Rejoice! Valve has officially resurrected the Steam Machine, a compact gaming PC made to be played on your living room TV. Not only does it (supposedly!) run quietly, but it can also handle 4K gaming at 60 frames per second with AMD’s FSR (FidelityFX Super Resolution) upscaling technology. Seems like Valve’s really throwing its hat into the ring as far as hybrid gaming consoles go, yeah? The cube-like device, which stands about 6 inches tall, will run Valve’s Linux-based SteamOS 3. According to Valve, it’s “six times more powerful than the Steam Deck.” With the Proton compatibility layer built in, it can run most Windows games natively—a huge deal because compatibility issues were the main culprit behind the failure of the 2015-era Steam Machines (back before the Proton layer was even a thing). The newest version of the Steam Machine will have two configurations: 512GB and 2TB. Inside, it’s got a custom AMD Zen 4 chip with 6 cores and 12 threads, plus a custom RDNA 3 GPU. Translation? You can expect console-level power in a wee little package.  Valve also showed off a new Steam Controller and the Steam Frame, a standalone VR headset running a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor. No word on price yet, but all three should hit sometime in early 2026. Read...

Auckland Transport has unveiled a proposal to introduce dynamic lane technology on Park Road. Read...

AI is revolutionising New Zealand healthcare by enhancing diagnostics and patient care while ensuring technology supports empathetic, human-centred treatment. Read...

HyperSteam hygienic deep cleaning, HyperStretch lay flat design and innovative Flash Dry self-cleaning technology are the leading features from wet and dry brand. Read...

AMD’s roadmap marches on: the company confirmed the presence of its next-generation Zen 7 architecture, and talked briefly about the company’s next-generation PC graphics roadmap as well. AMD hosted a day for financial analysts on Tuesday, outlining its businesses for a cadre of Wall Street investors and analysts. Unfortunately, the agenda reflected AMD’s new corporate priorities: with the bulk of AMD’s revenue now coming from its datacenter business, AMD scheduled just twenty minutes for its client businesses. AMD chief executive Lisa Su also identified the datacenter as “the most strategic business” for AMD. Before it did, however, AMD also revealed some brief details of its architectural roadmaps., where AMD chief technology officer Mark Papermaster announced that AMD was working on Zen 7, its next-generation CPU architecture. That will underpin AMD’s Ryzen CPUs, where in the desktop Su said that AMD commands over 50 percent of the desktop CPU channel. “We’ve delivered five generations of the Zen CPU,” Papermaster said. “We split it into high performance versions, power and compact, cloud optimized version also used in our networks, but all maintaining a consistency of instruction set architecture. We went where no company was willing to go in the bet we made with chiplets.” Mark Hachman / Foundry AMD’s Zen 5 architecture is the foundation of the Ryzen 9000 family. The Zen 6 architecture will debut in the company’s next-gen EPYC processor for servers, debuting this year, Papermaster said. Papermaster didn’t say anything about Zen 7, though he showed it on a roadmap slide. (That slide didn’t include an estimated ship date, either.) AMD continues to stagger its design teams, assigning one team to each architecture generation and going back and forth. (That means that the Zen 5 team is now shifting to work on Zen 7.) AMD also continues to develop two types of cores for each Zen architecture, one focusing on performance and the other focusing on power. Mark Hachman / Foundry Papermaster also provided an early look at AMD’s desktop graphics roadmap, though without revealing many details. AMD is equally interested in improving the performance of its desktop GPUs as well as other edge applications where it can apply GPU compute. Papermaster also showed off some of the improvements AMD is considering for its NPU roadmap as well. There, AMD plans more AI TOPS and more power efficiency, without going into details. Mark Hachman / Foundry Jack Huynh, the senior vice president who heads the Computing and Graphics Group at AMD, did not go into additional details, though he did indicate that AMD plans to move into edge AI as well as its existing markets in the mobile, workstation, and desktop markets. AMD has a “no compromise” PC strategy he said, infusing AI into everything the company does. “We’ve built tremendous momentum, and we have a clear path to market leadership,” Huynh said. “Now we’re entering a new era. AI is transforming the PC experience and redefining what compute means across every device in our portfolio. This is not just another product cycle, it’s a once in a generation shift towards expanding our opportunity across every segment. Our next chapter is about scaling the client business, deepening our council advantage, and unlocking new growth with AI at the edge. If I can leave you one thought today, it’s we are ready to lead the gaming and AI PC era.” Read...

