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Why pay full price for a new laptop or Smart TV when you can get one for a fraction of the cost?

Courtesy of our partners at TechBargains we have a selection of fantastic deals this weekend, with huge savings to tempt you. Offers include money off new PCs, televisions, electronics and components, and more. If you're in the market for a new laptop, you can save $80 off the price of a fantastic Dell Latitude 14 5000 business class laptop.

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When I want to stream locally stored media to my television, I turn to Plex. The popular service has apps for many devices such as Xbox One and Apple TV -- both of which I own. Heck, even my Samsung 4K TV has Plex support built in. Ultimately, the value of the service is found in both its ease of use and cross-platform support.

Never known to stand on its laurels, Plex is constantly improving, and today, it gets a really exciting new feature. Users of the service that are also owners of Amazon Echo or other compatible devices can now leverage the Alexa voice assistant to interact with Plex.

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In 2014, Apple introduced the first big iPhone, the iPhone 6 Plus. Since then, the company has offered a phablet version for each new incarnation of its hugely successful device. While Apple doesn't say how many buyers prefer it over the standard model, reports show that it accounts for a significant portion of sales.

In US, the Plus models have gained considerable traction, with Consumer Intelligence Research Partners saying that they made up 35 percent of the iPhone installed base as of 31 December 2016. And their popularity is growing, as a year prior that figure stood at 25 percent.

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The measure of Apple fiscal first quarter 2017 isn't record revenues ($78.35 billion) but comparison to major competitors: More than three times Google ($26.06 billion) or Microsoft ($24.1 billion). Amazon announces tomorrow, Groundhog Day. Will the retailer's CEO, Jeff Bezos, see his shadow? The 3x multiplier nearly applies to net income: $17.89 billion, versus $6.64 billion and $5.2 billion, respectively, for the two rivals. Looked at differently, compared to Apple's same quarter in fiscal 2010, seven years later, profits exceed total revenues ($15.68 billion). That's an astounding comparison.

The results defy pundits' prognostications, including my own, about gravity pulling the company back to Earth. iPhone, as major source of revenue, can only stay up for so long, before slowing smartphone sales wreck havoc. That said, credit where it's due: CEO Tim Cook is, as I've asserted before, a logistics and manufacturing genius. He is a strategist, but not an innovation leader like predecessor Steve Jobs. Cook masterfully manages his inheritance, but he, nor Apple observers, should get lost in the quarter's glow: iPhone remains boon and bane.

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After failing to participate in a taxi ban around John F Kennedy airport while protests against President Trump's travel ban went on, Uber found itself on the receiving end of a good deal of flak. The hashtag #DeleteUber spent a lengthy period trending on Twitter as people voiced their disapproval of what they see as a Trump-supporting company.

Irked Uber users who did not like the idea of the company seeming to profit from the refugee and immigration ban were not just flashing the #DeleteUber hashtag around, they were acting on it. But attempts to delete accounts led to frustration, with some people suggesting that Uber was blocking them from killing their account; this was not the case, and the company is speeding up the deletion process.

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Even after new mobile threats have been identified the number of devices in use means it can take time for patches to be rolled out to all users.

Mobile threat defense company Zimperium is hoping to tackle this problem with the launch of a $1.5 million bounty program to purchase N-day exploits which have been identified but are still usable on unpatched devices.

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Benchmarks are an important metric by which the performance of a given device can be measured. They provide a reliable means of determining whether one laptop, computer, phone or other device is faster than another -- at least that's the idea.

Tests performed by XDA Developers strongly suggest that OnePlus is using underhanded techniques to make the OnePlus 3T's Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 perform better in Qualcomm Trepn and Snapdragon Performance Visualizer tests. Analysis of results points to the fact that OnePlus is targeting benchmark apps by name, such as GeekBench, and is artificially boosting device performance when they are found to be running.

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If there's one thing that irks Twitter users (actually, there are many things, but stick with us...) it's the disorganized way in which information is scattered hither and thither. Keen to get users to break out of their timelines and see what else it out there, the Twitter app is undergoing a makeover.

