Author: Stephen Fenech

The NBN has revealed plans to offers speeds five times faster on its NBN Home Fast products taking it from 100/20 Mbps to 500/50 Mbps at no additional cost to wholesale retailers. NBN says it will accelerate the speeds for customers connected to the NBN via Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) and HFC (Hybrid Fibre Coaxial) technologies. It is also planning on tripling the download speed of its popular NBN Home Superfast product from 250/25 Mbps to 750/50 Mbps and the NBN Home Ultrafast from 500-1000/50Mbps to 750-1000/50-100 Mbps at no additional charge. These accelerated speeds are expected to be…

Apple has announced new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air laptop computers which now contain the company’s latest and most powerful M3 chip. Available from Friday March 8, the new MacBook Air models are up to 60 per cent faster than the M1 models and up to 13x faster than the fastest Intel based MacBook Air. “MacBook Air is our most popular and loved Mac, with more customers choosing it over any other laptop. And today it gets even better with the M3 chip and new capabilities,” says Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “From college students pursuing…

Join Tech Guide’s Stephen Fenech and EFTM’s Trevor Long for the latest episode of Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars  – The EV Podcast. This week, Stephen and Trevor are discussing the factors that can affect the range of an EV and Mercedes Benz  is thinking about revising its EV designs. https://youtu.be/GKBq0oXFdNA?si=9SSZGtWS4lXVR2tB You can listen to or watch the show right here on the Tech Guide site using the audio player below or by pressing play on the YouTube player above.

The new Hubbl entertainment platform will go on sale on March 10 and will kick off a national advertising campaign starring brand ambassadors Hamish Blake and Andy Lee. Hubbl is an all-new entertainment operating system which combines streaming apps and freer to air TV and bring all the best content to the surface. It will be available to customers as either a standalone box for $99 or as part of the Hubbl Glass TV available in 55-inch ($1,595) or 65-inch ($1,995). They will be available from JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman. WHAT IS THE HUBBL PLATFORM – READ MORE HERE…

You talk to your partner before you go to the suits. This week on The Best Movies You’ve Never Seen podcast we’re watching Black Rain starring Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia and directed by Ridley Scott. Black Rain tells the story of cop Nick Conklin who, while being investigated by internal affairs, witnesses a murder in a busy restaurant and apprehends the perpetrator – a Japanese crime figure who Nick must accompany to Japan after he is extradited. Stephen watched Black Rain at the movies and repeatedly on a South Sydney end of season trip where the movie was being…

Apple has highlighted stories from two customers whose lives were saved because they were wearing an Apple Watch. Each of these customers are still alive today thanks to two built in features – Fall Detection and Low Heart Rate notifications. The survival stories of Bruce Mildenhall and Lexie Northcott have been shared by Apple to showcase the lifesaving potential of these Apple Watch features. With Fall Detection, the Apple Watch can detect a hard fall and connect you with emergency services and even share your location if you are unconscious. If the Apple Watch detects movement, it will wait for…

The Chromebook has gone to the next level after more than 10 years of fast and reliable performance and the best security. Introducing the ASUS Chromebook Plus. The ASUS Chromebook Plus has twice the performance of previous models, an improved 1080p+ IPS display with webcam, built-in Google apps and new and powerful AI capabilities. For those new to Chromebooks – it is a laptop computer that’s not a Windows PC or a Mac – but a Google-powered cloud computing experience that offers most of the same capabilities as a regular laptop so you can stay productive, informed and entertained. Tech…

Data protection is critical in an age when digital platforms are more vital to us than ever. You may improve your digital security by using a free VPN for iOS.  Identifying the Need for a Free VPN for iOS: Let’s briefly discuss why utilizing a free VPN for iOS is essential before we get into the specifics. Your data is vulnerable to cyber threats when linked to the internet, including data cachers who may use security holes to obtain your personal data.  Connecting a Free VPN on iOS: Now, let’s connect a free VPN on your iOS device. Apple has…

It is an international show for Episode 622 of the Two Blokes Talking Tech podcast with Tech Guide’s Stephen Fenech coming in live from Las Vegas and Trevor Long touching down back in Sydney from Barcelona. Stephen is in Las Vegas to watch his beloved South Sydney Rabbitohs play in the NRL double-header while Trevor attended Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. On this week’s show, the issue of prominence for the free-to-air catch up apps on smart TVs which was the subject of a Senate inquiry, the latest announcements from Mobile World Congress including a Motorola rollable phone, Oppo’s Air…

Kobo has released its annual book report which shows Australians are reading even more ebooks – cumulatively in 2023 the reading time equated to 1430 years – that’s up by 119 years from 2022, with Prince Harry’s autobiography Spare among the most popular titles we read and listened to. And it wasn’t just reading we loved – we also loved listening to books – we spent a total time of 66.8 years doing that. That’s a 27 per cent increase thanks to the Kobo Plus subscription services including audiobooks. The Kobo Book Report outlines Australian reading habits including the most…

