Computeractive 2017-01-18

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UARY 201177 ISSUE 493 ❘ 18 – 31 JAN

STOP & CONTROL WINDOWS UPDATES

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From the Editor There are lots of things I love about Windows, but I wouldn’t trust it to keep my PC safe. For that I turn to paid-for antivirus software, (currently Kaspersky, but in the past I’ve used Norton, McAfee and Trend Micro). It’s a wise choice, judging by Windows Defender’s dire performance in our latest security test (page 50). Even when it does block malware, it slows your PC while doing so. If you are using it as your main antivirus, I would strongly advise ditching it for one of our top three programs. I would also like to introduce a new section called Reader Support (see page 70). Every fortnight we’ll try to answer questions you have in relation to advice

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we’ve given in previous issues, such as running a program or tweaking a Windows setting. Please email us your queries. Daniel Booth [email protected]

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HOW TO USE SNIPCA URLs We use snipcas to turn long URLs that are hard to type into ones that are short and simple. They aren’t websites themselves, which means they won’t be recognised if you type them into Google. Instead, you need to type them into your browser address bar, then press Enter. Doing this will take you to the correct website.

18 – 31 January 2017 3

18 – 31 January 2017 • Issue 493

STOP USING

In this issue… Stop using 50 Windows security Our antivirus group test shows up

flaws in Microsoft’s built-in defences, and is Kaspersky still the pick of the bunch?

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In every issue… 6 News 11 Question of the Fortnight Will you have to pay an eBay tax bill? 12 Letters 14 Consumeractive 16 Protect Your Tech 18 Best Free Software BCUninstaller 3.5 30 Buy It! 4 18 – 31 January 2017

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33 Competition Win a Picture Keeper Connect 16GB 49 What’s All the Fuss About? Green Screen of Death 64 Problems Solved 70 Reader Support Your tech problems fixe ed 73 Jargon Buster 74 The Final Straw Subscription software

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Reviews 20 Chillblast Fusion Sentinel Desktop PC serves up hot chips 21 Razer Blade Stealth This Razer laptop is a sharp operator 22 Canon i-Sensys MF229dw A mono printer with some colourful features 23 CCL Elite Desktop PC proves to be a tower of strength 24 Motorola Moto Z Modular phone with added value HTC 10 Evo Smartphone makes daft changes

Chillblast illblast F Fusion usion Sentinel p20 Razer Blade Stealth p21

Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse p28 Mo

25 Samsung C24FG70FQU A PC monitor shows lovely images but costs a pretty penny 26 Lexar Portable SSD An SSD for that faster drive

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28 Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse Unique controller for your PC Gear4 Stream 1 Wireless speaker is sound move 29 Furbo Dog Camera Care for your pet remotely

Workshops & Tips

14 pages of brilliant workshops and expert tips 35 Set a schedule of automated PC fixes

42 Create keyboard shortcuts for clipboard items

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43 Readers’ Tips Move your Flickr images to Google Photos

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18 – 31 January 2017 5

News

The top stories in the world of technology

At last! Postpone W10 updates to avoid problems M

icrosoft is planning to let people postpone Windows 10 Home updates, delighting users who regularly have problems with them. A leaked preview version of the Windows 10 Creators Update, which is expected to arrive in April, lets users ‘pause’ updates for up to 35 days. This means you can prevent automatic updates from installing at inconvenient times, such as while you’re using Skype or editing a video. The option applies only to updates that add new tools and replace old drivers, not those that fix security flaws. To reach the option in the leaked version, users need to click Settings, ‘Update & Security’, then select ‘Windows Update’, ‘Advanced Options’. A ‘Pause Updates’ slider can be found at the bottom of the page that appears (see screenshot). It’s not clear what happens after 35 days. To postpone the

COMMENT

update a second time, users may need to return to the slider and switch it back on. However, Microsoft may force you to accept the update at this point. This feature will be widely welcomed, but it falls significantly short of the four-month delay Windows 10 Pro users can select.

Update confusion

Since they were introduced last year, automatic Windows 10 updates have caused

confusion and problems. Microsoft had hoped users would appreciate not having to install updates manually, but instead many have complained about having less control over their computers. The ability to delay updates also gives users time to wait for problems to be fixed. The leaked Creators Update preview also revealed several other new features, including Start menu folders for files, programs and desktop apps. You can add items

You wait ages for good news about Windows updates, then two items come at once. Late last year, Microsoft promised to release updates faster, and now we’ll be able to shelve them until we’re mentally prepared for their impact on our PCs. There’s always a chance that this option won’t appear in the final version of the Creators Update, but it has been so well received that surely Microsoft won’t be so contrary as to remove it. Maybe, just maybe, Microsoft will soon let us postpone updates indefinitely. But we won’t hold our breath. to a Start menu folder by dragging and dropping. There is also a slider to reduce your screen’s blue light, which can disrupt sleep. A button in the preview’s Action Center provides access to this option.

OFFICE 200710’s SUPPORT ENDSDESIGN NEXT YEAR WINDOWS NEW ‘NEON’ Microsoft is working on a redesign of Windows 10 that will add more animations and blurred backgrounds to the operating system. Codenamed Project Neon, it comprises bold text and large white spaces, as shown in leaked screenshots (see right). Some images will change size as you scroll through a page, as illustrated here: www.snipca.com/23013.

Neon’s simplicity has been compared to Aero Glass, the interface design that Microsoft introduced in Windows Vista. This made some boxes transparent, and made others glow when the mouse cursor hovered over them. Microsoft is expected to announce further details in May at its Build conference for developers.

You’ll like this… Intel has unveiled a credit card-sized computer (www.snipca.com/23014) 6 18 – 31 January 2017

… but not this Security experts warn that a bank will collapse in 2017 after being hacked (www.snipca.com/23015)

Spy chief: online voting less safe than ‘stubby pencil’ as A former head of MI6 has uce criticised plans to introduce at it online voting, saying that makes the UK “more cks. susceptible” to cyber attacks. red), Sir John Sawers (pictured), 009 chief of MI6 between 2009 and 2014, told the BBC: ncil “Bizarrely the stubby pencil and piece of paper that you put your cross on in the ballot box is actually much more secure than anything which is electronic”. He said that the potential for hacking online voting hadn’t been discussed enough among governments, likening the situation to the early days of nuclear weapons in the 1950s when there were “no rules lined up as to how they should be used”. His views contrast with the findings of a commission set up by John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons, which in 2015 said that people should be allowed to vote online

in the 2020 general election. However, Sawers admitted that online voting would be popular among younger people, who “expect to do things remotely and through electronic devices”. Campaigners for electronic voting cast doubt on Sir John’s preference for the current system. Areeq Chowdhury, chief executive of WebRoots Democracy (https:// webrootsdemocracy.org), said: “There is no evidence to show that online voting is more susceptible to fraud than the paper alternative”.

He added: “There have been more instances of fraud across the world with paper votes than electronic ones, and the recent recounts of electronic votes in the US showed no evidence of hacking”. Sir John’s comments follow warnings from his successor at MI6, Alex Younger, that British sovereignty is at risk from hackers in Russia. In December the CIA and FBI concluded that Russia hacked the Democratic Party, releasing embarrassing emails in an attempt to influence the US election.

Government’s cybercrime website an ‘expensive flop’ A £12m Government website that offers advice on staying safe online has been branded a waste of money after attracting just 1.9 million visitors since it launched in January 2014. This means it has cost an average of £6.37 for every visitor. The launch of Cyber Aware (www.cyberaware.gov.uk), originally named Cyber Streetwise, was backed by a major marketing campaign. Government minister James Brokenshire said at the time: “We are taking the fight to cyber criminals wherever they are in the world”. But despite widespread advertising, Cyber Aware has

attracted fewer than 10,000 visitors during some of the months it has been online. Labour said the figures, obtained by the website BuzzFeed after a Freedom of Information request, showed the campaign had been “an expensive flop”. Rupa Huq, shadow minister for crime prevention, said: “Cybercrime is a growing problem for businesses and consumers across the country, but the Tories aren’t giving people the help they need to protect themselves online”. A Government spokesperson defended the

IN BRIEF NEW LIBREOFFICE TO ADD RIBBON

A new version of LibreOffice (www.libreoffice.org) will launch on 1 February with a ribbon toolbar system reminiscent of the tabs in Microsoft Office. The opensource program is a popular alternative to Microsoft’s software suite, with features including the word processor Writer and the spreadsheet tool Excel. We’ll review the new version soon.

NHS TO TEST AI SYMPTOM APP P

The NHS is to test an artificialintelligence (AI) app as an alternative to the 111 helpline, beginning with trials in north London at the end of January. It comes amid criticism of 111, which has been accused of giving patients bad advice. Instead of describing symptoms over the phone, users will type their concerns into the app, which will respond with further questions to get more information. It’s hoped that this will lead to better advice than is currently provided by 111’s staff.

Tomorrow’s

world

campaign, claiming that a sixth of the UK’s population said they were more likely to change their online behaviour as a result of it. The spokesperson also said that the website was just one element of the Cyber Aware campaign, and therefore its success shouldn’t be judged solely on the number of online visitors it had attracted.

Finally, someone has come up with a practical use for augmented reality headsets: to help you find lost items such as your car keys. Microsoft wants to patent ‘object tracking’, a technology for its HoloLens headset that learns what items look like, then shows you where in your home it saw them last. Sounds like a great idea, as long as you don’t also lose your headset.

18 – 31 January 2017 7

News IN BRIEF WORLD’S LARGEST USB STICK LAUNCHED

Kingston has unveiled a 2TB USB stick which it claims is the world’s highestcapacity flash drive. Also available as a 1TB device, the DataTraveler Ultimate GT (pictured) can store 70 hours of 4K video. It will be on sale from February. Pricing has yet to be announced.

FRENCH SAY ‘NON’ TO WORK EMAILS

French workers now have the right to ignore business emails that arrive outside of office hours. The so-called ‘right to disconnect’ has been introduced in a bid to restore the “balance between work and family and personal life”. Companies with more than 50 employees will have to set out the hours when staff are not supposed to send or answer emails.

Apple sued over girl’s death ‘caused’ by driver using iPhone A US couple are suing Apple after their daughter was killed by a driver who was allegedly using the video-chatting tool FaceTime on his iPhone. The lawsuit claims that Apple should have introduced a “lock-out” feature to prevent FaceTime from being used while the phone’s owner is on the road. Apple was granted a patent for this in April 2014, but has yet to add it to its devices. Five-year-old Moriah Modisette (pictured here in her memorial fund site) was sitting in the back of her parents’ car near Dallas in 2014 when it was hit at 65mph

by 22-year-old Garrett Wilhelm. He told police he was using FaceTime at the time of the crash, and officers said that the app was still running on his phone following the collision. Mr Willhelm faces a charge of manslaughter when his trial begins in February. Moriah’s parents, James and Bethany Modisette, and her eight-year-old sister Isabella were hurt in the crash. The couple say FaceTime was a “substantial factor” in their daughter’s death, and allege that Apple “breached a duty of care”. Apple has yet to

comment on the lawsuit. The case highlights the danger of drivers using phones. The UK Government is urging phone companies to add similar ‘lock-out’ tools to help reduce the number of deaths caused by distracted drivers, estimated at around 20 per year (see ‘Question of the Fortnight’, Issue 492, pictured left). Apple’s patent is to use GPS to monitor the speed of a FaceTime user, disabling the app if they are travelling a certain speed that suggests they could be in control of a vehicle.

Firefox to o end XP an and Vista support Mozilla has indicated d that its Firefox browser will stop supporting Windows ws XP and Vista in 2017, 17, making it unsafe to use on those operating ting systems. In a blog post (www.snipca. com/22980) it said that in March XP and Vista users will be automatically moved to the ‘Extended Support Release’ for Firefox. These are old versions of the browser that no longer receive new tools, but continue to get security updates. Mozilla added that in mid-2017 it will assess how 8 18 – 31 January 2017

many Firefox users still run XP or Vista, and then set a date to end all support – which it expects to be in September. You’ll still be able to use Firefox on XP and Vista after this date, but it would be unwise to do so because

hackers will be looking for potential flaws to exploit. To stay safe Mozilla “strongly encourages” Firefox users running XP or Vista to upgrade to a newer version of Windows. It said: “Unsupported operating systems receive no security updates, have known exploits, and are dangerous for you to use”. Google ended support for Chrome on XP and Vista in April 2016. Microsoft ends support for Vista on 11 April 2017, after which it won’t receive any security updates. The company ended support for XP in 2014.

Bird flu has triggered many health scares recently, but San Francisco designer Danielle Baskin thinks drone flu is a more serious threat. Via her website (www.dronesweaters.com) she is selling jumpers for drones so they don’t “shiver violently after exposure to winter temperatures”. You may shiver violently at the price - $189 (around £150) per jumper. Read more at www.snipca.com/22979.

