This week I’ve got news of a brand new addition to EFTM – our TV Search tool, it’s new, let’s call it Beta – but its there now for you to try, would love your feedback!
We talk to Bradley Howe from ASUS about the laptop market, what’s new for Asus and just how Apple’s NEO strategy has shaken up the market.
Plus your calls – anything tech, lets chat! Text or Whatsapp to 0477 657 657
Full AI generated transcript below
[00:00:03] VOICE OVER: The EFTM podcast. Talkback Technology. Got a question about tech? Trev’s here to help. Not sure what to buy? Ask Trev. Australia’s number one Talkback Technology podcast.
[00:00:15] Caller: I was gobsmacked.
[00:00:17] Trevor: I spoke to you on the Tuesday.
[00:00:19] Caller: Thursday afternoon, there’s this lovely courier man at me back door with a parcel for me.
[00:00:24] Trevor: All I know is within 24 hours, mate, you had it sorted after 5 weeks of hell, raising hell.
[00:00:29] Caller: Mate, I can’t thank you enough.
[00:00:33] VOICE OVER: Join the conversation. Head to eftm.com and click Ask Trev. Helping Australians with tech questions for over 15 years, the EFTM Podcast with Trevor Long.
[00:00:44] Trevor: Real Australians with real questions every week.
[00:00:50] VOICE OVER: You can text Trev now, thanks to Vodafone, on 0477 657 657.
[00:01:10] Trevor: G’day, g’day, great to have your company, um, wherever you’re listening, however you’re listening, uh, it’s wonderful to have your company. Ah, I’ve just been sending emails all morning about a certain thing and it’s, it’s, I’m wondering when it’s happening and it’s just damn well come out. So it’s the fun and games of the world, but it’s good news. I’m preparing for the EV show this week. And, uh, yeah, looking at, uh, the EV sales. So that data has finally come out, which allows me to do some preparation for the EV show next week. We’re really loving the EV show, by the way. If you’re— if you haven’t listened, um, jump into the Two Blokes Talking Tech feed or just search for, uh, Two Blokes Talking Electric Cars. Um, we, um, we’d love to— love to have you as part of the show. Um, it’s, uh, yeah, it’s a fascinating space right now because obviously, um, sales of electric cars are booming. Uh, and, um, yeah, the numbers are quite extreme as always. But, uh, yeah, we’ll get to that in the electric vehicle show. But this week, uh, to take your calls, uh, happy to have you on the show, 0477 657 657. Uh, and, uh, critically also, we’re gonna have a chat this week with Bradley Howe, Bradley from ASUS, um, who’s their basically head of consumer. He runs all their laptop business. And I wanna, I wanna honestly, I wanna ask him about the market. I wanna ask him about price issues. I want to ask him about the Apple MacBook Neo and whether that’s going to change the market in any way, shape, or form, because it shocked me. Did it shock the, the market, the rest of the market? I don’t know. Before I do that though, I do want to bring to your attention a cool little side project that I’ve been working on. I was in China last week. I have a story on the TV next week on the Today Show about Chinese car, which I’ll bring to you. Um, but while I was there, I, I was Because when I’m in hotel rooms, I think about all the things I’ve been thinking about doing and trying to do. And when all of the, um, when all of the price, uh, prices for, um, TVs came out, I, um, I wanted to merge it together and get a real sense of the market. And as I started to do that, grab, you know, Samsung, Hisense, LG’s pricing, I realized I was creating a spreadsheet of the TV market for 2026. I started adding more information and then building it out, and I thought, hang on a minute, I might get AI to help me here. So I got AI to kind of help me, um, get all the links, um, the model numbers correct, um, find retailer links where I could. And then I went, hang on a minute, this is useful. And I, I asked it to create a front end for the website, which you can see now if you go to eftm.com. And on a desktop, you’ll see a link at the top called Which TV to Buy. On a mobile, you open the menu on the top right and you’ll see Which TV to Buy. And you then get to select how you want to choose your next TV— size, price, screen technology, whatever it is, and brand. And there’s 130-odd TVs that it will— 136 different TVs. And basically then you can filter it down. So I just want to see 65 to 74-inch TVs. Well, there’s 24 of those. I only want to see OLEDs in that size range. There’s 6 of them. I only want to see LGs, there’s 3. I want Samsung as well, there’s 6 because there’s only 2 people doing OLEDs. Um, I want to narrow the price. I don’t want to spend more than $2,500. People say to me here on the show, so I’ll make it $2,600, and then I’ll set a minimum because if you’re setting a $2,600 maximum, you’ve definitely got a minimum of $1,500 to spend, right? Well, I can’t get an OLED because there’s nothing available. I can get one RGB TV which is exciting. There’s plenty of mini LEDs, and so that allows me to narrow down what I want to buy. So I think it’s super cool. I’m really proud of it because I’ve iterated it so much. We now have best price. I’m doing price updates as often as I can using AI again just to scrape the internet and report back essentially into my spreadsheet. I’ve now even added My Thoughts on Every Single TV. And this was a fun thing because again, oh man, I gotta sit down and be, be ready to write. Well, what I did was I made it a question and answer thing. I said to Claude, my AI, I said, use the spreadsheet and ask me about every TV model and I’ll give you a one or two line response. We’ll call that Trev’s Thoughts. And I did. So over the course of about an hour and a half, it said, what do you think of the Neo QLED NQN9NN? Sorry. QN80H from Samsung. I said, well, here’s what I think of it, and I typed that out. So for that one, I said, great local dimming using mini LED backlighting and Samsung’s signature Quantum Dot panels, hence the colors. This was once Samsung’s premium TV, still a fantastic option at any size. There’s no negative comments because there’s no bad TV out there. There’s no bad TV. Um, and so those thoughts are now against every single TV model, and You can, you can see this only if you go big or go home. So if you put in any, any price and 100-inch or higher and look at the most expensive TVs, you’ll see links to my reviews and Stephen and Val’s reviews. They don’t know that yet, but they’ll find out at some point. Um, so you’ve got EFTM review, Tech Guide, Gadget Guide, they’re all there. So you can quickly and easily link and reference those, um, those reviews at the same time. Super cool. I love it, I’m really proud of it. I’ve already got tweaks just from clicking it now. I’ve got some things I wanna change about the first few questions, but I’d love your thoughts. Thank you to the people in the EFTM Man Cave who did comment and gave some opinions already, loved it. And I’ve included many of those things already. But help me, well, what should it be? What should it do? How should it work? And importantly, and I’ve written this there, EFTM does not earn any commission from any links on that page. So it doesn’t matter which retailer you choose, doesn’t matter which retailer’s cheaper, we’ll just tell you the cheapest one. Earn money. See, I’m really not sure that it’s genuinely widely known that comparethemarket.com.au, you know, the meerkats and the David Koch and all that, they make money because you use them to find your next provider. finder.com.au, finder.com.au, whether it’s a credit card, insurance, or a new mobile phone plan, they make money because you chose them. I don’t love that model, never have. Mainly because they’re incentivized to get people to pay to advertise to be at the top of the results. And is that then the best option for the person? I don’t know. These results are entirely based on your needs. And what we’ll add obviously down the track is more reviews. As we review products, we’ll add a review slider. You know, how did it rate in this criteria, that criteria, and this criteria? Um, and those will be unbiased, just your ability to choose based on our reviews. I already make enough money out of EFTMI. I’m at capacity. I couldn’t, I couldn’t do more. I’d like to make more, I’d like to earn more, but I don’t like the idea of earning $100 a month because 5 people bought TVs. Like, if you told me I could make $100,000 a year Okay, we’d have a chat, but I don’t think there’s enough people using the EFTM Witch TV to Buy page that that’s gonna happen. So I’d prefer the model was very clear. If the model changes at any point, it’ll be made very clear. But right now, and from my view of the future, it is a non-commission buyer’s guide, legitimate, simple, and unbiased. So I’d love your thoughts on that. So please send me a text, Let me know what you think. Let me know whether you think it’s a cool idea, what you would change, what you would add, what you would do differently. Have a play with it. Have a muck around. I’d love to see what you think. You can get in touch with me all the normal ways, folks.
