Mary Branscombe

Exercise your brain with these short, punchy and speculative stories about what technology might really mean for tomorrow.

If you can get past the apparent technophobia, this is a comprehensive look at what loneliness at work means and how better management can help.

Harber London’s Everyday Leather Briefcase is pricey but will last well and get you organized on the go.

This power bank charges quickly and its thin form factor makes it convenient to carry.

Managing remote desktops is complex: Parallels RAS 19 continues to offer a strong range of features, along with a friendly interface to help less experienced administrators.

A rather pricey and fiddly set of in-ear buds that will be worth it if they help you sleep, but not everyone will get on with them.

Clever as it is, I don’t quite get the point of the Surface Laptop Studio - but the hinge is what makes the Duo special

Hands-on with a case/dock combo that adds legacy ports to the Surface Pro 8, while making it more resilient for retail and industrial work.

A mix of new features help to improve productivity and level up Corel’s image-editing capabilities.

If every company is now a technology company, developers can have an outsized impact on company strategy with their technology choices.

No matter how much you already know about computer graphics, you’ll find something new in Alvy Ray Smith’s wide-ranging, anecdote-strewn book.

The ScoutPro is expensive and heavy, but also very powerful, with the ability to charge a range of devices at once.

Daniel G Graham’s book won’t help hackers who already have a wide range of tools to attack networks and devices. But it will help defenders who want to turn those techniques to more benevolent use.

Surface Go 3 is still a tiny, lightweight and affordable full Windows PC, but Windows 11 may not shine on it.

Microsoft Teams has audio transcription built in, but not everyone can use it. Otter has a more versatile alternative, although it may initially confuse some users.

This is a comprehensive air quality monitor with a handy display and wi-fi data sync that could enable automation.

The XDO Pantera Pico PC is a very small, portable system that performs like a cheap laptop and fits into a small space.

The familiar compression tool spawns three new utilities for managing images, PDFs and backups, and has a handy new multi-cloud view.

This provocative book is a passionate screed full of figures and fears, but falls short when it comes to offering solutions.

Few new features but fundamental improvements to key tools make the 2022 release of Painter a major step forward.