The EFTM podcast – Looking for a BIG TV in the EOFY sales, and talking HP Laptops and AI on board

Podcast: EFTM

Episode: Looking for a BIG TV in the EOFY sales, and talking HP Laptops and AI on board

Date: 23 June 2026

Host: Trevor Long

Guest: Mark Fenson (HP)

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[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.

[00:00:45] Trevor: Real Australians, real questions, every week.

[00:00:51] VOICE OVER: You can text Trev now, thanks to Vodafone, on 0477 657 657.

[00:01:04] Trevor: Thank you for listening. Great to have your company, uh, once again here on the EFTM Podcast. Busy show, we’ve got a bunch of calls to get through. Um, I’m not sure I’m going to solve these issues. Couple of Apple issues ahead, um, looking at the call sheet, but we’ll get there. And we’re going to talk laptops. Now, the reason I want to talk laptops with Mark Fenson from HP is because it’s got to be a month ago now. It was before London and Apple, which is a few weeks ago. I went to an event with HP. They call it the HP Hotel. They took over the W Hotel in Sydney’s Darling Harbour and had a couple of hotel rooms there where they just showcased a bunch of their products. And it opened my eyes a little bit. Sometimes you kind of just get shown a product and you’re like, cool, cool, cool. Sometimes you think you know a product and then you’re like, wait a minute, what? And so that was a bit this way. I was like, oh right. So I want to unpack that a little bit a little bit with Mark from HP as well as take your calls. And most important, I’d love to hear from you. Uh, if you know someone in your life that needs some tech help, just refer them to me. Send them to me, 0477 657 657. They can send a WhatsApp or a text, or they can go to the website eftm.com and click Ask Trev. Doesn’t matter what the question is, I’ll try and help as best I can. If I can’t help, I’ll find someone who can, broadly speaking. So that’s just what we do here. Um, we’ve got a bit coming up next week. We’re going to talk TVs again with Chris Meyer from Hisense. Um, can’t wait to catch up with Chris. He’s been on a honeymoon for many, many weeks. He’s one of the absolute nerds and legends of Hisense. So we’ll find out more about their TV range for this year, but that’s next week. I’m just looking ahead at the rundown. Um, but no, most, most importantly this week, we’ve got a bit to get through— your calls as well as talking laptops with HP. Um, but yeah, let me know what you’ve bought recently. What have you purchased? You know what, weirdly, I’ve been playing with— I’ve been playing with a cassette player. Um, we should catch up with that, um, lovely lady who’s been writing those songs for the elderly in the, in the aged care home. We did send her a radio of some sort from Laser, but I suspect the expense of buying SD cards will probably make that a non-starter for her. But anyway, Laser sent me at the same time one of their little retro cassette boomboxes, and I do have a few cassettes here. I’ve got a cassette here which I definitely won’t be sharing, and it’s me calling talkback radio in 1994, maybe ’95. I’m calling Straight Talk with David Tapp, which was where I first got into the media, right? So I would ring the radio every weekend. David would say it would introduce Trevor on the line from Adelaide. G’day, Sparkplug. Well, see, Tappy’s been coming to my office here. He’s using my studio for his new podcast and we started talking about that and I went, “Ah, nah, I’ve definitely got a tape somewhere, but I don’t think I want to play it.” And I listened to it, my God, my voice, I’m like a 9-year-old, and I’m pretty sure I was at least 16, maybe 17. Anyway, weirdly, I was just playing that back and then I just, I’ve got a few cassettes of different weird things. So yeah, I’ve been going full retro, but what I can’t find, I’ve got one somewhere, is I’ve got a cassette to USB, so I can play it and ingest it into an audio file. Because even though I don’t want to listen to myself, I want to, I want to save it and essentially, you know, put it in a Dropbox so it’s there forever. Because it’s a, it’s a fascinating thing. I’ve got, um, in my possession a leather folio briefcase. Not really a briefcase, it’s more of a, like a leather soft bag. Uh, but it was my dad’s. My dad died 50 years ago, so this bag is 50 years old, but it has his initials on it, TWL, which are my initials. And so I’ve been taking photos of that and getting it. I was trying to find someone in Sydney who will restore it. Because I want to restore it but not make it brand new. Like I still want to have the bit like the handle I don’t want to touch because my dad held that handle and I want it to feel that way. But yeah, the metal clasps and everything and anything that’s kind of been unsewn, anything that needs repair, I might get that all done and whether it can be loosened up a bit. But anyway, inside it was all this stuff. Here’s the crazy thing. I found all this, um, these newspapers that my mum had obviously kept over her time with Dad, just mentions of Dad in the paper or anything. And, um, there was a box of matches, and I found out my dad worked at the Daily Mirror as a classified salesman for a very short amount of time. Um, anyway, it’s, it’s one of those weird things. You start going down memory lane when you have artifacts like that. And so I think the tape recordings of me, whether it’s singing or on the radio, aren’t things I ever want to share with the world, but I figure when I’m dead the kids can listen to them. It’s about as good as it’s going to get. Uh, anyway, enough about me. Uh, let’s get on with the show. Take your calls, 0477 657 657. Send me a text if you want to talk tech.

[00:06:16] VOICE OVER: Be part of the show. Thanks to Vodafone, you can text 0477 657 657.

Sean — Buying a 100-inch TV in the EOFY sales

[00:06:23] Trevor: Great to have your company. Get in touch if there’s something you want to talk about. Or question you’ve got, I’d love to try and help you out. Sean’s on the line. G’day, Sean.

[00:06:34] Sean: Hey, how are you?

[00:06:35] Trevor: Mate, really, really good. What can we do for you?

[00:06:38] Sean: Yeah, as I said to Rob, I’m just looking to buy a new TV and— Giddy up! —as everyone knows, it’s always a bit of a minefield. But once you get up into the really larger sizes, it becomes a little bit more confusing, I guess, just with regards to specifications and things and obviously pricing, etc. So I just wanted to pick your mind a bit on that. Have you got a budget?

[00:07:01] Trevor: Yeah, I’m happy to spend up to about $5,000. And what size are we talking? Massive.

[00:07:07] Sean: Yeah.