Microsoft admits ‘Upgrade to W10’ pop-ups were a mistake Microsoft has finally admitted what many PC users already knew – that the company’s incessant messages to upgrade to Windows 10 could be irritating and misleading. The company’s chief marketing officer, Chris Capossela, said that one message in particular went “too far”, referring to the pop-up that appeared when your PC was “scheduled to upgrade” to Windows 10 (see screenshot). Many users thought that by clicking the cross in the top-right corner to close the box they were refusing the upgrade. This had worked for previous pop-up boxes urging users to upgrade, and is standard across all software. But Microsoft interpreted this action as confirmation of the upgrade, a decision that infuriated hundreds of Computeractive readers and led to many people being upgraded to the new

operating system against their wishes. Some security experts likened Microsoft’s tactics to those used by malware. The message started appearing on computers in May 2016. Capossela, talking in the Windows Weekly podcast (www. snipca.com/22994), said that within a couple of hours he realised it was a mistake. He added: “Those two weeks were pretty painful and clearly a lowlight for us. We learned a lot from it obviously.” But Caposella stopped short of apologising for the pop-ups. In fact, he said that for most of

2016, Microsoft had found the “right balance where you’re not stepping over the line of being too aggressive”. Microsoft’s marketing push has led to over 400 million devices worldwide running Windows 10, although Windows 7 remains more popular, as it’s used on 48 per cent of computers, according to Netmarketshare’s figures for December 2016. The UK continues to buck that trend, however. Here Windows 10 is used on nearly 39 per cent of computers, which is much higher than Windows 7’s 26.9 per cent.

Children ‘need more protection’ from internet threats Youngsters don’t fully understand the dangers of the internet and need more rights to stay safe, a report claims. Published by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England, the report says children are left to fend for themselves online, with parents “vainly hoping that they will benefit from its opportunities while avoiding its pitfalls”. The Commissioner, Anne Longfield, said that the “impenetrable” terms and conditions for websites make it impossible for children to appreciate the risks. For example, the conditions of

photo-sharing site Instagram, used by millions of children, run to more than 5,000 words over 17 pages. The Growing Up Digital Taskforce found that only half of eight- to 11-year-olds could read the terms, and none understood what they meant. But children were more reluctant to use the site when the Taskforce presented the terms in simpler language, such as: “[Instagram] is allowed to use any pictures you post and let others use them too, anywhere around the world. Other people might pay us to use them and we will not pay you for that”.

The report also highlighted that children think it’s futile to report bullying and sexual harassment to social-media companies. One teenager said: “Someone was asking girls in my school for nudes. Everyone reported it about 100 times and the account is still there”. The report calls for the creation of an ombudsman to stand up for children’s rights online. Read the report at www.snipca.com/22992.

IN BRIEF AMAZON SCAMMERS’ NEW PAYMENT TRICK

Online shoppers have been warned about Amazon scammers who tempt people with “unbeatable” deals on the website. The comparison site Comparitech says that the fraudsters ask you to complete the purchase on their own site, not Amazon, so they can steal your bank details. Comparitech explains the threat in detail on its blog (www.snipca.com/22996), warning readers about one particular fake company called ScElegance that lures victims with cut-price TVs.

UK SCHOOLS HIT BY RANSOMWARE

Ransomware hackers are targeting UK schools, Action Fraud has warned. The attackers phone schools pretending to be from the Department of Education, and claim that they need to email the headteacher important documents. They then send malware, usually disguised as an Excel or Word document, that locks computer files, and demand a fee of £8,000 to decrypt them. The police have urged schools and colleges to be vigilant.

VIDEO CONVERSION TOOL OUT OF BETA

HandBrake, one of the most popular video-conversion tools, is finally out of beta, 13 years after launching. Version 1.0.0 adds settings for converting videos recorded on the latest phones and tablets. You can download the program for free from https://handbrake.fr. We’ll have a Workshop on it in our next issue, which is out Wednesday 1 February.

18 – 31 January 2017 9

News

Jane Hoskyn puts the boot into tech villains, jargon-spouting companies and software stuffed with junk

WARNING: JUNK AHEAD Junk offender: Comodo Firewall

You don’t need a third-party firewall program. Windows Firewall is an efficient companion for your antivirus (AV), and it’s already on your PC. But many people don’t know that – and Comodo (www. comodo.com) is here to exploit them. The new version (10) of Comodo Free Firewall doesn’t travel light. This 110MB program comes with at least 150MB of unwanted extras. You can decline some during setup, but most install forcibly and by stealth – there’s even a PUP in Comodo’s uninstaller.

Oh no, Comodo

The installer overrode Windows User Account Control, which I’d set to display a Yes/No box before running any portable program or installer. Pop-ups appeared for a fraction of a second then disappeared. The setup wizard offered an array of

pre-ticked extras, including Yahoo as my ‘home page, new tab and default search engine’. I unticked them all. Other extras came with no decline option. Comodo Dragon Browser (70MB) and GeekBuddy (83MB) were installed anyway alongside the 110MB firewall, and made their presence felt by displaying lurid pop-ups and dramatically slowing down my PC. This sent my anxiety levels high enough to reduce my heating bill. Comodo Internet Security tried to install itself too, but Windows blocked it to prevent a security conflict. All this rubbish took longer to remove than to install. Partly because it had installed itself surreptitiously and each item had a separate uninstaller, but also because it battered me with pop-up surveys demanding to know why I was uninstalling. Worse still, one uninstaller tried to trick me into installing Comodo

Comodo breaks new ground by including pre-ticked junk in its uninstaller

Cloud Antivirus, which would conflict with my existing AV (see screenshot). At least I was able to remove Comodo’s leftovers more easily than junk left behind by Auslogics (see Named & Shamed, Issue 492). IObit Uninstaller deleted 43 registry and program files left behind by Comodo, and AdwCleaner (www.snipca.com/22982) deleted an Ask.com PUP it sneakily installed. Unlike the Auslogics files that keep reappearing on my PC, no Comodo junk has returned – yet.

What are they talking about?

Jane’s villain of the fortnight

What they say

A man from Worthing has just been jailed for five years for using malware and stolen passwords to snatch $1 million (£840,000) from online bank accounts (www. snipca.com/22976). Polish national Tomasz Skowron, 29 (pictured), is far from the only cyber-criminal doing this, but he is one of the more hapless ones. He did all his cash-siphoning using his home IP address and personal bank account, which were traceable. He also filled his phone with texts about where to stash the money. He led police to a much wider network of tech bank robbers. Further good news – for you and me anyway – is that Skowron’s victims

Amazon: “Airborne fulfillment center utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles for item delivery.”

What they mean

An Amazon warehouse in the sky, equipped with fleets of drones to deliver people’s parcels. This patent application (pictured) has just gone public, months after being submitted last April – and its jargon sounds even more bizarre once you understand what it means.

10 18 – 31 January 2017

Tomasz Skowron

were construction companies in Australia in 2014 (if you’re a construction company in Australia, sorry for your loss). He was caught before he could steal from any more bank accounts. The bad news is that he’s a minnow in a cyber-crime ocean. Others cover their tracks using VPNs and so-called burner phones with untraceable numbers - and they’re buying your stolen passwords online for pennies, right now. Want to nominate a villain of the fortnight? Email us at [email protected]

?

Question of the

Fortnight

Will you have to pay an eBay tax bill?

HMRC’s new super computer is targeting sellers who don’t declare earnings

T

he number of goods being sold on eBay always rises sharply after Christmas, as people try to turn an unwanted present into money. But this year some sellers may have had second thoughts. For the first time HMRC is using a powerful computer system called Connect to track down those who have paid too little tax, and in its sights are people who make cash from online marketplaces, including eBay, Amazon, Etsy and Gumtree. As the 31 January deadline for self-assessment tax returns approaches, many eBay sellers need to work out whether the taxman will come after them. The key factor is whether you’re running what HMRC regards as a business – but how do you find that out? One way is to check whom HMRC has targeted in the past. At one extreme is the case of John Woolfenden, who in 2014 was jailed for two years for not declaring earnings of £1.4m. The

warning letters to 14,000 sellers. Using laws passed in 2014, it investigated users by downloading their account information, looking for signs that they were ‘trading’ on eBay – and therefore seeking a profit – not merely selling the occasional item. Another indicator HMRC looks for is the frequency of sales. It will become suspicious if you make lots of

HMRC downloaded info from users’ accounts to check whether they were making a profit taxman said he owed £300,000 for money he made selling DVDs, CDs and computer games on eBay. His conviction came at the end of a campaign that HMRC says raised more than £9m in unclaimed tax. But HMRC also contacted many sellers earning much less. In fact, in May 2015 it claimed that it had sent

similar transactions in a short space of time, even if your profit is small. It will also regard as taxable sold items that you’ve modified or repaired in some way, and items that you bought in order to sell at a profit, particularly if you borrowed money to do so. All this means that HMRC will probably leave you alone if the only items you sell are

unwanted gifts or clutter from the loft. But what’s never been made clear is how much profit you can make before you show up on the taxman’s radar. That changes on 1 April, from when you’ll be able to make £1,000 tax-free. Ex-chancellor George Osborne announced this in the 2016 budget in a bid to encourage “micro-entrepreneurs” who want to make money to supplement their main income. Many people who sell items they make themselves will fall into this category. Osborne also wanted to make it easier for people to benefit financially from the growth of the so-called ‘shared economy’, which includes homeowners renting out rooms and driveways, and professionals offering services. The new rules give sellers a clear tax threshold, but until then financial advisers have urged HMRC to take a “common-sense” approach. Justin Modray, director of Candid Financial, told the

THE FACTS • HMRC’s new £100m computer identifies sellers from eBay and other ‘marketplace’ sites • Sellers who don’t submit a self-assessment form by 31 January could face a £100 fine • From 1 April eBay sellers will be able to make £1,000 tax free

Daily Mail that the taxman must understand “that many people who have recently signed up to these websites might have not realised that they need to pay tax or may have been confused by the rules”. The public won’t mind if the taxman cracks down on sellers who, like John Woolfenden, are shamelessly cheating the system. But there will be some sympathy for sellers unaware that they need to pay tax. It’s vital HMRC gets the balance right. 18 – 31 January 2017 11

Letters

Tell us what’s on your mind

Email: [email protected] Facebook: www.facebook.com/computeractive Twitter: @ComputerActive www.twitter.com/computeractive

Disabling phones while driving is ‘over the top’

I accept that many drivers intend to use phones when in charge of their vehicle, but I have to disagree with the idea that mobile phones should be disabled while in a car. This appears to be an over-the-top measure that will punish all the responsible people who use their phones quite lawfully with hands-free equipment. These devices have become part of our daily lives and many of us still wonder how we got by without them. The real way to solve this is the way we approached drink-driving: education and enforcement. We didn’t ban alcohol sales to avoid drink driving. Instead, we convinced people it wasn’t a good idea and now the vast majority of us have no sympathy for a drunk driver. If we need to ban those found using their mobile phone while driving without a hands-free kit, so be it. What we shouldn’t have is a nanny state-type reaction. Clive Williamson

What’s popular on Google? Search me!

It’s strange to discover that what the world is searching for on Google is completely different to what you search for yourself. I felt it when reading Google’s top search terms for 2016 (News, Issue 492). Of the top 10, I had heard of five: Prince, Donald Trump, iPhone 7, David Bowie and the Olympics. What’s ‘Powerball’? A film? A computer game? Is ‘Suicide Squad’ a bunch of football hooligans or a masochistic pop group? And I don’t even know what questions to ask about the terms ‘Slither.io’, ‘Pokemon Go’ and ‘Deadpool’. It makes me feel as out of touch as a crumbly old high-court judge. Perhaps Computeractive could enlighten me? Ben Tynan CA says We’ll try. Powerball is a US lottery game. Searches for it peaked in January last year when the jackpot reached $1bn. Suicide Squad is a Hollywood film about a group of supervillians. Deadpool is a similar movie, featuring an ‘antihero’ described by Wikipedia as “disfigured and mentally

12 18 – 31 January 2017

unstable”. Both Pokemon Go and Slither. io (pictured above) were popular games launched in 2016, the former quickly becoming a worldwide phenomenon. We hope that helps!

Aluminium wires slow down broadband

Issue 492 refers to 900,000 homes unable to get speeds of 10Mbps in rural areas due to them being too far from their exchanges (News, page 9). I wonder how many more are unable to get this speed even when close to their exchanges, due to aluminium wiring rather than copper? It’s a detail that’s seldom mentioned, and many users may be unaware that it’s a factor in their broadband-speed problems. BT never refer to it, but they

used aluminium extensively in the 1970s and early 1980s due to the excessive price of copper at that time. While comparable in terms of conductivity in the short term, in the longer term it hasn’t the same durability because terminal corrosion leads to increased resistance and lower speeds. From what I’ve read online, BT will not replace aluminium unless it degrades to affect multiple users on the same installation. Some users have said they’ve reached up to 10Mbps if an engineer tinkers with connections, but this soon falls away as further terminal corrosion occurs. This is where copper scores because even when corroded it remains conductive, whereas aluminium doesn’t. Bill Munns I read with interest anything to do with broadband speeds, particularly if accompanied by pictures of country cottages. My maximum speed is a little over 8Mbps, and even my contract with BT says I can expect only between four and eight. I cannot upgrade to a faster service because “of where I live” (according to BT). Do I live in the middle of Dartmoor? Well, no actually –

Remembering my £3000 1GB hard drive I read with interest the letter from Matthew Hall in Issue 492 suggesting you have a ‘Yesterday’s World’ box celebrating old technology. I can vividly remember back in the early 1990s when, running a small IT team, I received the first 1GB hard drive any of us had ever seen. We knew these exotic devices existed, but to actually have one was something else. It was to be installed in one of the Vax computers we had then, and it cost over £3000. The rest of the geeks gathered round in silent reverence as I carefully took it from its box and placed it in the Vax. It felt like we were performing an organ transplant and

perhaps we should really have been wearing surgical gloves, masks and gowns. Looking back, I find it incredible to think how far we’ve now come in terms of storage. What we have now would have been like science fiction to us back then. Happy days. Bob Farish

I live in Acton, west London – about as ‘on the grid’ as you can get. Even the BT representative on the phone was surprised at this (Ofcom take note.) Fortunately, 8Mbps will do for me – I’m a cup of tea kind of guy. But if I’m subsidising rural broadband speeds that are faster than mine, then something stronger might be called for. Peter Warne

How I keep my PC files backed up

I really enjoyed reading Issue 491’s Cover Feature ‘Make Your PC Unhackable in 2017’. Well, I say ‘enjoyed’ – actually it filled me with dread! If any of my computer files go missing, nothing horrible is going to happen – no identities or bank details will be released. Having said that, I have collected hundreds of valuable resources over the years. I consider myself to be ‘tech savvy’, and thought that I had taken every eventuality into consideration. I have a 1TB external hard drive, which is encrypted with BitLocker. I carry this back and forth to the school where I work as a teacher. I use Second Copy (www.secondcopy. com) to sync the external hard drive to a home-built NAS running FreeNAS (www. freenas.org). Besides this, my computer uploads a copy to CrashPlan (www. crashplan.com), an online (cloud-based) file-storage service. I use Google Photos to back up all my images (incidentally, a service that all your readers should investigate). In your article, you mentioned a piece of software called CryptSync (www. snipca.com/22756). As I write, 472,477 files are being encrypted, compressed and stored on a separate internal hard drive. I generated the secure password for encryption using LastPass. Your article was a poignant reminder that the online world has changed. A valuable read that everyone with a computer should see. Richard Senior It was interesting to read your feature about hacking. Unfortunately, in my opinion it’s impossible to make any PC unhackable.