[00:09:01] VOICE OVER: Helping Australians with tech questions for over 15 years, the EFTM podcast with Trevor Long.
[00:09:10] Greg: Yeah, great to have your company, and we’ll get straight into your calls.
[00:09:15] Trevor: Darren’s on the line today. Darren?
[00:09:19] Darren: Hi Trevor, how are you?
[00:09:20] Trevor: Mate, really good. What can I do for you?
[00:09:22] Darren: Uh, Trevor, just for inquiry, I’ve got— I wanted to get a hardwired dash cam and I’m getting a new canopy fitted, uh, one of hardwired front and rear. Yeah, but the back window on the canopy’s, uh, tinted and my concern, my issue is, uh, for parking mode, like that’s just in case there’s, you know, whatever situation. Yeah, whether it’s going to be able to be, be seen.
[00:09:48] Darren: Efficient.
[00:09:48] Trevor: I mean, how, how bad is the tinting? Because my, like, my SUV, which I got, you know, pretty black tinting on the rear and side windows, mate, there’s still windows. You can still, if you can see through them, the camera can see through them.
[00:10:02] Darren: Okay.
[00:10:02] Trevor: Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:03] Darren: I contacted a couple of, uh, call distributors and they just, they wouldn’t need to finish. They said, oh, it should be okay. It might be. Yeah, it should be okay.
[00:10:12] Trevor: I mean, I think the simple thing, have you already got the car and the canopy?
[00:10:16] Darren: Uh, the canopy’s getting fitted tomorrow, that’s all.
[00:10:19] Trevor: And yeah, I think that the key is— so like, obviously there must be, uh, I don’t know the road rules, right? But it’s not— mustn’t be required to have a rear window because obviously some vans don’t have a rear window at all, um, and they rely on, you know, mirrors, not just the side mirrors for navigation and for getting around. But so there is no— I don’t think there’s a law on how dark your window tint can be on the back window. But for normal people, when you install tinting, uh, on a window, you make it as— you might make it as dark as you can be, but the tinting is only dark from the outside in. It’s, it’s certainly darker to look out of, but you can still see what’s happening. And think about what you’re trying to capture in parking mode. It is, you know, the, the face, maybe the style of clothes the person’s wearing, or, uh, you know, car type and hopefully a number plate. All those things are gonna be visible through the window. So, mate, in the end, once you get the car, once you get the canopy, sit in from the front seat and look out the back and go, can I see out the back? And remember, the camera is going to be at 1mm from the window. So it’s gonna be right on the glass. I think it’ll be fine, mate.
[00:11:30] Darren: Yeah, someone, I’ve been doing a bit of research, a Uniton 60R, And what’s up with Sony Starvis?
[00:11:38] Trevor: Yes, the Dashcam 360R is a great camera because one of the reasons I love that camera is because it is a barrel camera. So it doesn’t have a screen that distracts you while you’re driving. I just don’t see the point of that. Different people, different strokes for different folks. I get it. You know, that’s a $500 camera. It is 4K. The rear camera is excellent quality as well. You know, just gotta make sure you’ve got enough cable to wire it through that canopy, which is, boy, the case is, they’re really long. The cable that goes from the front to the rear is very long. I don’t think you’ll have a problem with it, but it’s a matter of, you know, wiring it in a way that it’s kind of discreet and out of the way and not something that’s gonna interfere with anything else you do. Also remember that if that canopy’s ever gonna come off, that’s a problem because the cable is from the front all the way to the back, it’s one cable. And yes, the cable can be unplugged from the camera because the camera actually comes, it’s this tiny little thing and then you plug the cable into it. Same with the front. I think in that one, I’m pretty sure the cable’s separate. It’s not actually hard wired into the camera. But my point is, if you take the canopy off, you’re going to need to break the cable. So do you intend to take the canopy off ever or much?
[00:12:57] Darren: No, not at all. Once it’s on, it’s staying on. Yeah, right. Totally fine.
[00:13:02] Trevor: Totally fine. No issue at all.
[00:13:04] Darren: Yeah. And the rear camera, it’s a 2K, is it? Is that correct?
[00:13:07] Trevor: I think, I think on that one it’s, it’s 2K rear, 4K front. They’ve got— there’s another model they’ve got which is like depends on what quality you choose. So essentially there’s only so much ability to store. So if you go higher quality at the front, it takes the back down and things like that. But I think you’re safe with 4K, 2K, which is plenty to be honest. Like I know 4K is great, but 4K dashcams don’t look like 4K television. You know, it’s not like they’re actually cinema cameras.
[00:13:33] Bradley Howe: They’re still tiny little lenses.
[00:13:35] Trevor: Lenses, right? And tiny little sensors. So, you know, there’s only so much they can capture, but they’ll be fine. Yeah, it’s a great setup and you’ll be fine. How are you going to get the camera through to the canopy?
[00:13:51] Darren: That’s—
[00:13:51] Darren: they’ve told me, a couple of people I’ve rang, that they, they have one of the technicians, whatever, they do it regularly. Okay. Completely wired, hardwired at the battery and all that. So it’s on parking mode overnight and all that sort of thing like that.
[00:14:03] Trevor: So I assume what they do, I assume what they do is actually drill through the tub of the tray, like to the cabin, and then put the cable through and then put a silicone sealer like you would in a shower to fill the hole. Like, it’s not gonna be a massive hole, but just to make sure that it’s airtight and water sealed around it. ‘Cause it’s obviously, there’s no opening from the cabin to the tray in a normal circumstance. So yeah, you just wanna make sure they’re doing it discreetly and whatnot.
[00:14:34] Darren: Yeah, I just didn’t wanna spend a substantial amount of money and find that it’s not airtight. Actually fit the purpose like that. It was the Branko BlackVue, but they’re over $1,000. I, you know, I just can’t, I can’t justify the unit. And you’re saying recommending is around $500.
[00:14:51] Bradley Howe: Yeah, that is easy.
[00:14:53] Trevor: I’ll be honest, I’ve got a BlackVue in my car, but the reason I did that was because I wanted one that I could put a SIM card into so I can, I can in real time not just see where my car is, but I can look through the front and back windows.
