Lenovo was one of the first manufacturers to really nail the Windows 8 hybrid with its folding Yoga concept, and the IdeaPad Yoga 2 is its cheapest expression yet. With its 11.6in touchscreen, it reprises the design of the £1,099 IdeaPad Yoga 11S, but slashes the price with a quad-core Pentium processor. See also: what's the best laptop you can buy in 2014?When is a Chromebook not a Chromebook? When it’s a Chromebook Pixel, of course. This is not, I admit, my finest attempt at humour, but it serves to illustrate a point: the latest Chromebook Pixel (which we're calling Chromebook Pixel 2, even though Google just gives it the old, numberless name) might technically be a Chromebook, but it’s a world apart from the rest of the field.

Like the original, the new Pixel is unashamedly luxurious – in terms of the way it looks, and the stares it draws when you pull it out in a meeting, the machine has more in common with hardware like the Apple MacBook, the 2015 Dell XPS 13 and the Microsoft Surface Pro 3.There isn’t a magic wand you can wave to fix low-quality MP3s, but there are ways to spruce up a scratchy-sounding music collection. The most obvious – and time-consuming – method is to simply re-rip your CDs at a higher quality. If your old CDs are scratched, that’s potentially fixable – applications such as Exact Audio Copy (www.exactaudiocopy.de) or dBpoweramp Another, slightly cheeky, method is to sign up for Amazon’s Cloud Player. The free service allows you to upload only 250 tracks for free, but if these tracks are in Amazon’s library, you’ll find your low-quality MP3s replaced by high-quality variable bit-rate MP3 versions, which you can stream online, or download to your PC with Amazon’s MP3 Downloader software. Apple’s iTunes Match does likewise for £22 per year.

Wish you could play music from your smartphone on your hi-fi without rummaging around for a cable? While newer hi-fi systems and components are beginning to embrace wireless music, it doesn’t cost much to add wireless audio streaming to even the most vintage of systems.If you want to beam music to your hi-fi from any Bluetooth-enabled device, then Harman Kardon’s BTA 10-EU serves up wireless audio streaming for £50. Simply plug it into any hi-fi with a spare audio input, connect to it with your smartphone or tablet, and you can stream local music tracks, or music from online streaming services such as Spotify, Google Play Music or SoundCloud without getting up from your armchair.

If you have more than messy audio cables on your mind, then Apple’s AirPort Express is an even more flexible option. This £79 device allows you to slash a sea of cables by extending a dual-band 802.11n network and sharing USB printers over the network. It also provides a combined analogue and digital audio output for high-quality audio streaming.All four of the UK’s mobile networks are now well into their 4G rollouts, and prices have fallen dramatically since EE first launched 4G in 2012. Is now the time to upgrade your smartphone?Fourth-generation mobile technology is referred to by the umbrella term 4G. All of the UK’s mobile networks run on the same 4G standard: Long-Term Evolution (LTE), which offers a significant speed increase over the 3G technologies we’ve been using for the past decade or so.

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It has a theoretical maximum download speed of around 300Mbits/sec and uploads at up to 75Mbits/sec, although actual network speeds are considerably slower than those headline figures.EE’s "double speed” 4G, which is available in around 20 cities at the time of writing, offers maximum download speeds of 60Mbits/sec and maximum uploads of 11Mbits/sec, although EE admits that the average download speed will be around 20Mbits/sec.At those speeds, 4G becomes a viable alternative to fixed-line connectionsThat’s still faster than what most people get on a fixed-line ADSL connection, and only about 12Mbits/sec slower than the average BT fibre-to-the-cabinet connection.At those speeds, 4G becomes a viable alternative to fixed-line connections. But there are significant drawbacks to relying on mobile broadband at home, not least the cost of the connection and the amount of data you’re allowed to download every month.

4G also paves the way for enhanced mobile services. On-demand video, which can still be a stuttering, low-resolution affair on 3G networks, is now a near-instantaneous experience on handsets that often boast
a resolution as high as your living-room television. Entire albums of music can be downloaded to a handset within seconds.Mobile working is a much more practical proposition, too, with networks capable of downloading – and, crucially, uploading – large files in a matter of seconds, and dealing with high-bandwidth services such as remote desktop access and videoconferencing. A laptop tethered to a 4G connection now delivers a near-identical experience to connecting to a fixed-line network over Wi-Fi.

