: pricing and verdict

All the variations of Google Hangouts are bundled with G Suite, available on three different plans: Basic ($5/£3.30 per user per month), Business ($10/£6.60 per user per month), and Enterprise ($25/£20 per user per month). You get all the Meet and Chats functionality on all these plans (the differences are more to do with user storage space and advanced data processing features).

These two tools under the Hangouts umbrella certainly have everything that business users could want in a messaging service: File transfers, group video chats, access from multiple devices, integration with various third-party services, and so on. Throughout, you’ll find Google’s love of white space and simplicity evident in the interface, and everything is simple to move around.

Your mileage may vary, but as far as Hangouts Chat goes we prefer the way Slack handles threads inside rooms (or channels in Slack parlance), and the clear and consistent way it manages channels and direct messages. Hashtag and tagging support looks much better in Slack too, though admittedly Chat is playing catch up and may have the opportunity to fix some of these problems in the future.

Well, unless you really depend on seamless integration with other G Suite components, it’s unlikely that you’re going to be jumping ship to Hangouts Chat from Slack anytime soon, unless you’re looking to save money by only paying for one package of tools. Similarly Hangouts Meet is solid enough, but not necessarily light years ahead of something like Skype, which you may already be comfortable with.

There’s no doubt that the Hangouts components of G Suite are well built, reliable to use, and with pretty much all the features you’re likely to need. Unlike other parts of G Suite though, they don’t stand out as being substantially different from what the competition offers. Google has room for improvement here.

Go to Source

Apple has officially unveiled a new Apple Watch and three new iPhones. Missed the news? Here’s how to get a recap.

When was the Apple event?

Wednesday 12 September at 10am PDT/6pm BST.

Where can I re-watch a live stream of the Apple event? 

On Apple’s website >> right here.

You can also enjoy our coverage of the products launched during Apple’s special event:

Go to Source

With the same design as the pricier iPhone Xs and Xs Max but with a 6.1in LCD screen, the new iPhone XR uses much of the same hardware including the A12 Bionic chip. It’s the new iPhone everyone will want, but it’s not the small and cheap iPhone SE 2 we were hoping for.

iPhone XR release date

You can pre-order the iPhone Xr from 19 October, with the phone on sale on 26 October.

It’s available in a range of colours including white, black, blue, yellow, coral and red.

iPhone XR price

Starting at £749/US$749 with 64GB of storage, the iPhone XR is also available in 128GB (£799/$799) and 256GB capacities (£899/$899).

Click here to buy the iPhone XR.

iPhone XR features and specs

The iPhone XR is very similar to the iPhone XS and XS Max, sitting between them in terms of size with a 6.1in screen. The key difference here is this is an LCD rather than OLED panel, which Apple has termed a ‘Liquid Retina Display’. 

It’s an edge-to-edge screen with 1.4m (1792×828) pixels and a pixel density of 326ppi. Although it’s larger than the screen on the iPhone 8 Plus, the phone itself is actually smaller. It’s built from 7000-series aluminium with IP67 waterproofing.

It has many of the same features, bar 3D Touch (it has Haptic Touch), such as the 120Hz touch-sensitive layer, wide colour display and tap to wake. It has no home button and instead is navigated using screen gestures.

The XR has the same Apple A12 Bionic processor as the faster models – a 7nm chip that Apple claims is faster than anything on the smartphone market with 15% greater performance on the CPU and 50% on the GPU than the Apple A11. 

The camera setup is also the same… sort of. It’s a single- rather than dual-lens camera, but the one lens it does have at the rear matches that of the XS. This is a 12Mp wide-angle camera with a six-element lens, 1.4um pixels, f/1.8 aperture and an improved True Tone flash.

Also seen in the iPhone XS is the front camera setup. The XR has exactly the same Face ID system, and all the tech at the front including the 7Mp selfie camera, with a faster sensor and f/2.2 aperture, an IR camera and dot projector, is all present and correct.

Apple compares battery life to the iPhone 8 Plus and says it is an hour and a half longer.

iPhone XR key specs

• 6.1in Liquid Retina HD LCD Display (1792×828, 326ppi)
• iOS 12
• Apple A12 Bionic six-core processor
• 64/128/256GB storage
• 12Mp, f/1.8 wide-angle camera with 5x digital zoom, 4K video
• 7Mp, f/2.2 selfie camera
• Face ID
• A-GPS, GLONASS
• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth
• 25 hours talk time, 16 hours video playback
• Qi wireless charging
• IP67 waterproofing
• 75.7×150.9×8.3mm
• 194g

Read next: Best new phones coming in 2018 & beyond

Go to Source

The successors to iPhone 8 and 8 Plus have been officially confirmed as iPhone Xs and Xs Max during Apple’s September 12 special event. Clad in surgical-grade stainless steel, they adopt the all-screen notch design introduced with last year’s iPhone X, and will be available in gold, silver and space grey.