[00:15:10] Bradley Howe: That’s—
[00:15:11] Trevor: yeah. And honestly, when it comes to— and all the Uniden ones are sensational quality at that end. So when you’re in this $500 price point, you’re getting great cameras. When you’re in the $200 price point, you’re compromising somewhere, somehow, always. There’s just no question about that. But okay, mate, bottom line, if you can see through the window, the camera can see through the window.
[00:15:34] Darren: Okay then. Yeah. All right then. All right.
[00:15:36] Trevor: Good luck, mate.
[00:15:37] Darren: Enjoy.
[00:15:37] Trevor: Thank you.
[00:15:37] Darren: No worries, mate. Thanks for getting in touch.
[00:15:39] Trevor: Bye.
[00:15:39] Jamie: Good on you.
[00:15:42] Trevor: Yeah, very simple. I mean, I know it’s— you’re gonna say silly question, stupid question, whatever, but you know, some windows are much darker and on a rear canopy of a ute, you could definitely have that basically blacked out. So it really does, it’s a matter of sitting in the car and going, if I can see out, the camera can see out.
[00:16:01] VOICE OVER: This is the EFTM podcast.
[00:16:03] Trevor: Get in touch anytime you want. You can send me a text 0477657657 or download the EFTM app and click Ask Trev. Greg’s on the line, g’day Greg.
[00:16:14] Greg: Hi Trevor, how are you?
[00:16:15] Trevor: Really good, mate. Now we spoke, uh, I’m gonna say about a month ago, uh, you were looking for a recommendation of essentially a basic phone. Where did we end up and what did you end up doing?
[00:16:24] Greg: I ended up buying an Apple E16.
[00:16:27] Trevor: Oh, the 16E, yes, great. Now was this for your daughter or for yourself? I can’t remember.
[00:16:35] Greg: Myself.
[00:16:35] Trevor: Ah, right, perfect. Um, and what did you have before? Remind us.
[00:16:40] Greg: I had an Apple— not an Apple Very old, I think, Apple 12 or something.
[00:16:45] Trevor: Like an old one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how long have you had it for, mate?
[00:16:49] Greg: So my apologies, what was that?
[00:16:51] Trevor: How long have you had it for?
[00:16:53] Greg: Uh, about 3 weeks.
[00:16:56] Trevor: Right, tell us, like, is it an upgrade in your world from what you had, or are you missing something?
[00:17:04] Greg: No, it does what I need it to do.
[00:17:06] Trevor: Boom. Isn’t that all that matters?
[00:17:09] Greg: It is, it is. The camera could be better, I’m honest there, but it’s a pretty good camera. I don’t take a lot of photos, so.
[00:17:16] Trevor: And we talked about that. It’s a single-lens camera. It doesn’t have the ultra-wide. You’re right, it is a good camera. And my only tip to you is the funny thing about the cameras on all iPhones, frankly, and they don’t really advertise this, is they talk about how amazing they are, but that’s only if you set them to the amazing settings. So essentially you can go into the camera settings and choose the higher resolution, the higher quality, by default, and it takes up more storage space every photo, but it’s a better photo. So it might be worth tinkering with that if you notice anything about it. But otherwise, mate, photography is the same. Good lighting, good subject, it doesn’t really matter what camera you use, it’s always going to look good.
[00:17:57] Greg: True, true, true. You’re 100% correct.
[00:18:00] Trevor: Are we on your in-car hands-free?
[00:18:04] Greg: Uh, yeah, I’m in a truck.
[00:18:06] Trevor: Yeah, yeah, it’s okay. So I was going to say what sort of car, but it’s a truck right here. I like reviewing people’s cars cars based on their hands-free system to see how good they are. It’s the same with headphones. See how good your headphones are by having these conversations and recording them, you see.
[00:18:22] Greg: Yeah, yeah, true. I’ve got a VW Polo GTI, latest series, and it works well on that. Nobody’s having any problems hearing me, and vice versa.
[00:18:31] Trevor: Nice. All right, mate, well, enjoy, uh, enjoy the phone, mate. I’m glad we— it’s a good value. It’s all you need. It does what you want. That’s what matters.
[00:18:39] Greg: All right, mate, you enjoy the rest of your day.
[00:18:41] Trevor: Cheers, buddy. Thank you. Good on you, Greg. Thank you so much, Greg. There, uh, he got his iPhone 16e, uh, and you know what, that’s, it’s a really honest appraisal. Uh, it does what he needs, uh, and could be better. The camera could be better, no question. Um, but that’s, it’s like what I talked about with TVs. It’s about what you’re able to achieve. So, you know, your budget and what you need and what you want. Big difference from buying the thing that does everything to the thing that just gets you through the day and does what you need.
[00:19:15] Jamie: Very simple stuff.
[00:19:17] VOICE OVER: Tech, cars, lifestyle. This is the EFTM podcast with Trevor Long.
[00:19:23] Trevor: Great to have your company. And if you want to get in touch, send me a text. Got a tech question, tech problem? 0477657657. Now, um, there’s been a lot going on in the laptop world over the last few months, uh, so never a better time to talk to the great Bradley Howe from ASUS in Australia here. G’day, Bradley, how are you, mate?
[00:19:41] Bradley Howe: Hey, Trev. Great. Thanks for having me again, mate.
[00:19:44] Trevor: It is. I got to say, I was talking to someone this week about the TV market this year. Probably one of the— not strangest— most exciting years for TVs because of some new technologies and things. And I feel like there’s a couple of things going on in the laptop market which I want to address, which we’ll get to. But just on ASUS specifically to start with, a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago, you, you kind of launched formally the, the Duo and the Zephyrus Duo. They’re staggeringly stunning products, very high-end. Let’s be clear, we’re talking about, you know, many thousand dollar products. But what is the purpose of that product for you as a brand? Is it about demonstrating what you can do and having a premium product that flagship, you know, stands for the brand? Or is there a genuine demand in the market for a dual screen laptop out of the box?
[00:20:35] Bradley Howe: Yeah, the great thing is there’s a bit of both. There’s genuine demand for a dual screen device and And this is by, you know, from a brand point of view, no mistake. We’ve been doing this for many, many years now. This is something that we’ve really started with the basis of the first device, which was dual screen, and then evolved into multiple devices to the point we have a range of dual screen devices now as well. So that gives you a good idea of the market acceptance as well to go from something that was almost just a, we can do this, so we did in terms of innovation.
[00:21:07] Trevor: Yep.
[00:21:08] Bradley Howe: As a brand, we’re all about innovation. And then to have the ZenBook Duo evolve so much over the years into the latest device that we did launch about a month ago, which has flown past as well. And now the Zephyrus Duo, which is, you know, two 16-inch OLED displays on an amazingly powerful device. It is an expensive solution, but consumer acceptance has been already quite good. We’ve already managed to see a few, few sales come through, which is quite amazing. But the greatest part of that is that the, the user experience that people get out of dual screens and, you know, you’ll probably on multiple screens talking to me today. I am definitely on multiple screens talking to you today. And when I travel— last week I was just away for a business trip and I took my external secondary display with me. So from an efficiency point of view, people are so used to multiple displays to have it built into the one device and that seamlessness of just taking it with you and not having to make sure you pack something else is very well accepted at the moment.
[00:22:12] Trevor: Because I think people— I think I had it on the Today Show when I was— it was just sitting there looking like a laptop. And then I went, took the key, like you peel the keyboard off because it’s like magnetically attached.