[00:07:08] Trevor: 98, 100-inch, something like that. Go big or go home, as they say. Exactly. Why wouldn’t you? I mean, there is a lot. So 98, you know, TCL’s kicking into the $6,000 mark. 100-inch though, at that price, Hisense have got the U7, which was listed originally at like $6,999.

[00:07:30] Sean: And yeah, that’s the one that I was looking at the other day. Right now it’s made—

[00:07:34] Trevor: it’s $4,900.

[00:07:35] Sean: Yes. Yeah, they were offering it about $4,700. Yeah. Yeah, I could get it in the store sort of thing, but I just wasn’t sure. I’ve never had— I’ve had a couple of smaller Hisense TVs just for my kids and things and they seemed fine, but I had a 75-inch Sony previously, but it had the Google operating system and I just found it terribly slow and not particularly good.

[00:07:58] Trevor: Yeah.

[00:08:00] Trevor: Look, I’ve got— I would say it’s the equivalent 100-inch TV at home, but it’s from, I don’t know, 3 years ago maybe. I think mine was called the U7K AU, which was still on sale, might still be on sale in some places. But the one you’re looking at is— is you want— you want the 2026 model. Let’s be honest, like the one I’ve got is literally the 2023 model. It’s— but mate, I love it. It’s, it’s perfect. I don’t— yes, if I put a new brand new TV next to it, I’d probably notice some differences in contrast and color and all those kind of things. But sure, the— what apps do you use? What are you, what are you streaming?

[00:08:38] Sean: Just the normal ones, you know, KO, Netflix, all of, you know, Disney, that type of thing.

[00:08:44] Trevor: There’s nothing unique or weird that you watch? Yeah, because like for me, we watch the Major League Baseball. We love our MLB and there’s no MLB app on the Hisense TV. So it’s quite a pain in the ass for me to watch the MLB. I’ve got a, I’ve got a Fetch TV logged in normally into HDMI 1, and so I have to plug a Google Chromecast into that because I do like the Google, Google operating system that you had on the Sony. So it’s disappointing to hear it was sluggish and slow.

[00:09:08] Sean: Well, it was just, it was that. But also I had a, I’ve got a Bose surround sound system and I had it every time the TV turned on, it would never connect and I’d have to manually connect it. And then when we moved house, I sold that TV and connected the, the sound system straight into my other Samsung TV and it just connects perfectly every time. Right. But the Sony just never would.

[00:09:29] Trevor: Yeah, look, you know, it’s just little things like that, but they drive you mad after a while. No, no, they absolutely do. Yeah, for sure. But look, in the end, to, to, to go up a spec is, is pricey. You know, you’re jumping up to, you know, $10,000. Samsung’s best is $7,000, and that’s not at all discounted at the moment. Obviously there’s, there’s Kogan’s that are heaps cheaper, you know, about $1,000 cheaper than what you’re looking at. But on, on balance, I think the Hisense is an unbelievably good value TV. Yeah.

[00:10:01] Sean: And it has the matte screen as well. Is that what you call it? Yes, it does have the glare-free.

[00:10:06] Trevor: The U7 does have the glare-free. Yeah, because it’s going to be—

[00:10:09] Sean: we’re moving into a big unit, but it’s got sort of large glass all along one side.

[00:10:14] Trevor: Have you stood in front of a TV with the glare-free? Yes. It’s amazing, isn’t it? Yeah.

[00:10:19] Sean: Yeah. He was showing us in the store, you know, shining a light on the ones that don’t have it and on this one and you couldn’t see it virtually at all.

[00:10:26] Trevor: They were willing to point that out to you. Did they point out other ones that had it or were they focusing just on the Hisense?

[00:10:31] Sean: No, other ones that had it and just ones that didn’t have it, you know, that were even more expensive. You know, as you said, you’re going to have a major issue. I think it was— was it— I forget what he was saying about something to do with the OLEDs and things that just in the really bright rooms they have a problem.

[00:10:50] Trevor: Well, look what the, the, the, I guess the complaint about OLEDs over the years has been that they’re not bright enough. But they’re plenty bright these days. It’s really, it’s really not that.

[00:11:01] Sean: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t reckon—

[00:11:01] Trevor: I reckon if you could afford a 100-inch OLED or a 98-inch OLED, you’d be very happy to get it. Put it that way, man.

[00:11:08] Sean: Yeah, that’s right.

[00:11:09] Trevor: I wouldn’t begrudge anyone. Exactly. It’s crazy money. I think the TV that you’re looking at is the genuine sweet spot. I think it’s basically the one that’s, that’s taken the place of the, of the 100-inch that I have, because it’s strange to me, the U7, which is what you’re looking at, the U6 hasn’t really been listed anywhere yet and it’s, it’s priced higher than, than the U7. So, you know, you’re in a you’re in a pretty great spot to, although now I’m looking at it, it does look like I’m just going to go to the Good Guys here. Yeah, it’s still listed at $6,000. So it’s, yeah, it hasn’t even come down.

[00:11:44] Sean: That was in the Good Guys the other day though, but they had that price.

[00:11:48] Trevor: And that’s, this is the model below yours, the below the one you’re looking at.

[00:11:51] Sean: Oh, right. Yeah. Oh, okay.

[00:11:53] Trevor: So it’s kind of insane to me that that TV hasn’t yet started the discounting because what I’ve started doing, and I don’t know if you’ve had a look at my buyer’s guide, but on the website, but I’ve started charting it. And so it’s fascinating to me to look at it and you go, okay, the one you’re looking at has a retail price of $6,999, but it’s currently at $6,600, sorry, $4,900 as you know. But there was this whole week where it was at $5,900. And it’s funny to look at the graph and realize that these things jump up and down. And so it looks to me like it’s probably got another week left at this price. And you gotta remember they can’t keep prices low. I don’t know the legislation, but I think it might be 10 days. So the price stays low for 10 days, that becomes the new price, the new standard price. Um, so they can’t, they can’t say it’s discounted anymore. So what they do is they’ll jump it back up. My guess is they’ll jump it back up to $5,900 and then they’ll bring it back down to $4,900 again and it’ll fluctuate across the year at those prices. But, uh, but I don’t think you’ll have any regrets with that TV. It’s a great TV. Um, they, they make beautiful TVs. The operating system’s excellent. I don’t think you’ll have a problem at all, mate. You’ll be loving it. What are you— how quickly are you trying— why are you trying to buy it?