STAR LETTER

Persuade drivers to stop using phones, don’t force them If “nearly a fifth of drivers” indulge in the dangerous practice of using a handheld phone to send texts or emails while driving (‘Question of the Fortnight’, Issue 492), this means that more than four-fifths do not. To punish everyone for the misdeeds of a minority is not right. There must be better detection of offenders, as well as harsher penalties. I agree with the aim of making irresponsible phone use as socially unacceptable as drink-driving. I have seen it in action and it takes my breath away that anyone could be so rash and stupid. Before we go down the route of a technical solution, which would target everyone in a car with a phone, we should consider the ‘law of unintended consequences’. There are not only drivers in a car, there are also passengers, whose phone would be disabled, along with that of the driver. There are emergencies when you may need to report a crime, serious traffic situation or crash. These would, one

hopes, be rare occurrences. More sophisticated technology could (and maybe already does) let you use your voice to tell your phone to, for example, “Ring Mother and tell her I’ll be late”, without taking your hands off the wheel or your eyes off the road. I am not in favour of any government using legislation to force technology to disable a phone while it’s in motion. I am, however, in favour of stronger penalties for those apprehended. We should also disregard the plea, “But I’ll lose my job!” They should have thought about that in the first place. Susan Platter

The Star Letter writer wins a Computeractive mug! For 14 months I’ve played cat and mouse with a hacker, desperately trying to remain one step ahead of him. It’s not always possible because he can totally disable my Kaspersky antivirus. Therefore I’ve had to stop internet banking at home. In fact I bought a laptop to be used only in my local bank. I have gone over to using virtual private networks (VPNs), but twice the hacker disabled the VPN software and prevented my iPad and MacBook Pro from being able to access the internet. This resulted in me having to reset both devices. The hacker has even put another operating system on my phone and put it on his server, resulting in me having to factory-reset it. Should workable suggestions be available to improve my situation I would welcome them. Martin Pepper

FastStone is picture perfect

I would like to thank you for your recommendation of FastStone Image Viewer (www.faststone.org) in Issue 490 (see Best Free Software). This was the program I’d been looking for to catalogue and archive my photo collection. I had tried Photoshop Elements, Picasa and Olympus Studio 2 but none of them came close to FastStone’s intuitive functionality and efficiency (and it’s a free program). My thousands of photos are now categorised and archived at long last. It took a great deal of time but FastStone made it relatively painless. Richard Palmer 18 – 31 January 2017 13

Consumeractive I broke through my data limit – why wasn’t I warned? Last July, I bought a Motorola Moto G4 with a contract for 300 call minutes, 5000 texts and 1GB data for £15.50 per month. But Carphone Warehouse took £90.50 via my first direct debit. I was told this was correct because I’d been browsing the internet. Why didn’t they warn me I was going over my limit? Can you help me? William Hickmott

Q

It’s always difficult knowing how to advise readers in these cases because it’s so easy to rack up huge data bills without realising it. Not all mobile providers warn you if you’re about to exceed your limit, although Carphone Warehouse told us that William should have received a message, and most phones also let you set warnings. Phone companies can sometimes overcharge customers, but Carphone Warehouse told us that William’s bill was correct. However, it acknowledged that he may not have realised it would be so large. To its credit the company contacted William to suggest ways he can avoid similar bills in the future, and refunded the surplus charge as a goodwill gesture.

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What are my rights regarding my refurbished iPhone? I bought a ‘Grade A’ refurbished iPhone for £109.95 from a seller on Game Marketplace (www.game.co.uk/ marketplace). It arrived with three major faults. I contacted the seller immediately, but his suggested fixes didn’t work. The seller said that I would have to get the phone repaired, but I refused, quoting the Consumer Rights Act to him, and returned the phone. Now the seller is not responding to my emails, and I haven’t had a refund. What actually are my rights concerning second-hand and refurbished goods? Claire Wilson

Q

Since first emailing us Claire got back in touch to say that Game’s customer service team had intervened, and she has now received a full refund. But we’ve included her case because it gives us the chance to clear up any confusion regarding the legal difference between new and second-hand (or refurbished) goods. Under both the Sale of Goods Act (SOGA) and the Consumer Rights Act (CRA) that replaced it in 2015, your

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rights remain the same for both types of product. This means all items, new and second hand, must be of satisfactory quality, fit for purpose and as described. There is one important exception though. The law states that secondhand goods, including refurbished products, can’t be expected to last for as long as new items. Under SOGA and the CRA you have up to six years to seek a refund or replacement for new goods; this is reduced to four years for second-hand items. The other issue was the seller saying Claire first has to put up with a repair. This is not the case because within 30 days of purchase customers are entitled to a full refund. Claire was well within this time limit, though happily didn’t need to pursue her case against the misinformed seller.

Can I get a refund for a service I can’t receive? I subscribed to the online TV channel Enigmatv.com (http:// enigmatv.com) for one year in April 2015, but was unable to renew my subscription this year. Then I found payment had been taken via PayPal

Q

because it was set up as a recurring payment. According to Engimatv’s site I’ve no current subscription, but it won’t answer my emails. Can you help? Rob Prince Rob should first try to retrieve his money from his bank because it’s too late for him to approach PayPal, which only allows 180 days to log a dispute. But he can stop further PayPal payments by logging into his account, then clicking Activity at the top of the page to bring up his payment

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14 18 – 31 January 2017

history. He should then click references to ‘Enigmatv’, and click ‘Manage Enigmatv Payments’. This will appear as ‘Active’. Rob should click Cancel. Enigmatv appears to have opted subscribers into ongoing payments. While this is illegal under the Consumer Contract Regulations, Enigmatv is based in Florida, and so isn’t covered by UK law. Also, Rob’s payment seems to have gone to a company in Hyderabad, India. We’ve emailed Enigmatv and, if we get no reply, we’ll follow up by phone.

Contact us so we can investigate your case

Email: [email protected] Write: Consumeractive, Computeractive, 30 Cleveland Street, London W1T 4JD Please include both your phone number and address. Unfortunately, we can’t reply to all your letters.

We sstand up for your legal rights

How d H do I report an eBay seller who has ripped me off? An eBay seller was offering an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card for £300, which was a great price. But when I tried to buy it, the seller said he had none left, so instead I bought the more expensive GeForce GTX 1080 (pictured) for £599. There’s nothing wrong with the graphics card I have, but I feel ripped off because he’s still advertising the cheaper card. Can I do anything about this? Becky Flowers

Q

Yes, because this sounds like ‘bait and switch’ advertising, which is the unsavoury (and illegal) practice of luring people with extremely cheap prices for goods that don’t exist in the hope of persuading

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them to buy a more expensive alternative. Sellers may think it’s clever marketing, but it’s fraud – plain and simple. Becky can take legal action against the trader using rights provided by the Consumer Protection (Amendment) Regulations 2014. This law doesn’t replace the Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, but does make

CASE UPDATE Contacting two companies is better than one When a reader’s problem involves two companies, as David Brown’s did in Issue 489, we always contact both of them – even if only one is legally responsible. Doing so gives us more chance of success, as has been demonstrated with David’s case. David was having problems with a Motorola Moto G 2nd Generation 8GB phone he bought from Carphone Warehouse in May 2015. Although under the Sales of Goods Act he could have approached the retailer about the problem, he decided to send it to Motorola for a repair. The company told him that it had sent the phone to the repair company Anovo, but the device had gone missing in the process. Legally, it was Motorola’s responsibility to find or replace the phone, but we contacted both companies. We were happy with the initial outcome: Anovo found the missing phone, apologised to David, then repaired it for free. But we were overjoyed by what happened a couple of weekss later. Motorola told David it was “sorry for the inconvenience” and offered him im a new Motorola Moto G 4th Generation tion sed 32GB (pictured), which was released ng in March 2016 and is currently selling for around £220 online. David was pleased with his new phone, and e said he would probably donate the repaired phone to charity.

an important change. Previously, only Trading Standards or the Competition and Markets Authority could take legal action against a rogue trader. Now consumers can bring their own cases to court. If Becky does this and wins her case she has several options. She could end her contract with the seller and demand a full refund; she could keep the graphics card and ask for a discount; or she could claim damages based on either financial loss, alarm, distress, physical inconvenience or discomfort. It would be best to talk to the Citizens Advice Bureau for more information about making such a claim. Visit its ‘Contact us’ page at www.snipca.com/22931.

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18 – 31 January 2017 15

Protect Your Tech Scams and threats to avoid, plus new security tools WATCH OUT FOR…

Excel files that steal your money What’s the threat?

Hackers are attacking WhatsApp users with malicious Excel files that at can steal your bank details, ils, and therefore money from om your account. The files (disguised as official-looking king government documents)) ha have so fa far been sent to people in India only, but there is potential for it to spread to other countries, including the UK. It appears that people working for the Indian police and army are being specifically targeted. The malicious files claim to come from the Indian National Defence Academy and the National Investigation Agency in the hope of convincing recipients that they are important documents that need to be read straight away. Security officials say

the files may also arrive as a Word document or a PDF.

Wh What should you do?

You’ You’re unlikely to be targeted by thi this particular threat, but simi similar attacks are expected in 2017. As me messaging services like WhatsApp continue to grow rapidly (more than one billion people use it worldwide) hackers will increasingly look for ways to send phishing attempts through them. We’ve already seen some devious examples. In October 2016, scammers bombarded WhatsApp users in the UK with a fake £100 Sainsbury’s voucher (pictured above right), while in May a hoax tried to persuade people to upgrade to a non-existent ‘gold’ version of the app. The same rules for email apply to

New tools There’s an important new section to explore in CCleaner. Version 5.25 of the program lets you disable Firefox extensions, which previously you could do only by opening the browser. To do this, open CCleaner, then click Tools in the left-hand pane. In the menu that appears click Browser Plugins, then the Firefox tab at the top (there are also options for Internet Explorer, Chrome and Opera).

CCleaner 5.25

www.piriform.com/ccleaner

Next, look at the Key heading (see screenshot), where you’ll see listed all the extensions and plug-ins you have installed in Firefox. Click one, then choose to disable or delete it by clicking either blue button on the right. If you select Delete you’ll be asked to confirm your decision. Visit CCleaner’s site for details of more changes in 5.25, plus a full history of previous updates: www. snipca.com/22988.

messaging apps: never open a document that you weren’t expecting, or from a sender you don’t recognise, and don’t trust ‘too good to be true’ offers. WhatsApp provides more info on fake messages, and how to block senders: www.snipca.com/22986.

ScamWatch

READERS WARN READERS

Foiled BT scammers hang up

On two separate occasions recently my wife answered a call from a man who claimed to be from BT. He told her that our computer had a lot of “error messages”. My wife then asked him who our internet supplier was. He said that it could be TalkTalk, EE, Virgin or Sky! In fact it is none of those. She refused to switch on her computer, then told him that she was not going to speak with him further because she knew it was a scam call. He then hung up! Another day a woman claiming to be from BT phoned my wife. She also hung up when my wife said it was a scam call. Allan Watt Warn your fellow readers about scams at [email protected]

16 18 – 31 January 2017

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Best Free Software Jane Hoskyn recommends new programs that won’t cost you anything UNINSTALLER

BCUninstaller 3.5 www.snipca.com/22939 What you need: Windows 7, 8/8.1 or 10 Completely remove unwanted programs, Windows features, Windows 10 apps, adware and leftover files using this small (10MB), fast and extremely thorough open-source tool. BCUninstaller launched 18 months ago and has become one of the two program uninstallers I keep on my PC. I keep IObit Uninstaller out of habit, but I keep BCUninstaller because it’s the most powerful uninstaller I’ve ever used. Version 3.5 integrates with your PC’s System Restore tools, so you can quickly save and retrieve system backups while removing Windows features. You can create ‘Filter lists’ of items on your PC, then click to automatically remove them all in one go. It can also now find and remove leftover LNK (‘.lnk’) files – Windows desktop shortcuts that malware sometimes creates automatically (www.snipca.com/22940). Recently added features include the option to rate Windows

tools and apps, letting other users know what you decided to remove, and automatically retrying failed or incomplete uninstallations. As ever, BCUninstaller colour-codes items in its list, so you can easily spot specific types of tools and features, and then lets you remove as many of them at once as you want. It then scans your program folders and registry for leftover files and gets rid of them. BCUninstaller now comes in installable and portable versions (both for Windows 7 and later only). To get the installable version and receive automatic updates, click Download Latest Version to be redirected to the open-source software site SourceForge, which downloads the installer automatically. Run the file, choose Standard Installation in the setup wizard and then follow the steps. There’s no junk to opt out of, and no paid-for version to dodge.

