Christmas is upon us! For this year’s holiday season, Santa shouldn’t be the only one checking his list twice; that’s right it’s your turn. We’re compiling our Christmas Digital Checklist to make sure your home is kitted out ahead of the most wonderful time of year.
From games and gadgets to gigabit-speed full fibre broadband, Christmas really wouldn’t be the same without technology.
With that in mind, here are five ways you can ensure your home is a festive haven of tech ahead of the seasonal celebrations.
Can the last one in turn on the lights!
Don’t fancy getting tangled up in a labyrinthian web of corded Christmas lights? Then don’t! There are plenty of smart lighting solutions that do away with the trip hazards of cables, while keeping the magic of Christmas colourful.
Phillips tends to lead this niche category of smart home furnishings, with their ‘Hue’ bulbs and floor lamps boasting over 16 million colours with a huge variety of customisation, all accessible at your fingertips with a handy app! Elsewhere Govee’s Wi-Fi bulbs allow for Alexa integration in case voice activation is your style.
Be aware, the more smart devices on your broadband means more demand on your bandwidth, ‘sleigh’ the buffers this Christmas with full fibre broadband.
Home is where the Christmas entertainment is
Charades may still have a place in Christmas festivities, but we all know that the true entertainment is offered on the big screen!
Ahead of the big day, be sure to check your streaming platforms to see what’s on offer! There’s nothing worse than the collective dismay of discovering the film the entire family has been hyped to watch isn’t actually available for streaming.
On the subject of gaming, it’s an equally miserable experience getting the brand-new title you’ve waited months for, only to find out you’ll be waiting over an hour for it to download! A note to parents: why not download the game onto your children’s console so they can get straight into the action?
With full fibre broadband, hefty download wait times are a thing of the past, so you can have their next gaming adventure underway faster than you can embarrass them by calling their PlayStation 5 a ‘Nintendo’; we’ve all been there!
Working From Santa’s Grotto
A lot of us remote-working busybodies will be logging on right up till Christmas Eve this year. Fret not, for there are plenty of ways to keep your home office feeling festive and, of course, productive, right up to the big day.
Here are just a few ways you can capture the holiday cheer from the comfort of your own patch of productivity:
- Decorate a miniature Christmas Tree for your desk
- Pop some string lights around your shelves or, if you’re daring, on your monitor
- Set up a Christmas playlist to soundtrack your working week
- Do away with that default screensaver you’ve had for years, switch things up with something seasonal
There’s no better gift you can give yourself this Christmas than full fibre broadband, particularly for the home office. With speeds up to 11x faster than superfast broadband, say goodbye to slow browsers and downloads dragging their feet, and welcome the age of maximum productivity.
Google is your friend this Christmas!
With Google at our fingertips, mastering the holidays is a breeze! Not sure how to perfect your Christmas Day roast? Want to upgrade your present wrapping abilities? Or simply looking to learn how to level up the celebrations with some DIY décor? You can find it all on Google with handy step-by-step tutorials!
Here are some of our favourite cheat sheets for upskilling your holiday know-how:
- How to carve a turkey: https://www.jamieoliver.com/inspiration/how-to-carve-a-turkey/
- How to gift wrap like a pro: https://www.countryliving.com/diy-crafts/how-to/g900/how-to-wrap-a-gift/
- How to craft your very own paper snowflake chain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op3DQ-XhPBU
Festive Full Fibre Merriment
Streaming Christmas flicks, downloading the brand new videogame you’ve hurriedly unwrapped, taking a free masterclass on how not to burn the Christmas goose; what do these things have in common? They all need the backbone of full fibre broadband.
Unlike the current infrastructure used to access internet, commonly referred to Superfast broadband, full fibre networks do not rely upon Victorian copper cables which simply aren’t built to deliver the modern demands for more and more data.
Full fibre ensures robust connection with speeds 11x faster than that of Superfast networks, reaching up to 1,000 Mbps and doing so with greater reliability – more than enough to keep pace with all you’re looking to throw into this year’s festivities!
Whether you’re a resident or business, you can check if you’re covered in County Broadband’s rollout by entering your postcode at www.countybroadband.co.uk where you can also register your interest to learn more about the full fibre infrastructure and service.