TL;DR: For a limited time, get permanent access to the PDF Converter & Editor for just $29.99 (MSRP $99.99). Here’s a solid way to simplify your workflow: for a limited time, you can get lifetime access to the PDF Converter & Editor for $29.99 (MSRP $99.99). It’s a single payment for a tool that removes the usual PDF frustrations — no subscriptions, no hidden restrictions, just full functionality when you need it. Whether you’re merging pages, converting files to Word or Excel, or extracting text from scanned documents, this software gives you all the PDF power you need in one place. It’s fast, reliable, and trusted by individuals and businesses to make daily document workflows way smoother. Highlights at a glance Convert to & from PDF — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, PNG, JPG & more Edit & Organize Pages — Merge, split, rotate, or delete in a few clicks OCR Technology — Extract and edit text from scanned PDFs Form Tools — Fill out or build interactive forms with full customization Compress, Protect & Unlock — Control file sizes and secure your documents Annotate & Watermark — Add comments, shapes, or branding to your PDFs If PDFs are part of your daily grind, this is an easy one-time investment that will pay for itself the next time you need to edit or convert a document. Get a lifetime of PDF Converter & Editor for just $29.99 (MSRP $99.99) through November 20. No coupon needed. PDF Converter & Editor: Lifetime LicenseSee Deal StackSocial prices subject to change. Read...

A survey of business leaders suggested companies may be measuring against the wrong benchmarks, and that technology adoption was lagging. Read...