3

1

2

4 1 BCUninstaller makes it

very easy to find certain items on your PC, using the Search and Filtering panel. To create a new ‘Filter list’, click ‘Advanced filtering’ then Add.

18 18 – 31 January 2017

2 Tick ‘Select using

checkboxes’ to display a tick box next to items in the colour-coded list. Tick ‘Show Windows features’ to see items such as Internet Explorer 11.

3 To remove multiple items

at once, tick as many as you want then click Uninstall or ‘Uninstall quietly’ (without having to confirm each time). Click ‘Advanced operations’ for more options.

4 To rate any item, right-

click it, click Rate and then click Useful, Questionable or Junk. To remove files left behind by old uninstallations, click Tools then ‘Clean up…’.

CALCULATOR

SpeedCrunch http://speedcrunch.org What you need: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8/8.1 or 10 This new open-source tool may be the most powerful scientific calculator you’ve ever used, but it looks like a blank square. Where are the numbers? SpeedCrunch works as you type, like the Command Prompt. Type a sum, such as 2+3, then press Enter for the result. Type strings up to 50 digits using complex numbers, numeral bases and mixed measurement units (metres and feet, say), and SpeedCrunch instantly solves them (see screenshot). If you’d rather use a clickable number pad, press Ctrl+K and it’ll appear. Other shortcuts include Ctrl+1 for a built-in library of common formulae, such as Celsius to Fahrenheit and the volume of a cone; Ctrl+2 for a wonderful database of scientific constants such as Earth Mass and a Speed of Light in the Vacuum; and Ctrl+7 for your session history, which you can export as HTML or plain text. Our only gripe is that units have to be typed in US English. Type metres and you’re told it’s an ‘unknown variable’. To get SpeedCrunch, click Download then Installer, then save and run the setup file. There’s no junk to opt out of. For Windows XP or Vista, use the portable version instead.

KEYBOARD TOOL

NeatMouse 1.05 www.snipca.com/22865 What you need: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8/8.1 or 10 Computer mice may be tiny but they’re a big strain on your wrist. Avoid pain by using this free program to remap mouse movements to your keyboard. For example press 8 to virtually move your mouse up, or press any number+Enter to virtually right-click. You can change these and other preset controls to suit you, add your own controls and create profiles for different users. The new version of NeatMouse is open-source, so we expect many innovative improvements in the coming months. NeatMouse has installable and portable versions. Click Download, then click ‘Normal installation’ or ‘Portable installation’ during setup. There’s no junk in either version.

WHAT SHOULD I DOWNLOAD? We tell you what software to use

What’s the best alternative to WD’s backup software? I’ve just bought a WD (Western Digital) My Cloud external hard drive, as I want to keep my PC and two laptops backed up using my home Wi-Fi. The drive is great, but it came with WD’s tedious SmartWare software. Is there something better I can use for free? Mike Kennedy

Q

WD’s range of hard drives and NAS (networkattached storage) devices often get great reviews. Their bundled SmartWare software is, to put it mildly, less well received. SmartWare even seems to behave like a PUP, with some users struggling to remove it from their PCs (www.snipca.com/22884). Good alternatives cost money, unfortunately. Your best bet is Acronis True Image (www.snipca.com/22883), whose new 2017 version automatically detects NAS drives like My Cloud. It lets you set up a backup schedule and encrypts your data to ensure it can’t be hacked. However, it costs £34.99 for a one-year subscription. Free backup software is a mixed bag. EaseUS Todo Backup Free (www.snipca.com/22881) demands your email address in return for its installer, and then tries to trick you into downloading a PUP called ByteFence. Clonezilla (http:// clonezilla.org) is free and junk-free, but complicated, and designed to back up entire PCs rather than selected folders. We like the free new program Safe Backup (www.snipca. com/22882, see screenshot). It lets you pick files and folders to compress and back up to your My Cloud drive. They can then be restored easily. It’s junk-free, small, fast and easy to use. However, it’s not quite an alternative to SmartWare because it won’t run scheduled or automatic backups.

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Do you need our advice on what software to use? Just email us at [email protected]

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18 – 31 January 2017 19

Reviews

New products tested by our experts

PC ❘ £750 from Chillblast www.snipca.com/22999

Chillblast Fusion Sentinel A capable PC with a brand new processor Kaby Lake may sound like a new out-of-town shopping mall somewhere in the Midlands, but actually it’s Intel’s latest range of processors. On the face of it, a new out-of-town shopping mall in the Midlands would be more exciting: these chips aren’t a huge step forward from the Skylake series that’s been worming its way into PCs for the past year or so. In fact, they’re a bit of a stop-gap while Intel gets its real next generation of chip manufacturing sorted out. Still, they’re designed to be more energyefficient, which in turn means they can run slightly faster. The first Kaby Lake desktop PC to arrive in our testing lab is this mid-range i5 system. The i5-7400 is the successor to the popular i5-6400, with a base clock speed of 3GHz and a maximum of 3.5GHz (that’s 0.3GHz and 0.2GHz faster, respectively, than Skylake). Although 0.3 may not sound like a big number, it’s an extra three hundred million clock cycles per second, which is not to be sniffed at.

Equipped with the latest components, it performs well, but expansion is limited For your £750, the Sentinel also includes a standard 8GB of relatively fast DDR4 RAM and a GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics card. This is the souped-up version of the budget GTX 1050, with 4GB rather than 2GB of its own memory, and much like the i5-7400 it may not be top-of-the-range but it is brand new. For storage, a 250GB SSD is paired with a 1TB hard drive to give you both fast performance and ample capacity. 20 18 – 31 January 2017

So is Kaby Lake a shiny new day-trip destination with a great selection of coffee shops, or just a grubby precinct full of disaffected teenagers? It’s good news, according to our benchmarks: the Sentinel’s scores were about 10 per cent better than an i5-6400 desktop PC with similar specifications. The older chip was already reasonably adept at basic document-, photo- and video-editing tasks, as well as multitasking, but it looks as if Intel has modestly improved it. The Sentinel will serve most people’s purposes very well. However, at this price you’d expect a bit more than that, and the 1050 Ti graphics card provides it. At Full HD resolution with the highest Ultra graphics settings, we got up towards 90 frames per second (fps) in some 3D games, while the most demanding ones could at least manage 30fps on Very High. Don’t mistake this for a high-end graphics card, but with plenty of memory it doesn’t feel restricted, and should help out effectively with compatible photo and video software too. Be wary, though, if you’re likely to need more horsepower later. Even though the reasonably compact Corsair case can take a full-size ATX motherboard, the Sentinel is actually built on a smaller micro-ATX board, leaving you no spare RAM slots and only a single PCIe x16 slot, which is SPECIFICATIONS

3GHz Intel i5-7400 quad-core processor • 8GB memory • 4GB Palit GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics card • 250GB SSD • 1TB hard drive • 3x USB 3.0 ports • 5x USB 2.0 ports • Gigabit Ethernet • 2x HDMI ports • 1x DisplayPort • 2x DVI ports • 1x VGA port • Windows 10 • 428x200x447mm (HxWxD) • Two-year warranty www.snipca.com/22999

already taken by the graphics card. There are two basic PCIe x1 slots for additional accessories, such as Wi-Fi or a sound card, but one of these is obscured by the chunky GTX 1050, so it would be a fiddly job to make use of it. There are two free bays for 5.25in optical drives, if you need DVD or Blu-ray, as well as room for up to two storage drives in addition to the SSD and hard drive, plus an M.2 slot for NVMe SSDs – the fastest storage you can buy. Nonetheless, a sensible storage setup and up-to-date components make the Sentinel a well-rounded PC for the money. VERDICT: With the latest processor and graphics card inside, this is a fine system to start off 2017, even if it might prove limiting in the future

★★★★☆ ALTERNATIVE: CCL Elite £623 This Skylake PC (see page 23) is cheaper, quieter and smaller, with built-in Wi-Fi, but doesn’t have the same level of performance

LAPTOP ❘ £1,000 from Razer www.snipca.com/22924 HOW WE TEST

Razer Blade Stealth Laptop with a desktop PC inside This Windows 10 laptop comes in several configurations. nfigurations. This is the cheapest, but it still costs a grand. That’s a lot of money for a laptop, but this isn’t just st a laptop. With th the same processing power as a mid-range d-range desktop PC, it could easily servee as the only computer you need. The black k case is aluminium, not plastic, and there’s e’s an ultra-fast Thunderbolt 3 USB Type-C pe-C port as well as regular USB 3.0 and HDMI MI sockets. The screen asures just 12.5in – making measures the laptop wonderfully easy to carry – yet has 2560x1440 pixels, the same as a typical 27in screen. Pay more and you can take that right up to 4K (3840x2160) with expanded colour for professional work. But there’s really no need. We found the standard QHD screen sharp and brilliantly colourful, covering 97 per cent of the standard sRGB range with good contrast. You’d have to look at something like the new MacBook Pro 13in for a brighter screen with more colours, and that starts at an eye-watering £1,449.

A sharp screen, powerful performance levels and brilliantly designed keyboard Razer has added a handy feature to the keyboard. Not only do the key caps light up, but each key can be set to any colour, and you can create your own setups for shortcuts in your favourite programs. As seems fashionable these days, the keys don’t move much, but they are sized and arranged really well for such a compact laptop, making typing easy. The glass touchpad also works perfectly, and you even get decent stereo speakers at either side. Razer is renowned for gaming systems,

BUY IT!

★★★★★

Computeractive is owned by Dennis Publishing, which owns a hi-tech facility for testing the latest technology. You’ll often read references to our benchmark testin testing, which is a method of assessing produc products using the same criteria. For exam example, we test the speed of every PC and the battery life of every tablet in exa exactly the same way. This makes our re reviews authoritative, rigorous and ac accurate. De Dennis Publishing also owns the ma magazines PC Pro, Computer Shop Shopper and Web User and the webs websites Expert Reviews (www. expert expertreviews.co.uk) and Alphr (www. alphr. alphr.com). This means we can test thousa thousands of products before choosing the mo most relevant for Computeractive.

FAIR AND IMPARTIAL

Our writers follow strict guidelines to ensure the reviews are fair and impartial. The manufacturer has no involvement in our tests.

OUR AWARDS

but this isn’t one. There’s no dedicated graphics processor. Instead, all the work is done by a brand new Intel Kaby Lake i7 processor. That’s right, even the basic model has an i7, but don’t get too excited – it only has two cores, and in our tests it performed to a similar level as the i5 in the MacBook Pro. That’s nothing to be ashamed of, and the built-in HD Graphics 620 GPU is enough for 4K video playback and light gaming. Work the processor hard and you do begin to hear the internal fans. Although Kaby Lake is meant to be power-efficient, the Stealth only lasted six and a half hours in our video-playback test. That’s a shame, but for some users it will be perfectly acceptable. Overall, for the money, we’re really impressed by the combination of build quality and performance. SPECIFICATIONS

2.7GHz Intel i7-7500U dual-core processor • 8GB memory • 128GB SSD • 12.5in 2560x1440-pixel screen • 802.11ac Wi-Fi • 2x USB 3.0 ports • 1x Thunderbolt 3 USB Type-C port • HDMI 2 port • Webcam • Windows 10 Home • 13.1x321x206mm (HxWxD) • 1.29kg • One-year warranty www.snipca.com/22925

We award every product that gets five stars our BUY IT! Buy It! stamp of approval. ★★★★★ It means we were extremely impressed by the product, and we think you will be too. Every product that gets a four-star review is given the Great Pick award. We highly recommend these products, although they just fail to meet the high standard of our Buy It! winners.

PRICES

Our reviews contain a link to the best price we found online at the time of press.

VERDICT: We’d never have guessed that Razer would produce a Windows alternative to Apple, but this is a superb laptop if you can stretch to this price

★★★★★ ALTERNATIVE: Dell XPS PS 13 £1,129 With an i5 processor, twice the SSD storage and a a bigger screen, this is a worthy rival but it can’t match the premium feel

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Reviews PRINTER ❘ £189 from Printerbase www.snipca.com/22945

Canon i-Sensys MF229dw Better than a colour printer What would the world be without thout colour? Boring, that’s what. That’s why printer adverts are full of splotches and splashes and rainbows. It’s a brilliant selling ng point. And we do mean selling. g. If printer makers had a pound d for every single one of the 16.7 million illion colours they can reproduce… oh, wait – they do. There’s another way to look at this. What would your favourite novel vel be without colour? Exactly the same. lack text There’s nothing wrong with black on a white page, and that’s what many people require to print. Choosee a nd you’ll ’ll black-and-white laser printer, and get faster, crisper output with lower running costs – important when you see the frankly terrifying prices of colour laser toner cartridges.