[00:13:07] Sean: I want to— well, I was just going to buy it in the sales because our property is going to be finished in a month or two. And they said they’ll just hold the stock and you can just collect it at any time, sort of thing.

[00:13:16] Trevor: So yeah, hey, that’s pretty good because it— because I was going to say the other thing is, mate, a 100-inch TV is enormous in the box. Yeah, I know. You said you’re moving into a unit. Is it like a high-rise unit or— Yeah. Have you checked the size of the lift? Yeah.

[00:13:32] Sean: Okay, good. Yeah, it’ll fit in the lift. The table we’re buying won’t. We’ve got to carry that upstairs. Oh no, that’s another story. You’re going to have some fun there. But the TV will fit in the lift. Yeah.

[00:13:45] Trevor: All right. Okay. Well, just make sure you check these things. Look, worst case scenario, out of the box, it’s a lot smaller because obviously the box contains a lot of foam and padding and things. But mate, in the end, you’re on a winner, mate. It’s a great TV.

[00:14:02] Sean: Will do. Thanks, Trev.

[00:14:04] Trevor: Good on you. Thanks for getting in touch. Cheers. Great to hear from you. Well done. Uh, there you go. Happy days buying a 100-inch TV. Look, when you, when you get your first 100-inch TV, you’ve just got to smile. Smile on your dial. That’s all it is, because it’s great. It’s such a great way to watch TV. It’s just, it sounds ridiculous, but it just looks so much better. It’s the simple things in life, you know. It really is the simple things in life, and I reckon a big TV is exactly that. So enjoy.

[00:14:38] VOICE OVER: You’re listening to the EFTM podcast. Join the conversation. Head to eftm.com and click Ask Trev.

David — Daughter’s Apple account wiped after device theft

[00:14:54] Trevor: Great to have your company and happy to help wherever I can. 0477 657 657, the number to text. David’s on the line. G’day, David.

[00:15:01] David: Good morning, Trevor. How are you?

[00:15:03] Trevor: I’m really good. What can I do for you?

[00:15:05] David: Trevor, I recently wrote to you regarding an issue with Apple. My, my youngest daughter had all her Apple devices stolen. Well, not all, everything but her iPhone. And they were stolen while she was at work. She left them in the car in a backpack. Anyway, when she got back to her car some 8 hours later and realized that they’d been stolen, she, she did the Apple thing because she’s pretty smart. She discovered that the devices were pinging about 2 streets away and rang the police, but the police couldn’t attend, they were too busy, of course. And then instantly she, she, um, I’m not an Apple person, Trevor, unfortunately, but she is. And instantly she knew she needed to lock the devices down. So she went into her iPhone, which she still had, and in the device list, her laptop, her MacBook Air, and her iPad and Apple Watch, they no longer existed. And it also said that, um, her account didn’t exist anymore. Wow. So yes, so I won’t take up too much of your time. So the next morning, we immediately went to an Apple Store to the Genius Bar. And we spoke to the techs there, and two of them just said instantly, um, well, that’s weird, we’ve never heard of this before. And I said, well, that’s why we’re here. And I said, um, she can’t, she can’t log into her Apple account because her Apple account doesn’t exist anymore. And, um, and then another couple of techs came out and they said, oh God, we’ve never seen this before. They took her phone and they tried in the settings because they thought it was a simple fix. Anyway, they couldn’t do anything, so we got no joy and Holly sort of lost all her data. She can’t log in because she no longer has an Apple account. And so then I rang Apple in Sydney and spoke to two guys called Rob and Seth. They were pretty high up apparently, and had a one-hour discussion with them, explained everything. Gave them the case number and all that, and they said, yes, everything’s here on her record, but we’re sorry, we can’t do much for you because the account you’ve just given us doesn’t exist. I said, well, we know that, but that’s not her fault. So, and I said, she’s lost, you know, 27,000 photos, all her uni assignments, and just terrible. So, yeah, so, um, my couple of questions to you are I don’t understand the cloud like you do, but I know that your data is stored in data center somewhere. And what I don’t understand is I said to the two guys in Sydney, how can you tell me that her data does not exist? I mean, it’s somewhere. Where is it? You know, surely each and every Apple user has an account number and an Apple ID, and surely their data has an assignment spot somewhere.

[00:18:33] Trevor: Like, you think of it like there’s just a folder in the cloud, why can’t you just give me that folder? Yeah, I think you’re right. It’s absolutely extraordinary. There’s a lot. How old is your daughter? 23. Okay, so she’s a smart girl, as you said.

[00:18:50] David: She’s had Apple phones since she was 13. And it was—

[00:18:52] Trevor: what was lost?

[00:18:53] David: An iPad and a Mac or something? MacBook Air, an iPad, and her Apple Watch.

[00:19:00] Trevor: Wow. Wow.

[00:19:00] David: I’m sorry, not Apple Watch, Trev. What do you call them?

[00:19:03] Trevor: EarPods. EarPods, right. EarPods. Sorry. Look, so there’s a couple of things that I would say. We don’t know what happened to the account, but let me give you a reason why it might have happened. Just a random potential reason. It’s possible, it’s possible, but I’m not suggesting it. It’s possible that say the iPad didn’t have a passcode on it. So you could just swipe to open it and unlock it. And it’s possible that they then went in, they got it, and they went in to her Apple account and not only changed the Apple ID, like changed the email account and all this kind of stuff, but essentially went in and hacked her account. So they had her. Once you’ve got your device, if you can get into a device, then you might be able to hack the account. But normally that’s very hard because you need to know the password or you need to know, you know, the secondary code like on a phone. But again, she had—

[00:19:58] David: she— all her devices were password protected and had dual factor ID, you know, the retina and the fingerprint. And my question to the guys in Sydney was, I said, You guys sell your products on what you claim to be the safest platform in the world. And, and yet someone can steal her devices, bypass her password protection and her dual-factor ID and change her account number. And I said, I accept that someone in this day and age can possibly do that. But what I want to know from you is where is her data? Surely.