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros The indoor video monitor is an excellent addition Outstanding battery life Reasonably priced Considering it comes bundled with a display Cons We encountered some playback bugs Display has very low resolution Subscription plan doesn’t add much Our Verdict Pairing a small monitor with this video doorbell is a no-brainer way to get more out of what has become a something of a commodity device. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: SwitchBot Smart Video Doorbell Retailer Price $129.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Part of the trouble with video doorbells is that you don’t always have your phone at the ready to see who’s ringing. If you’re standing in the kitchen when the bell rings, but you’ve left your phone in the bedroom, do you rush to your phone to get a peek at who’s there, or do you take a chance and just answer the door? SwitchBot takes aim at this situation by bundling its doorbell with a stand-alone battery-powered display that gives you an extra way to peek at who’s outside. If you’re in on the SwitchBot ecosystem—and even if you’re not—it’s an affordable combo that’s worth a look. Specifications Not to be redundant, but there are two components in the box: the doorbell and the monitor/display. I’ll break down each of them. The SwitchBot Smart Video Doorbell can be installed in seconds if you use adhesive, and setup in the SwitchBot app is especially quick. The SwitchBot Smart Video Doorbell is a plain-Jane design, available only in silver and vaguely resembling an old cell phone. It measures 4.96 x 3.70 x 1.50 inches (126 x 94 x 38 mm) (HxWxD) and carries an IP65 rating for protection from the elements. According to our IP code guide, that means it’s impervious to particulate matter and that it can withstand jets of water coming from any direction (short of a pressure washer, that is). SwitchBot provides everything you need to set up the Smart Video Doorbell, including angle wedges.Christopher Null/Foundry The doorbell is outfitted with a 2K camera lens with maximum resolution of 2304 x 1296 pixels and a 165-degree field of view. It records video with a 16:9 aspect ratio that promises to capture head-to-toe views of your visitors. There’s also an onboard motion sensor and two small LED spotlights at the top of the device that activate on demand. A speaker and ring button that illuminates when motion is detected, are at the bottom of the doorbell. SwitchBot includes straight and angled mounting brackets in the box. The doorbell is powered by an internal 5,000mAh battery that SwitchBot says can last for up to 19 months on a full charge. That battery can be charged three ways: with a 5V/2A power supply and a USB-C cable plugged into a port on the bottom of the device, trickle-charged with a connection to a standard 24V doorbell transformer, or SwitchBot sells a solar panel as a $50 option that’s designed specifically to keep the doorbell’s battery topped off. (One pet peeve: The doorbell has no indicator to let you know when it’s fully charged. A simple LED would be a nice addition for those who must remove the doorbell to top it up periodically.) The display—a “new-generation super monitor,” per the company—features a 4.3-inch screen with a mere 480 x 272-pixel resolution. A smattering of physical controls let you accept or hang up on video calls, manually check the live view, and playback recent videos. (These buttons have other functions when video is streaming live.) The SwitchBot Smart Video Doorbell isn’t what I’d call a fashion-forward smart home device. Christopher Null/Foundry The screen is dark by default unless the doorbell button is pressed, at which point it displays a live view of what’s happening outside. You can set the monitor to be always on, but this simply shows the time (in 24-hour format) and date, and this can’t be adjusted. It’s powered by a standard two-prong electrical plug. Videos can be stored on SwitchBot’s cloud service or on a microSD card that’s slotted into the monitor. Cards up to 512GB is supported, but SwitchBot throws in a 4GB card for you to use out of the box. You can choose from five canned, quick-reply responses (such as “Please leave the package at the door. Leave a message if you’d like to.”) that conflict-averse types can deliver on demand. These responses can be sent by either the app or the monitor. The SwitchBot app is easy enough to use, but it’s odd that it doesn’t provide you with any means to scrub back and forth along a timeline when you’re watching a recorded event.Christopher Null/Foundry Both devices can be wall-mounted via included screws or adhesive mounting options, and the monitor has a kickstand for placement on a tabletop. The display and the doorbell must be within 100 meters (in open air) to communicate with one another; any physical barriers between the two will, of course, quickly reduce that range. And SwitchBot recommends a more realistic range of just 5 to 10 meters. The two devices communicate with each other (and the web, via your router) using 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Installation and setup Physical installation will vary based on which components you’re mounting to the wall and how, but even the screw-mounted options require just two screws for each device. Use adhesive and installation can be done in seconds. Setup in the SwitchBot app is especially quick, particularly since it does not require a SwitchBot Hub to connect to Wi-Fi. In fact, the Video Doorbell includes its own version of a hub that allows it to also work with SwitchBot Lock devices, allowing remote control of the lock via the doorbell interface, though it can’t serve as a hub for other SwitchBot gear. To complete setup in the app, the Video Doorbell is served up as a new device once it’s powered up, and a few basic steps complete the bridging to your Wi-Fi network. Using the SwitchBot Smart Video Doorbell The SwitchBot Video Doorbell works largely as expected. When approaching the doorbell, its ring button gently illuminates. Pressing the button causes the bell to ring (very loudly, by default), the monitor to ring, and a push notification to be sent to your phone. If the device is paired with Alexa (its only third-party support), Echo devices will also announce that the bell has been rung. Oddly, ringing the bell does not cause the monitor to automatically display a video feed from the door. You must press the “play” button on the monitor to start the video, after which it takes a few seconds for the stream to start. The display that comes with the SwitchBot Smart Video Doorbell is a decided low-res affair. Christopher Null/Foundry It’s also worth noting that the low resolution of the monitor is immediately evident. While color representation looks fine, the grainy quality won’t win any awards and is useful only for a quick check of who’s outside. Both bell rings and motion detection trigger video to begin recording, stored by default to the microSD card on the monitor. Clips are limited to a maximum of 60 seconds, after which they are available in the SwitchBot app for playback for three months. The playback interface is segregated by day, with thumbnails for each recorded event appearing chronologically. A few thumbnails were randomly missing in my testing, and I found recent clips would often fail to load without a force-quit and restarting of the app. The app includes AI-based technology to categorize human motion and tag it as such; this was hit-and-miss in my testing. Paying for cloud-storage subscription unlocks pet and vehicle tagging; plus, unlimited online storage space for 30 days of recordings. This plan costs $4/month or $35/year for a single device, with discounts for additional devices available. A one-month free trial is included with your purchase. The absence of significant distortion was a pleasant surprise.Christopher Null/Foundry I found the motion sensor on the device to be extremely sensitive, and at the highest sensitivity it was flagging activity constantly, day and night, even tagging a random bug flying by as a “human” detected. Dialing the sensitivity down helped a lot toward averting false positives. Video looks good when played back on your phone, particularly during the day, and while the viewing angle is wide, it’s not too terribly distorted. The infrared night vision mode looks fine, though its usable range is limited to about 15 feet, and while the device claims a “color night vision” mode, I found this completely useless; all video recorded at night with this mode active resulted in an image that was almost completely black. One oddity about playback: There is no way to rewind or fast-forward through clips in the app, and even the pause button does not work. If you want to carefully scrub through a clip, you’ll need to download it to your phone for viewing elsewhere. (Fortunately, this is easy to do.) Should you buy the SwitchBot Smart Video Doorbell? This doorbell lists for $150 and I’ve seen it on sale at Amazon for as little as $120. That’s less than many competing products, none of which come with a video monitor. Since it’s not especially tied to the SwitchBot ecosystem, there’s really nothing that should block any smart home user from picking it up; although if you’re not interested in the monitor, a no-frills doorbell will be the cheaper and more effective way to go. This review is part of TechHive’s in-depth coverage of the best video doorbells. Read...

Alarm.com has launched a unified smart security platform in ASEAN, integrating legacy systems with cloud technology to streamline business security management. Read...