It prints quickly and crisply – and won’t cost a fortune to run So an affordable mono laser printer like the i-Sensys MF229dw may not seem terribly exciting, but it shouldn’t be overlooked. This particular model has the extra features you’d expect from a modern multi-function device, including built-in Wi-Fi with Apple AirPrint and Android Mopria and a scanner under the lid topped by a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF). While it’s bulkier than the average inkjet printer, it doesn’t take up too much desk space. A touchscreen makes it easy to operate. Although you can only print and copy in black and white, the scanner works in full colour, and delivered very clean and detailed images to our PC. At 28 seconds SPECIFICATIONS

600x600dpi maximum print resolution • 27ppm quoted speed • 600x600dpi maximum scan resolution • 50-sheet ADF • 250-sheet paper tray • Fax • USB • Ethernet • 802.11n Wi-Fi • 360x390x378mm (HxWxD) • 12.2kg • One-year onsite warranty www.snipca.com/22946

22 18 – 31 January 2017

Do I really need...

a matched pair of RAM modules? What does it do?

Adding memory to a PC is a g good upgrade, especially if you have less than 8GB or use demanding software. It’s often recommended that you install matching modules (DIMMs).

Why would I want it?

To eke out all the performance you can – but you need to know how pairing works.

for an A4 greyscale page at 200dpi, or 10 pages from the ADF in 87 seconds, it’s not fast nd print rint both fast. Yo You can scan, copy and sides of the paper, though, which is a time and cost saver in itself. When it came to the all-important text output, our 20-page test document sped out at 22.4 pages per minute (ppm), and throwing in some greyscale graphics only slowed it to a creditable 16.9ppm, although the results looked predictably grainy. Few inkjet printers can match that – and they cost more. At around 2.2p per page, running costs beat rival laser printers, although one or two inkjets do work out cheaper for black-only pages. You could buy a colour laser multifunction printer such as the Lexmark CX310dn for even less money – but think twice. The CX310dn isn’t designed as a black-only printer, and will therefore cycle the colour toners to keep the mechanism working. So even if you only printed black, you’d eventually need to replace the colour toners, costing around £150. VERDICT: A sensible and practical buy for anyone wanting fast black-and-white prints with manageable running costs

★★★★☆ ALTERNATIVE: VHP OfficeJet Pro 8720 £195 This similarly equipped inkjet prints almost as fast and adds colour, but its colour prints aren’t great

What’s the catch?

Modern PCs support faster ‘dual channel’ operation if two identical modules are fitted in paired slots, or even quad-channel if all four match. But the benefit is small – maybe 10 per cent. The slots may be colour-coded to show which are pairs. DIMMs needn’t be the same brand, just the same specification. Do read the The two pairs of DIMM manual for slots (top left) are colour-coded blue your PC’s and black motherboard for important advice on installation.

So can I do without it?

Yes, if necessary. Suppliers such as Crucial (www.snipca.com/22973) and Mr Memory (www.snipca.com/22974) will identify DIMMs that are compatible with your PC. These should normally work alongside any memory included when you bought the machine, even if the number of gigabytes is different. If you’ve previously added your own modules, match their type and speed. Using a ‘kit’ of two modules half the size in two free paired slots will work slightly faster, at the expense of leaving fewer slots for further upgrades. If you only have one slot free, and have to choose whether to spend your money, say on two new 4GB DIMMs or adding an 8GB to the existing 4GB, the extra gigabytes will help more than pairing.

PC ❘ £623 from CCL www.snipca.com/22926

CCL Elite Neither too big nor too small, but just right How big should a PC be? A full-size desktop PC has lots of space for adding components later, and also makes it easy to ensure good airflow inside. A micro format like Intel’s NUC (see our review, Issue 484), on the other hand, crams the same basic features into a glorified cigar box, and still lets you swap parts. But if you want to install a graphics card or Blu-ray DVD drive, the compact dimensions will work against you. You can now even get PCs the size of a highlighter pen that just plug into your TV (see our Intel Compute Stick review, Issue 456), but that’s getting silly.

Its ideal dimensions let you multitask, play games, burn discs and keep well connected No, the ideal choice for many homes will be a mini tower. The relatively compact size takes up less space than a full tower, yet because it uses a similar layout to larger systems, there’s still quite a bit of scope to open it up and tinker. The CCL Elite is a good example of this type of system. Pairing Intel’s year-old 2.7GHz quad-core Skylake i5-6400 processor with Nvidia’s brand new GeForce GTX 1050 graphics card puts it firmly in mid-range territory, which means it can easily manage more demanding programs as well as breezing through basic Windows 10 tasks. We’ve seen good desktop PCs based on processors from further down Intel’s Core range, such as the i3-6100, and they do OK in our image-editing tests, but when it comes to video editing and multitasking they tend to falter. The i5-6400, on the other

hand, is a particularly well-balanced processor, achieving near-identical scores in all three benchmark tests. It’s helped here by a sensible 8GB of DDR4 RAM running at 2,133MHz, which is faster than the DDR3 memory modules you’re more likely to see in PCs at this price. The GTX 1050 is one ics of the best budget graphics cards around at the moment and is designed to run most games on high or medium settings at Full HD resolution. Nvidia licenses the design to various manufacturers, who mostly produce very similar cards; in this case CCL has used one from Palit. In some games we got a very slick 76 frames per second (fps) in Full HD even when we used the highest quality settings. More demanding games did force it down below 30fps, but adjusting the settings made them playable once more. Nvidia cards are widely supported by graphics programs, too, so creative tasks – such as editing photos and videos – should benefit. CCL has fitted a DVD drive, which you can use to burn music or video discs, or make backups of selected files. Wi-Fi is also included – not something you can take for granted with desktop PCs – although you’ll want to replace the 802.11n card with an 802.11ac version if you’re planning to use this regularly. A better option is to cable the Gigabit Ethernet port to your router. Other ports include four USB 3.0, split evenly across the front and back panels, four USB 2.0, and two PS/2 ports in case you have an older keyboard and mouse to connect.

Two HDMI sockets, a single DisplayPort, two dual-link DVI outputs and a VGA interface will cater for any screen or projector setup. Upgrading won’t be easy because of the small microATX motherboard, which can only take two memory modules, one graphics card in the PCIe x16 slot (which is already filled by the 1050) and an accessory in the only PCIe x1 slot that isn’t covered up by the graphics card. There are two 3.5in drive bays free, though, beside the installed 1TB hard drive, and 2.5in drives can be mounted onto the chassis, so it wouldn’t be difficult to add an SSD. SPECIFICATIONS

2.7GHz i5-6400 quad-core processor • 8GB memory • 1TB hard drive • 2GB Palit GeForce GTX 1050 graphics card • 4x USB 3 ports • 4x USB 2 ports • Gigabit Ethernet port • 2x HDMI ports • DisplayPort • 2x DVI ports • VGA port • Windows 10 Home • 378x198x411mm (HxWxD) • Three-year warranty www.snipca.com/22926

VERDICT: Compact, versatile and reasonably quiet, the CCL Elite is a good-value all-rounder if you don’t have big expansion plans

★★★★☆ ALTERNATIVE: Wired2Fire Diablo Nucleus £600 With the same case, this uses AMD’s rival FX 460 graphics card and replaces the hard drive with an SSD

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Reviews PHONE ❘ £449 from Amazon www.snipca.com/22951

Motorola Moto Z A bargain with or without extras Motorola’s Moto Z Play (see our review, Issue 491) showed that a phone with attachable (and detachable) accessories could be more practical, more elegant and cheaper than LG’s G5. This is a pricier version of that phone, but at £449 it’s cheaper than many top-of-the-range phones. Add the £200 Hasselblad True Zoom accessory, which turns your Moto Z into a fully featured compact camera, and you’d still only be paying a tad more than for a basic iPhone 7 or Samsung Galaxy S7. Resist the add-ons and you get the world’s thinnest phone, if you ignore the bump of the built-in camera at the back. SPECIFICATIONS

5.5in 2560x1440-pixel screen • 13-megapixel rear camera • 5-megapixel front camera • 32GB flash storage • MicroSD card slot • 802.11ac Wi-Fi • Bluetooth 4.1 • 3G/4G • 155x75x5.2mm (HxWxD) • 136g • One-year warranty www.snipca.com/22952

This isn’t the best camera for fine detail, but takes acceptable photos, and the sharp 5.5in AMOLED screen n covers the full sRGB colour range, albeit with slightly limited brightness. There’s a fingerprint sensor with Android Pay (Google’s contactless payment system), and inside is a Snapdragon 820 processor that helps it perform on a par with the S7, though still a little way behind Apple’s graphics capabilities. Android 6 comes installed, but we’d expect a free upgrade to 7 very soon. Battery life could be better, at 12 hours 21 minutes in our video-playback test, and as with the iPhone 7 you have to connect headphones via the single data port (in this case USB Type-C), making

charging more of a hassle. Just 15 minutes plugged in should give you up to seven hours of use, though, and among the optional extras are battery cases for longer running. VERDICT: Despite the lacklustre built-in camera and relatively short battery life, the Moto Z is impressive for the price

★★★★☆ lus 3T ALTERNATIVE: OnePlus £399 With 64GB of storage lot), (though no microSD slot), this is a strong rival if the ystem Moto Z’s accessory system doesn’t appeal

PHONE ❘ £470 from Amazon www.snipca.com/22953

HTC 10 Evo A good phone spoiled We liked last year’s HTC 10 (see our review, Issue 477), and here’s the latest version of it, which is £110 cheaper. But we knew something was wrong as soon as we picked it up. While the 5.2in HTC 10 felt solid and comfortable to hold, the 5.5in Evo is awkwardly angular and bulky. And yet, seemingly there wasn’t room for a headphone port. Fortunately, a very good set of earbuds is supplied with a USB Type-C plug, but you still can’t listen while charging, which is just annoying. The screen may be bigger, and protected by Gorilla Glass 5, but it has SPECIFICATIONS

5.5in 2560x1440-pixel screen • 16-megapixel rear camera • 8-megapixel front camera • 32GB flash storage • MicroSD slot • 802.11ac Wi-Fi • Bluetooth 4.1 • 3G/4G • Android 6 • 154x77x8.1mm (HxWxD) • 174g • One-year warranty www.snipca.com/22954

24 18 – 31 January 2017

much poorer contrast and colour accuracy, making it one of the worst we’ve seen recently. Behind it is a Snapdragon 810 processor that just isn’t good enough for a phone at this price, making Android 6 feel sluggish. And despite the chunky chassis, the battery only lasted 11 hours eight minutes of video playback, giving you below-average running time at an above-average cost. What can we say that’s positive about the Evo? Well, the fingerprint reader works, and the cameras are fine. Oh, and it’s splashproof. That’s almost a bad thing, though, because if you’re unfortunate enough to buy one, you’ll be hoping it falls in a pond and gives you an

excuse to replace it with something better. This is more like a step back to HTC’s uninspiring One M9 than a successor to the 10. They should have called it something else, like the HTC Oops. VERDICT: In the great scheme of things this isn’t a terrible phone, but there’s no good reason to choose it over others

★★☆☆☆ ALTERNATIVE: Motorola Moto X Force £392 If you like the idea of a big phone that’s ’s hard to break, this is a much better etter deal, though without the fingerprint reader

PC MONITOR ❘ £299 from Samsung www.snipca.com/22944

Samsung C24FG70FQU A screen that’s ahead of the curve Let’s not beat about the bush: this monitor is too expensive. These days, for a pound short of 300 quid, you’d expect a 27 or 28-inch screen with at least 2560x1440 pixels (QHD) or even 3840x2160 (4K UHD). This one is just 23.5in and 1920x1080 (Full HD). So why are we bothering to even talk about it? Well, first of all, like printers, monitors tend to get discounted, so if you keep your eyes open, there’s a good chance you’ll eventually see the C24FG70FQU selling for less. Secondly, this isn’t just any 24in panel. It’s billed as a ‘Professional Gaming Monitor’, but many of the things that might appeal to gamers will also appeal to anyone who wants a decent screen to work on. From the front, it looks fairly standard, with a neat black plastic case, slim bezels and a circular stand. Look to the side, however, and it’s anything but ordinary. The display is concave, curving on a 1.8m radius to make the picture feel like it’s wrapped around you. The case accommodates this with a distinctive wedge shape, and it’s mounted on a big and sturdy two-piece Anglepoisestyle arm (see image below). This justifies the extra space it takes up, because you can set the screen at the exact height and angle that suits you. With experts saying that most of us are using screens in positions that harm our neck and back, it’s a feature we shouldn’t take lightly. And the picture is well worth seeing in

comfort. This is one of the first PC monitors to borrow ‘quantum dot’ technology from high-end TVs. In the future, screens made entirely of quantum dots could bring higher contrast and purer colour. For the moment, though, the principle is n used for backlighting of an otherwise conventional LCD dvantages, panel to give the same advantages, rather like the AMOLED technology in Samsung’s laptops and tablets. It works: our test equipment measured an amazingly low black level, very high brightness and enormous contrast.