[00:22:21] Bradley Howe: I like to call it the magic trick.
[00:22:23] Trevor: Yeah, it’s the big reveal and people are like, whoa. And because if we rewind, I don’t know, it feels like a decade. I remember someone having a product at Mobile World Congress where there was, you know, two screens and one of them was the keyboard and it was like, yeah, okay, but I don’t really want a touchscreen keyboard. So what you did with the Duo is find a way to give the best of all the worlds. I don’t want a touchscreen keyboard on a laptop. Like, you deal with that on a tablet sometimes. I want a real keyboard. And so, and that idea of propping up your laptop so that you’ve got a screen kind of down low, which might be where you see your emails, but then a screen up top, which is where you’re working, and then a full keyboard. It’s just so dynamic. And I think it’s one of those things you need to demonstrate. So how do you manage a product like that? Because this is what’s fascinating to me. To me, that’s an expensive product. You can’t just issue 100 of them, let alone 1,000 of them to every retailer. Do you demonstrate that in certain areas in retail where there’s better foot traffic? Like, how do you decide where to demonstrate that product?
[00:23:24] Bradley Howe: Yeah, it’s a really good point because it is an expensive exercise and to be very honest, something very difficult to secure in a retail environment as well. So we have a couple of hurdles we need to come across, but ultimately, yeah, you’re right. We end up putting it in key locations that may have you know, premium spaces within that store, um, depending on the, the, the geographic location as well. We always try to make sure we have, uh, the premium, very high-end devices across each state, across the country as well, so that we can reference to, you know, a certain location, go and check out this retailer at this location. We know it’s on display. Um, a lot of people are spending that kind of money, want to see the device. I’m one of those kinds of people. I love I love to see expensive products I’m buying firsthand. And yeah, you’ll do the research and probably go into the store and know what you’re looking for in the first place.
[00:24:16] Trevor: But it’s that final seat. Well, you can do all the research. It’s like cars. You can do all the research in the world, but until you sit in and go, “Oh, the seat is actually comfortable,” or take it for just a 10-minute drive, even though it’s great value, da da da da da, it doesn’t matter until you’ve done that last thing. So you can decide on something. And I say this often about podcasts or radio callers and people listen and they go, “That guy just wanted you to say yes. And sometimes that’s what people want. They just want someone to say, that’s the right thing for you. And that’s the retail situation. It would be even worse with the Zephyrus because gamers are an elite category of humans, are very specific about their needs. And I’m noticing this tragically more and more with my 14-year-old son who is way more into gaming than my older son was at the age. And I love it. Like I encourage it. I’m like, yeah, I’ve got this cool new keyboard for you, buddy. It’s got like a Stream Deck built in. And you know, he’s got a, he’s got a, Strix there that he’s using to help me, because like I needed a gaming laptop to have enough power to review the latest games. I was just this morning with Jörg Neumann, the head of Microsoft Flight Simulator, out at Bankstown Airport. You know, that’s a game, that is a game, or sorry, it’s not a game. I called it a game to him live on TV and he corrected me, it’s a simulator, it’s a sim. But that’s a program, that’s a piece of software that requires serious gun, and now Imagine the Zephyrus Duo. This is two big OLED screens that are now able to run, you know, Microsoft Flight Simulator. And then you throw in just a nice joystick and you’ve got a solid gaming experience that’s essentially portable. It’s remarkable how much power you can now take with you wherever you go.
[00:25:58] Bradley Howe: Yeah, I think that’s the key as well. People, people are traveling there. They’re very mobile nowadays. And just because you’re away on a business trip, it doesn’t mean you have to miss out on, you know, enjoying some downtime in a hotel hotel room when you’ve got the chance to actually have a bit of, you know, one-on-one gaming. And these types of devices are a perfect solution for that, especially, you know, the dual screen technology that we’ve really pioneered the way over the past few years. These devices are very much geared towards a bit of work and play, I guess you could say, because obviously they’re amazing devices from a day-to-day business work point of view. But then at night when you’ve got that time aside, you can really powerful, you’ve got a really powerful gaming rig that’s, you know, no compromise whatsoever.
[00:26:42] Trevor: Of a problem for you is the, this memory crisis, this storage memory price drama, which I understand is driven by the AI revolution and data centers and all these different things. But essentially there’s more demand for memory and storage than there ever has, than there is supply, and that’s putting pressure on prices. We’ve seen it a little bit in some places. So for example, Samsung’s phone went up $50 this year. I’ve seen people send me photos of like SD cards that have gone up in, in quite large numbers, the price. But at a device level, have you seen it yet or is it something that’s coming? Where does that pan out for the average Aussie this year?
[00:27:24] Bradley Howe: Yeah, it’s 2026 is definitely a different market to 2025, that’s for sure. And we probably see it more as an opportunity to really show our brand and in its best light. ASUS has always been about innovation but also adding value to the consumer. And I feel in particular now that we’ve unfortunately ran into this challenge that is a global challenge and obviously everyone is experiencing it, it’s given us a chance to make sure we’re talking about the right things. Previously, a few years ago, consumers would go into a store and have that conversation about RAM and hard drive being a basic conversation, if you like, in terms of that’s what they need because their good friend said, “I need this.” Yep. But that conversation has changed a little bit. We’re talking about battery life, battery life. Does this have all-day battery life? Does this have multi-day battery life? The weight of the devices become really important. So because we have such a wide range of product portfolio from our, you know, entry-level Chromebook range all the way through to a premium ROG gaming rig, we’ve really got a solution for every type of consumer. And, and the great thing about this, and I say it as an opportunity, is that we’ve got our chance to shine and show things like CeraLuminum which is such a cool material that really needs to be experienced to understand what it’s about. It feels so different, so lightweight. It doesn’t have, you know, it’s quite smudge-proof and things like that are adding value to a device. And it takes away just from that, I guess, price discussion, which is, it’s a real-world factor at the moment that everybody is dealing with. But it’s nice for us to be able to have other things to be able to share with our consumers.
[00:29:02] Trevor: So what I’m hearing, excuse me, what I’m hearing from you is that it’s a pressure that everyone’s under. So it’s not like it’s going to be unique to ASUS. So someone’s going to go into a retail store with the intention of buying a laptop, they’re going to have the same challenge across the brands. So whatever amount of RAM or memory or hard drive you want is going to be the same price pressure across the brand. So you’re using this as a way of going, so you’ve got to find a point of difference. If people are spending more, they want to know why they’re— what they’re getting that’s better. They want to justify it to themselves and go, but look, look at the non-fingerprinty finish on this thing. The Ceralumin is genuinely a really lovely finish. And so does that work in retail though? Because people going into retail and they’re going, oh geez, why is it so expensive? You know, it was, it was cheaper, you know, 6 months ago or a year ago, etc. So I don’t know, is that enough to get people over the line?
[00:29:53] Bradley Howe: I think it’s one of those key factors, I suppose. And then adding to that, things like OLED, you know, OLED is something again, we’ve really led the way over the years in terms of incorporating it into quite a depth, quite a, quite a number of our deep product portfolio. So again, it’s visually different as well. So it’s a great call out in a store when you’re next to something that may not have an OLED screen. So it is really making sure we stand out on shelf and have a differentiator. It is challenging because, you know, there is so many different options. And from a consumer point of view, especially someone that may not be as educated it can be quite confusing. So making sure you stand out in a retail environment is key at the moment for sure.
