An introduction to smart TVs for a complete novice

Earlier in December, we decided to put a TV into our guest room. One catch: there is no aerial there, so initially we thought, ‘We have some great DVDs, let’s plug in the DVD player.’ But it didn’t quite feel right. We’ve stayed at enough places with smart TVs, including some running the Android TV […]

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Opera GX wins over Firefox in typography; Über’s still a lemon

I’ve had both Firefox and Opera GX running as replacements for Vivaldi, which still crashes when I click in form fields, though not 100 per cent of the time. It’s running at about 50 per cent, so the fix they employed to deal with this issue is only half-effective. I see Firefox still doesn’t render […]

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Xiaomi’s tiny idiosyncracies

There were a few surprises switching to Xiaomi.    First up, it asked me to do a voice identification by saying these four words, 小爱同學. Only thing is, it doesn’t understand Cantonese.    The default weather app was able to give me details based on exactly where I am (location service turned on, and I […]

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Some surprises on day one with the Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 5G

Top: Decent enough specs for the Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 5G. Above: Very respectable download speeds (in the header) as the phone updates 71 apps.   My Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 5G is here, and it’s proved better than the reviews suggested.    First up, kudos to the seller, YouGeek on Aliexpress, who not only […]

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InShot Music Player is also forgetful, though it’s not as bad as the last two

One bug that creeps up at unpredictable intervals with InShot’s Music Player—though it is not as severe as the bug on Muzio Player—is that after a while, it forgets that it should shuffle the tracks and resorts to alphabetical order, starting from the top.    Considering this isn’t something that has affected any other music […]

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There go three weeks of ‘Changes saved’: another forgetful piece of software

After all these experiences, I really shouldn’t be surprised that computers and their programs are so forgetful, and the same applies to cellphones. But of course it happened again today, undoing three weeks’ work.    I don’t know if this is hardware- or software-related, but all I ask of people who make this stuff is […]

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Switching to a Chinese OS solves another Instagram bug

Whaddya know? Uploading an Instagram video with an Android 7-based phone is fine if it’s on a Chinese OS and not a western one.    This was a bug I wrote about nearly two years ago, and I wasn’t alone. Others had difficulties with their Android 7 phones with getting Instagram videos to play smoothly: […]

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Microsoft’s revived Intellimouse isn’t a successor to the old

How I had such high hopes that the Microsoft Intellimouse Pro Special Edition bought at Noël Leeming would be a successor to my Intellimouse 1.1. The short version: it isn’t.    It might be a successor to the Intellimouse Explorer 3 on which the shape is modelled, but for those of us who prefer symmetrical […]

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The first world problems of the cellphone (lockdown edition)

This Pukerua Bay Tardis was the last thing I shot before the cellphone’s camera and gallery failed   First world problems: the cellphone. Right now my partner and I have half a phone each, so between us, we have one phone. She can receive calls on hers but no one can hear her answer. Mine […]

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Finding an Android browser that works without fuss is harder than you think

With my last two cellphones, I’ve not used the default browser. I usually opted for Firefox, and in December 2018, I believe that’s what I did on my then-new Meizu M6 Note.    I don’t recall it being too problematic, but the type on some sites displayed a tad small, so I sampled a few […]

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