Category Archives: Tablet

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STM Myth Laptop Backpack 18L

January 21, 2020 Matt Porter Leave a comment

This weeks review centres on a product that is aimed at safely carrying your gadgets or in particular your laptop computer.

For the past few weeks, I have been testing the STM Myth 18 L Laptop Backpack. STM Goods were founded 20 years ago when the founder Ethan Nyholm realised that carrying his laptop around in a padded envelope whilst hiking wasn’t a lasting solution! He teamed up with Adina Jacobs and together they have been making fashion-conscious tech-carrying gear.

The Myth is available in three colour schemes, Granite Black, Slate Blue and Winsdor Wine, min was the latter.

Unlike most laptop bags which are simply foam-padded, the Myth utilises a proprietary technology called ‘SlingTech’ which features extra padding and gapless corners and actually ‘suspend’ your laptop away from the edges of the bag and thus out of harm’s way.

Aside from this ingenious protection, the bag also boasts a ton of features including music-centric CableReady systems, AirPod pocket and Earbud keeper. It also has a PassPort feature which allows you to securely attach other luggage whilst travelling, this is integrated with lumbar support, which made carrying the bag very comfortable. Helped by the Air-Channel back-panel which promotes air-flow and keeps you cool, so no more sweaty backs!

Aside from the standard back-carry straps, there is also a TPU coated webbing hand which is riveted in place. This allows you to carry the bag and the solid constructions keep it from banging off your legs.

Inside the bag is a myriad of storage, plenty to carry up to 16″ laptop and associated printed material. There are also several internal pockets for pens, plugs and accessories. It also has a fleece-lined sunglasses pocket!

The outside of the back is Water repellent and the outer zippers use reverse-coil zippers to protect the teeth and keep moisture and dirt out.

The bag is made from 100% polyester with dimensions of H 17.7 x D 11.4 x W 5.9 in / H 45.0 x D 29.0 x W 15.0 cm. The bag weighs in a 2.2 lbs / 1.0kg (without the laptop!).

I’ve been using this as my main laptop bag for a few weeks, my 15″ Macbook Pro slides in effortlessly and when fully unzipped the bag doesn’t just fall open, it feels like it is opening on a hinge and means the contents aren’t going to just spew out all over the place.

The bag feels extremely sturdy and very very comfortable to wear. The added back support is welcome and the flat base means it isn’t falling over when you place it on the floor. I can see many commuters finding a back like this very useful indeed and it has plenty of storage space inside.

If you fancy trying out the bag yourself, you can download STM’s App and use the AR Tag printed here. Once you get it going, it’s quite a bit of fun to play with and you can see how their bags look before purchase. https://www.stmgoods.com/stm-app2/

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Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 with InfinityEdge Screen

June 24, 2018 Matt Porter Leave a comment

In the never-ending battle of the tech giants, 2018 has most certainly been the year of the bevel or indeed lack of bevel. TV’s have become almost bevel-less, transforming from boring black rectangles that have been slowly consuming our living rooms to ambient wall furniture which can now disguise itself as the wall-covering it once blighted like some kind of digital chameleon.

In our hands, the swift removal of bevels from around our curved smart phone screens has introduced us to the ‘notch’ as manufacturers desperately seek new ways to hide fingerprint readers and front facing cameras. Along with these gadgets, we now see the same happening with computer screens, laptops and of course the 2-in-1 or convertible touchscreen notebook / tablet devices.

Three Dell XPS 13 (Model 9365) Touch 13-inch notebook computers, codename Aventador.

The Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 is just one of those devices, a beautifully sleek device with the almost bevel-less screen in the form of Dell’s own ‘InfinityEdge’ display and a power packed Intel Core i7 processer and SSD drive.

The XPS 13 2-in-1 is a convertible laptop which with the help of Windows 10 converts into a 13” tablet by simply folding away the keyboard and transforming into a lovely device to please artists or note-takers alike.

The 2-in-1 comes in a nicely branded black soft-touch box. Inside you find the laptop with its lid and base polished aluminium with embossed Dell logo in the centre. Opening the lid to expose the keyboard and screen isn’t quite as graceful as other laptops due to the lack of weight, but this is a small issue as once revealed, it provides a very pleasant view for owners.

The keyboard is nicely recessed, typing is very tactile and feels high quality with a good sized touch pad below. Surrounding the keyboard and touchpad is what looks a feels like carbon fibre, this this looks really nice and gives good grip when ‘manipulating’ the device, but is also a bit of a fingerprint magnet. There is also a fingerprint reader for use with Microsoft Hello.

Now down to the display itself, which I have to admit is absolutely stunning! Dell have gone for a gloss glass screen which makes colours rich and vibrant, blacks are… well black as they should be with no obvious backlight ruining your viewing experience. My unit was a 1920 x 1080 FHD screen, but there is also a 3200 x 1800 model giving even greater clarity. The screen is also multi-touch (10 touch points) capable and for artists the Dell Active Pen can also be used which is sold separately.