[00:30:35] Trevor: Now speaking of standing out in a retail environment, you have a competitor in the market who, I’ll put it this way, look, their marketing is strong. The way Apple talk about their products is funny to me. I often am in their events and I kind of smirk at the way they promote a product, but they have a unique ability to say something like, The MacBook Air is the best-selling laptop in the world, okay? A very, very commonly said thing. The issue is people that don’t know the market don’t realize that ASUS, HP, Dell, whoever, all the other brands, you have many more models. So there isn’t really one that just attracts all the sales, right? And I think that’s probably based on many factors in retail and other, other things. But it’s also about, as you’ve just said, serving a wider, um, level of products to a broader community. But I’ve got to tell you, I will I was blown away by the announcement of the MacBook Neo earlier this year. For Apple to come into the price point of under $1,000 on a laptop, I feel like it sent shockwaves through the laptop market because there’s great products under $1,000, I acknowledge that. But most of the time it feels like it’s a compromise in some way. You’re going down in processor or you’re going to Chromebook. And while Chromebooks are awesome, they’re not for everyone. So firstly, was it a shock and has it shocked the market in a way and does it change the market in any way or is it just business as usual for you guys?
[00:32:00] Bradley Howe: Yeah, it really is business as usual. I mean, did it shock us? I think it shocked the market in general. One of our co-CEOs actually came out quite openly and said that it was a bit of a surprise, but ultimately again, it’s given us an opportunity to make sure we do better. We need to be ready for anything in this market. It can change and does change at the moment daily. So again, as you mentioned, making sure you’ve got that depth in your product portfolio to be able to pivot to something else where required, whether it be like you mentioned, a Chromebook into the VivoBook or into our premium ZenBook range. But even on top of that, we’ve had great success in the previous years in our mobile handheld gaming console space. So obviously the ROG Xbox Ally is our most recent iteration of device. And, and that’s where we’ve really enjoyed a lot of success in the past 2.5 years and great incremental business as well, because 2.5 years ago it didn’t exist for us. So I feel like as a brand we’ve got our ability to be able to pivot quite quickly. Yeah, it’s kept us on our toes, but I don’t see that as a bad thing. It’s a good opportunity for us to make sure we, we level up where required. And as a brand, we’re innovators. That’s what we’re about. We’ve got 5,000 engineers back at HQ that this is their job to, to bring something to the market. And I’m confident that that’s, that’s on its way as well.
[00:33:22] Trevor: A little bit of a rising tide lifts all boats as well. You know, if more people are brought into retail stores thinking about buying a laptop that’s under $1,000 and expecting a certain, certain thing, then hopefully the retail level store staff are pointing out the other things that are in their, in their field of view. Like that’s what you want really is no matter where they end up buying, what we want is people people buying the products. And your job is to use things like Ceraluminum and stuff like that to attract that attention. So, ’cause I’ve noticed from Ceraluminum is a great example, that was a premium level product, which is now just slowly being scattered amongst the range. It’s not on everything, but it’s getting out there. And I can imagine that being a huge point of difference for you because, mate, I genuinely love the feeling of that. Of that material. It’s the strangest thing in the world. I just still can’t quantify it to people. I always say when I’m talking about it, it’s got a stone-like feeling to it.
[00:34:18] Bradley Howe: I was going to say the same thing. It feels like stone. That’s definitely the most natural feeling, I guess you could think of. If you’ve got a stone in your hand and then you feel the Cerillumin, that’s definitely what I feel like it feels like as well. But yeah, it is about having those differentiators and having something that is something we can talk about. But then also, obviously, because it is a physical feel and touch thing, it’s quite a nice experience for the consumer to go into that, you know, retail channel partner store and actually go in and enjoy and feel. And it’s key for us to have these devices on display. You mentioned it’s starting to move down the stack in terms of price point, which is, which is great because we’re finally giving more and more consumers the opportunity to have that premium device. And that will continue through the rest this year as well.
[00:35:06] Trevor: What, what does the market do with laptops? I’ve never really monitored pricing closely, but we are 6 to 8 weeks away from tax time, so I’m assuming the next 5 to 6 weeks there’s going to be some specials and stuff. Is that how the market reacts? Do you know, is that controlled entirely by the retailers that say, we want you to help us with these kind of this time of, time of year, and you’ve got to sharpen some pencils and things? Can we expect some good laptop buying times in the few weeks ahead?
[00:35:32] Bradley Howe: Ahead? Yeah, yeah, most definitely. We’re really fortunate. We’ve got extremely tight and close relationships with all of our partners and have done so over many, many years. And there’s key beats that we always need to, you need to make sure you’re a part of. ‘Cause if you miss your tax times, your Black Fridays, your Boxing Day, your back to school, you know, it almost sets you up for a good or a bad year effectively. So we’re lucky we do work closely with the team and our local team, but then also So our partners, you know, we always come in and make sure that we’ve got great opportunities to have very, very good volume opportunities with them, but then also pass those deals onto the consumer as well. So yeah, you’re definitely right. You’ll start to see things ramp up for tax time. It’s definitely, you know, cost of living’s a challenge at the moment for consumers. So I feel like at the moment the market’s definitely a need market, not a want market. Want, you know, if you need a new computer, you want—
[00:36:26] Trevor: Yeah, that’s a good angle. Yeah.
[00:36:27] Bradley Howe: Yeah, you’ll definitely go out and buy one. And the greatest thing about those consumers that do need a device in the next, let’s call it 6 weeks to 8 weeks, there’s definitely going to be some very, very strong deals out there from ASUS and our partners.
[00:36:40] Trevor: Finally, with your longer-term goggles on, let’s shift away from tax time and think long-term because you get to see, you know what’s coming, you know what’s coming. You’ve got to keep a guarded word on it. But is 2027 an exciting year for laptops even more so? Because I feel like Look, I’ll be honest, I feel like the Apple thing plus the technology innovations that we’ve seen in laptops over the last kind of 12 months means, you know, there should be some really exciting things happening in those back rooms at HQ right now.
[00:37:11] Bradley Howe: Yeah, there definitely is. And like you say, it’s hard to say too much about them, but I’ve definitely seen some 2027 products. To be honest, I’ve seen some 2028 products and the greatest part about about our brand is that we always have something new. We always, you know, go back to the drawing board and think of something new. And we’re definitely doing that. There’s some exciting product even in the second half of this year, to be honest, that, you know, that timing of Computex, which is always in June.
[00:37:38] Trevor: Yep.
[00:37:38] Bradley Howe: That’s our home show in terms of in Taiwan. And even there, there’s gonna be some exciting announcements as well. So plenty to come. But yeah, what I have seen is very, very positive. Very cool.
[00:37:49] Trevor: Well, we’re conducting this interview on Zoom, so I can tell people he’s smiling, he’s happy. He doesn’t look at all worried or concerned about the industry. So that fills me with confidence at the same time, Brad. Great to talk to you, mate. I appreciate it.
[00:38:02] Bradley Howe: Awesome. Thanks, Trev. Take care, mate.