Today PCWorld has launched a major update to Smart Answers. When you ask the tool a question, you will now get a longer, more-detailed and better-structured answer that really helps you get the most from our in-depth journalism. What is Smart Answers Smart Answers is a chatbot tool that helps you get more from our content. It’s built using Generative AI and content written by our human editors. The way we interact with content is changing. It wasn’t so long ago you would have sifted through a printed magazine for advice on the latest consumer technology, yet it felt like a revolution when magazines switched to digital and online editions. These days, everything you could ever want to read is on the internet—or just as likely on YouTube or TikTok. The difficulty comes in finding trustworthy, up-to-date information that precisely and immediately answers your question, and most of us tend to rely on search engines and algorithms to figure that out, with varying degrees of success. But faced with a page full of links to visually similar content, you’re still at least one step away from the information you need. Smart Answers is our new reader service that turns content discovery on its head. You control the questions, the answers, and the delivery. It’s like having a PCWorld editor at your beck and call, allowing you to request and receive specific content on demand. So, why wait for the content to find you? PCWorld’s Smart Answers tool is now available in key regions across the globe. Try Smart Answers We’ve worked in partnership with Miso.ai to develop Smart Answers, a GenAI tool (see What is GenAI?) that draws only on Foundry‘s complete catalog of English-language content (written by humans) to answer your natural-language questions. You’ll not only benefit from the expert knowledge of PCWorld editors, but those of Macworld, Tech Advisor and TechHive too, collectively covering the entire consumer technology sphere. Smart Answers is fast and efficient, which means you don’t have to scroll through pages of information to find what you need. You can ask it anything, from what is the best laptop for gaming to which printer should you buy for your home office, or even when is the next CPU family coming out. It’s like having a PCWorld editor at your beck and call… why wait for the content to find you? Ask it a follow-up question, too, or browse the recommended reading for more detail on the topic. Smart Answers is clever enough to work out what you may want to ask next, and it will even show you best pricing for related products and services. Smart Answers has been trained on the type of tech-related questions our readers are likely to ask. Ask it a silly or irrelevant question, and you’ll either get a silly or irrelevant answer, or no answer at all. Our priority is to ensure Smart Answers is able to adequately respond to questions on the topics we do cover. Though Smart Answers is intrinsically linked to our editorial content, our editorial function stands independently. No article published on this site has been created using GenAI. Extensive testing has been conducted by our editors over the two years since we first launched Smart Answers in August 2025, with our feedback used to retrain the model. We wouldn’t be rolling this upgrade out today if we were not confident that the answers it provides are as trustworthy as if they had come direct from our editorial team. This cycle of testing, feedback, and retraining is ongoing and will be important as we continue to add functionality to Smart Answers – and this is just the start of a process that will ultimately put you in charge of your own content experience across Foundry-owned sites. Of course, the real testing comes from you. We’ll be analyzing all search data collected by Smart Answers, and cross-checking the quality of responses, but we’d also love to hear your feedback. You can get in touch with our Director of Content Operations Marie Black or Director of Product and Data Neil Bennett over email. FAQ 1. How does Smart Answers work? Smart Answers is based on a GenAI platform, built by our partner Miso.ai. Unlike ChatGPT, Google Bard and other GenAI tools that source their information from all over the web, Smart Answers has been trained only on content written by Foundry journalists. It responds to queries posed in natural language with a summarized answer and links to related information. 2. What is GenAI? Short for Generative AI, GenAI is a type of artificial intelligence that is able to mimic the neural networks of the human brain and, through machine learning of existing content, generate entirely new content in the form of text, images, video and audio. When given a prompt, such as a piece of natural-language text, the computational power of GenAI allows it to deliver an answer much faster than can the human brain. 3. Can I trust Smart Answers? Yes. Smart Answers provides answers based on articles written by Foundry journalists and does not use data from any external sources, which could be unreliable or subject to copyright concerns. Extensive testing has gone on behind the scenes to help train the model, so we are satisfied that it is able to provide reliable information. We’ve also worked hard with partner Miso.ai to eliminate “hallucinations,” which are misleading or wholly incorrect answers that may be given when the answer is not known or the data required to answer the question is incomplete. If Smart Answers is unable to answer your question, it will tell you so. 4. Is Smart Answers a threat to our editorial team? Absolutely not. Smart Answers cannot exist without the expert content written by Foundry journalists. Its ability to stay useful and relevant is entirely dependent on it being able to learn from their content, and thus it is not the first step in some evil plan to replace our team of editors and cut costs. Smart Answers is a supplementary service for our readers, designed to aid content discovery and enhance the user experience. Though we will make revenue from any ads displayed on the page and earn commission on links to purchase some products and services, Smart Answers also costs us money to develop and run. 5. Is Smart Answers being used to create editorial content on PCWorld? No. Editorial articles feed into Smart Answers, but Smart Answers is not used for the creation of editorial articles. But in the future we may use query data to help us come up with article or FAQ ideas. 6. What data is Smart Answers collecting? We are recording queries submitted via Smart Answers to help us understand the information our readers are interested in. Smart Answers also collects anonymized user data that allows us to better understand the interests and intent of readers visiting Foundry websites. Learn more about Foundry’s Privacy Policy, and Miso.ai’s Privacy Policy. Read...