Author: Duncan Pike

Anyone who’s bought a laptop will know how costly the process can be. Need more RAM, storage, or a peripheral? Those usually cost eggstra. Then, there is the option to eggstend the warranty for protection if something terrible were to happen. That usually also costs eggstra. This month, Acer Africa is offering buyers of certain laptops the option of a discounted eggstended warranty. It might not be the most glamorous of offers, but if you’ve ever had to foot the repair bill for a laptop out of warranty, you wouldn’t have that smirk on your face. Protect your Acer eggs…

Sonos recently dropped the recommended retail price of its Era 100 smart speaker and Ray soundbar. The company didn’t say much publicly about the price decrease, but when the vigilant folks in the Sonos subreddit spotted the decrease in other countries, we reached out to Sonos’ local distributor, Planetworld, to confirm if South Africa would benefit. On that note, we’ve got some good news. Sonos lowers the barrier of entry We’ve confirmed that both the Era 100 and Ray have had R1,000 lobbed off their original recommended retail prices. That means both now have a new RRP of R6,000. This…

Amazon’s Project Kuiper will release its first full load of satellites into low-Earth orbit soon. The mission, called “KA-01”, for Starlink’s main competitor is currently scheduled for “no earlier than” 18h00 SAST on Wednesday, 9 April. Barring any further delays, a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket will launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida and transport 27 internet-from-space-enabled satellites to about 450km above the Earth. Once the satellites have successfully separated from their launch vessel, “a series of mostly automated steps to activate onboard systems” will commence as their electric propulsion systems carry them to their…

ChatGPT’s free users can finally access the model’s latest image-generating abilities. There are a few caveats, which we’ll get to, but free users can join in the fun of ripping off other folks’ creative work for their amusement. After releasing ChatGPT’s new built-in image generation capabilities last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the rollout of the update to the free tier would be delayed because “images in chatgpt are wayyyy more popular than we expected (and we had pretty high expectations).” “Hey ChatGPT, what is copyright?” The delay turned out to be just over a week, and now most…

If you were holding your breath for another fully electric SUV to become available locally, you can finally release it. Volvo Car South Africa unveiled its new EX90 flagship SUV at a launch event in Cape Town this week. Don’t panic if you had your heart set on buying the older plug-in hybrid or internal combustion engine equivalent XC90, that has just received a facelift and is sticking around… for now. Powered by electrons The ‘Ultra’ spec EX90, the only one coming to SA initially, is propelled by two electric motors, one over each axle, and a large 111kWh battery…

This definitely won’t be the first time you’ve heard about a possible Half-Life 3 release, and it probably won’t be the last. New rumours have surfaced that suggest Valve’s third main entry to the series has entered a new stage of development, which could signal an imminent announcement. Half-Life 3 almost confirmed? The latest batch of rumours comes courtesy of well-known Valve-focused data miner ‘Gabe Follower’ who shared their findings in a video on their YouTube channel. Known internally by its codename HLX, Gabe Follower has detailed what they believe to be discoveries related to Half-Life 3 of groups called…

Earlier this year at CES, Dell Technologies announced a major rebranding or “brand unification” across its PC range. This was confirmed for the local market yesterday at the first Dell Tech Rally of 2025. That means no more XPS, Inspiron, or Latitude models. Going forward, there will only be ‘Dell’. That doesn’t mean everything about the former models is falling away. Most of the good bits will remain, they’ll just have new names. There’s a new Dell in town Dell has divided its portfolio into three categories, each with three performance tiers. As illustrated above, the three categories are Dell,…

Huawei today has unveiled its latest foldable device, the Pura X, at a launch event in China. The company’s new smartphone might look a little familiar to other brands’ clamshell folding devices, like the Galaxy Z Flip 6, but its form factor hides a slightly different 16:10 aspect ratio. Most of the specs have been confirmed on Huawei’s official Chinese site, except for the chipset it uses. The odds are high that the Pura X houses one of the Kirin chips we’ve seen in other recent Huawei devices, perhaps the Kirin 9020 as seen in the Mate X6 released in…

OG smartwatch fans rejoice, the Pebble smartwatch is making a comeback this year. With his new company Core Devices, the creator of the original modern smartwatch, Eric Migicovsky, has announced the imminent launch of the Core Time 2 and Core 2 Duo. They might have new names but these are still very much Pebble watches at their core. They will run on the newly liberated PebbleOS and will feature all the best bits from the original watches, with a few new tricks too. Bag a new Pebble The Core 2 Duo is the cheaper of the new devices (so far) with…

Danish audio company Bang & Olufsen has been in the business for a whole century, so you could say they have a good amount of experience crafting high-end audio equipment. The brand’s latest flagship wireless headphones, the Beoplay H100, are exactly that. They are far from what one might call ‘affordable’ — at R37,000 that’s not a word in this company’s mantra. Its cheapest product is a R7,000 60W portable speaker. Instead, the company focuses on delivering finely crafted, high-quality products with longevity in mind. That’s evident by their five-year warranty and modular design. As with other B&O products, these…