[00:20:39] Trevor: And so what I want to do is I want to get you to a point of understanding that it’s possible, it’s possible that it happened, and I’ll explain where the data is in a minute. So I think we need to understand that if this was a prolific bug with Apple devices, I’d hear about this every week, right? And so I’m not suggesting your daughter did anything wrong, I’m just saying there’s a couple of things. If it’s local, there’s also a chance your daughter was targeted. Let’s take it to the extreme. Let’s say your daughter was targeted. She’s at uni, I think, did you say?

[00:21:15] David: Yep, yeah, she’s at work.

[00:21:17] Trevor: There’s a criminal network at the university that purport to be studying the arts, but they’re actually just wandering around profiling people based on what devices they hold, right? And they’ve been— let’s— and I’m being extreme here, but let’s say they’ve been watching her for months and they targeted her and they also learnt about her, right? And the reason they did that was because they wanted to obtain as much information they could about her so that they could know her passwords, particularly potentially. They might have even spied on her to see her PIN code, right? So, so we’ve gotten to a point— let’s just in our heads establish that someone targeted your daughter in such a way that they, they were able to get the devices and unlock them because they found out her PIN and, and reset her account and password, right? So that allows us to say to ourselves, Jesus, that’s elaborate, but that’s, that’s how it happened, right? That’s how it happened. Which leads us to the question of, right, where’s her data? And this is where you’ve got to understand that actually Apple’s processes and Apple’s security and privacy are exactly why the data doesn’t exist anymore. Because what happens is there is a big data center with all of our data in it. But even if you were to stand in front of that computer inside a data center and say, Trevor’s photos are all on this hard drive here, you can’t— even if you could see the file, you can’t unlock the file without my device, and without my Apple ID, it’s like the code, it’s like the key to getting in. And so because these thugs have gotten her key, they’ve gotten her whole account and they’ve just moved it. They’ve— I think what they’ve done is they’ve renamed her account, set a new email address, and basically just migrated it over so that they can then have control of the account, um, re-establish the two-factor authentication, and then wipe the devices. Because the thing is, if you— Mate, if I left my iPad sitting on an airplane, which I could likely do easily, right? It’s of no use to anyone because they can’t wipe it without my Apple ID password. But that’s right, if they looked over my shoulder for enough flights, they might have seen my PIN code. And then if they knew enough about me, maybe they’d worked out my password, and then they get in. So it’s extreme. Everything we’re saying here, mate, is extreme. But I’m trying to logically suggest to you that whatever happened, happened, and it can’t be changed now. And the reason it’s frustrating that her data is also gone is essentially because Apple does link your data securely to an Apple ID, and that Apple ID is now gone. So, mate, it’s horrible. There’s nothing you can do for your daughter in this circumstance because the data is gone. And that’s, that’s not a fun thing to hear. I get it.

[00:23:59] David: The guys in Sydney said to conclude after a 1-hour conversation, they said the only thing that we can possibly see has happened, that they’ve somehow managed to change her Apple ID.

[00:24:11] Trevor: That’s what I— yeah, yeah.

[00:24:12] David: And I said, how though? The devices were locked and double protected. How? And they can’t give me an answer.

[00:24:19] Trevor: Well, let me give you another answer — do you remember Medibank was hacked? Yes. Yep, yep. That wasn’t— that was not some nerd sitting behind a computer going, is this how I get in? Is this how I get in? This is how I get in. This is a nerd that got in by sending an email to an employee there saying— and I’m making this up, but I’m giving you the scenario— saying, your Netflix account will shut down tomorrow because your credit card is out of date. Click here to renew your credit card. And you click here, and it asks for your Netflix account and password, then you put in a credit card, and now the hacker’s got your credit card, but they’ve also got your password. And now they log back into Medibank and they go, bloke’s using the same password here, and they’re inside the Medibank systems because they’ve got the password. And then they go in and they hack the whole thing. So through some— it’s called social engineering, right? And again, it feels really extreme to me, but it’s absolutely possible, right, that at some point, at some way through the last 6 months of time before this all happened, your daughter clicked an email and did something that was completely congruous, but it allowed them— and it might have been an Apple email, but it wasn’t really Apple, it was a fake one— and it allowed them to find out what her password was and allowed them there to turn off two-factor. I don’t know, mate, it’s— it is extreme, but unfortunately it happened. Now, your daughter sounds like she did all the right things in the first place. Two-factor authentication, all that kind of stuff. So she shouldn’t be put off any of these things other than to say that what I— the learning for your daughter should be strength of password and, and regularity of password change. Those would be the two things I would learn. And I would want to have security software, uh, like, like Trend Micro is a sponsor, but they’re who I use on my Mac and my phone. And Trend Micro stops me clicking stupid emails that look real but aren’t. And so by having some form of security software going forward and by setting a stupidly long password. And the way to set a password is this. You look around the room you’re in, and I’m looking at my office right now. I’m going, okay, there’s a DeLorean in front of me, I got a Lego DeLorean. So I’ve got a DeLorean, I’ve got a vacuum, and in front of me I can see a BlackBerry. A DeLorean, a vacuum, and a BlackBerry are 3 words that would never exist together in a dictionary or in any words ever written in society, right? So DeLorean Vacuum BlackBerry is my new password. DeLorean Vacuum BlackBerry. And now I’m gonna capitalize the U’s in vacuum. DeLorean Vacuum BlackBerry with capital U’s. And I’m gonna throw a #52, ’cause the clock is 52 right now as we speak, between a vacuum and BlackBerry. DeLorean Vacuum with capital U’s, #52 BlackBerry. And I just keep saying that to myself, and now I write it down, and now I type it a few times, and that’s my new password. But it’s so long that it’s unhackable. It’s so obscure, it’s unhackable. And then, mate, in 3 months, 6 months from now, I’m gonna change it, I’m gonna look around the room again, and I’m gonna go, ‘Novus Dad Tablet’ and there my next password. So unfortunately, you’ve just got to take this time and go, we’ve got to learn from it and walk away because you’re never getting the data back. That’s the solid truth of the matter.

[00:27:37] David: Well, I did say to the guys in Sydney, I said, I’m not being rude here, I said, but I can’t help but think if it was an Apple executive’s daughter, they’d find her data.