[00:38:06] VOICE OVER: Join the conversation. Head to eftm.com and click Ask Trev.
[00:38:11] Trevor: Great to have your company. Jamie’s on the line. G’day, Jamie. How you doing?
[00:38:15] Jamie: G’day, Trev. Yeah, very well, thanks, mate.
[00:38:17] Trevor: We spoke previously and you were looking at laptops. I think we talked about Chromebooks. Where did you go from there?
[00:38:25] Jamie: Yeah, mate. Yeah, I kept an eye on the Chromebook, the one you suggested, the ASUS DX14, the 14-inch one with the Intel Core i3. And yeah, JB had a sale on it, dropped down to just under $600. So I pulled the trigger, actually ordered one from Officeworks click and collect and went in and picked it up, mate. And got it all hooked up to the two monitors and it’s working like a dream. But yeah, so much faster and just more responsive and obviously, you know, new machine as well. So getting all the updates as well. So yeah, so thanks very much.
[00:38:57] Trevor: Remind me what sort of things you do on your laptop because I think a lot of people wouldn’t even consider a Chromebook on most days, you know, because they think, yeah, something half-baked.
[00:39:07] Jamie: Yeah, well, I mean, I do a lot of research. I’m using— I’m actually using AI at the moment a lot to do, to do some stuff, do some research and work on a few projects as well.
[00:39:17] Trevor: Yep.
[00:39:17] Jamie: Yeah. So I’m using that. I’m using it for, you know, obviously researching products that I’m wishing to buy. But yeah, I’ve sort of got into a— I’ve been using Claude a bit recently.
[00:39:27] Trevor: Oh, same, same. Yeah. Yeah. So what sort of things you’ve been using it for?
[00:39:33] Jamie: Well, some stuff come up at work recently where they’re offering voluntary redundancy. So I’m actually looking at, you know, on a few projects to sort of look at what I might do if I took a package.
[00:39:45] Trevor: Yeah. Right. So you’re basically saying, hey, here’s my circumstances, here’s what you need to know about me. If I came into kind of this much money, how would I manage that? What would I do next kind of thing?
[00:39:55] Jamie: That’s right. Yeah. So just putting in the figures and saying, obviously the safe option would just to be keep working for another 5 or 10 years, 5 years max hopefully for me. But obviously, but yeah, just looking at if I can retire a bit earlier, 5 years earlier, than the normal, you know, obviously the cash flow wouldn’t be as much. I’d have to probably do something else. But yeah, it’s really good to just have a look at those figures and have a look at the Bible thing.
[00:40:20] Trevor: I mean, it’s a great example of it, but have you also done the, I think there’s a government website about super and planning for retirement and I did it a couple of months ago just ’cause I was trying to understand, you know, you see those ads and they say, you know, you should have this much super by this age and you’re like, oh, what the? And so I’m like, What’s it going to matter? And I did it and I was like, oh, actually it’s looking okay. And it’s all about really how little you can live on when you’re retired. But do you think that Claude, therefore AI, gave you more insights than what you could find elsewhere? Or was it about the detail that it gave you? What did it get you going?
[00:40:59] Jamie: Yeah, it really just looked at the figures and it was able to tap into my particular super fund, which is PSS, the Public Super public super fund, which is defined, but it was able just to pull that data from off the net obviously and just put it all into context about, you know, this is how much money you would need to retire at this age and this is, you know, the cash flow and with 2 kids and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, obviously the safe option, as I said, is just to keep working. But yeah, to look at other opportunities and, you know, when I say redundancy, it doesn’t mean I can’t keep working for that next 5 years. It just means I’d have to do something else. So yeah.
[00:41:35] Trevor: And that’s the other thing. One of the things that people, and I don’t assume producer Rob would mind me saying this, but he was a long-term employee at News and ended up taking a package out of there. And you think, well, you’re still allowed to work. You can still work like 8 or 10 hours a week or whatever it is, or more. I don’t know what the numbers is, but again, those are the questions that you can ask. And my only advice to people and my caution to you is then how much how much extra work are you doing to fact-check it? Because if you take its advice as granted, do you know that if it says, let’s say I asked it, how many hours a week can I work while I’m on the pension or something like that? You’ve gotta make sure you go and check what it found out, don’t you?
[00:42:22] Jamie: Yeah, that’s right. And that’s what I’ll be doing. I’ll take all this information and meeting with a financial advisor shortly as well.
[00:42:28] Trevor: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:42:29] Jamie: Just to crunch those numbers and just double check. But yeah, it’s a bit of a gamble, but I guess those sort of opportunities don’t come up very often. So it’s best to have a look at them.
[00:42:39] Trevor: What a great use of AI, mate. Well done. Yeah.
[00:42:42] Jamie: Oh, thanks for that. Yeah, thanks, Trev. But yeah, look, the Chromebook’s great. Thanks very much for your tip. And yeah, I’m sure it’ll give me many years of enjoyment. Just one of the things too, Trev, I just wanted to touch on. So I’ve had a few issues with my NBN connection recently. I was with Aussie Broadband. No problems with them whatsoever. It’s more actually the NBN network itself. We have seemed to have a lot of outages here in the north side of Brisbane. I don’t know what it is. There just seems to be always emergency outages. You know, my wife’s trying to work from home.
[00:43:15] Trevor: So you get a notification saying there’s an NBN outage, et cetera, but you’re seeing them more frequently than you normally would.
[00:43:22] Jamie: Yeah, like there’s always seems to be maintenance, you know, like the last time I think we were out for about 3 or 4 days and I just got fed up with it. So I thought I started looking at options. Obviously Starlink was, was one of the options, a little bit more expensive, but I’ve ended up on the Telstra 5G internet, NBN, which is I think $85 a month. It only gives you 1 gigabyte of data. That will be the only sort of caveat. I think after, you know, after you reach your data limit, it drops down to 25 down. Yes. Um, which, which will be interesting.
[00:43:56] Trevor: There’s very rare NBN plans that have any sort of limit, you know.
[00:43:59] Jamie: That’s, yeah, that’s right.
[00:44:00] Trevor: That’s one of the deals. Look, I, I think, you know, it’s a fascinating one because, look, if you’re in a good area, um, then you won’t notice a difference. It’s, it’s just, it’s just more internet. If you’re someone who does speed tests every 5 minutes, you’ll definitely get better on the NBN, but you’ll also find times where you’re like, wow, this is happening by 5G. And then if you’re someone who uses a lot of data, I’d hate to know what data I’m using every month. I’ve never looked.
[00:44:24] Jamie: Yeah, well, that’s it. I’ve been monitoring mine.
[00:44:25] Trevor: It worries me greatly. But on a kind of similar vein though, you’re probably paying more though, aren’t you? Although $85 a month.
[00:44:34] Jamie: $85.
[00:44:35] Trevor: Yeah. What speed were you on before?
[00:44:37] Jamie: So I was on the 500 with Aussie, but I think that was $95 a month. But this is up to 300 down. And the thing is, it actually hasn’t missed a beat. Me since I installed that new modem. I just went into the Telstra shop and, you know, did it in person, got the modem and they said, look, if it doesn’t work out, just bring it back. You just, you know, we, you don’t, it’s no locking contract. And it was interesting because when I was in the shop, there was another couple there getting the exact same modem as me. And I said, well, just curious, like any particular reason why? And they said the same thing. They’re just sick and tired of all the outages with the NBN. And that’s the thing. While it, while Well, it’s— well, it works. It’s great. But we’re on the— we’re on the hybrid coaxial.
