Battle Of The Virtual Assistants — Microsoft vs Apple vs Google

As predicted by Star Trek, it looks like we‘ll be talking to our computers soon. Or, more specifically, an AI personal assistant. Roland Waddilove compares the current crop

The digital personal assistant would appear to be one of the next big battlegrounds in tech, and many companies are pouring a lot of money, time, and talent into developing them. These are apps and services that are intelligent, interactive, can perform tasks that make life easier, and keep you updated with the latest information on things that interest you. The names are now pretty well-known: Microsoft has Cortana, a key component of the Windows 10 operating system; Google has Now on Android and iOS, and also Assistant in the latest Pixel phone; Apple has Siri, which is on iOS and also in macOS Sierra, the latest Mac operating system. Other companies are getting into digital personal assistants, too, such as Amazon with Alexa.

Bagging A Bargain

It’s time to whip out the credit card: Black Friday and Cyber Monday are back

If you have snapped up this copy of Micro Mart on the day it made it to the shops – that is, 24th November 2016 – then let us be the first to wish you a very happy Thanksgiving. It may seem odd for us to do that given we don’t actually celebrate this particular American festival here in the UK. But it’s getting to the point where it’s just about the only US event that we don’t mark. Not yet, in any case.

Fantastic new uses for your old laptop

You may struggle to teach old dogs new tricks, but that’s not true of old laptops. Mike Plant explains how to get more out of a laptop you thought you’d never use again

Many of us have an old, long-forgotten laptop squirreled away in a cupboard or the loft gathering dust. It probably became too sluggish for everyday use, prompting you to replace it with a swankier, speedier model. Perhaps you put your laptop through our recent ‘When will your PC die?’ benchmark tests and realised it was on its last legs.

Before you send it off to your nearest landfill site, why not try giving it a new lease of life? Read on as we explain how to convert it into anything from a second PC screen to an amplifier.

Stop online advertisers tracking you

The web is tracking you without you even knowing. Mike Plant explains how to shield yourself from online advertisers that want to sell your browsing habits to the highest bidder

Are you being watched right now? Probably not because you’re reading this! But the next time you go online your activity will be closely monitored. Every website you access employs trackers designed to see how you reached it, which bit of the site you interacted with, how long you stayed put and what site you leapt to afterwards.

Samsung 960 Pro 1TB

Samsung makes some scorching hot hardware, but not in the Galaxy Note 7 way

Dо you recall when the PC transitioned from IDE to SATA? Then most motherboards came with both ports, and I recall looking at IDE and wondering why they still existed.

SATA was so superior that, other than for legacy reasons, IDE became pointless practically overnight. I'm saying this since the new Samsung 960 Pro M.2 makes me view SATA ports in precisely the same way.