The change means that the existing search, Moments, and trends are now combined into a single, more manageable Explore tab. It's a simple change, but one that will make life easier for Twitter explorers.

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Consumers in US and Europe haven't quite warmed up to wearables, according to a new report from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. Smartwatch adoption in both markets remains below the five percent mark, despite multiple models being available for a few years now.

This isn't exactly a surprising finding, because smartwatch sales are pretty bad. Depending on who you choose to believe, they were between 2.7 and 6.1 million units in the third quarter of last year (we're still waiting on the numbers for 2016 from the likes of IDC and Canalys). Apple Watch rules this space, but it is hardly a major market as you can see.

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Headphone manufacturers must make deliberate audio signature decisions when crafting cans. Some shops, like GradoLabs, adopt a house sound. Relative newcomer Master & Dynamic's design ethic seeks to equally please eyes and ears. As such, its flagship wired headphones (MH40) and wireless (MW60) share similar industrial design. Aluminum, lambskin, leather, and stainless steel combine in rugged style that evokes aviators of a bygone era. The newer MW50 Bluetooth headphones strongly resemble the other two, but they're tuned for younger listeners on the move.

M&D's earlier cans are over-ear—meaning they cover the lobes, while the MW50 rest on them. The headphones are smaller and lighter than either the MH40 or MW60, but with most of the overall benefits of the latter, including excellent wireless reception. On-ear headphones can be uncomfortable to wear and leak in too much ambient noise. The MW50 push past both typical limitations, which, honestly, surprises me. I personally don’t find the design to be as attractive as the over-the-ear cans. It’s about the ear cups, which function matters more, however. The lambskin-covered ear pads are immensely comfortable, and the MW50 arguably are better all-around-wear than their siblings. I would take them outdoors on a walk, for example.

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For Google, Chromebooks have not been quite the success the company was hoping for, firmly remaining a niche product. As part of a drive to boost popularity, the company announced last year that it planned to bring Android apps to Chromebook.

But there is, of course, the question of which Chromebooks this means: and now we know the answer. Google has published a list of devices that will support Android apps, as well as revealing that all new Chromebooks will have the feature.

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Following the release of flagship devices such as the iPhone 7 and Samsung Galaxy S7 in 2016, water resistant handsets are now the fastest growing segment in the smartphone industry. But, what does this mean for handset design in 2017?

Let's take a look at recent research from IDC and explain how hydrophobic nano-coating technology can support OEMs when looking to incorporate this increasingly sought after feature.

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As we enter the first part of the new year, we’re setting our resolutions (or perhaps already breaking them), and reflecting on 2016. We witnessed many highs and lows last year, and it seems it’s trendy right now to bemoan everything that happened. This is no different in the security world. We saw some of the biggest -- and highest profile -- breaches of all time (DMC and Yahoo, just to name a few) and nearly all of them involved compromised, weak or reused passwords.

Everyone can agree that passwords are no longer adequate for protecting information online: even the most complicated passcodes can be broken relatively swiftly with a sophisticated algorithm -- or a specially targeted spoofing email. In an attempt to combat this, companies have been adopting new approaches, like tokens, OTPs and multi-factor authentication -- but many experts are pointing to biometrics as the next big thing -- especially for industries rife with risk, like finance, healthcare and government.

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Two-hundred-and-fifteen in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps, games and extensions released for Windows 10 on Windows Store in the past seven days.

Another week, another Insider Build. Build 15014 introduces an ebook store, and ebook reading capabilities in Microsoft Edge among other things.

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HTC has a serious problem: it cannot deliver a flagship worth getting excited about. A while back, the company at least tried to do things differently, to get consumers talking, but lately it seems happy just to have a new high-end smartphone on the market -- even if everyone knows it's way behind the competition.

Last year's flagship, called HTC 10, was better than its most-recent predecessors, but it failed to stand out against devices like Apple's iPhone 6s and Samsung's Galaxy S7. So no one cared about it. This year's HTC U Ultra is no different -- it's probably the most uninspiring device in its segment. How disappointing.

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