Powering the device is the 7th generation Intel Core i7 running at 1.60Ghz along with 8Gb of memory and a 240Gb Solid State Drive (SSD), as expected the machine runs very quickly indeed with almost instantaneous boot up and excellent performance. Running Adobe Photoshop was a breeze and I can imagine with the Dell Active Pen would provide an excellent environment for artists.

As the machine runs on Windows 10 Home Edition, the majority of owners will be familiar with finding their way around the system and with a device designed to work directly with this software, the journey is relatively painless.

If you are looking to plug in your peripherals, you will find that the XPS 13 2-in-1 has now joined the USB Type C charging club and thus has no traditional USB ports other than using an adapter. Thus, you have 2 USB-C ports for connectivity or charging the device, a Micro SD port for transferring data, a display port connector, a Thunderbolt™ 3.0 connector and headset jack port. The frustration of losing the standard ports we have all grown used to can be easily remedied by after-market adapters.

Dell have yet again produced a high quality machine which sits right up there with other manufacturers hardware. It would be very useful for business people who need to work from remote locations or whilst commuting and I’m pretty sure that a few lucky students would also benefit from using it.

Starting at around £1150, the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 is by no way an entry level device, but if you are look for a very nicely designed notebook or tablet, then buying a 2-in-1 may well be your solution.

Matt Porter
The Gadget Man
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First Products of the Tech Giants – Play our Quiz!

November 28, 2017 Matt Porter Leave a comment

We all have to start somewhere and so did some of the biggest tech companies. Play our quiz and see if you can guess what their first products were? You might be surprised at some of the answers!

Don’t forget to comment with your score and don’t forget to like and share!!

Credit:: https://money-pod.co.uk/guides/first-products-tech-companies

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1257 Miles in an Electric Car – Part 1 – A Plan is Hatched.

October 19, 2017 Matt Porter Leave a comment

Holzhausen’s drawings of the Model S — Holzhausen’s original drawings of the Model S

10th July 2017

I was sitting in my office in Martlesham on the 10th July 2017 chatting to a colleague about Tesla cars. The conversation had started after he noticed the framed artists sketch hanging on my wall.

I have driven a number of Tesla Model S cars in the past from the excitable P85+ to the ‘Insane’ P85D. They are very exciting cars to drive, not just because they are fully electric and pack extremely powerful single gear motors, but because you feel your are riding on the coattails of automotive history, participating in an irreversible shift change in motorvehicle technology. It’s very exciting!

The conversation moved on the the Model X and Model 3, Tesla’s entries in to the SUV and ‘affordable’ markets. The Model X has recently appeared in the UK, the Model 3 is two years away from being available. We continued to chat for the rest of lunch, but the seed was planted.

That evening I wrote an email to Tesla’s press office requesting the loan of a Model X for review. Nothing specific, simply available dates.

The next day I received a reply from Tesla, it’s explained that things were very busy with the Model X, but the 5th and 6th of October was available for a test drive, did that suit? I puzzled for a while, in the past I had been loaned vehicles for a little longer, to give me time to get to know the vehicle, two days seemed a bit short to get a proper review in place. So, I followed up with an email, requesting a little longer.

I quickly received a reply from Tesla asking what my plans were? OK, good question, time to put on my thinking cap.

15 July 2017

My initial idea was driving from Lands End to John O’Groats, but after a little bit of Googling, I discovered that this had already been done in a Tesla and well documented on YouTube, there was nothing original to achieve in travelling down this this ‘road’.

But wait a minute! Was there? I live about 40 minutes from Ness Point, the most easterly point in the UK. Nestled in Lowestoft, Ness Point at first glance seemed a little unloved. Some thought and effort has been made to build a stone circle, with plaques showing distances to well known points in the UK. It’s quite nice, but the surroundings aren’t that impressive, but it seemed like the obvious starting point for a challenge and wasn’t too far from home.

Now to find the most westerly point of the UK.

Ardnamurchan Lighthouse sits on the most westerly mainland point of the UK accessible by a short ferry ride at Corran and a two hour drive along single track roads across an extinct volcano. There even appeared to be a ‘rapid’ charge point a few miles away at Kichoan Pier, which would set a challenge outside of Tesla’s ‘Supercharger’ network.

The plan was hatched, but it was just the beginning.

Matt Porter
The Gadget Man

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The Cosmic Watch – A Mesmerising & Beautiful App for Viewing the Cosmos

May 30, 2017 Matt Porter Leave a comment

The human race has always been fascinated by the stars in the sky. From guiding themselves across the seas, planning the harvests or daydreaming about visiting far away planets, we spend a great deal of our time thinking about the stars and planets.

It is fascinating to think that we have only really begun to understand the Universe in the last 50 years and continue to be humbled by our place its vastness and the influence it still continues to holds on us.

