Small
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Blog
Best Places to Buy Small Appliances
While mega-retailer Amazon.com outperforms most of its competitors in Consumer Reports’ latest ratings of small appliance retailers, Chicagoland’s Abt takes the top spot for overall customer satisfaction. Its strong performance also bumps QVC.com—the top shop in our 2022 survey—down to fifth place. The family-owned retailer, in business since 1936, also earned the top position in our ratings of large-appliance stores,…
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Best Small Kitchen Appliances of 2024
Each year CR’s market analysts research and select hundreds of new countertop appliances to test, and we deploy a team of secret shoppers to buy each one to ensure we’re getting the same products you’ll find at retail. Our test engineers put each model through rigorous tests to see how well it performs and how convenient it is to use.…
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Best Compact Vacuums for Small Apartments
“If you live in an apartment with all hard-surface flooring, you could get one of the stick vacuums that are very compact,” says John Galeotafiore, who oversees CR’s vacuum testing. “If you have a lot of carpeting, then you’re going to need a vacuum that can deep clean, but you could get by with a bagless upright, which tends to…
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Does AI level the playing field for small businesses?
Despite the gradual integration of artificial intelligence into almost every facet of society, in the business world, algorithms and automation have traditionally been fancy expensive tools used mainly by the biggest enterprises. Today, however, the technology is more accessible and affordable than ever before. AI is available in many guises, across various platforms, and it is even baked into most…
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Forget expensive, power-hungry LLMs models, 2025 will be the year where small language models hit the mainstream
Small language models (SLMs) could hit the mainstream in 2025, according to analysts, as enterprises look to speed up training times, lower carbon emissions, and bolster security. While much of the generative AI boom has focused on LLMs and an industry arms race to create more powerful models, Isabel Al-Dhahir, principal analyst at GlobalData, believes the appeal of leaner options…
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Small businesses could see electricity bills surge 70% as AI data center energy demands skyrocket
Smaller firms will feel the strain from data center development as surging energy demands ramp-up costs, new research shows. The research, co-authored by the Jack Kemp Foundation and Capital Policy Analytics, suggested that US consumers and small businesses could see a 70% uptick in their energy rates on the back of data center power consumption. Already struggling against inflationary pressures,…
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AI tools aren’t helping developers save time on software testing – but small teams are reaping the rewards
AI is doing little to help developers with the most time-consuming and painful parts of their daily workflows, according to new research. In a survey commissioned by Rainforest, three-quarters of developers using open source frameworks for test automation said they were using AI to assist with test writing and/or maintenance, both of which are notoriously time-consuming tasks. However, the productivity…
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The new Mac Mini takes a small step towards upgradeable storage
Apple’s redesigned Mac Mini M4 has ditched the previous M2 machine’s SSD that was soldered to the logic board, as confirmed by teardowns like this one posted on X showing it has a single removable SSD module. It’s not Apple’s first desktop computer to go in this direction, as we saw similar modules in the Mac Studio and Mac Pro.…
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UK government trials chatbots in bid to bolster small business support
The UK government is running a private beta of a new chatbot designed to help people set up small businesses and find support. The generative AI chatbot, based on OpenAI’s GPT-4o technology, will be tested out by up to 15,000 business users, after earlier trials went well. GOV.UK Chat is linked from 30 government business support pages, including ‘set up…
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Top Antivirus for Small Businesses in 2024
If you’re running a small business, it’s important to recognize that you’re facing a growing number of online threats. These pose risks not only to your operations but also to your company’s reputation. Small businesses are often seen as easier targets for phishing, ransomware, and data breaches. The shift to remote work and cloud services has only increased the risk…
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