[00:45:18] Trevor: I was just going to say, what technology are you on? So you’re on the HFC, the old Foxtel cable?
[00:45:23] Jamie: Yeah, that’s right. So I don’t know whether, you know, there’s a bit of, you know, that cabling is a bit old or there’s some water damage or what’s—
[00:45:30] Trevor: it must be. I mean, I’m on HFC and it’s great both home and work. I wouldn’t mind even— I know you’ve already left the NBN connection. You’re on the 5G and there’s no drama there. Yeah, but if you don’t mind, I’ll get producer Rob to reach out and get your address details because I’d like to follow up with the NBN, especially given what you say about other people clearly saying the same thing. You know, if—
[00:45:51] Jamie: Yeah, that’s right.
[00:45:52] Trevor: If people are leaving the network because of outages, they surely know that. They’re surely seeing the churn on the network. So they probably need to look into it.
[00:46:01] Jamie: Yeah.
[00:46:01] Rodney: Yeah.
[00:46:01] Jamie: Our next door neighbors, they work from home as well. They’re on Aussie as well. And they used to send me all the— I used to be on Buddy. I’d been to Buddy for a while.
[00:46:09] Trevor: Yeah.
[00:46:10] Jamie: And yeah, they used to send me all the emails for the outages. Outages. And yeah, like, because it obviously affected us as well.
[00:46:15] Trevor: Well, tell them that I’m going to follow it up.
[00:46:17] Jamie: Okay.
[00:46:18] Trevor: All right, so you get me, I’ll get Producer Rod to reach out, we’ll get your address, and if you don’t mind, I’ll use your address to say to the NBN, hey, this guy left the NBN, is now with Telstra 5G because the outages were too frequent. And he was actually— saw a person at the Telstra store for the same reason, and his neighbor is complaining as well. So there must be a problem. We’ll, we’ll see whether they can tell us what’s going on, or at least do something to repair it.
[00:46:41] Jamie: That’s great. Thanks for that, Trev. Awesome.
[00:46:43] Trevor: All right, mate, no worries. Enjoy your day.
[00:46:45] Jamie: Cheers, you too. Thanks, mate.
[00:46:46] Trevor: Cheers. Good on you. Yeah, I mean, look, the bottom line is the NBN should be the reliable option. But yes, cables have faults, whether they’re copper, coaxial, or fiber. Now, fiber less so. That has to— they normally just breaks. But, you know, the HFC has been around, it’s been decades installed, and so there could be issues with it. And that’s why it may need more maintenance in that area. But to have so many people complain is a worry.
[00:47:15] VOICE OVER: Tech, cars, lifestyle. This is the EFTM podcast with Trevor Long. You can text Trev now thanks to Vodafone on 0477 657 657.
[00:47:29] Trevor: Get in touch, I’d love to help you out if you’ve got a tech question or a tech problem, or you just want to brag about some cool thing you just bought. You’ve got a big screen TV, let’s talk about it. Rodney’s on the line. G’day, Rod.
[00:47:37] Greg: How are ya?
[00:47:38] Trevor: Good, buddy. How are you? How are you?
[00:47:40] Rodney: Good.
[00:47:41] Trevor: What’s happening, mate?
[00:47:42] Rodney: I’ve got— I’m not very clued up on technology, as you sort of know. I’ve got an old— I think it’s an iPhone 11 Pro Max, and it always tells me it’s full. So then I spend hours upon hours trying to delete things one by one. Doesn’t really do much. And then I see all these ads pop up, Facebook I ask people and they say they’re all scams, so I’m not going to hit anything to clean my phone out. And I was just wondering if there is anything legit, if they are scams or they’re not, or what’s the best procedure?
[00:48:23] Trevor: I mean, look, the first thing to do is work out where it is that your, your storage is, is, is problematic for you. Um, have you dug into the settings to see what it is taking up space Is it something simple as photos, or is it some of your apps?
[00:48:37] Rodney: Majority photos. Majority would be photos, but I think a lot of duplicates and things. But to try and work out in different albums what’s in there—
[00:48:48] Trevor: what’s—
[00:48:49] Rodney: yeah.
[00:48:50] Trevor: And just to be clear, you’ve been into the iPhone storage section, you’ve looked at the apps, for example. So for example, my, my WhatsApp is using 19 gigabytes of storage on my phone. Now that’s okay because I’ve got a really big storage. But if I had a, you know, older phone, 64GB, that’s a huge amount. That’s a big percentage. An app like CapCut, which is made for video editing, right? It’s got 7GB of storage in it. When I edit a video, it’s done, it’s finished. Why is it storing anything? So I can click on that app and just go offload, and that just deletes all the storage. So it, it, um, you know, sorry, delete app is what you want to do. Um, look, don’t offload it. And, and you can basically clean up pretty well there. But if it’s photos If photos is what’s causing you the most problems, my regular advice on this is to switch to Google Photos. You want to move to the cloud, right? So the cloud— what happens with the cloud, and if you’ve already got iCloud in any way, you could, you could use this broader advice as well, but there’s a setting in Photos to have it manage the storage on your phone. So what happens is it, it puts everything in the cloud and then it only keeps the most recent kind of couple of days worth of photos on your phone. But when you scroll back to 2017, you look for a photo You can see that the photo exists, but all you see is a little thumbnail. And when you click on it, it might take 5 or 6 seconds for you to see the whole photo because it grabs it from the cloud and shows it to you. But that photo, that photo doesn’t need to be on your phone because it’s from 7 years ago. So, so Google Photos is my recommendation because it’s even better. It will do things like find duplicates and those kind of things, merge them and delete duplicates. It’ll clear out your storage and it’s all on, it’s all in the cloud. So you basically need to move to the cloud, mate, is with your phone. Photos.
[00:50:36] Rodney: No problem. So all the things that I see, the ads, they’re not really trustworthy?
[00:50:42] Trevor: No, no, because what they’re all, all they’re doing is just trying to sell you what I’ve just told you. Um, there’s no, there’s no simple solution to your problem. Now, could you go to JB Hi-Fi and buy a hard drive, plug it in the bottom of the phone, and move all your photos over to that? Yes, yes, absolutely. That is totally achievable, but you then need to delete them all from phone. So you need to kind of go, well, okay, this hard drive here, this little thumb drive, is now all my photos up until May 2026. And, and then you start from scratch, and then you put those on your computer, for example. Uh, yeah, but then there’ll be that day where you’re looking for that photo of you on a motorbike from, you know, 6 years ago, and it’s not on your phone because it’s on the computer now. That’s why the cloud’s so great, mate. I can, I can just open up— I don’t need to be on my phone. I can just go to photos.google.com .com on my computer, and I can— I could search for, uh, have I named everyone in my— like, because it recognizes faces, right? I can search— I don’t even need to worry about faces. I can just search for motorbike, right? And it will find photos of motorbikes. Yeah, like, just by instinctively knowing. Like, I don’t even remember taking some of these photos. They are like of a bloke on a scooter or, you know, some random motorbike I saw on a street. And then if I scroll roll back far enough, I’ll find photos of some Speedway motorbikes at Etihad Stadium in 2014. Like, you know, instantly. Like, here in front of me I have photos just from that one search for motorbike from 2014, taking photos at the Speedway Grand Prix.
