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20 Mar 2025

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NZ writers encouraged to apply for Shanghai residency
The eight-week stay in China is open to mid-career or established writers with a publishing record.

Non-Pharmac-funded drug insurance comes with limits
Insurance advisers need to understand that most insurers will only cover non-Pharmac-funded cancer drugs if they have been approved by Medsafe and also indicated as treatment for the specific type of cancer their client develops.

Is USB or Thunderbolt better for portable SSDs? The key differences, explained
I could spoil this entire article and tell you right off the bat which high-speed bus protocol you should be looking at for you current and future external storage needs… But where’s the fun in that? If you need an answer right away, simply scroll to the bottom and grab your instant gratification. Otherwise, educate yourself with this quick treatise on the various high-speed external protocols that are available, as well as their respective strengths and weaknesses. 10Gbps USB (USB 3.2) So, have we really come so far that a 10Gbps/1GBps transfer rate seems quaint? I’d say, yes, at least from the perspective of a long-time storage reviewer. Nevertheless, for small amounts of data, a 1GBps transfers rate is still going to get the job done quickly enough. SK Hynix 10Gbps Tube T31 SSDJon L. Jacobi And, of course, for a lot less cash than the 20Gbps/40Gbps options. If capacity means more to you than top performance, then 10Gbps USB (or even 5Gbps if you really don’t care about speed) could be the way to go. Best Usb 3.2 external drive Crucial X9 Pro Read our review Best Prices Today: $95 at Amazon 20Gbps USB (USB 3.2×2) This protocol offers fast 20Gbps transfers, but it’s the odd duck of the bunch. It will work on normal USB ports at reduced 10Gbps/5Gbps speed, but a dedicated and not particularly common 3.2×2 port (sometimes referenced at 20Gbps) is required to attain the promised 2GBps transfers. Another downside is that unlike USB4, USB 3.2×2 will not function at its full 20Gbps on most Thunderbolt 3 or 4 ports, instead dropping to 10Gbps — the rate of most native USB implementations. Thunderbolt passes through USB to the system. That speed drop afflicts all new Apple Silicon Macs. I was sorely disappointed when I found out that my more-than-fast-enough 20Gbps USB SSDs transferred at half speed on my otherwise stellar-performing Mac Studio. Crucial’s 20Gbps X10 ProJon L. Jacobi On the plus side, 20Gbps USB SSDs run cooler, use less juice than their 40Gbps counterparts, and still gets things transferred pretty darn quickly. The price of USB 3.2×2 SSDs has dropped some recently, due to USB4 showing up, but they’re still not as affordable as a 10Gbps SSDs. best usb 3.2×2 External drive Lexar SL600 20Gbps USB SSD Read our review Best Prices Today: $129.99 at B & H Photo | $150.24 at Amazon Thunderbolt While Thunderbolt has been the de facto high-speed port on Macs for well over a decade now, it’s not nearly as widespread on Windows PC platforms. Largely that’s because it’s pricier to implement than USB thanks to royalties and greater power delivery. That goes for both motherboards and drives. Thunderbolt is certainly more common than it once was, but it’s hardly ubiquitous on the Windows side of the pond. Here are the various flavors you might run across. Thunderbolt 1/2: These older versions with Mini-DisplayPort connectors and 10Gbps/20Gbps transfer rates are only found on legacy equipment, though you can connect newer Type-C Thunderbolt peripherals to these ports and vice versa using Apple’s Thunderbolt adapter. There are others, but check the specs carefully — some don’t connect 1/2 to 3/4/5, only vice versa. My advice? Stick with newer Thunderbolt 3/4/5 peripherals and use the adapter. Or perhaps upgrade your computer. Glyph Atom Pro SSD Jon L. Jacobi Thunderbolt 3: This version of the technology doubled bandwidth to 40Gbps and was the first version to use the Type-C connector. The latter confused just about everyone, as USB switched to this connector around the same time. Thankfully, Thunderbolt 3 tunnels USB so you may attach USB peripherals to a Thunderbolt port, if not the other way around. Thunderbolt 3 can achieve around 3GBps during transfers on most computers sporting the technology. It’s also getting cheaper as the industry moves on to Thunderbolt 4/5. Thunderbolt 4: 40Gbps Thunderbolt 4 was more a certification update than a change in the technology. Intel found that vendors weren’t implementing all of Thunderbolt 3’s features all the time. Thunderbolt 4 made implementing the entire stadard mandatory if you wanted to use the name and logo. Thunderbolt 5: Version 5 doubles version 3/4’s 40Gbps storage bandwidth