Author: Duncan Pike

With most of 2023 in the rearview mirror and 2024 around the corner, it’s time to cast our gaze deeper into the new year at a few promising new laptops that will hopefully make it to shelves around the world – and our review desk, at some point. Unfortunately, laptop manufacturers don’t usually enjoy as rigid a release schedule as smartphone companies. That makes laptop predictions a little harder, especially where release and availability dates are concerned. Although, that’s not to say the world of laptop releases is a complete mystery. Apple and Microsoft tend to stick to the same…

Buying presents for people, no matter how well you might know them, can be tough. Luckily, Stuff’s gift guides have arrived, both online and in the latest issue of the magazine, and are chock full of techy gift ideas. We’re sure some folks will tell you that this holiday period shouldn’t be about buying gifts. Instead, it’s got to do with that famous baby or the fat old man who breaks into your house to eat your biscuits and drink your milk. Those people are either stalling because they haven’t figured out what to buy yet or they’re trying to…

Chinese tech company Huawei has just announced a bevy of new devices at a global launch in Dubai, for the second time this year. Following on from the company’s flagship launch earlier this year, Huawei has just unveiled a refreshed Matebook D 16, its largest tablet yet the MatePad Pro 13.2in, a new MatePad Air with the company’s PaperMatte display technology, and an interesting-looking set of ‘earbuds’ called the FreeClip. Huawei doing tonight? We’ve all seen laptops and tablets before, the FreeClips and their ball-and-chain-looking “open-ear design” have managed to stand out. Whether that translates into passable audio and the…

A “small subset” of unfortunate users suffered a tragedy not so long ago thanks to a sync issue in the Google Drive for Desktop app. This issue caused months, or, in some cases, years of files and folders in the affected Google Drives to vanish, leaving no trace of where they might’ve gone. This caused some justifiable panic but after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the Google Drive team has reported back with a solution.  The latest version of the app comes with a file recovery tool that should restore barren Drives to the disorganised file dumps they once…

There was only about 7% of 2023 left the last time we checked. That might not be enough time to finally start those New Year’s resolutions you’re still going to get around to, but it does mean you have time left to find gifts for your friends, family, and close associates. If you, or any of the people on your gift list, are the type that enjoys a trip to the cinema or can’t help but point out that Viggo Mortensen broke two of his toes in that one scene in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, here…

Don’t you love it when companies use a sensible and easy-to-understand naming convention for their products? So do we. Jabra could have called its latest flagship earbuds something obscure but we’re glad it’s sticking to the ‘bigger number means better’ convention with the Jabra Elite 10. These, along with the Elite 8 Active, are the latest silicone-wrapped in-ear headphones from the Danish company and supplant the previous flagship, the Elite 7 Pro. This time Jabra has tweaked the design and crammed more features into these tiny earbuds. Adding more features doesn’t always improve a product but at least it doesn’t…

If your hunger for local content can’t be quenched, we direct your attention to the newly overhauled SABC+ streaming service. The streaming service has a new website, is sporting a fresh new look, offers higher-quality streaming options, and no longer requires an account to access. We hope Showmax is taking notes. This not-so-new streaming service has emerged from the ashes of the previous SABC+ which went down for maintenance on 01 December 2023, never to return. We specifically mean the old site, sabcplus.com, accessed through a web browser. It is gone so that sabc-plus.com can live on in its place.…

Update 30/11/23: Late yesterday, 29 November, the same Google support member who initially said the company was investigating the issue, posted an update to the Google Drive support forum. The post mostly serves to keep the “small subset” of affected users in the loop, saying the issue has now been identified as a problem for “Drive for desktop users on version 84, which only affected local file changes that had yet to be synced to Drive.” The update post didn’t come with instructions for a fix, though one is expected “to be available in the next few days.” In the…

In May this year, Haval SA gave the country its first tease of the GWM Ora at the NAMPO Harvest Day agricultural exhibition. With the tease came the price range for the Ora – also known as the ‘Good Cat’ or ‘Funky Cat’ in other markets – which secured it the title of the country’s cheapest full-sized fully-electric vehicle. That title was previously held by the Mini Cooper SE. The British 3-door hatchback offers a claimed range of 215km with a R783,500 starting price. The local 5-door GWM Ora lineup consists of four derivatives, starting with the ORA 03 300…

Established peripheral maker Logitech recently announced the local launch of the Rally Bar Huddle and Sight, devices designed to make corporate meetings in a hybrid work environment more “equitable”. It’s been over a year and a half since South Africa ended its national state of disaster in response to the pandemic. For the most part, everyone went back to the office wearing pants, whether they liked it or not. However, Logitech clearly believes that the hybrid work model that emerged from the pandemic is sticking around. There might not be as many people missing from the office now, but the…