[00:52:19] Rodney: Yeah, okay. So, so let Google Photos manage my photos.
[00:52:24] Trevor: Correct, correct. Download the app, agree to all the bloody circumstances, and then your biggest decision though is, am I, am I going to spend money on my photo library? So you can upload lots of photos in kind of what they call low quality. They’re not— it’s not terrible quality, but they’re not original quality. And so if you wanted to make a big poster, probably not big enough and good enough. But if you pay a little bit for Google’s cloud storage, it will then take— it will keep them all in original form and I’m telling you, it is a remarkable service. Because once you sit there and you go, well, you know what I’ll do? I will spend some time, and it shows you faces, you give it names. And so you name people. I’ve got photos, like I’m loving scrolling through just searching for motorbike here, because now I’m seeing photos from when I was in Sweden at the 500cc there. I’ve found photos of my mom’s pub when she had the pub and all these motorbikes parked out the front from when it burnt down in the early 2000s. I’d forgotten about these photos. Pub’s half burnt down and all these 30 or 40 motorbikes pulled up to, can I just have a beer? And it’s a great memory and it’s there in my Google Photos forever. And I am paying every month for Google. It’s, they’ve got me by the balls because I’ll never not pay because I want this photo library. But pretty cool, pretty cool thing to have access to. And I think it’s the most important thing that we subscribe to is our cloud photo storage.
[00:53:50] Rodney: Well, it’s pretty much your life now, isn’t it? the way it’s gone.
[00:53:56] Trevor: Yeah. So Google Photos, buddy, give it a try.
[00:54:00] Rodney: I might do that and I might buy a little hard drive because there’s probably a lot of photos that I don’t actually need on my phone.
[00:54:07] Trevor: Yeah, that makes— mate, I’ve got like, I don’t even know how many photos. Does it tell you anywhere? It probably does, but I’ve got a crazy amount of photos and I like, I can’t imagine going through, you know, the way you’re talking there, it’s like you’re going to go through your photos and and work out. Could you, could you imagine trying to do that? Like, I’ve got— when I scroll back sometimes I see these things and I go, what the hell is going on here? And it’s when my kids were like 4 and 5, they grabbed an iPad and they just took 100,000 photos of themselves. So what is going on here? Um, so yeah, my— I have 74,000 photos on my iPhone.
[00:54:45] Rodney: Oh wow. Yeah, I don’t have that many. Um, is— can I ask another question? Yeah, I’m going back to Thailand again. Can I take my Alexa speaker? Will I get in over there and it will work or not?
[00:55:01] Trevor: Well, well, yes, because all you need to do then is set it up on the Wi-Fi network. So you just need to— what I would do, be— I would do it before you go, is I would go to the Alexa help page and find the instructions for connecting Alexa to a new Wi-Fi network. Because really, that’s what Alexa is now talking— Alexa, stop! She’s talking in the office here. But basically, you— that’s all you need to do. Because if I take us— I got Alexa speaker here on my desk. If I take it home, all I need to do is, is connect it to the home Wi-Fi network. That’s the same as taking it to Bali, just put it on different network. I wouldn’t go to the trouble of telling it you’re in a different country and all that kind of stuff, because there may be differences to the way it works. But I don’t think— I don’t think you need to do anything.
[00:55:43] Rodney: Okay, so just connect it to— okay, fair enough. Thank you.
[00:55:46] Trevor: You just need to learn how to connect to a new mobile network— new Wi-Fi network, sorry.
[00:55:53] Rodney: No problem.
[00:55:54] Trevor: All right, good luck.
[00:55:56] Rodney: Thank you so much.
[00:55:57] Trevor: All right, champion, good to talk.
[00:55:58] Rodney: You take care.
[00:55:59] Trevor: Thanks, mate. Uh, um, yeah, plenty of options there for Rodney. Um, you know, but, you know, people say I, I, you know, talk about Google Photos a lot because it’s bloody bloody brilliant. One of the greatest bits of technology that I have at my fingertips, that I can just type, you know, motorbike, and I see all these great photos of, you know, motorbikes from over the years in my photo library. Yeah, why wouldn’t you take advantage of that? And I get plenty of people saying, well, Apple Photos does that too. Yeah, it does. I just think that if I go side by side, let’s go plane, something really simple and obvious, plane. On my computer, on Google Photos, I type plane. If I now go to my phone and type plane, um, there’s certainly a lot of results, but I can already see, like, my computer is showing just random photos, like planes that are like way up that you wouldn’t even notice. Um, the iPhone, it’s interesting, I would argue it’s showing— they’re all showing different planes, but I’m getting many more results on Google Photos than I am on my iPhone. But that may just be my collection, I don’t know. But iPhone photo search does work, works very well. I’ve just found that certainly face recognition, person recognition, is by far better on Google Photos. My opinion.
[00:57:30] VOICE OVER: Be part of the the show. Thanks to Vodafone, you can text 0477 657 657.
[00:57:39] Trevor: Thank you so much for listening, and please, as I mentioned at the start of the show, would love your genuine feedback on the EFTM Which TV to Buy search. Um, yeah, I want it to be a page that, uh, it’s going to take probably a month before it’s, it’s fully live because a lot of TVs haven’t been announced, not available, not on sale yet, the prices aren’t there. And obviously then the reviews are going to take like many months. And obviously I’ve already thought, well, next year there’ll be another filter, which is 2026, 2027. So we’ll— but I’m not going to integrate older TVs. I am going to talk to Kogan about getting a list of their most current TVs so they’re not seeing all of them. I’m just seeing the current one. So I will add in Kogan as well. I have added into the database the ability for Amazon or Kogan to be retailers if any of these TVs are available there. And I will say this out loud and upfront, I am, I’m doing it manually at the moment in terms of running the system, but I will set it up to be a daily or a couple of day a week thing. But I’m doing the price checks regularly. I’m going to keep a log of that so that we can see price fluctuations. I talked once about the Coles Woolies plugin that’s in Chrome that allows you to see the price fluctuations on a on any product at Woolworths. Broadly, what I wanna see here is if I’m looking at the Samsung 65-inch R85 RGB TV, it’s currently $2,567. It’s $650 less than it was last time I checked. I’d love to be able to hover over that and see a price graph that shows me what the highest it’s been, the lowest it’s been, because then you know essentially your bargain point. If the lowest that TV’s been is $2,200, you say, listen, it’s been $2,200 before, just sell it to me now for that and I’ll buy it. Right now. So hopefully that kind of works. Anyway, um, thank you so much for listening, and we’d love your feedback. You know how to get in touch. Look forward to hearing from you.
[00:59:35] VOICE OVER: This is the EFTM podcast.
The elder statesman of the EFTM team, Rob has been a long time listener, reader and follower – He’s “Producer Rob” for the EFTM podcast and looks after our social media posts. To be fair, he’s probably the most tech-savvy bloke in the crew too!
