Author: Brett Venter

Lenovo’s X1 Carbon is a brilliant machine, often being the only Windows-sporting notebook to actually give the MacBook Air a run for Stuff’s money. And the race is going to be repeated again in 2015, as the Chinese manufacturer has re-re-refreshed the ThinkPad X1 Carbon again for 2015. And the refresh takes things back a step. 2014’s Carbon featured a clickable trackpad and that upper adaptive row of keys but those weren’t all that useful by the look of things. How do we know (besides having actually used the Carbon)? Well, the 2015 edition is set to dispose of those…

Some fitness users, who are known to the Stuff staffers (no names, to protect those of us here who don’t work out), like to keep their fitness trackers close to their hearts. And if FitLinxx, the company behind a new wearable called the AmpStrip, has their way then soon the previous sentence will be more than just a figure of speech. The AmpStrip, which is being shown at CES 2015 and which has also just passed its IndieGoGo crowdfunding goal, is something very different in the world of fitness trackers. There are no bands for this one, either around your…

4K is the coming thing, but it seems that LG is going to be doubling that resolution for their star players at the upcoming CES event set to take place in Vegas next year. According to a CNET report, citing “LG insiders”, the South Korean company has made arrangements to get an 8K 55-inch TV set to Las Vegas. The TV, which is apparently codenamed ‘Mabinogion’ is said to feature a resolution of 7,680 x 4,320 and, of course, it is just a prototype for now. That might be because 8K video is currently unavailable anywhere and the company has…

We’ve kept our peepers on the sale of old Apple-1 computers for some time, as they are fetching some fairly ridiculous prices of late. Another one has gone under the hammer and, despite being a working unit that was sold by late Apple CEO Steve Jobs himself back in 1976 (seriously, they had proof), it managed to fetch less than the record-setting bid from 2013 for a different unit. This particular Apple-1 went for $365,000 or, in South African moneys, R4.23 million. That’s still way under the record paid for an Apple-1 at auction, that all-time high comes in at…

The best thing about holidays? Doing whatever you want. If you have kids though, you will usually wind up doing whatever they want. Unless you head to someplace like the Sci-Bono Discovery Centre where they’re hosting a month-long holiday programme that will entertain and educate kids. According to the Centre, school-age kids (and we dare say a few parents as well) will be able to experience “…steam turbines, robots and Bloodhound racing cars, instant ice cream and Segway rides, planetarium shows and telescopes, 3D shows, rockets and parachutes”, among other activities – from 11 December to 11 January 2015. The…

This is certainly… different. Taxi app service Uber and online retailer Kalahari have teamed up to make shopping online an unusual experience this year, though what they have in mind would make avoiding the completely mad shopping centres in SA this festive season a possibility. As long as you live in Cape Town. Uber and Kalahari are setting up to provide some South African users with an UberSleigh, which is an Uber van that pitches up at your door with a selection of retailer Kalahari’s best-selling items this year. All of the items will come in under the R1,000 mark and…

Any chance that we were going to get more productive in the New Year has just gone right out of the window. Which we made by melting some sand in a furnace that was made out of stone and wood that we got from punching trees and rocks. In other words, we’ve just heard from Microsoft locally that Minecraft: Pocket Edition has landed on Windows Phone. You’ll be able to take Steve out on crafting adventures on your Windows Phone 8.1 device for the princely sum of R90. Which isn’t the price we were given initially by Microsoft but we’ll…

Microsoft wants your money this December. And to achieve this, the company has instituted a country-wide, all-retailers-included price drop for their Xbox One consoles that will lower the price by R500 per package and this drop is going to be valid until 24 December 2014. Microsoft has said that an “…Xbox One bundled with FIFA 15, and the Limited Edition Sunset Overdrive console with Sunset Overdrive [is] now available at R5799. The 1T Call of Duty Limited edition console will be R6799, and the Xbox One Kinect bundle with Dance Spotlight and FIFA 15 will be R7499.” [youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu78Yef2aEU”] So in…

We’re extremely excited about Google’s Project Ara modular phone project, if only to see how it will all work in practise. And it looks as though LEGO-phone hopefuls will be able to construct and order their hot-swappable handsets without having to leave the house. Google has partnered with a company called Globant, according to a recent release, in order to create and construct an online outlet for Project Ara devices. The company says that the store will be similar in nature to Google’s Play Store, with user reviews and recommendations available – for components rather than software. Google is looking…

4K video is the coming thing, if the TV screens we’ve seen popping up everywhere for ages are any indication. But getting 4K content is still a bother, unless you’re Netflix, YouTube or certain film studios who created 4K content to promote the TV screens (Samsung, we’re looking at you) in question. But 4K might be more prolific soon. The other video hosting service, Vimeo, has announced that their Pro users will now be able to upload their video content in 4K resolutions. That does mean that you need to give Vimeo a $200 (around R2,300) subscription fee every year…