Brilliant images and a superb stand – but just too expensive What your eyes will tell you is that the image is bold and vibrant when it should be, but also does full justice to subtle gradations. Our test confirmed that it covered almost 100 per cent of the sRGB range with very high accuracy. That’s not quite so impressive now that Apple, for example, fits screens that go well beyond sRGB sRGB, but only a few programs can take adva va advantage of that. There’s little to be gain in by fiddling any further with the gained colo lo settings, but it’s easy to do so if colour you u want, thanks to the straightforward menu system, controlled by a joystick me behi hi the bottom edge. behind Non-gamers may not be excited by the monitor’s 144MHz refresh rate and one-milisecond response time, bu but they mean the display looks sm smooth and stable and objects in mo motion stay sharp. It all contributes to mo moving pictures that look more solid and d real. If you do like 3D games and have ve an AMD graphics card, Freesync is supp supported to keep the monitor locked to

the number of frames per second being output, and we found it worked perfectly. Finally, the optional ‘Arena lighting’ feature projects light downward when the screen gets bright, a bit like Philips’ Ambilight, although it’s much weaker here. You’d only notice it when watching videos or playing games in a dark room, but, like the curve, it makes you feel a little more immersed in the experience. If we were going to splash out on a curved screen, we’d probably pick a bigger one. But this is such an excellent monitor that we hope to see more like it – albeit at lower prices. SPECIFICATIONS

23.5in VA LCD • 1920x1080-pixel resolution • DisplayPort 1.2 (cable included) • 2x HDMI port (cable included) • Headphone socket • 545x545x387mm (HxWxD) • Two-year warranty www.snipca. com/22944

VERDICT: We’re not going to recommend it at £300, but this is nothing short of a great screen with features that will hopefully appear in cheaper monitors

★★★☆☆ ALTERNATIVE: Samsung LC27F591FDUXEN £250 It’s not as impressive or adjustable, but this curved 27in monitor adds speakers and is cheaper – though still only Full HD

18 – 31 January 2017 25

Reviews SSD ❘ £135 from Amazon www.snipca.com/22962

Lexar Portable e SSD 512GB ling Storage without the installing More and more laptops now come with h SSDs rather than traditional hard drives, es, giving faster reading and writing speeds ds but less capacity. It’s also simple to add dd an SSD to a desktop PC, either as a 2.5in SATA drive or as a bare module to plug ug into the increasingly common M.2 interface. If you want extra space but don’t fancy opening anything up with a screwdriver, an external SSD is the answer, now that USB 3.0 provides enough transfer speed to take advantage of the performance available from budget SSDs.

A great option if you want extra space but don’t want to open up your PC This USB 3.0 SSD comes in a slightly bulkier case than the unit from Adata we tested a couple of months ago (see our review, Issue 489), and that’s because it’s compatible with Lexar’s Professional Workflow system. Buy an HR1 four-bay USB 3.0 hub (£43 from Amazon www. snipca.com/22963) and you can slot in up to four portable units for flexible

high-speed, high-capacity storage. It’s nowhere near the fastest option around – USB 3.1 and now Thunderbolt 3 support much higher speeds, delivered in turn by more expensive SSDs – but it’s relatively affordable. If you only need a single drive, the Portable SSD 512GB (also available in half the capacity for around £100) isn’t reliant on the HR1 but comes with a USB 3.0 cable that you plug straight into your PC. We found it randomly disconnected and reconnected itself every now and again without warning, but this didn’t cause any problems. Otherwise, it worked as we’d expect it to. In our tests, write speeds peaked a bit higher than the quoted 245MB/s, but dropped to as little as 16MB/s with small files, while reading peaked at 366MB/s but fell to a disappointing 13MB/s in more challenging tasks. These aren’t bad results for the price, though not quite as good as those achieved by the Adata SV620.

WHAT SHOULD I BUY?

You could get more capacity or performance for your money by buying a standard 2.5in SSD and an external enclosure, but as a ready-made solution this is good value. SPECIFICATIONS

512GB 2.5in SSD with enclosure • USB 3.0 • 23x74x60mm (HxWxD) • 240g • Two-year warranty www.snipca.com/22964

VERDICT: A decent choice if you want fast external storage but don’t need top performance, and the hub option may be of interest for later expansion

★★★★☆ ☆ ALTERNATIVE: IVE: Adata SV260 480GB £117 The 240GB 40GB version of this drive, which comess in a smaller basic enclosure, was as slightly fasterr in our tests

We solve your buying dilemmas

Is the Lenovo Ideapad 310 a good option? I need to replace my ageing Acer Aspire laptop, mainly for word processing and photo editing. I enjoy taking close-ups of architectural detail. I use an iPad as my photo album, so I don’t need a huge hard drive. I’m hoping to spend no more than £500 and have been shown a Lenovo Ideapad 310 with an i5 processor and Full HD screen. I know the battery life isn’t great, but I can cope with that. I’d welcome your opinion. Ann Lines

Q

26 18 – 31 January 2017

We’d advise keeping copies of your photos on both your iPad and PC for safety reasons, and with modern image sizes the iPad will eventually fill up. We haven’t tested the latest Ideapad 310, but it looks good value at £400 from PC World (www.snipca. com/22965, see image). The i5-6200U is an older dual-core processor, but faster than the Pentiums and Atoms in some budget laptops, and fine for photo editing. The screen is sharp, and better than rivals like the HP Pavilion 15.6in,

A

but colour accuracy will be limited in this price bracket. Plugging a monitor such as the Asus VC239H (£132 from Amazon www.snipca.com/22966, see our review, Issue 490) into the HDMI port would give you very good colour. Do you need advice on what you should buy? Email us at [email protected]

Reviews MOUSE ❘ £46 from Amazon www.snipca.com/22956

Microsoft Arc Touch Mouse e A unique mouse that ditches the scroll wheel This is the weirdest mouse we’ve seen – and we mean that in a good way. It comes as a flat strip, with left and right buttons at one end and a touch-sensitive strip between them instead of a scroll wheel. That makes it easy to pack away, and in use it snaps into a hand-fitting bridge shape. Although the Arc Touch has been around for a while, it incorporates the kind of haptic technology we associate with fancy products like Apple’s Magic Trackpad 2. With no moving parts, the scroll strip detects the movement of your finger, but optional sound and vibration effects (set up using a SPECIFICATIONS

2.4GHz wireless mouse • Requires Bluetooth receiver (supplied) • Supports Windows 7, 8 or 10, Android 3.2 or higher, MacOS 10.7 or later • Requires 2x AAA batteries (included) • 37x6x11mm (HxWxD) • 86g • Three-year warranty www.snipca.com/22955

companion app for Windows and Android) make it feel like you’re operating something mechanical. The laser-based optical sensor nsor works well on almost any matt surface, and unlike most mice we test, it suits both right- and left-handers. A wireless USB stick is supplied to connect the mouse to your PC. An alternative Bluetooth version (£50 from Amazon www. snipca.com/22957) works with devices that have built-in Bluetooth, although the app for this doesn’t work with Windows 7. The Arc Touch runs on two AAA batteries, which Microsoft reckons will need replacing about every six months (a warning light lets you know when they’re getting low). There are no extras such as assignable buttons, and we found the main left and right clicks

required a bit more force than we’d have liked. But this is a very usable mouse at a fair price. VERDICT: It’s a satisfyingly unique device, and the design makes it especially handy if you need to carry a mouse around

★★★★☆ ALTERNATIVE: Logitech Ultrathin T630 £48 With a more advanced touch surface, this flat Bluetooth mouse is good but not such a comfortable shape

WIRELESS SPEAKER ❘ £35 from HMV www.snipca.com/22959 /22959

Gear4 Stream 1 Streaming sound for less This speaker is a cylinder that’s exactly the diameter of a CD – perhaps a homage to the audio generation it supersedes. It can play music from your phone and tablet via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, or directly from services such as Spotify Premium (which requires a subscription) when it’s connected to your home broadband router. There’s also a direct audio jack input. Buttons on top of the unit control volume and playback, but you can’t skip tracks. For most purposes you’ll control the speaker from Gear4’s app, which also lets you create multi-room setups if you buy more than one Stream unit. SPECIFICATIONS

2x full-range drivers • 802.11n Wi-Fi • Requires PC, phone or tablet with Bluetooth 2.1 or higher • 210x120x120mm (HxWxD) • 1.1kg • One-year warranty www.snipca.com/22959

28 18 – 31 January 2017

Unfortunately, the app pp is very clunky, and could leave ave you scratching your head a few times before getting things hings working. The built-in rechargeable rgeable battery makes the Stream ream 1 fully wire-free (unlike the chunkier Stream 3), and it has a rubber handle on top for carrying it around. At over a kilo it wouldn’t be the ideal choice for holidays, but it’s portable enough to take into the garden or for a day at the beach. Launched last summer, the Stream range isn’t currently shown on Gear4’s website, which seems slightly ominous. If you’re planning a future-proof multi-room system, you might want to stick with a more established range, such as Sonos. As a standalone speaker with a good range of connection options and

multi-room potential, though, the th Stream 1 isn’t bad, a and HMV is currently se selling it at little more than a th third of the normal price o of £100. VERDICT: For £100 this doesn’t have the best sound or the neatest app, but if you can get it for less it’s a decent portable speaker

★★★★☆ ALTERNATIVE: Jam Rhythm £70 Sound quality is similarly limited but this multi-room starter speaker also uses Wi-Fi for a reliable connection

SMART PET CAMERA ❘ £249 from Amazon www.snipca.com/22960

Furbo Dog Camera Your robot dog-sitter This plastic column reminded us of home-security monitors like the Canary (see our review, Issue 478), but it comes with a twist. The section at the top accommodates an internetconnected 720p HD camera, while the hole half-way down ejects pet treats on command! The commands come from the accompanying app, which runs on your Apple or Android phone or tablet. The Furbo connects to your broadband router, letting you control it from anywhere in the world when you’re connected to the internet. On-screen icons let you watch live through the camera’s lens, talk to your dog over the Furbo’s built-in speaker, or flick a treat in the hound’s general direction. There’s no obvious reason why this wouldn’t all work equally for cats, except that any self-respecting cat would just stare at the unit balefully for a couple of hours before swatting it on to the floor. Some dogs might adopt the same attitude, but fortunately it’s not as easy to knock over as it looks.

There’s a genuine purpose to this gadget, but it’s too expensive for most pet owners You’ll need to place the Furbo fairly high up, because the camera points slightly downwards. It gives a wide-angle view, and provides night vision, so when your dog (or cat) is in the same room you should be able to see what it’s up to. The speaker and mic (yes, your pup can talk back to you) don’t give particularly brilliant sound quality, but the app will alert you when it hears barking. The idea is that you can then soothe the mutt with some kind words and a snack, of which up to 30 can be stored (their diameter

The Computeractive

Wishlist

Products we would like to see

can be no larger than 1cm), although for health reasons you shouldn’t dish out more than 10 a day. Dispensing too many treats (as we discovered during testing) can result in your faithful friend, well, returning the favour, so to speak. If you regularly have to leave your dog on its own, there’s a genuine purpose to this gadget, and the treat-giving aspect should ensure it hangs around at least some of the time in the camera’s vicinity, even if it’s not confined to the room. But at £249 (up from the original £199 due to the exchange rate), it’s far too expensive for most pet owners. SPECIFICATIONS

120-degree wide-angle camera with 4x digital zoom • 720p HD • Speaker and microphone • 802.11n Wi-Fi • Ethernet • Requires iOS or Android device • 225x150x120mm (HxWxD) • 0.8kg • One-year warranty www.snipca.com/22961

VERDICT: What sounds at first like one of those ‘internet of things’ joke items is actually quite a good idea – but not at this price

★★★☆☆ ALTERNATIVE: Petzi £135 We haven’t had the chance nce to test this rival treatdispensing camera, but the price is much more to our liking

No.11: A TABLET WITH NO BEZELS ‘Bezel’ is a lovely word from Old French for something nobody wants: the plastic border around a screen. On your PC monitor or HDTV, it’s a small percentage of the total area – and while it looks more stylish if it’s super-slim, you can still forget about it if it isn’t. But on phones and tablets, the edges matter. The first iPad seemed like it was half border, and even today’s tablets still have sizeable bezels, making them bulkier than necessary. Phones have been losing their flab: Huawei’s Mate 9 has just a tiny ‘chin’ and ‘forehead’, while the screen of Xiaomi’s Mi Mix (pictured) goes to the edge on three sides. Why shouldn’t tablets follow? There’s been some waffle about the bezel giving your thumbs room to hold on, but we don’t see the need, and software is getting better at ignoring accidental screen contact. We’d like the camera to go behind the screen, so we can look straight on, not to one side. Failing that, a camera bump on the edge would be no worse than on the back. No more excuses: it’s time for the edge-toedge tablet.

NEXT IS ISSUE

ON SALE

Weds 1 Feb

GeForce GTX 1050 10 vs AMD RX 460 0 Which budget graphics card is the best upgrade?

Asus Z As ZenBook Book 3 A Windows 10 laptop to beat the MacBook

These and much more… Subscribe to Computeractive at www.getcomputeractive.co.uk

18 – 31 January 2017 29

Buy It

Find out what other products we liked. Buy our new 2015 Back Issue CD: £15 from www.snipca.com/21619

Our pick of products that have won the Buy It award

LAPTOP

DESKTOP PC

APPLE IPAD

Asus ZenBook UX305CA

Palicomp AMD Avenger

Apple iPad Air 2

This metal-cased ‘ultrabook’ looks much more expensive than it is. There’s no touchscreen or 36-degree hinge, just great quality all round and an ultra-sharp display. The M3 processor is adequate for most tasks, though not gaming.

AMD’s Athlon X4 880K processor gives this PC solid performance with money left for GTX 960 graphics and a very fast 128GB SSD as well as a 1TB hard drive. It’s not the quietest or most expandable PC, but excellent value.

Getting old, but still our favourite iPad. Buy with 64GB (£429) and you’ll never run out of space. The Pro models are great with Apple’s keyboard and Pencil, but work out much more expensive.