[00:27:51] Trevor: And I’ll be honest with you, I don’t think they would. Because so the FBI rings Apple and says, we want to open this phone, and Apple says, we can’t, we can’t get through it.

[00:28:01] David: That’s not— yeah, I’ve seen those issues.

[00:28:02] Trevor: We don’t do it. Like, that’s— it’s a, what do you call it, it’s a frustrating, um, obnoxious kind of approach to security that they have. That even, even if there was a terrorist on the loose, Apple would not break into their phone.

[00:28:17] David: Yeah, I’ve seen it on the news and different issues.

[00:28:20] Trevor: Yeah, you know, so anyway, so the other little annoying learning is non-cloud backups. If this has happened to you, and it’s probably making a lot of people think, you know, you want to put your photos, you want to back them up to somewhere that you’ve got a physical drive, physical copy of them. Unfortunately, that’s it.

[00:28:38] David: Yeah, well, her elder sister is a schoolteacher. She’s got everything in the cloud too, and she came over to console her the day it happened. And she said, well, I’m changing my storage now to external hard drives. I don’t trust it.

[00:28:51] Trevor: And that’s— with that experience, I don’t begrudge you that at all.

[00:28:55] David: Yeah, you know, I would be doing the same.

[00:28:58] Trevor: Strong and crazy security, even though she was on the right path for sure. Strong and crazy security and a real robust attention to what you click on and where you click, because your daughter will never know what it— well, if we’re to assume that she was the victim of a social engineering attack, she’ll never know what it was. She’ll never know what email it was she clicked, but it was something. And it may have been a year ago, may have been 6 months ago, maybe 2 days before that happened, but it happened most likely, and that’s how they were able to circumvent all this.

[00:29:32] David: Oh good, Trev, well, sorry so much for cutting out.

[00:29:35] Trevor: Not what you wanted to hear, but I guess we need to move on because it’s not going to change.

[00:29:41] David: Well, I used to drive for a living. I used to listen to you every Wednesday on 6PR and also watch you on the Today Show. And after a month had gone by, you were on the Today Show last week and I said, oh my God, that’s who I should contact, Trevor. He may know something.

[00:30:01] Trevor: And now you’ll say he was bloody useless.

[00:30:03] David: No, I won’t. All right. Well, I won’t take up any more of your time. Thanks so much, Trevor.

[00:30:09] Trevor: Cheers. Bye. Look, it’s all conjecture. I’m guessing at every part of it, but something happened. Something more than just the theft happened. And that’s, that’s a real challenge for his daughter because she won’t trust the cloud or Apple probably for a very, very long time.

[00:30:28] VOICE OVER: This is the EFTM podcast.

Michael — iCloud account randomly changing names and profile picture

[00:30:34] Trevor: Thanks for listening. Thanks for downloading. Lovely to have your company. Michael’s on the line today. Mike, Michael, I’m very good, thanks. How your day going? Pretty darn good, mate. What can I do for you?

[00:30:44] Michael: Well, I’ve got an inquiry about my iCloud account, right? Now, my iCloud account, it changes— it changes names. What? It changes name? Yeah, so like you go into the settings and you’re going to open your phone, you gotta press the iCloud at the top. Yeah, you can’t— you can’t change the picture. The picture stays the same, initials, and then once in a blue moon, the name, the name changes.

[00:31:11] Trevor: Changes. Now, is this when you’re in settings or when you’re like messages and things?

[00:31:15] Michael: Um, in settings, right?

[00:31:18] Michael: So like, um, like one day I was opening my phone and my phone went to like my daughter— had my daughter’s name, all her details and stuff. And then the next day was my other daughter, and then it went back to myself. And then my name, my profile name changes. Have your—

[00:31:34] Trevor: do your daughters have their own iCloud? Yeah, they’ve got all separate.

[00:31:38] Michael: Yeah. Oh, everyone, the whole house is all separate.

[00:31:42] Trevor: Okay. But, uh, do they have a device? I’m trying to think. So it sounds to me like there might be a shared device somewhere which is essentially getting conflicted. And I wonder whether at one point you had like an iPad or something that had your account, and after that you got everyone an account. And so yeah, that feels like the way the conflict would occur. Is there any shared devices?

[00:32:05] Michael: No, no shared devices. No, nothing in the house. No.

[00:32:08] Trevor: I think the best thing to do then is to sit around the dinner table one night, get everyone’s Apple devices in one place, and get everyone to sign out. Okay, sign out and everything. Yeah, sign out. Because I know, just so you know, I did it last week when I was in America. I signed out of my Australian account to log into my American. Totally fine, doesn’t change anything. It’s all good. Um, so yeah, sign out of your iCloud. And remember too, there’s two types of sign-in. So one of the things that you can do is you can sign out just of the App Store and sign into another one there, but your iCloud account for the phone can be different. So you want to sign out of everything, right? So sign out, sign out of the iCloud account at the top of the settings, sign out of the App Store, and then on each one sign in. And the other thing to do would be to open up a browser and go to iCloud.com and see what settings it says in there, because that’s like the single source of truth. That’s like the knowing exactly which— what Apple thinks the name of the account is, and maybe changing the settings there as well. Okay, yeah, all right, I can try that. That’s the best advice I can give you right now, mate.

[00:33:21] Michael: Okay, well, how come— and, and the picture doesn’t change either? Like, actually, I can’t change the picture.

[00:33:26] Trevor: Well, that, that’s, that’s a profile setting on your iCloud. So you should just be able to go to your, uh, and again, it might be useful to do it on your computer as opposed to on a phone. So if you go to that as well, yeah, and you change the photo, it doesn’t update, or does it revert back?

[00:33:46] Michael: Okay, I’ll try it. And when you go on your, um, if you get your MacBook or, and you sign into icloud.com, yeah, and you go into the settings and you go change my profile picture, yeah, there’s no profile picture in there.

[00:33:59] Trevor: Well, that’s why I think signing out of all the devices and then going browse your device on your Mac for a new image so that it finds an image that is suitable to you and then saving it on the computer. So you see that it’s there and you’ve got it— it’s probably all updated there and then sign in on your phone and try and see if the same image is reflected. Okay. I’ll sign out of all the devices. The other thing you can do on the web through iCloud.com is you can sign out of all other browsers as well, so that you know that there’s no other place where you’re logged in or anything like that.