ECOVACS is returning to Aldi Special Buys with its DEEBOT NEO robotic vacuum cleaner and mop on March 6 and are offering it half price for $399. Usually priced at $799, the ECOVACS DEEBOT NEO is packed with features to keep your house neat and tidy including laser-based mapping and navigation technology. The product is compatible with Google Home or Amazon Alexa so it can be integrated into your home’s smart ecosystem and controlled with your voice or with your smartphone. At this price it is ideal for those customers who want to purchase their first robot vacuum or for…

Lenovo has introduced a new ground-breaking concept product – the ThinkBook Transparent Display laptop – which can completely change the way we interact and create with our computer. Introduced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Lenovo ThinkBook Transparent Display laptop concept includes a 17.3-inch micro LED see-through screen. It is reminiscent of the displays seen in films like Minority Report and Avatar. It has a borderless screen as well as a transparent keyboard area. The transparency of the laptop means it can naturally integrate within its environment. Users can also switch between the keyboard and drawing board with…

Press play on Episode 589 of the top-rating Tech Guide podcast hosted by editor Stephen Fenech as he keeps you updated and educated about the latest consumer tech news and reviews. On this week’s show: questions raised about Hubble’s free to air TV over the internet features, Samsung to expand Galaxy AI to even more devices and Taylor Swift fans smash through their data at her Australian concerts. In the Tech Guide reviews, we take a look at the Echo Hub control panel, we check out the Obsbot Tiny 2 webcam and the product that lets you show your MacBook…

Uniden has received Canstar Blue’s highest award as the Best Dash Cam brand in all categories including quality and value for money. The Dash View and iGO dash cams offer up to 4K video and a wide field of view so they can be your eyes and ears on the road. The Canstar Blue awards looks at several categories – video quality, value for money, design, memory/storage capacity, user-friendliness and overall satisfaction. And Uniden aced every single category with a five-star rating in every single one. Uniden, founded in Japan in 1966, has poured years of research and development into…

Oppo has unveiled its prototype AR glasses – the Air Glass 3 – which can provide AI-powered experiences and information based on what you see around you along with relevant notifications and reminders. Revealed at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Air Glass 3 can feed images to the glasses via a tiny triple-colour micro projector that adjust to the brightness of your surroundings. The device offers XR – extended reality – so users can see information, images and video through the glasses. A light press of the temple of the Oppo Air Glass 3 will also activate an…

Join us for the latest episode of the Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars podcast with Tech Guide Editor Stephen Fenech and EFTM’s Trevor Long as they discuss the EVs that won the major awards from Drive.com.au including the Car of the Year. We are joined by Drive’s Trent Nikolic to discuss why the EVs fared so well in this year’s awards. https://youtu.be/x9LfwqM-p-o?si=Oc8A1E9ElJjkhZnP Also on the show, Trevor’s not so positive EV experience and the US decision that could have a huge impact on EV sales. You can listen or the watch show right here on Tech Guide site using the…

HMD, the company behind Nokia smartphones, has partnered with Mattel to release a Barbie-themed flip phone. Due for release in mid-2024, the HMD (Human Mobile Devices) Barbie Flip Phone will ride the wave of popularity from the recent hit Barbie movie starring Australia’s own Margot Robbie. Mattel is a global toy company with a strong portfolio of children’s and family franchises including Barbie which was originally released in 1959. The new HMD Barbie Flip Phone will no doubt offer the same vintage chic of the original Barbie dolls including that unmissable dash of pink as well. “Is it time to…

When Hubbl last week announced it could offer free-to-air without an antenna we all sat up to take notice – but there are some issues that customers need to know about. This was all announced in the same week a Senate inquiry was held to ensure Australians still had exposure and access to free-to-air TV. At its heart, the inquiry was centred around upcoming Prominence legislation that is looking to ensure TV manufacturers offer the same exposure to 9Now, 7Plus, Tenplay, ABC iView and SBS OnDemand as Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and other streaming services. On the Hubbl side, the…

The Amazon Echo Hub is a great way to bring together your smart home devices and control, manage and monitor them all in one place. I’ll be honest – at first, I struggled to understand the difference between the Echo Show 15 that’s already on wall and the new Echo Hub with its 8-inch touchscreen. We can talk to the Echo Show and ask it to play music, videos, set reminders and control our devices. The Echo Hub is a different beast. It can also play content and do most of the things the Echo Show can do, but where…

Say hello to my little friend!!! This week on The Best Movies You’ve Never Seen podcast we’re watching Scarface starting Al Pacino, directed by Brian De Palma and written by Oliver Stone. Scarface tells the story of Cuban refugee Tony Montana who fights his way up through the ranks of the Miami underworld to establish his dominance in cocaine trafficking. Stephen didn’t watch this in the cinema but saw it over and over again on VHS as a teenager and his since rewatched it many times ever since, the latest on 4K in a remastered version. Trevor is coming at…