What’s the fastest 4G network in the UK?This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Regulator Ofcom is testing the speed of mobile-broadband networks in the same way that it provides independent speed tests of fixed-line broadband providers, but its results aren’t due until the autumn.Network-analysis firm RootMetrics published the results of a nationwide mobile speed test earlier this year, in which EE was unequivocally declared to have the best mobile network for speed and reliability, but the validity of the tests has been called into question by the networks that didn’t fare so well.RootMetrics said its speed tests were collated from 840,000 samples taken using "off-the-shelf” Android handsets during the second half of 2013. However, Vodafone and O2 didn’t have their 4G networks live until late August 2013, and Three’s wasn’t operational until the end of the year. RootMetrics’ results make no distinction between the types of network tested, so it’s impossible to draw any conclusions about the relative performance of the 4G networks from its results.

Vodafone also questioned RootMetrics’ testing methodology, claiming its tests were carried out in "an inconsistent manner”. These accusations were denied by RootMetrics, which insisted that it "measured the network as it performed – the same way a consumer would experience it”.Vodafone suggested that those "looking for more robust research should be approaching more established researchers, such as Ookla, which is completely independent and uses hundreds of thousands of real, unbiased customers across the country for their results”. Alas, Ookla failed to respond to our requests for data on the performance of the UK’s 4G mobile networks.

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Ookla publishes the Net Index Explorer site, which displays the results of its speed tests in different geographical locations. Its results for London in April 2014 show that EE has the fastest average speed of any mobile network, at 13.2Mbits/sec. O2 achieves 7.2Mbits/sec and Three hits 6.3Mbits/sec; Vodafone, curiously, isn’t listed in the ranking of 73 fixed-line and mobile ISPs.Again, these results need to be treated with caution. As with RootMetrics, Ookla makes no distinction between 3G and 4G networks, and as EE is a 4G-orientated network, its entire customer base will have 4G-compatible handsets. The majority of customers on the other networks will almost certainly still be running 3G equipment.

Claimed network speeds should also be taken with a pinch of salt, but here EE again has the upper hand. The company claims its "double speed” 4G network – live in around 20 of the 200 towns and cities that its 4G network covers – provides a maximum download speed of 60Mbits/sec and an average of 20Mbits/sec.Vodafone is coy on the speed of its network, claiming that it’s "typically six times faster than Vodafone 3G, based on a pre-launch network”, but never using headline figures in any of its material. O2 is equally modest, claiming that 4G is five times faster than its 3G, but keeping mum on average or maximum speeds. Three is also tight-lipped, but spoke of an average download speed of around 12Mbits/sec at the time of its 4G launch.

It seems the networks are, at last, being cautious when it comes to trumpeting headline speeds, after many failed to live up to the wild speed claims made about their 3G networks. We’ve recorded 4G download speeds of up to 40Mbits/sec on three different networks in central London and Sussex, with uploads of between 10Mbits/sec and 15Mbits/sec. The networks appear to be underplaying their hands at present, although speeds may slide as 4G handsets become more widely used and congestion increases.Analysts believe that the amount of spectrum EE has been able to allocate to 4G (more of which below) has also given it a performance edge over its rivals. "The capacity EE has, what it’s done with the double speed, and the ability to reallocate more of the 1,800MHz band towards 4G services, has given it an advantage,” said CCS Insight’s network operator specialist Kester Mann. "EE is certainly leading in terms of speed.”

There’s an element of "how long’s a piece of string” to this question, because 4G coverage varies depending on location (see How to check your coverage, below). However, there are crucial differences in the coverage and 4G spectrum used by the networks that could sway your decision if you’re in the fortunate position of having a choice of networks serving your home or office.Sales of Chromebooks are expected to leap by 79% this year – but most of the total 5.2 million devices will be sold to US schools.Chromebooks first arrived in 2011, with Samsung and Acer each launching a low-cost cloud-based notebook running Google's Chrome OS.Since then, Chromebook sales have gradually accelerated, with the vast majority of devices going to schools in the US. Last year, 85% of the 2.9 million Chromebooks sold were in the US, and 82% were to the education sector.

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