They sound great, but we reckon it’s the cheaper iPhone Xr everyone will want.

The new phones squeeze larger screens into similar size bodies as their predecessors, now packing the biggest screens found on any iPhone to date. But the 5.8- and 6.5in screens are not just a lot bigger, but also infinitely better.

Marketed as ‘Super Retina Displays’, these are OLED panels with super-high resolutions (2.7m pixels Xs; 3.3m pixels Xs Max) and crystal-clear 458ppi density. They have 60 percent higher dynamic range than the iPhone X, 1m:1 contrast ratio, HDR10, Dolby Vision, 120Hz touch sensing and 3D Touch.

The new iPhones are also protected with the most durable glass used in any smartphone, and now support IP68 waterproofing, able to endure up to 2m of water for up to 30 minutes.

Nicely complementing the redesigned screen for multimedia and gaming is the implementation of improved stereo speakers for wider stereo sound.

As expected performance has also seen a bump, but it’s more of a push than a bump. The A12 Bionic SOC is, according to Apple, the world’s first 7nm chip (we’ll just forget about Huawei’s latest Kirin chip then). It is faster and more powerful than any of the competition, says the company.

The SOC builds in 6.9 billion transistors, and as before comprises a CPU, GPU and neural engine. Each of these components has been enhanced, with the two-performance cores of the six-core CPU running 15 percent faster and 40 percent more efficient than in the A11, the quad-core GPU an amazing 50 percent faster than in the A11, and the octa-core neural engine now able to process 5 trillion operations per second (up from 600 billion).

Cameras have also been upgraded, with the iPhone Xs fitted with a dual-camera at the rear that has two 12Mp lenses and dual optical image stabilisation. The wide-angle camera has a six-element lens, 1.4um pixels and an f/1.8 aperture. There’s also a telephoto camera with f/2.4 aperture and 2x optical zoom, and an improved True Tone flash.

Round at the front there’s a 7Mp selfie camera, with a faster sensor and f/2.2 aperture, an IR camera and dot projector. 

Battery life has improved too, and the iPhone Xs lasts 30 minutes longer than the iPhone X, while the Xs Max can last a whole hour and a half longer.

iPhone Xs price & release date

The iPhone Xs will be available in 64GB, 256GB and 512GB, starting at £999/US$999. Available in the same capacities, the Xs Max will start at £1099/$1099.

Here’s the full pricing:

• 64GB iPhone Xs: £999/$999
• 256GB iPhone Xs: £1149/$1149
• 512GB iPhone Xs: £1349/$1349
• 64GB iPhone Xs Max: £1099/$1099
• 128GB iPhone Xs Max: £1249/$1249
• 512GB iPhone Xs Max: £1449/$1449

Pre-orders begin on 14 September, with the new iPhone officially on sale on 21 September. Click here to buy the new iPhone XS.

There will also finally be a dual-SIM version of iPhone XS and Xs Max available in China, but elsewhere there will be both single-SIM and E-SIM versions.

Read next: Best new phones coming in 2018 & beyond

Go to Source

The name may be a bit of a mouthful (fitting for a toothbrush, we suppose) but the Philips Sonicare ProtectiveClean 6100 is the company’s flagship non-smart brush. It’s designed to appeal to anyone willing to invest money in their dental health, but understandably sceptical about whether or not their toothbrush needs its own app.

That’s not to say this is short on fancy features, with multiple modes and intensities and automatic brush head detection and optimisation. We’ve been using the ProtectiveClean 6100 for a few weeks now, and here’s what we think.

Philips Sonicare ProtectiveClean 6100: Price and availability

At list price, the ProtectiveClean 6100 isn’t cheap in the UK: it’ll set you back a whopping £299.99, though the US price is a much friendlier $129.99. That’s closer to what you should actually pay in the UK though, as at the time of writing you can get it from Amazon UK for just £119.99.

That’s still a decent chunk of money of course, but it’s much closer to the prices you’ll see for rival devices like the Oral-B Pro 6000 or Philips’ own app-connected Sonicare FlexCare Platinum. Take a look at the rest of our best electric toothbrush chart for our other recommendations.

If you want to spend a little less, Philips also offers the ProtectiveClean 5100 and 4300 models, which offer a similar design and use the same brush heads, but support fewer modes and intensities, and also drop the BrushSync feature.

