Practical UK tech skepticism, weekly.
The PC Pro Podcast follows a rotating PC Pro panel through the week’s computing, mobile, AI, and industry stories. It is brisk, dry, and grounded in prices, product names, outages, policy changes, and the practical consequences behind the headline.
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The PC Pro Podcast is a weekly UK technology panel with the texture of a working newsroom conversation. It is informal, quick-moving, and opinionated without sounding staged. The show tends to begin with a concrete story: a Surface Laptop price rise, a Windows 11 promise, a new MacBook Pro chip, an Alexa Plus launch, or an AI coding failure. From there, the panel tests the claim against prices, dates, specs, product tiers, and what ordinary users or IT buyers might actually experience. That practical habit is the show’s centre of gravity. It cares less about abstract disruption than about whether a laptop costs more, whether a repair can be done without tweezers, whether an office suite replaces the whole corporate stack, or whether cloud gaming leaves console hardware stranded. AI appears constantly, but rarely with simple awe. Recent episodes pick through Claude Cowork, Amazon Q, LinkedIn’s AI data use, Alexa Plus, Sora, jailbroken shopping chatbots, and corporate AI stand-ins with a mix of curiosity and suspicion. Apple, Microsoft, Lenovo, Amazon, OpenAI, Disney, Backblaze, LibreOffice, NextCloud, Xbox, PlayStation, and DaVinci Resolve all pass through the same filter: what is this for, who pays, and what breaks next? The format has room for interruptions, wrong turns, birthday asides, noisy microphones, Discord comments, and live hot-or-not votes. That looseness is part of the appeal. It sounds like people who know the beat working something out in public rather than delivering a polished verdict from above. The humour is dry and lightly chaotic. The analysis is usually sharper than the banter suggests. For listeners who follow computing news closely, the show offers a useful weekly calibration: not just what happened, but whether the story is genuinely hot, merely expensive, or quietly more important than it first looked.
Made for: For listeners who already follow computing, mobile tech, AI, and PC hardware news and want a knowledgeable UK panel to stress-test the week’s claims. It especially suits practical buyers, IT-minded readers, and people who enjoy product detail over hype.
What sets it apart: Its strength is the combination of magazine experience and live, slightly untidy panel chemistry. Stories are pulled apart through prices, specs, repair details, policy implications, audience polls, and blunt practical judgment.
Every week the team behind the UK's biggest technology monthly discusses the latest news and issues in computing and mobile tech. Subscribe to the magazine at https://subscribe.pcpro.co.uk
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
The PC Pro Podcast makes technology policy legible by testing corporate promises against practical experience, institutional power and lively disagreement.
The PC Pro Podcast approaches public affairs through the technology people use and the companies shaping it. Tim Danton, John Honeyball, Barry Collins, Lee Grant and Darian Graham-Smith trade informed questions, objections and dry jokes as they move through Microsoft, Apple,…
An iPhone battery swap gets called 'absolute cobblers'; your repair instincts may feel seen.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A loose but useful panel connects Surface price rises, AI workplace distance, backup, and free video software.
PC Pro's 16 April 2026 discussion finds the computer market in a strained mood, with Microsoft's Surface starter prices up by 170 to 220 pounds and component shortages still pressing on even the biggest companies.
A Welsh election experiment leads into a practical debate about who controls everyday information and software.
The PC Pro Podcast starts with a civic question: if 52% of adults in Wales get news from social media, what does that means for political information around the Senedd elections?
A loose panel weighs Windows 11, Sora's closure, AI costs, and the promise of 240-watt USB-C.
Episode 784 uses Microsoft's promised Windows 11 work as a way into the arguments that shape everyday tech choices. The panel looks at why Windows still draws both loyal fans and firm critics, then moves to OpenAI's decision to close Sora, the reported $1.9 million in revenue,…
A useful, slightly scruffy panel on Apple news, laptop repairability, and the value of small engineering fixes.
The PC Pro Podcast uses Apple's staggered announcements as a practical way in, with the panel sorting through a week of polished news and finding only a few points worth lingering over.
A practical panel debate on Claude Cowork, console hardware, and a 52-48 monitor vote.
The PC Pro Podcast uses Claude Cowork as a grounded way into desktop AI. Barry Collins sets out its move from Mac to Windows and draws a clear distinction from ChatGPT's virtual-browser agent: Cowork runs locally and can act directly on the computer.
A careful news opening leads into a grounded discussion of repair rules and Copilot at work.
The episode is strongest when it slows down a fast-moving story about attacks against Hezbollah in the Middle East. John Honeyball keeps the technical questions clearly bounded, while the panel notes that responsibility had not been claimed and that speculation was moving faster…
A grounded discussion of AI agents, human checking, and what Windows may ask users to trust.
Microsoft's push to bring more AI agents into the Windows 11 taskbar gives this PC Pro episode a clear point of pressure: an operating system promising AI help while the panel keeps asking who checks the output.
A weekly panel of veteran gaming journalists breaking down game reveals, industry news, and layoffs.
Global tech with real-world consequences.
The PC Pro team discusses the recent sophisticated attacks using exploding pagers and walkie-talkies against Hezbollah, analyzing the technical mechanisms and supply chain vulnerabilities.
The PC Pro team discusses Microsoft's plan to transform Windows into an 'agentic OS' with integrated AI agents like Copilot.
The PC Pro Podcast on 16 April 2026 opens with Barry Collins, Darian Graham Smith, and Lee Grant on Microsoft Surface price rises of £170 to £220, as Lee describes a four-terabyte NAS hard drive that his suppliers cannot get.
BBC Wales is testing six fictional Welsh social-media profiles across YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, and X after Ofcom found that 52% of adults in Wales get news from social media.
Microsoft has formed a Windows 11 K2 task force under Pavan Davaluri to tackle complaints about taskbar placement, Copilot clutter, File Explorer, widgets, and Windows Update behavior over the next six to eight months.
The PC Pro podcast team discusses the launch of Alexa Plus in the UK and its AI capabilities.
Barry Collins and guests discuss Amazon's six-hour outage caused by AI coding errors and the jailbreaking of Amazon's AI chatbot.
Apple's MacBook Neo at £599, with 8GB of RAM and 256GB or 512GB of storage, drives the longest hardware debate.
Barry Collins says Ofcom fined 8579LLC £1.35 million under the Online Safety Act for missing age checks.
The PC Pro Podcast discusses LinkedIn's updated terms allowing AI training on member data and a recent data breach case.
The PC Pro podcast discusses Apple's WWDC announcements, focusing on the new Liquid Glass visual refresh across its operating systems.
The PC Pro podcast panel discusses Mark Zuckerberg's vision of AI as friends, following the integration of Meta AI into WhatsApp and other platforms.
The PCProbe podcast discusses Apple's AirPlay vulnerability, Chinese EVs, and Google's AI ad push.
The PC Pro Podcast discusses a House of Commons report on UK laws being unfit for the social media age, focusing on police and CPS information sharing with media.