Home › Articles
Plain-English guides
Articles that actually help.
Straight answers on AI at work, what the AI tools cost in Australia and the honest web — written for Australian businesses, not for other IT people. No jargon, no fear-mongering, and nothing behind an email gate.
- Does AI really understand, or is it just autocomplete? — "It just predicts the next word" is true, but describe a brain the same way and it sounds just as silly. Whether AI understands, what researchers found inside the models, where they still fall short, and why we may be on the cusp.
- My AI is writing to your AI: email in the age of personal AI agents — More of our inbox isn't written by the people who send it, and more of our replies aren't written by us. What personal AI agents mean for email, where agent-to-agent communication is heading, the new risks, and the rules we use.
- The slowest part of AI is us: training people to keep up — AI tools improve faster than people can learn them, so the weak link is now us. Why one-off AI courses go stale, the six skills that carry from one tool to the next, and a four-week plan for a small team.
- Card surcharges are now banned: what changed on 1 October — From 1 October 2026 Australian businesses can't add a surcharge to eftpos, Visa or Mastercard payments, and Amex, UnionPay and PayPal followed. What's banned, what's still allowed, the lower interchange caps, and a checklist for today.
- Adventures in recovering DVD data for a client — The build diary of a real DVD rescue: a Mac drive rack that choked on the hard discs, IsoBuster on Windows, our own Linux program running GNU ddrescue for days, and AI agents passing notes with John making every call.
- Claude and Claude Cowork have merged into one — On 16 September Anthropic folded Cowork into the main Claude app and added Claude Docs and Slides. What changed, what carries over, when each plan gets it, and what a small business should do.
- An always-on AI hub for your home or small office: the Mac mini setup — One small computer that never sleeps, so scheduled AI jobs, backups and shared files keep running while every laptop is shut, and larger jobs don’t slow your main PC. What a hub does, which Mac mini to buy, the settings that matter, and what it won’t do.
- Microsoft Copilot plans in Australia: every tier compared, with Australian prices — From the free chat to Microsoft 365 Copilot and E7 — Australian prices, what is billed on top, and where your data is processed. Checked 1 October 2026.
- Every feature of Copilot and Copilot Cowork, explained — What each Copilot feature does, which licence it needs, what is free, what is metered, what Microsoft has renamed or retired, and what isn’t available in Australia.
- Claude plans in Australia: every tier compared, with Australian prices — Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise — GST-inclusive Australian prices, what each includes, which ones train on your chats, and where your data is stored. Checked 1 October 2026.
- ChatGPT plans in Australia: every tier compared, with Australian prices — Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business and Enterprise — Australian prices, what each includes, which ones train on your chats, and where your data is stored. Checked 1 October 2026.
- What AI can actually do for a small Australian business in 2026 (and what it can’t) — An honest capability map — the work AI genuinely does well today, the things it still gets wrong, and how to start without the hype.
- How to write a team AI usage policy (with a free template) — Your team is already using AI. A good policy fits on two pages and answers five questions — here’s how to write it, plus an editable template.
- The domain renewal rip-off: why your $2 domain now costs $49 — Honeymoon pricing, pre-ticked add-ons and paid ‘privacy’ — how registrars quietly quadruple your bill, and how to pay a fair price instead.
- Stop the Madness: a short, slightly furious guide to dark patterns — The tricks websites use to make you spend more, cancel less and agree to things you never wanted — named, explained, and politely set on fire.
No articles match that search yet. Try a different word.
Want to know how it works underneath?
These articles are about decisions you have to make this year, so they carry dates and get refreshed. For the fundamentals that don’t go out of date — how a CD stores data, how a computer spots a damaged file, what’s inside an audio file, every plug and port — head to Learn.