to 80Gbps. You may see 120Gbps mentioned in slides, but that’s downstream only to drive displays. Thunderbolt 5 also delivers significantly more power across the bus at 240W as opposed to Thunderbolt 3/4’s 100 watts and the mere 9.9 watts of 1/2. This makes Thunderbolt 5 the go-to for power users with power hungry storage peripherals — e.g., a RAID box. OWC’s 80Gbps Envoy Ultra Thunderbolt 5Jon L. Jacobi But wait… There’s a caveat! While Thunderbolt 5’s specs sound spectacular and it benchmarks great, it hasn’t shown a significant impact on real-world performance in our real-world large file transfers. Also, the doubled bandwidth does nothing to speed random performance, which is far more about seek time than raw throughput. So it won’t run an operating system appreciably faster than an older Thunderbolt 3/4 SSD. USB4 As you may or may not be aware, USB4 is basically a version of Thunderbolt 4 that was donated to the USB Forum by Intel. Hence there’s an awful lot in common including the up-to-40Gbps transfers. The ace up USB4’s sleeve is far greater compatibility. While you can’t attach Thunderbolt peripherals to older 1/2/3.x USB ports, you can attach USB4 peripherals to those ports with every expectation of them operating. Of course, only at the maximum speed of the older port — but hey, better slower than not at all! Also, the shared heritage means you can attach a USB4 peripheral to a Thunderbolt 3/4/5 port and have it work at its best speed: 20Gbps on Thunderbolt 3 and 40Gbps on the other two. Adata’s 40Gbps SE920 USB4 SSDJon L. Jacobi If almost complete compatibility weren’t enough, USB4 seems to be coming to market at a lower price point than Thunderbolt 3/4/5. Adata’s uber-fast SE920 is roughly $125 per terabyte, about par with no-name Thunderbolt 4/5 SSDs. Alternatively, you can grab a USB4 enclosure such as UGreen’s CM642 for less than $100 and add your own NVMe SSD. Note that there is an 80Gbps USB4 2.0 in the works (of course there is!), but we haven’t seen an implementation yet. best usb4 external drive Adata SE920 USB4 SSD Best Prices Today: $179.99 at Amazon USB4 for the win! If you just read all of the above, it shouldn’t surprise you that I’m giving the nod to USB4. It’s very fast, compatible with just about every computer and device on the planet, and more affordable than Thunderbolt. The only exceptions to that recommendation would be 5/10Gbps USB if you need something super cheap, or Thunderbolt 5 if you want absolute top performance and have the software and hardware to take advantage of it. Further reading: Best external drives

Neighbours star Ian Smith 'defying odds' after cancer treatment
The actor, who played Harold Bishop in the Australian TV soap, says treatment "seems to be working".

Acer Swift Go 14 AI review: Boring looks, brilliant battery life
At a glanceExpert's Rating Pros Sharp, bright display Enjoyable keyboard Respectable CPU performance Long battery life Cons Drab design IPS display can’t match OLED in contrast or color Mediocre integrated graphics performance Our Verdict The Acer Swift Go 14 AI is a competent Snapdragon-powered laptop with long battery life, but it doesn’t stand out from the crowd. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chips turned heads in 2024 thanks to their combination of great CPU performance and battery life. However, as the months have passed, they’ve become important for another reason: they’ve put serious downward pressure on the pricing of budget and mid-range laptops. The Acer Swift Go 14 AI is a solid Qualcomm-powered laptop with a good mix of performance and battery life. However, it faces competitors that offer more for less. Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Specs and features The Acer Swift Go 14 AI has a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus processor, specifically the X1P-42-100. It also has 16GB of RAM and 1TB of solid-state storage—a respectable but typical, configuration for a laptop priced around $1,000. Model number: SFG14-01-X006 CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus (X1P-42-100) Memory: 16GB LPDDR5x-8448 Graphics/GPU: Qualcomm Adreno NPU: Qualcomm NPU up to 45 TOPS Display: 14.5-inch 2560×1600 120Hz IPS Storage: 1TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD Webcam: 1440p 30fps camera with physical privacy shutter, dual array microphone Connectivity: 2x USB-C 4 with DisplayPort and USB Power Delivery, 2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, 1x 3.5mm combo audio jack Networking: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 Biometrics: Fingerprint reader in power button Battery capacity: 75 watt-hours Dimensions: 12.6 x 8.9 x 0.7 inches Weight: 2.91 pounds Operating System: Windows 11 Home Extra features: USB-C to HDMI adapter Price: $999 MSRP from Acer, roughly $837 retail at Best Buy Acer lists the laptop at $999, which is a bit much for what the laptop offers. However, the laptop is often discounted at Best Buy and more competitive when sold for around $850 or less. The Acer Swift Go 14 AI is currently available in just one configuration, which is the model I reviewed. The Acer Swift Go 14 AI is a competent mid-range laptop. It benefits from excellent battery life, an enjoyable keyboard, and a bright, high-resolution IPS display. Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Design and build quality IDG / Matthew Smith The Acer Swift Go 14 AI follows the company’s usual tactic of delivering a simple, competent, but generic chassis that doesn’t impress or offend. It has a grayish-silver exterior that’s attractive at a glance, and the materials provide a nice metallic luster that will at times catch the light in a room. Acer’s branding is minimal as well with only two small Acer logos on the display lid. However, the laptop’s design is a bit boxy and old-fashioned (though it’s not too thick at roughly 0.7 inches) and the materials used feel a bit thin. The display lid shows no flex when opening or closing the laptop, but the lower chassis wavers slightly when typing or picking up the laptop from a corner. The design is best described as functional. It does the job, but it doesn’t make an impression. Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Keyboard, trackpad IDG / Matthew Smith A spacious keyboard spans the Acer Swift Go 14 AI’s interior. It provides well-sized keys with only some left-side keys such as Tab, Caps Lock, and Shift, noticeably smaller than normal. Even so, they remain large enough that I didn’t have to adjust my muscle memory. Key travel is good and keys activate with an enjoyable spring and slight tactile click. The typing experience isn’t incredible, but it’s better than budget competitors like the Dell Inspiron 14 and Lenovo IdeaPad 5x. The touchpad is less impressive, but fine. It measures about five inches wide and three inches deep, which is the typical touchpad size for a 14-inch Windows laptop. It’s responsive, multi-touch gestures work well and the touchpad surface provides a physical click for right and left-click actions (though tap-to-click also works). However, most laptops in this category offer a nearly identical touchpad experience. Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Display, audio IDG / Matthew Smith Acer ships the Swift Go 14 AI with a 14.5-inch IPS display with a native resolution of 2560×1600 and a refresh rate up to 120Hz. Choosing an IPS display instead of an OLED display puts the Swift Go 14 AI at a disadvantage in image quality next to competitors like the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED. IPS has worse contrast and less vibrant color than OLED, which causes the display to look less dynamic and realistic. But that’s not to say the Swift Go 14 AI’s display is bad or even mediocre. It’s a competent, sharp, and colorful IPS screen that generally looks good even if it can’t match OLED. The Acer’s display is bright and has an anti-glare finish that makes the display more comfortable to view in a bright environment than competitive laptops with an OLED display. Whether the Swift Go 14 AI’s display makes sense will depend on your needs. A competitor with OLED will have better image quality in games and movies. However, the Swift Go 14 AI’s display has benefits in productivity and portability. Audio quality isn’t a strength of the Swift Go 14. It has downward-firing speakers that may sound muffled, depending on the surface the laptop is placed on. They’re not loud and lack low-end, which leads to muddy and often harsh sound. The speakers are fine for podcasts and most YouTube videos, but I wouldn’t recommend them for music, games, or movies. Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Webcam, microphone, biometrics The Acer Swift Go 14 AI ships with a 1440p webcam and dual-array microphone. Webcam resolutions up to 1440p aren’t hard to find in 2025, but if you’re coming from a slightly older laptop or comparing against a 1080p or 720p webcam, the Swift Go 14 AI’s camera will feel like a huge upgrade. It’s sharp and colorful. I found the dual-array microphone serviceable, too. It easily picked up my voice even when I spoke softly but also did a good job rejecting repetitive background noise. The audio quality is still hollow and distant, as typical for such microphones, but it’s fine for Microsoft Teams or Google Meet. Biometric login is provided by a fingerprint reader in the power button. I prefer facial recognition, but the fingerprint reader does the job. It works reliably in most situations but will be fooled if your fingertip is slightly damp or dirty (so don’t swig a Coke before you log in). Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Connectivity IDG / Matthew Smith A pair of USB-C 4 ports with DisplayPort and USB Power Delivery provide the bulk of the Acer Swift Go 14 AI’s connectivity. These ports are useful not only for data connections but are also used to charge the laptop and can connect to external displays. Both USB-C are on the left side, so keep that in mind if you want to connect a USB-C hub or dongle. Acer also provides a pair of USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports and a 3.5mm audio jack. The laptop lacks Ethernet and HDMI-out though, in the second case, Acer side-steps the lack of HDMI by including a USB-C to HDMI adapter in the box. Wireless connectivity is good, as the laptop supports both Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. These are the latest versions of each standard. I didn’t experience wireless connectivity issues in my time with the laptop. Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Performance The Acer Swift Go AI has a Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100 chip, which sits at the bottom of the Snapdragon X Plus line and is the second least performant Snapdragon X Plus chip overall. It has eight cores and a maximum single-core clock of 3.4GHz. The chip is paired with 16GB of LPDDR5x 8448 MT/s memory and 1TB of M.2 PCIe 4.0 solid state storage. IDG / Matthew Smith The Acer Swift Go 14 AI gets off to a reasonable start in Cinebench R24, though it depends on your perspective. It performs well among price-competitive systems and looks particularly good when compared to Intel Core Ultra chips, which fail to keep up in this heavily multi-threaded CPU benchmark. However, the Asus Zenbook S 15 underscores a problem the Swift Go 14 faces. That model has a better Snapdragon X Elite chip with 12 cores and the four extra cores provide a significant upgrade. That’s a problem for the Swift Go 14 because some laptops with the Snapdragon X Elite sell for as little as $800. IDG / Matthew Smith CPU core count isn’t the only way Qualcomm downgrades the Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100 relative to its more capable siblings. It also turns down the IGP performance with a quoted specification of 1.7 TFLOPs, down from 4.6 TFLOPs in the best Snapdragon X Elite chips. Unfortunately, that translates to a big decrease in GPU performance. The Acer Swift Go 14 AI scored just 16,179 in 3DMark Night Raid. That’s a large decrease from the Asus Zenbook S 15, which has a Snapdragon X Elite chip and scored 25,917. The Asus Vivobook S 14 with Intel Arc 140V graphics is over twice as quick in this benchmark. This is the Acer Swift Go 14 AI’s biggest weakness and it’s particularly weak against Intel-powered alternatives, as most in this price bracket will indeed have Intel Arc 130V or Arc 140V graphics. Put simply, I wouldn’t recommend the Swift Go 14 AI if you want to play recent 3D games or accelerate 3D productivity software. Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Battery life The Acer Swift Go 14 AI has a sizable 75 watt-hour battery. That’s towards the upper end of battery size for a 14-inch laptop. The large battery and efficient Qualcomm Snapdragon boost the laptop’s battery life to more than 19 hours in our standard battery test, which loops a 4K file of the short film Tears of Steel. IDG / Matthew Smith As the graph shows, the Swift Go 14 AI’s battery life doesn’t set records, but it does come in towards the high end of what’s typical for modern Windows laptops. I also saw great battery life in my day-to-day work, which includes a lot of time spent in Microsoft Word, Affinity Photo 2, and a web browser. Using the laptop for four hours drained the battery by about 30 percent. The laptop’s low power consumption means it only requires a 65-watt charger and the charger that ships with the laptop is quite small. Even so, you might feel comfortable leaving the charger at home. The Swift Go 14 AI charges over USB-C, so a wide variety of chargers can power it, including those that provide less than 65 watts (though charging will be slow and might not happen at all when the laptop is in use). Acer Swift Go 14 AI: Conclusion The Acer Swift Go 14 AI is a competent mid-range laptop. It benefits from excellent battery life, an enjoyable keyboard, and a bright, high-resolution IPS display. However, the Swift Go 14 AI’s value is hampered by the specific Snapdragon X Plus and the laptop’s $999 MSRP. While the chip is a fine performer in CPU tests, frequent discounts on laptops with Snapdragon X Elite chips like the Asus Vivobook S 15 make it difficult to recommend a similarly priced Snapdragon X Plus laptop If the Swift Go 14 AI dips below $800, however, it’s a good choice for people who need long battery life alongside decent CPU performance.