[00:34:35] Michael: Okay, yeah, all right, I’ll try that. I’ve been to the Apple Store and they couldn’t help me either. Wow, that’s rubbish. And they sent me the— I went to the shop store and they couldn’t help me. And then, you know, you get a callback from an engineer.

[00:34:51] Trevor: Yes, yes.

[00:34:52] Michael: I’ve been going on— I’ve been gone for 2 months and they still can’t fix my problem.

[00:34:56] Trevor: All right, we’ll do this. Do the mass sign out. All right, the bulk sign out, and then see whether or not that has any effect.

[00:35:04] Michael: Okay, I’ll do that today then. I’ll sign out on all of my devices.

[00:35:08] Trevor: All right, buddy, good luck.

[00:35:09] Michael: I even, I even, um, wiped my whole phone and put the cloud back on, and that didn’t work either.

[00:35:14] Trevor: Oh Jesus. I reset my phone.

[00:35:17] Michael: I reset the whole phone again. I deleted the whole phone and then reset it again, and that didn’t work.

[00:35:26] Trevor: That’s wild. You’ve got some freaky stuff going on, my friend. Let me know how you go, buddy.

[00:35:31] Michael: All right, I’ll let you go.

[00:35:33] Trevor: Thank you for your help today. No, no, we’ll do our best, mate. Hope it goes all right. All right, cool. Thank you. Cheers, buddy. Thanks for getting in touch. I don’t know, that’s a tough one, um, because I get the conflict. I’ve had it where— so for example, mine is like the emoji me, and I don’t love that, but there is also a photo of me kind of listening listed on the iCloud. Um, now I’m trying to think, how do I update mine? If I go to personal information on my account, um, like, I don’t want to change the photo, but the poster I’ve got is completely different to what the photo is. Um, so yeah, not quite sure how that’s continually happening for the great man, but anyway, maybe the mass bulk sign out could have some effect for him. We shall wait and see. Good luck, buddy.

[00:36:27] 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.

Mark Fenson (HP) — AI PCs, neural processing, and the laptop market

[00:36:41] Trevor: Great to have your company. And if you want to get in touch, as we say, 0477 657 657. If you’re in the market for something, then give us a call. We’ll try and help you buy. Guide you through the buying process because it’s a nightmare out there. There’s a lot of products in every category, from TVs to mobile phones to computers. There’s always a lot to consider, and every single person is different. And unfortunately, when you go to a retail store, you might get swayed one way or another based on, well, the retail store’s own personal decisions rather than what actually suits you. So happy to help wherever I can. Speaking of buying laptops, big market— what about that for a segue? My next guest is from HP. Mark Fenson joins me. Uh, mate, great to be with you.

[00:37:22] Mark Fenson (HP): Great to see you, Trevor. Welcome back to our great, great shore.

[00:37:25] Trevor: Yeah, I know, I’ve been traveling a bit, but we caught up before I went away, and that’s why I wanted to have this conversation, because some, just some weird things crossed my mind during our conversation when HP was spending some time just running through the new AI PC lineup. And I guess I kind of found myself learning a lot when I thought I knew already what an AI PC was. So for example, the one thing I want to throw at you early is I felt like when— and I was at the launch of Copilot Plus in Seattle, and it was exciting, you know, we’ve got this new generation of PC category with, you know, all these tops of processing power and neural processing. It’s all very exciting, right? And I went, well, if you want good AI, you’re going to need a great neural processor. But what you demonstrated to me was, yep, that’s excellent. It does a lot of great legwork. But actually, the power of the PC is still in the CPU and the GPU. That’s doing the legwork. Doesn’t matter whether you’re playing a game or doing AI functions.

[00:38:31] Mark Fenson (HP): That’s exactly right, mate. And Intel’s just released their latest Core i3 series processor, and there’s different varieties there. But again, can be quite confusing. But you’re quite right. Whenever you start looking at what your overall PC wants to do for you. You need to look at a good CPU, a good GPU, graphics processing unit, and include a neural processing unit. We can have an AI PC that has a smaller size neural processing unit, or as you said, a Copilot Plus next-gen AI PC which has 40+ TOPS, and that’s trillions of operations per second on the neural processing unit. But you need a good combination of all three. Most AI tasks now, like, there’s been such a big float of AI being sort of, what is it actually going to do for me? But now we’re really starting to see it come into the forefront for general day-to-day users. And as I showed to you at the HP Hotel, showing you what you can do, but it doesn’t all use the neural processor, it doesn’t all use the GPUs, it uses a good combination of all three. And that’s what you’re looking for when you’re looking for a good CPU, plus of course the memory and the hard drive does. That comes down to what your requirements are for what software you’re doing. But the CPU comes into all aspects of that. Now, the Neural Process Unit— what does it actually do? Well, it’s there to design to do AI tasks in a low-power state. So this is great for things that are going to be running security in the background. That’s not going to take away your resources from your GPU or your CPU. It’s just going to run in low power. So it’s not going to have 2 hours of battery life and you’re not in the daily use that you want. These new CPUs can have anywhere between 22 to 33 sort of hours of use. So we’re really seeing a huge jump due to that neural process unit.

[00:40:14] Trevor: And it’s fascinating ’cause one of your colleagues was showing a demo doing some stuff in Adobe Premiere, which I use a bit for video editing, but way more advanced stuff like, you know, cutting out a person and putting text behind them and some really amazing things which we see now are possible. And there was a lot of people might have seen over the years on their computer, you can bring up like a graph that shows you how much CPU is being used. And so there was like these 4 graphs. And man, I’m staring at him doing all this work going, the NPU, the neural processing unit, which I’d been trained to think was the thing doing cool AI stuff, was just flatline. It wasn’t doing anything. And the GPU was going off its head trying to, you know, create this work and do these amazing things and doing it with ease. And what he explained to me was, it’s as you just said, it’s that balance between, you know, trying to understand what you need now versus your battery life versus is this a task that can just be done in the background, because if it can be done in the background, the NPU might be perfect for it and just throttle away and do its thing and then give you the results or the answer or the outcome of whatever command it is. Whereas something that’s happening in your actual workflow, in your daily workflow, whether it’s processing a video or a photo or something cool that a piece of AI software does, can use the GPU and get it done for you. And that’s, I think that’s a really powerful distinction for people who are thinking, because a laptop is something you buy for the next 5 years. Like, this is a device I’m going to hold on to. So what— I don’t know what I’m going to be doing in 5 years from now. So actually talking about the power of the GPU and what Intel’s doing is just as important. Absolutely.