ALTERNATIVE Dell Inspiron 15 5000 If you need a full-size Windows 10 laptop with a DVD drive and a desktop PC-level i5 processor, this is a solid choice. £550 from www.snipca.com/21650

ALTERNATIVE: Dell Inspiron 24 5000 If you prefer your desktop PC in one neat box, this Intel i5 system has all the essentials at a reasonable price. £815 from www.snipca.com/21651

ALTERNATIVE: iPad Mini 2 Slower than the iPad Mini 4, with no fingerprint recognition and a less vivid screen, but an iPad at this price is great value. £239 from www.snipca.com/20436

£650 from www.snipca.com/22321 Tested: Issue 475

£500 from www.snipca.com/20927 Tested: Issue 479

£390 from www.snipca.com/21664 Tested: Issue 437

ANDROID TABLET

APPLE IPHONE

ANDROID PHONE

Samsung Galaxy S2 9.7

£450 from www.snipca.com/21678 Tested: Issue 462

Apple iPhone SE

£361 from www.snipca.com/21683 Tested: Issue 474

Motorola Moto G4

The Sony Xperia Z4 is too expensive and Google’s cheaper Nexus 9 has been discontinued, leaving the 32GB S2 9.7 as the best mid-sized choice. It’s a serious rival to the iPad Air 2, albeit slower.

It may be b Apple’ Apple’s ‘budget’ ‘bud ud t’ phone, ho but the smaller SE beats most others in the market with top-end processing power, a great screen and camera, fingerprint recognition and Apple Pay. You should consider paying £439 for the 64GB model, though.

With an attractive 5.5in screen, an excellent 13-megapixel camera and decent performance, the G4 is the best budget option. £150 from www.snipca. com/21685

ALTERNATIVE: Huawei MediaPad M3 8.0 Rivalling Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S2, this compact tablet has a slightly larger screen and a fingerprint reader. It’s highly capable except when playing advanced 3D games. £310 from www.snipca.com/21926

30 18 – 31 January 2017

ALTERNATIVE: iPhone 6s A bigger screen, better camera and 3D Touch justify the price, but as with the SE the 64GB model (£619) is the best choice. £499 from www.snipca.com/20441

£158 from www.snipca.com/21685 Tested: Issue 479

ALTERNATIVE: Samsung Galaxy S7 Restoring the microSD slot to allow extra storage makes this an even better top-end phone than the S6, with a fantastic screen and camera and incredible 18-hour battery life. £460 from www.snipca.com/21684

Zoostorm ™ recommends Windows.

The Zoostorm™ range of home desktop PCs deliver powerful, reliable performance that’s perfect for everyday computing and offers the perfect mixture of performance and price to suit every budget. Browse the web, work with documents, create visual content and enjoy light gaming with ease. Work and play in high resolution and experience visual perfection with HD graphics. Zoostorm™ is manufactured and supported in the UK and has built its reputation on delivering excellent quality, service and support.

EVOLVE DESKTOP PC

EVOLVE DESKTOP PC

DELTA PICO DESKTOP PC

DELTA PICO DESKTOP PC

Product Code: 7260-0211

Product Code: 7260-0215

Product Code: 7260-0140

Product Code: 7260-0142

• Windows 10 Home

• Windows 10 Home

• Windows 10 Home

• Windows 10 Home

• • • • •

Intel® Celeron® Processor 8GB RAM 1TB Hard Drive DVD/RW VGA, HDMI, USB 2.0 x3 & 3.0 x3

£249 .88 Available to buy from:

• • • • •

AMD A10 7860K Processor 16GB RAM 2TB Hard Drive DVD/RW VGA, HDMI, USB 2.0 x3 & 3.0 x3

£399 .89

• • • •

Intel® Celeron® Processor 4GB RAM 500GB Hard Drive USB 2.0 x4 & 3.0 x2

£189 .98

• • • • •

Intel® Celeron® Processor 8GB RAM 1TB Hard Drive DVD/RW USB 2.0 x4 & USB 3.0 x2

£219 .98

BUY IT!

★★★★★

Buy It

EBOOK READER

SECURITY SOFTWARE

PHOTO EDITING

Amazon Kindle (2016)

Kaspersky Internet Security 2017

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 6

Kaspersky Internet Security 2017 has won our past eight antivirus tests. Compatible with Windows 10, the 2017 edition is available at an exclusive reader discount on our Software Store. Go to the link above for a one-year, one-device licence or buy a two-year, three-device licence for just £34.99.

Lightroom is the professional’s choice for managing and tweaking photos, including raw files from DSLR cameras. If you need Photoshop for more advanced editing, get both on the Adobe CC Photography Plan for £8.57 a month (www.snipca.com/19283).

£57 from www.snipca.com/21901 Tested: Issue 483

£19.95 from www.snipca.com/21532 Tested: Issue 493

£99 from www.snipca.com/21904 Tested: Issue 453

Here: All copy copied and pasted from issue 489

Amazon’s on’s basic ebook reader is now good enough to be our first choice. It’s plasticky, but slim and lightweight, with a decent 4GB storage and good battery life. Consider the £110 Paperwhite if you want backlighting or (for £60 extra) 3G. Glo HD One ALTERNATIVE Kobo Aura Competing with Amazon’s the Kindle Kindle Paperwhite, Oasis, this Kobo’s premium compact model model from hasKobo a clear hasscreen a with largecontrollable 7.8in screenlighting. and is comfortable £130 from to www.snipca.com/21905 read. £190 from www.snipca.com/22031

ALTERNATIVE: Avast Free Antivirus Almost as good as Kaspersky, but sometimes blocks legitimate software. Free from www.snipca.com/16493

ALTERNATIVE: Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 365 For all-round design and drawing plus photo filters, this affordable app has a lot to offer. £49 from www.snipca.com/19280

PC MONITOR

ROUTER

NAS

AOC Q2778VQE

Synology RT1900ac

Synology DiskStation DS215j

£230 from www.snipca.com/21902 £228 Tested: Issue 468

£145 from www.snipca.com/21903 £134 Tested: Issue 474

£172 from www.snipca.com/21906 Tested: Issue 449

Here: All copy copied and pasted from issue 489 It comes with no extras, such as built-in speakers or a USB hub, but this 2560x1440 panel gives you a full 27in screen with excellent contrast and colour accuracy at a very reasonable price. It’s a little laggy for gamers, but there’s no ghosting on motion.

If you’re looking to upgrade an outdated Here: All copy copied router, there are lots of dual-band and pasted issue 802.11ac models to from choose from. This 489 This one suits one suits mostalmost broadband all broadband connections connections that don’t require and has an ADSL plentymodem of options, and such has plenty as sharing of options, a connected such asprinter sharing ora storage. connected printer or storage.

ALTERNATIVE: Dell UltraSharp U2414H This 1920x1080, 24in screen has a stand that can switch to portrait mode. Colour accuracy is excellent. £199 from www.snipca.com/21908

ALTERNATIVE TP-Link Archer C9 Not quite as fast, but this or the D9 (with ADSL modem built in) is a simple and capable router with a stylish design. £109from £85 fromwww.snipca.com/21909 www.snipca.com/21909

32 18 – 31 January 2017

This two-drive NAS enclosure has it all – fast performance, easy configuration and plenty of extra features. Its only flaw is that installation is a little fiddly – but if you want quality network storage, then this is the obvious choice. ALTERNATIVE: Synology DS414j A four-drive NAS that’s generally fast and easy to set up and use. £268 from www.snipca.com/22846

BUY IT!

★★★★★ HOMEPLUGS

WEB DESIGN

Devolo dLAN 1200 Triple+ Starter Kit

Xara Web Designer Premium 365

£100 from www.snipca.com/21690 Tested: Issue 444

Devolo’s latest HomePlug adapters are the fastest we’ve ever seen. They’re well designed too, with a passthrough socket so you can still power another device and the design should avoid skirting boards and other obstacles. ALTERNATIVE: D-Link PowerLine AV2 1000HD Gigabit Starter Kit Fast (speeds of up to 1000Mbps), much cheaper and very easy to set up, but the lack of a passthrough socket is frustrating. £22 from www.snipca.com/21691

MULTIFUNCTION PRINTER

Canon Pixma MG5750

£77 from www.snipca.com/21693 Tested: Issue 470

You don’t get many frills, but this compact all-in-one printer/scanner includes all the essentials, like Wi-Fi and printing both sides of the paper (duplex), at a reasonable price. It’s fairly quick, running costs are better than average, and the five-ink system ensures photos and black text both come out looking great. ALTERNATIVE: Brother MFC-J5320DW For more business-type tasks, this all-in-one has automatic paper feed for the scanner and the ability to print occasional A3 pages. £115 from www.snipca.com/21694

P DRRIC OP E

£56 from www.snipca.com/16955 Tested: Issue 453

This visual web-design program makes creating sites more like laying out a document than writing HTML code, and sites can be responsive, meaning they look right on both big and small screens without extra work. A basic version is also available for half the price.

COMPETITION

Win 1 of 3 Picture Keeper Connect 16GB Using Picture Keeper Connect you can back up your phones, tablets and computers. It’s easy to use – simply connect it to your device, click ‘start backup’ then let the app do the rest. It’s compatible with Android and iOS, as well as PC and Mac. You can use it anywhere – no internet connection is required. To enter this competition, email your address to [email protected] with ‘keeper’ in the subject line by midnight 31 January.

ALTERNATIVE: Incomedia WebSite X5 v12 Evolution It may feel a little basic, but this straightforward program outputs efficient HTML code and responsive pages. £50 from www.snipca.com/19440

You can buy the Picture Keeper Connect 16GB version for £112 from Amazon (www.snipca.com/22930). There are also 32GB and 64GB versions available for £135 and £170 respectively. For more information visit http://picturekeeper.com and follow @PictureKeeper on Twitter.

SOLID STATE DRIVE

SECURITY CAMERA

Crucial BX100 1TB

Y-cam Day/Night

£583 from www.snipca.com/21695 Tested: Issue 445

A blindingly fast, high-capacity SSD at a low lower ower er p price rice than ever before. If you’ve been put off buying an SSD because of the cost, then now is finally the time to take the plunge. ALTERNATIVE: Samsung 850 Pro 256GB An even faster SSD, but it’s much more expensive per gigabyte. £118 from www.snipca.com/21696

P DRRIC OP E

om/22987 £122 from www.snipca.com/22987 Tested: Issue 483

Smaller and simpler than rivals, this all-in-one 720p HD Wi-Fi camera is triggered by motion. Play back or watch live remotely from your iOS or Android phone or tablet. A week’s cloud storage is free, upgradable to 30 days for £3.99 per month. ALTERNATIVE: Netgear Arlo Batteries, which last months, make these cameras (the price is for two) very practical. Cloud storage beyond a week costs extra. £290 from www.snipca.com/21653

18 – 31 January 2017 33

Computeractive 2015 Back Issue CD Over 100 people have given our 2015 Back Issue CD a five-star review on Amazon. Visit www.snipca.com/21619 to read them, and buy the CD yourself. Here’s what some of your fellow Computeractive readers have said:

This exceeded my expectations. You tend to forget the amount of information there is in each issue. Simply wonderful. Keith Hollobone

★★★★★

Have been using these for some years. Great space-savers as well as a convenient method of storage and accessing data. Maureen Jenner

★★★★★

Excellent product. I have purchased all of the 2015 printed editions. I can now use the disc as a reference source, in a compact, easily retrieved form. Wouldn’t be without it. David Nelson

★★★★★

Invaluable space saver. I have every issue of this CD back to Computeractive’s first appearance 18 years ago and many Windows systems back, and they all still produce the information asked for. Margaret Little

★★★★★

An absolute bargain at the price. These 26 issues contain a wealth of information for all computer users and have already solved some problems I was having. I copied the files to the hard disc of my PC so I could browse them at leisure without inserting the CD. Carl Hughes

★★★★★

Lived up to expectations and as a new purchaser of the magazine it gave me access to previous editions. Mr N Tinlin

★★★★★

COMING SOON! 2016 BACK ISSUE CD

Workshops & Tips

PU & LL OU Is K su E e E 49 P T 3

Edited by Sherwin Coelho

14 pages of easy-to-follow workshopss and expert tips 35 Set a schedule of automated PC fixes 38 Edit multiple photos in one go

40 Set your PC to shut down automatically 42 Create keyboard shortcuts for clipboard items

PLUS 43 Readers’ Tips 44 Phone & Tablet Tips 46 Make Windows Better

47 Make Office Better 48 Secret Tips For... Chromecast

Set a schedule of automated PC fixes What you need: Synei System Utilities; Any Windows version (XP to 10) Time required: 30 minutes

I

n Issue 489, we reviewed the latest version of Synei System Utilities (see page 18). This PCmaintenance program is incredibly comprehensive and includes many tools that we simply didn’t have room to cover. Here, we’ll show you

how to use its most useful feature, which lets you schedule automatic fixes and cleaning tasks, so that your machine is always in optimal condition. We’ll first show you how w to tweak both these tasks’ default settings for the best results.

STEP To install the program, go to www.snipca.com/22217,

1

scroll down, then click the Download button at the foot of the System Utilities Free column. Run the downloaded setup file to launch the program. You’ll see four tabs at the top 1 with various options 2 . You can schedule tasks, including 1-Click Maintenance 3 (to find and fix problems with your PC) and Clean PC 4 (to find and remove junk files).

STEP Before you do this, it’s a good idea to tweak the default

2

settings for both tasks. To change your default 1-Click Maintenance settings, click Configuration 1 . Here, you’ll see two pages of 1-Click options 2 . The Recommended setting 3 is set by default, but you can switch to Maximum 4 for more thorough results, though this will take longer and slow down your PC while it is running. You can also modify each option manually.