Finally, you’ll need to make sure you buy the right brush heads for the new range – we’d recommend sticking with the official Philips brushes to make sure the BrushSync microchip works without a hitch, but the downside is that you will have to spend £5/$5 or so per brush head, which is a little steep.

Philips Sonicare ProtectiveClean 6100: Design and build

The first thing you’re likely to notice about the 6100 is that it actually looks pretty damn nice. That may not be your number one priority when it comes to choosing a toothbrush, but it is still welcome that Philips has put a bit of effort into aesthetics.

Available in white, pink, or black (pictured) in the UK, and white, pink, and navy blue for the US, your chosen colour covers the whole body, with the exception of a small silvery area around the two buttons – for power and changing the brush modes respectively.

All the info you’re likely to need is communicated through a few simple LEDs: three bars on the metallic area indicate the current intensity; below that three white LED dots let you know which of the brushing modes is currently active; finally at the bottom of the brush two coloured LEDs let you know the battery life and whether the brush head needs replacing.

Along with the brush itself, Philips throws in two whitening brush heads (in the UK at least – US buyers will only get the one brush), a charger, and a travel case that fits the handle and up to two brush heads.

Philips Sonicare ProtectiveClean 6100: Features

The ProtectiveClean 6100 doesn’t bother with complicated connected features, but is instead intended to be as simple and effortless to use as possible.

There are three available brushing modes – clean, white, and gum care – but Philips hopes that you’ll never need to manually switch between them. That’s because each brush head is equipped with a microchip that’s read by the handle. As you connect the brush head, the handle will then automatically turn on and switch to the appropriate brushing mode.

The standard ‘clean’ mode is supposedly the best for all-round dental care, the ‘white’ mode is optimised for removing surface stains, and the ‘gum care’ setting adds an extra minute of low-power brushing which you can use to massage your gums.

It’s hard to say how much difference the various brushing modes really make – we suspect the brush head you go and buy will make a bigger difference really – but it will at least be a mild convenience for any families who share a handle but each use different types of brush or brushing mode.

A better use of the BrushSync tech is that it tracks how many times you’ve used each individual brush head, letting you know when it’s time to swap the brush for a new one. Since this reflects actual usage, it’s more accurate than vague guidelines like ‘swap brushes every three months’, and more precise than systems that rely on you checking the bristles for colour changes to cue a swap.

Beyond all that, the ProtectiveClean 6100 offers most of the other features you’d expect from a premium electric toothbrush: an automatic timer, alerts every 30 seconds to move on to the next section of the mouth, and a pressure sensor to let you know when you’re brushing too hard.

Philips Sonicare ProtectiveClean 6100: Battery life

Battery life is actually one of our favourite things about the 6100, and between that and the included travel case it’s one of the best electric brushes we’ve tried for travel.

Philips boasts that the 6100 will last for 14 days of regular use without a charge, but at the time of writing we’re on day 22 – brushing twice a day – and it’s still going, though the low battery indicator kicked in on day 21.

Battery life will naturally fade over time, but even so you should be able to comfortably take this brush on a two-week trip without worrying about bringing the charger along.

Go to Source

Apple has officially confirmed its fourth-generation Apple Watch during its September 12 event.

The new Apple Watch Series 4 has a redesigned screen that is more than 30 percent larger. It’s pushed right to the corners, so there have been minimal changes to the case size – the Series 4 is actually thinner than Series 3.

Other hardware changes include a speaker that’s 50 percent louder, and a re-engineered digital crown that builds in haptic feedback. There’s a new S4 64-bit dual-core processor that’s two times faster, while the black ceramic and sapphire crystal rear improves cellular reception.

Apple has also redesigned the WatchOS software, and there are now eight complications. You can customise these with the things that are important to you, such as health and fitness data and different time zones.

Some of the more interesting new features are to do with health, however. The Apple Watch Series 4 is the first consumer product offered over the counter to allow ECG (electrocardiogram) tests wherever you are, important for helping to diagnose certain heart diseases. 

The Series 4 can also send notifications if your heart rate is too low, or if you have an irregular heart beat. And it can detect a fall – should you be immobile for a minute it will automatically trigger an emergency call and send a text with your location.

Despite all these changes, Apple Watch Series 4 has the same 18-hour battery life as previously.

Apple Watch Series 4 price and release date

The new Apple Watch 4 will be available from $399 with GPS, and $499 with cellular. And the Series 3 will still be available from $279.

(UK pricing has not yet been confirmed, but we expect we’ll pay the same in pounds – £399. £499 and £279 respectively.)

Pre-orders begin this Friday, with the new Watch on sale 21 September.

Read next: Best smartwatches

Go to Source