[00:41:49] Mark Fenson (HP): And prime example is your podcast right now. We’re recording this through Teams. And say that you want to edit this later or you want to just put a transcript of this whole conversation. You can have that transcribed through the NPU and it can sit in the background and run as long as it likes. You don’t need it instantaneous, but you could then go and use other parts of your PC using the CPU and GPU, and you’re not taking those resources away from those other tasks that you want to do. If you want it done very quickly, the GPU is probably where you’ll go, because when you start comparing this TOPS number, you’ve got about 50 to 80 TOPS in the Neural Processing Unit, but you’ve probably got 120 or 100 or so. Or if you’ve got a dedicated graphics card, you could have up to thousands of TOPS sitting on the graphics card. So if I want something done instantaneously, like my Premiere Pro editing and things like that, I want that to be done through the GPU. If I want an answer through a large language model sitting on my device using something like Intel AI Playground, I want that instantaneously. So that’s where I’ll use the GPU. So I think the best AI is AI that you set and forget, or you do it, it just happens in the background. And this is where I want the computer to make the decision of what the task is, what I want to do. If I want to instantaneously use the GPU, if I wanted to run in the background with low power, use the CPU. It’s like when we started moving to Teams and we had background blurring and our battery would die very quickly because it was using the GPU. Now that uses the neural processor unit, we can have a low power state through our whole meetings.

[00:43:23] Trevor: It’s kind of like we needed everyone to catch up with what they were developing. You know, we had all this rush towards Zoom and Teams and then we had the AI stuff, but it wasn’t— I guess the software was built without knowing how to correctly channel its needs. And now software is being built to go, okay, where available do this and where available do that. But those decisions on both the software and hardware front are why we’re getting now laptops that have these just phenomenal battery life. Exactly.

[00:43:54] Mark Fenson (HP): And HP and Intel are doing a lot around focusing how they create the software that sits in the background that can run specifically to the processor that’s best for it. And you’re starting to see a huge shift in more and more ISVs starting to use the NPU. Use those extra tops that are sitting there. And that’s why sort of if you’re going to future-proof yourself, a next-gen AI PC is exactly the sort of— if you’ve got the budget to go there, absolutely move to those products because that’s where you’re going to get the future-proofing that will last you 5 years. Not to say that an AI PC that’s at a lower level tops is not going to be perfect for you. It can still do enough for having a neural processing unit that will do some of the dedicated tasks that’s required.

[00:44:34] Trevor: Is it as much in demand in the corporate world as it is in retail for consumers, or is there a vast difference between the buying decisions that are being made there?

[00:44:46] Mark Fenson (HP): Definitely, I think commercial’s now starting to click into it because it’s your, if you can have 10.5 hours of Teams calls all day and having 3×3 video walls and your battery’s not gonna die, that’s perfect. I’m not designed to do 10.5 hours of Teams calls all day, but that’s just me. But people do do that and you don’t want your battery dying. You don’t want to have that full day of work, whatever your workload does. So absolutely, commercial is now starting to see it really start to drive to that neural processing unit, and you’re starting to see more and more security software, particularly commercial security software, running that neural processing unit because it’s low power. It can kick into using a CPU or GPU when it is required, but if it can sit in the background using low power, it’s perfect for that always-on security type of stuff.

[00:45:33] Trevor: What’s the challenge in retail for the consumer market when it’s such a busy space? Like there’s so many brands in this space, there’s such a wide variety of price points. And look, I said directly to one of your competitors recently, I said, I think that Apple’s move into that, you know, sub-$1,000 mark really shook the laptop market up in a good way. But how do you compete? In that space? How do you compete? Because you have such a wide portfolio. What is it that sells HP in a retail store to a consumer?

[00:46:06] Mark Fenson (HP): And I’ll go back to my days of when I used to work in a Harvey Norman store many, many, many years ago. But you’d have the parents coming in with a budget this big and the kids that are now getting down to kindergarten and say, we want a computer this big that has a budget this big. And that’s some of the biggest problems that you’re trying to balance between the kids wanting to play AAA title games and having the biggest budget they could possibly imagine with mum and dad trying to go, well, we also need a printer with this, we also need this. So that’s probably one of some of the biggest challenges of walking in and it can be quite confusing. But you are getting that space of that entry-level consumer space now. Then you’re really defining sort of those thin and light devices, next-gen AI PCs that premium space. And then gaming has really come out of its shell and really started to take hold that there is a large differentiation between that entry space, that ultra space, and now that gaming space. And it really does show that. I think it’s a little clearer now in my sort of sense that you can see exactly which budget you can suit to and what you can get from that. And you’re starting to see Intel release the new X7, X9 chips, which have onboard graphics that can rival a dedicated graphics card.

[00:47:20] Trevor: So you’re really getting that. You showed one of those with like running Formula 1 or something on a laptop and I was like, hang on a minute, this thing’s running on, not even on a discrete graphics card. That’s it.

[00:47:30] Mark Fenson (HP): It’s running the X7 integrated graphics and it was running F1 25 at around 100 frames per second matching a previous gen dedicated graphics card. So this is in a small CPU GPU integrated sort of solution matching a discrete graphics card. So running on less power and just performing really, really well and being able to play those AAA titles.

[00:47:53] Trevor: Yeah, I mean, I love the space and but it is a, it is a multi-year decision whether it’s a school kid’s laptop. Like I said to my kids, they, I think they got laptops in like year 5 or 6 thinking about high school and now they’re in year 9, 10. So they lasted 4 years. And for a kid, their first laptop, that’s pretty good. But I said to them both, listen, this is the last laptop I’m buying you. I don’t want to break it to you. Like, I don’t know if you’re going to go to uni. I might buy you one in uni, but they are— it’s a long-term decision you buy. And I feel like also one of the other confusing parts of the laptop market over recent years has become the processor, because it used to just be, hey, it’s got Intel inside and that was it. But it’s a super competitive space now where, you know, all the brands have multiple processors, but it’s not really a difficult decision because they will all do the same broad things. There’s not really one thing that one CPU does that another doesn’t. It’s more about the fundamentals of actually how does it impact its battery life and what are you, what are you going to do with the device, which has always been the first question.

