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From styling your hair to drying your socks — 5 ways to use your portable fan in between heatwaves

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support A handheld electric fan makes a huge difference during summer heatwaves, but there's no need to stash it away in a drawer when the weather cools down. Whether you need an ad-hoc hair styler or a quick way to cool your kids' dinner without blowing on it, your mini fan can be your best friend. Great fans don't have to be expensive, either. I recently tested five portable fans from across the price spectrum , and the most expensive model was outranked by a humble model costing a fifth of the price. 1. Drying your hair When reviewing the Dyson HushJet Mini Cool Fan , I noted that "even on the lowest setting, you can really feel it; dial it up to maximum and it’s as powerful as some hairdryers I’ve used" — and it seems some fan-owners follow that thought to its natural conclusion, using their portable coolers to help dry and style their locks...
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‘Never get blindsided by an empty battery’: I was pleased with the OnePlus Nord CE5's performance and camera, but its battery life is the part that truly impressed me in real-world testing

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support OnePlus Nord CE5 review: two-minute review The OnePlus Nord CE5 is an affordable yet premium-feeling handset that punches way above its weight. Although its successor, the CE6, has launched in some markets, OnePlus has confirmed that it and future handsets will no longer sell in the UK. So, in lieu of a newer version, is the CE5 still worth your consideration? The OnePlus Nord CE5’s design certainly doesn’t make it look bargain basement, but it doesn’t feel super luxe either. While it’s pleasantly tactile under your fingertips, there’s no confusing its plastic edges for metal, and I’m not totally bowled over by the pearlescent effect on the Marble Mist colorway. However, I will grant that it feels solidly made and its vertical camera module looks pretty neat when so many handsets’ lenses look like they’ve been grafted on by Dr. Frankenstein. Although it’s not...

I'm an Apple Watch die-hard — here are my picks for the 10 best Apple Watch faces of 2026 so far

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support Apple makes some of the best smartwatches you can buy in 2026, especially if you're already an existing iPhone or MacBook user and embedded in Apple's ecosystem. In many ways, the Apple Watch is Apple's most personal device, sitting right on your wrist, with plenty of color and band options – not to mention loads of different watch faces to pick from. The face you pick is where the fun really starts, as it can make the same watch feel sporty, traditional, playful, or completely different from one day to the next. I tend to favour simpler, less complicated faces that make the time easy to read without cramming the screen with data, all of which is still available inside various apps. But I've included all sorts here. From my daily-driver Flux face to Snoopy’s wonderfully unpredictable animations, these are the 10 Apple Watch faces I’d recom...

Xenoblade Chronicles 2's Nintendo Switch 2 edition could have been perfection — but unending menus left me burning with rage like Pyra

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support I made the original Nintendo Switch my opportunity to experience a wider breadth of the titles in the Japanese company’s repertoire; moving past simply the latest Super Mario or Legend of Zelda story and into the entries I only knew about through Super Smash Bros. Among this list of experiments was Xenoblade Chronicles 2 . My complete lack of knowledge about the first game thankfully didn’t hold me back (outside of a not overly important detail in the ending) from mastering the Blades-based combat system and finishing Rex and Pyra’s quest. Unfortunately, the melodramatic story, staccato cutscenes, and some general tediousness to side-quests and menu management meant I exited the Xenoblade franchise; content with what I had sampled but with no desire to order a second course. Despite that initial assessment, the series and this game specifically have re-...

I stopped writing careful ChatGPT prompts and rambled at it for 10 minutes instead — the results changed how I use AI

Web Hosting & Remote IT Support I've often treated ChatGPT as though a poorly worded prompt might break it. I'd think about what I wanted to ask, rewrite it a couple of times, remove anything that sounded irrelevant, and essentially do half the chatbot's work in my head before ever submitting a prompt. Recently, I've discovered that some people succeed with the complete inverse of that strategy. Instead of polishing every sentence, they simply talk, and keep talking. They switch on ChatGPT's advanced voice mode , start rambling, and let whatever happens to be bouncing around inside their head spill out for several minutes without interruption. I was curious to try out simply thinking out loud and letting ChatGPT sort through the mess afterward. Rambling AI (Image credit: OpenAI) The point was to say everything I was thinking, so I promised not to endlessly edit myself, ...