Computers, Laptops & Tablets

    Welcome July! In this month of beach time, trail rides, and camping in the great outdoors, take a minute to look through what’s new at Best Buy.

 For me, summer has always meant travel. Whether it’s on a much-needed vacation or an extended summer road trip to visit friends and family, I just tend to want to be on the move and explore a bit more when the weather is hotter. And as a rabid gamer and online addict, I always bring my laptop with me wherever I go, which means I usually also have a bag of accessories in tow. So, just what are my five laptop travel essentials? Read on and find out.

Why would you buy a gaming laptop? If your idea of playing games on your PC is Candy Crush, then you wouldn’t. But if your idea of fun is piloting a 24-foot tall Titan or taking on a Zerg swarm and you want to do it on the go (or in the smallest space possible), then you want a gaming laptop. These mobile PCs are small enough to serve as a compact all-in-one PC gaming rig, but also offer the advantage of portability. They will dramatically outperform a typical laptop or Ultrabook when it comes to video games because they are designed with one thing in mind: speed.

Windows 10 Creators Update makes multitasking and shifting between applications a lot faster than before. The cogs that run the Windows machine have been greased and the performance gains and improvements, which also benefit gamers, can only be a good thing for all types of users.

It’s tax season, and while we at TurboTax adore this time of year as we get to help millions of Canadians get their taxes done right, we know that most people don’t get quite as giddy as we do about taxes. We’ve compiled a list of the top five burning questions you had for us during our recent #taxtalk Twitter chat with the Best Buy team. We hope they help you better understand your taxes.   

Now that Microsoft is offering a version of its ubiquitous Office productivity suite for the iPad, Apple’s tablets are even closer to being a device that can be used for getting serious work done. Mouse support and multi-window functionality in a future iOS version would be nice, but with a decent Bluetooth wireless keyboard, an iPad does a pretty good job these days. I took one of the best-known iPad keyboard solutions for a test run and was impressed by just how good the experience can be. The ZAGGkeys Folio not only offers a compelling Bluetooth keyboard, but it mounts it in a clamshell enclosure that transforms the iPad into an ultra-portable laptop. How well does the ZAGGkeys Folio work? I wrote this post (over 1,000 words) using a ZAGGkeys Folio and my iPad Mini with Retina Display and it was virtually as fast as my usual PC-based writing setup.  

Summer may be around the corner, but you can’t always say the same thing about your Wi-Fi. And with the warm weather on its way, it’s time to think about getting a strong Wi-Fi signal into your backyard.