Apple Car

The first Apple product has arrived that boasts wheels, but how does it compare to the company's Macs and iPhones?

It's 2020 and the new Apple Car finally arrived last night. Long-rumoured, it represents a brave new frontier for the American giant after years of relative failure. After all, shareholders won't let beleaguered Apple CEO Tim Cook forget about the eleven people on earth who point-blank refused to buy an iPhone 8s last summer, and his slip-up in a recent earnings call where he suggested people "probably didn't really need to buy an Apple Watch for every limb".

Pass on your accounts

What happens to your online accounts after you die? Jane Hoskyn explains how to bequeath your photos, emails and other digital data to your loved ones

Bruce Willis fights to leave his iPod tunes to his family!’ screamed newspaper headlines in 2012, when the Die Hard star reportedly planned to sue Apple for the right to bequeath his iTunes library to his daughters. Experts saluted Bruce’s stand (www.snipca.com/15497) and lawyers analysed the case (www.snipca.com/15504).

A fictitious case, as it turned out. The story was an urban myth. But like all the best myths, it contained one big truth: what will happen to our digital possessions after we die?

Toshiba Satellite Radius 11

This Windows 8.1 laptop-tablet is no jack of all trades

Toshiba makes some great Windows 8.1 laptops, but these tend to be the company’s more expensive models. Of late, we’ve been far less impressed by its cheaper laptops. The Satellite Radius 11 is Toshiba’s latest budget laptop, but it also functions as a tablet when you fold back its screen until it lies flat against the back of the keyboard.

Unfortunately, the Radius 11 isn’t an easy sell as a tablet. It’s chunky and heavy, weighing 1.3kg (light for a laptop, not for a tablet). You’re more likely to angle the touchscreen so that the keyboard acts as a stand (see image), making it more comfortable to use for watching videos and swiping through photos.

Toshiba Chromebook 2 CB30-B-104

Toshiba's latest stab at a Chrome OS laptop is a mixed bag

The idea of a non-Windows laptop that relies on web apps may still seem radically new, but laptops using Google’s Chrome OS have been around for a while now. In fact, almost all the major laptop manufacturers are already on to their second- or third-generation Chromebooks. Toshiba is no exception, and the Chromebook 2 is its latest attempt at a budget Chrome OS laptop.

As with Toshiba’s original Chromebook, this has a plastic construction, though the dimpled lid provides an additional touch of class. It’s noticeably less chunky, having been slimmed down to 1.3kg from the original’s 1.5kg. While the casing flexes under pressure more than we’d like, it’s still reasonably sturdy -especially when compared to many laptops in this price range.

Epson Expression Photo XP-760

An inkjet multifunction printer for keen photographers

The new Expression Photo XP-760 is one of Epson’s more pricey home inkjet multifunction printers (MFPs). As its name suggests, it’s aimed at budding photographers. In a bid to deliver great photos it prints with six ink cartridges rather than the usual four. The two extra (lighter shades of cyan and magenta) are intended to produce less grain in lighter areas of photo prints, such as the sky.

Epson Perfection V37

It's Epson's cheapest stand-alone scanner, but not quite cheap enough

Epson’s Perfection V37 is an A4 general-purpose scanner with a top resolution of 4,800 dots per inch (dpi). To put that into some kind of perspective, it can scan a postage stamp and produce an image that has more detail than the new 4K Ultra High Definition television standard. It also scans documents of course, but lacks the backlight necessary to scan slides or negatives - for that you need the Perfection V370, which costs about £20 more.

Doro EasyPC

An easy-to-use laptop aimed at the elderly

Dora is a Swedish company best known for its range of mobile phones aimed at the elderly. It’s therefore no surprise to see the company launch the EasyPC, a laptop designed for older novices who are somewhat intimidated by computers.

While Dorn’s basic, no-frills phones have been reliably good, the company’s Android-based smartphones have so far been virtually unusable. We were therefore pleasantly surprised by the overall high quality EasyPC, but it still has its fair share of flaws.

Will your photos survive the digital dark age?

'Bitrot' will make our photos and videos inaccessible to f uturegenerations

When teenagers take selfie photos at parties, they’re far too busy having a good time to worry about whether their great-grandchildren will be able to open them. But as we get older, making sure our precious digital content outlives us becomes more urgent. We don’t want our photos and videos trapped in time.

It’s not a new problem, as anyone with piles of unplayable VHS cassettes and unreadable floppy discs will know. Nobody is more worried about this digital decay than Vint Cerf a vice president at Google and the company’s Chief Internet Evangelist.