[00:48:58] Mark Fenson (HP): It is. And I’ve come from the workstation space where you’re designing cars, you’re designing F1 Ferraris with it. And they were always the first question I have asked is, what software are you trying to run on this? And sometimes when you see the software, it gives you the minimum specs, but the minimum specs are just going to give you a minimum performance type of thing. You need to decide what is the workflow that’s going to happen on this. Are your kids going to go into Premiere Pro and need large hard drive spaces and great GPU performance? Um, but you’re right, it’s— you’re completely right. And this is where, uh, I know my kids when they were in primary school, high school, they’d throw the bag across the room and go and run off and play with their mates. And you’re starting to see some of our workstation class sort of engineering coming to our consumer-grade devices with military-grade specs. This is a US standard for the military to purchase consumer commercial devices. And we now do that in our consumer range across our OmniBook 7 and X range. So you’re getting that sort of commercial type of business-grade security slash reliability/sturdiness. Now coming into our consumer devices because that’s what we want to do. We want our kids to be able to treat these like kids do and we want them to have it for 3 to 5 years depending on what it is. And that is exactly how businesses are looking at their IT investments as well.

[00:50:19] Trevor: You also mentioned how kids have a bigger shopping list than parents often. My other message to parents is you’re the one paying for it. So just remember, and again, I said that to my kids. I said, listen, we’ve got more Xboxes in our house than the average home, so be thankful. So the device I’m buying you is not to play games, it’s to get your schoolwork done. And unfortunately, those are the tough times as a parent. Sometimes you’ve got to go, buddy, no, I’m not buying you a gaming laptop. Because also, a gaming laptop, while it can also do all your schoolwork, there’s a couple of problems. You know, it might not meet those durability requirements that you have for that backpack. And it also might be heavy. And there’s a bunch of reasons why gaming laptops are gaming laptops. So sometimes parents have got to play the game of being a parent and going, actually, we’re here with a budget. Let’s find the best one we can buy. So, you know, standing in a retail store, there’s nothing better really. I still do it. I’m sure you still do. You walk in there and you go, you pick up all the different laptops and there’s a different feel to every laptop. That’s what’s fun about being in the market for something like that. But your message is really know the capabilities that you need before you walk into the store. Yeah.

[00:51:26] Mark Fenson (HP): And of course, the ultra-premium are going to be thin, light, have a great CPU. But do you have the budget to go to that level? And what we’re seeing now is with all the developments around AI and data centers around the world, we are seeing a constraint on RAM. RAM, hard drives, CPUs around the world. And this is affecting commercial and consumer. And we need to be mindful that going in to just buy a notebook these days isn’t a simple plan. The budgets have started to stretch further. The devices are getting slightly more expensive and we need to be mindful of that when we walk into our retail stores.

[00:52:03] Trevor: And you mentioned price. This is a problem for the market. You know, the price of memory, the price of computing technology has unfortunately been driven up by the AI data centre rush, and that’s not going to turn around anytime soon, is it? Even though there might be some pretty good deals around now, end of financial year, it’s not suddenly going to be amazing. In fact, it’s probably a reason to look now than later in the year.

[00:52:26] Mark Fenson (HP): Absolutely. And there’s some great deals out there with a lot of the retail partners and our HP online store. It really, again, as you said, walking in with the right mindset that this is the budget and this is my wiggle room if I want to go a little bit further for something else. But you need to be very conscious of all these challenges that are happening at the moment.

[00:52:47] Trevor: It’s an exciting time because I genuinely, and I mean, I think I said this to your team, I was blown away by some of those demonstrations you gave us because it made me realize that you probably, I probably overthought the AI part of the PC and not really understood what Intel had suddenly brought to the table with their latest generation and that integrated graphics and the performance that you can get from something like that. So it’s a pretty cool time to be doing stuff. It’s a pretty cool time to be you because you get to muck around with cool things and find not just the capabilities, but the limits of these devices, which are pretty hard to find, I’m guessing, mate.

[00:53:24] Mark Fenson (HP): Oh mate, and I’m so glad you took that away from our event because that’s the exact experience we were trying to do, that you went from— this is the consumer room that I was in showing you what a general user— now I’m not saying I’m a master at AI, but I was able to show content creation. I have little musical talent and I was able to rip a song into 4 different instrumental, bass, drums, vocals very quickly and easily. Able to turn AI from a picture into a moving video and really being able to show what consumers can now do. And this is where AI is going to be fantastic. It starts to take away the mundane in your work life to make you more creative and think differently about the other aspects of your business and be far more productive in that space. And that’s what we were really trying to do with that event is to show how, yes, there’s so much fluff about AI, but there’s so much more that is now in your hands of every user.

[00:54:19] Trevor: I feel the fluff existed because we wanted to make people think about AI, and now we’re finding the reasons we can cut through those fluffy moments and actually give demonstrations to people, which is super exciting. Mate, great time to be in your space, and really appreciate the explanation for folks.

[00:54:35] Mark Fenson (HP): No problems at all, mate. I hope that was easily explained for everyone. Always, always.

[00:54:40] 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. Thank you for listening.

[00:54:55] Trevor: Great to have your company once again. And as I always say, I’d love to hear from you, um, wherever you’re listening. Just give me— let’s get in touch, let’s talk tech. Uh, you got something new, you’re in the market for something, we just want to talk about something you’ve seen on the internet. Let’s just shoot the breeze. You don’t have to have a problem, you don’t have to have a question, you could just bring something to the table, if you know what I mean. I’m happy, there’s no drama, bring it on. Send us a text, producer Rob will get in touch with you on the show. Love to hear from you at any time, any day, and we’ll try and line you up for a chat on the show. Thanks for listening. Let’s do it all again soon. Next week, in fact, we’ll talk to Chris Meyer from Hisense and take more of your calls.

[00:55:35] VOICE OVER: This is the EFTM podcast.