So, when I was contacted by the makers of Cosmic Watch, I was intrigued on how an app was going to give me a much deeper understanding of our solar system and the movement of the planets and celestial bodies.

A screenshot The Cosmic Watch of one of the many different modes available.

To start with, Cosmic Watch is a really good looking mobile application, with an incredibly slick, but simple to operate user experience. This is an app that can be any one of many things, from world clock, searching for planetary positions to finding Astrology Star Sign and it’s relation to those constellations at your time of birth.

Any astrophysicist worth his salt will tell you that the study of our Universe is not simply the study of ‘space’, it is also the study of ‘time’, this is conveniently called ‘Space-Time’. It’s called this because everything in our Universe is moving and thus “In physics, spacetime is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single interwoven continuum.”.

In order to understand and track the stars and planets we need to understand Space-Time in order to be able to find the positions of the planets and stars at any given point in the past and the future.

Cosmic Clock can provide this information using a 3d user experience which places our planet Earth in the centre of everything, not as a step backwards in our understand, but in fact to help us understand our place in the Universe. It does this both effortlessly and beautifully.

Cosmic Clock has three main modes:

World Clock – For time keeping around the globe
Astronomy – For viewing the constellations and planets
Astrology – The study of the position of the stars and their perceived influence on us and our daily lives.

To navigate any of these modes you use buttons on the left hand side of the screen, with additional buttons placed at the base of the screen to control how the information is displayed.

Swiping the screen causes everything to rotate in 3d around the Earth, you can also pinch to zoom in order to see a particular place in detail.

In clock mode, you can actually use your phone or tablet as a desktop clock, just make sure you connect it to a charger first. You also need to switch off ‘sleep’ mode to keep the screen on. This is a fascinating view as it shows the Earth in real time including the approaching sunrise or sunset.

Astronomy mode display the stars and planets with added labels. You can speed up, freeze or reverse time to find out the exact position of celestial bodies as specific times.

Astrology mode shows the plants and stars using their traditional symbols and signs of the zodiac. It’s very detailed if this kind of thing interests you.

Throughout all of these modes, there are a myriad of different settings available to allow you to display the cosmos in pretty much any conceivable fashion and it’s certainly extremely interesting to use.

The app makes use of the internal sensors or your phone and tablet including the compass. This helps you align the display of the app with the actual night sky and makes the experience fascinating as rather than guessing the position of a planet, you can accurately predict when it will be in the sky.

If the stars and planets interest you, Cosmic Watch will provide you with a fascinating insight into the Solar System and wider Universe and it an absolute MUST PURCHASE and at £4.99 it is worth every penny.

You can purchase Cosmic Watch for iOS here or Android here

Or visit them directly here at http://cosmic-watch.com/

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The ASUS Transformer Mini T102H Review – Is it a Laptop or a Tablet?

May 10, 2017 Matt Porter Leave a comment

For the last few weeks, I have been testing the ASUS Transformer Mini, a device which can be a laptop and tablet depending on your mood.

The idea of a tablets with keyboards is not a new one, these were generally add-on keyboards for iPads or Android tablets which worked well, but seemed out of place on a device that was designed to be operated without one. There have also been laptops with detachable keyboards which in turn felt out of place running software which was designed for one.

The key change is the introduction of Windows 10 which can seamlessly transform itself from a keyboard and mouse centric operating system into a touch and swipe based tablet and back again, simply by detaching and reattaching a keyboard,

ASUS have been in the ‘transforming’ tablet market for some time and the Transformer Mini T102H brings a very useful addition to the table with a 10.1″ LED backlit HD screen which uses ASUS’s ‘Splendid’ and ‘Wideview’ Technology to give great viewing angles.

ASUS Transformer T102H — ASUS Transformer Mini T102H

Powered by the Intel® Atom™ x5 Processor and 4 GB of RAM. The hard disk is in fact Solid State memory and gives your 64GB of silent running. Everything on board is low power and there didn’t appear to be any internal fans to cool the device.

The graphics are fast and snappy helped by the integrated Intel HD Graphics processor and there’s also an inbuilt 2 megapixel webcam for Skype or other video chat applications.

The great thing about Windows tablets is the number of connectors, the Transformer has a 3.5 mm combo audio jack, USB 3.0 and Micro USB ports, a micro HDMI socket, Fingerprint reader for login, volume controls and micro SD card slot.

The detachable keyboard was really easy to use and attaches using a powerful magnet and always seemed to line up properly and was responsive to use with the inbuilt trackpad. My Transformer also came with a stylus which is battery powered and looks and feels like a real pen, it was great for drawing and painting using the bundled apps and can also be used to write on-screen sticky note.

I really enjoyed using the Transformer and it makes a great device for people who are comfortable with tablets, but also need a real keyboard for their work, possibly an idea for students? At £449 it is reasonably price too.

Matt Porter, The Gadget Man – AI, Technology News and Reviews