1

1

4

3

3

4

2

2 18 – 31 January 2017 35

Workshops STEP To modify each option, first click Recommended 1 .

3

Now click the Normal Scan dropdown menu and change it to Full Scan (longer but more thorough) or Custom Scan (lets you specify which PC areas you want to scan) 2 . Select Maximum Optimization 3 and tick Internet 4 to include your browsers. Both these options will display pop-up menus telling you that some programs may become unstable (switch to the Recommended setting if programs are affected).

1

2

3

4

STEP Next, click ‘1-Click Page 2’ on

4

the left to see more options. By default, the program only defrags your C Drive, but you can select All Drives from the dropdown menu 1 . Ensure that all options are ticked under Synei Spyware Defender 2 and change the Cleaning Mode dropdown menu to Deep Clean 3 . Click Apply 4 then OK. You can revert to the default settings at any time by clicking Restore To Default 5 , then clicking Yes.

1 2 5 3 4

1 1

2 3 4

2

4

STEP It’s also a good idea to customise your PC-cleaning

5

options before scheduling that task. Click Clean PC on the main screen. By default, the program analyses your files, but doesn’t clean or remove them. To change this, untick Analyze Only 2 . On the left, you’ll see your PC browsers and other options as expandable menus 3 . Click the relevant menus, then tick the boxes of any items you want to clean 4 . 36 18 – 31 January 2017

1

3

STEP Expand System 1 , then ensure that Empty Recycle Bin,

6

MS Office Cache and Windows Defender 2 are ticked. Tick Windows Disk Cleanup 3 then click Customize 4 . Here, tick Internet Cache Files, Offline Page Files, Previous Installations and Temporary Files. Click Save when you’ve finished, then close the window.

Set a schedule of automated PC fixes 3

1 2

3

4 5

4 2

1

5

STEP We’ll now show you how to schedule the 1-Click

7

Maintenance task. First, click the Toolbox tab 1 , Schedule Manager 2 , then Add 3 (ensuring the ‘Create a Task’ section is set to 1-Click Maintenance, Scan and Optimize 4 ). On the right, use the dropdown menus to set the day and time you want to run the task (ensure it’s when your PC is likely to be switched on otherwise the task won’t run). Finally, click Add 5 .

1

STEP To schedule the PC Cleaner task, click Add (top left).

8

Now change the ‘Create a Task’ dropdown menu to PC Cleaner 1 , change the Task dropdown menu to Scan and the Option dropdown menu to Clean. Set a day and time to run this task 2 , then click Add at the bottom left. In the Synei Schedule Manager window, you’ll see an overview of your upcoming tasks 3 with options to edit or delete them 4 . Click Apply 5 then OK to confirm your scheduled tasks.

4 5 1

3

2

2 5

STEP The program has other useful features. For example,

9

click the Status tab 1 , select Startup Manager 2 , then click Open Startup Manager at the bottom right. Here, you’ll see a list of all programs that start with your PC 3 . Entries in grey slow your PC’s startup time while any in red can safely be disabled. To remove an item from the list, tick to select it, then click Disable or Delete 4 . Click Apply 5 to confirm your choices.

4

3 STEP Next, click Manage Task Scheduler 1 . Here, you’ll see a

10

list of PC tasks automatically scheduled by programs you’ve installed 2 . Scroll right 3 to see when it was previously run and when it’s next scheduled to. Right-click any task you don’t want, then click Disable to stop it running or Delete to remove it from the list 4 . Synei System Utilities has different themes. Click Settings 5 , then Themes on the left, select a theme from the dropdown menu at the top, then click Set to apply it. ●

18 – 31 January 2017 37

Workshops Edit multiple photos in one go What you need: ImBatch; Any Windows version (XP to 10) Time required: 20 minutes

T

here are plenty of great photo-editing programs around but most will let you tweak only one image at a time – and that can take ages. If you want to rotate, resize or adjust the

brightness and contrast levels of a group of photos, making the same changes to each, you should use the free program ImBatch. Here, we explain the program’s easy-to-use core features.

STEP Before you begin, it’s a good idea to

1

save all the photos you want to edit to a new folder on your PC. To install the program, go to www.snipca.com/22989, then click the Download ImBatch button at the top right. Open the downloaded setup file, click Run, then Next. Here, you can choose to install the Standard 1 or Portable 2 version of the program, then click Next 3 until you need to click Install.

1 2

3

1

2

2

1

3

3

4 STEP When the program opens, you’ll see a ‘Drop files here’

2

message on the left. Open your folder of photos, then drag and drop all photos that need rotating into ImBatch’s left-hand pane. You’ll see all your photos as a list 1 . Move your cursor over any thumbnail to see a larger preview. Next, click the Add Task dropdown menu 2 , where you’ll see a list of actions you can apply to all your photos in one go 3 . 38 18 – 31 January 2017

STEP To rotate your photos, move your cursor to Transform

3

in the list, then click Rotate. In the right-hand pane, you’ll see an Angle field with a slider. You can either enter the angle of rotation 1 or use the slider 2 . Make sure you’re happy with the angle you’ve chosen by clicking any photo 3 , then comparing the Before and After tabs 4 .

1

STEP To save these rotated versions,

4

click the Add Task dropdown menu 1 again, move your cursor to Save, then click Save As. If you want to replace the originals with their rotated version, click the Run Batch Processing icon 2 , then click Yes to confirm. Alternatively, if you want to save the edited photos as new files, type -rotated (or similar) in the File Name field 3 . You can change the file type of all the edited photos (optional) using the File Type dropdown menu 4 (JPG and PNG are the best for photos).

2

3

STEP By default, the edited photos will

5

be saved to the same folder as the originals. To change this, click the folder icon below Folder 1 , select where you want to save these edited photos 2 , then click OK 3 . When you’ve finished, click the Run Batch Processing icon 4 . When that’s finished, you’ll hear a ping alert and see a summary. Click OK to close this, then go to the folder you selected to see your edited photos.

4

4 1 2

3

1

3

2

1

3 2

4 STEP Whenever you reopen ImBatch, you’ll see the list of photos you

6

edited previously along with any tasks you carried out. If you want to start afresh, click the ‘Remove images from list’ 1 and ‘Remove tasks from list’ 2 icons. Don’t do this if you want to work with your rotated images. We’ll now show you how to shrink your photos (to 80 per cent of their original size). Click the Add Task dropdown menu 3 , move your cursor to Transform, then click Resize 4 .

STEP To shrink your photo, type 80 (or whatever

7

percentage you want) into the Width field 1 , then change the Units dropdown menu to ‘%’ 2 . Refer to Steps 4 and 5 to rename and save your edited photos. You can also change the brightness, contrast and sharpness levels of multiple photos. For brightness and contrast, click the Add Task dropdown menu 3 , move your cursor to Colors, then click Brightness/Contrast. To sharpen photos, move your cursor to Effects, then click Sharpen. All three effects have sliders to modify their intensity. ● 18 – 31 January 2017 39

Workshops Set your PC to shut down automatically What you need: Lomsel Shutdown; Any Windows version (XP to 10) Time required: 25 minutes

I

t’s a good idea to shut down your PC when you’re not using it, but there may be processes or programs on your PC that prevent this from happening – virus scans, optimisation tools and file-syncing programs, for example. Lomsel Shutdown

is a new free program that lets you set specific criteria for running PC tasks when it’s most convenient, including logging off, restarting and shutting down. You can also use it to automatically launch any program whenever you want.

STEP To install the program, go to www.snipca.com/22941,

1

scroll down and click the Download button 1 . Open the downloaded setup file 2 , click Run, select ‘I accept the agreement’, then keep clicking Next until you need to click Install. Finally, click Finish to launch the program. The program lets you set criteria for 17 different PC actions which you’ll see on the left-hand side of the screen.

STEP Select the option you want (such as Shutdown 1 ).

2

You can set up an onscreen countdown that pops up shortly before the task starts and create a message telling you your action is about to be run. To do this, tick Warning Message 2 , then click the Message button 3 . Now type the reminder message, the number of seconds you want to count down in the ‘Time to display warning’ field 4 , then click OK.

2 3 1

1

4

2

STEP By default, you can’t cancel an action once it’s been

3

set to run, so tick Allow Cancel 1 to add a Cancel button to the countdown timer. Other programs running in the background may disrupt the action you’ve set up. To prevent this, tick ‘Force Applications to close’ 2 . Now click Run 3 . You’ll see your onscreen message with a countdown timer, after which your PC will automatically close any programs in the background, then shut down.

1 2

3 40 18 – 31 January 2017

1

3

4

2 4 2

5

3

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1 STEP Lomsel Shutdown also lets you launch any program

4

within a specified time. You may, for example, set Outlook to open to remind you to check your emails. To do this, select No Action 1 . Now click the Message button 2 , enter your message and set the number of seconds before your chosen program opens. Next, tick ‘Run a program’ 3 , click Program 4 , click the button beside the Program 5 field in the box, navigate to Outlook on your desktop and click OK. Click Run and Outlook will automatically open after the countdown timer elapses.

5 1

STEP Some PC programs (antivirus, optimisation tools and

5

cloud storage) can take a while to carry out background tasks, thereby slowing other actions like shutdowns and restarts. Lomsel Shutdown lets you set your PC to run an action after that program or process finishes what it’s doing. To set this up, open the relevant program and start the task. Next, select the action you want to run 1 , select ‘After a process stops’ 2 , then click Process 3 . Now select your program from the list 4 , then click OK 5 . Finally click Run. Your PC will now execute the action you selected after that program/process is finished.

4

5

4 3 2

2

3

STEP If you tend to leave your PC switched on, you can use

6

Lomsel Shutdown to switch it off after a specified time of inactivity. Select your action on the left 1 , select ‘CPU is idle’ 2 , then click CPU Options 3 . Here, you can specify how long (in minutes or seconds 4 ) your PC is idle before your selected action is run. You can also set the action to be carried out when your CPU usage level is very low (say, 10 or 20 per cent 5 ). Click OK, then Run to execute your action.

1 STEP Finally, click the Options button

1 to see other useful settings. The Activity tab lets you set an action after a certain duration of keyboard or mouse inactivity. Tick ‘Enable activity timer’ 2 , choose an action from the dropdown menu, then set an Idle duration (in seconds 3 ). Similarly, the Hot Key 4 and Mouse Click 5 tabs let you set keyboard shortcuts and mouse-click combinations to run any of the actions listed in the left-hand panel. Click OK, Save, then Run. ●

7

18 – 31 January 2017 41

Workshops Create keyboard shortcuts for clipboard items What you need: MultiClipBoardSlots; Any Windows version (XP to 10) Time required: 10 minutes

B

y default, when pressing Ctrl+C Windows only saves the last item you copied to paste (Ctrl+V). New free tool MultiClipBoardSlots gets around this limitation by letting you set up 20 keyboard shortcuts for 10 terms you

copy and paste regularly. Before starting this Workshop, it’s a good idea to list the 10 terms you tend to copy and paste often. This may include your email signatures, address, photos, or URLs.

1

2

1

2

3

3 STEP To download the program, go to www.snipca.

1

com/22942 and click the ‘MultiClipBoardSlots_Installer. zip’ link toward the top of the page. Open the downloaded folder 1 , click ‘Extract all files’ 2 , then click Extract 3 . Next, open the setup file in the window that opens, then click Run. In the next window that opens, tick ‘Portable installation’ if you prefer that or leave it unticked if you want the full version, then click Install and Run to open the program.

STEP You’ll see two tabs 1 , which accommodate your 10

2

copy-and-paste keyboard shortcuts. By default, all copy shortcuts in the first tab are set to Ctrl+1,+2, etc 2 . Similarly, the corresponding paste shortcuts are Alt+1,+2, etc 3 . You can change any modifier key or number using the relevant dropdown menu. We’ll now show you how to use the program.

STEP First, select the text/image/URL you want to copy,

3

1

3

then press Ctrl+1 (assuming you haven’t changed this shortcut). When you want to paste this text/item, simply click where you want it, then press Alt+1. Do this for the first five items. Next, click the second tab 1 . Here, you need to manually set the dropdown menus to create the copy-and-paste shortcuts you want 2 . After doing this, repeat the process to copy and paste items. The program sits on your desktop. Click ‘#To-Tray’ 3 if you want to move it to the System Tray in your taskbar.

NEXT ISSUE 2

• • • •

ON SALE

Weds 1 Feb

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42 18 – 31 January 2017

Readers’ Tips

Handy hints and tips from your fellow readers Email us your tips: [email protected]

TIP OF THE FORTNIGHT T

Migrate from Flickr to Google Photos I’ve been using Yahoo for a decade or so, but the recent hacks they’ve suffered have made me dubious of the service. I successfully followed your feature on moving from Yahoo Mail to Gmail (see Issue 488, page 58), but I was more reluctant to migrate my photos from Flickr (which is owned by Yahoo) to Google Photos. Thankfully, the process was easier than I expected. First, go to www.flickr. com and log into your account. Now, move your cursor to You at the top left, then click Camera Roll to see all your photos as thumbnails. To quickly move all photos in your account, choose your first

photo, press Shift, then select your last photo. Now click the Download button (see screenshot), then click ‘Download zip’. Your photos will start downloading as a zip file. After that’s finished, go to this zipped file in your Downloads folder, right-click it, then click Extract All. Click

Brian wins a copy of our A-Z Jargon Buster book OFFICE

Open LibreOffice more quickly

My new Windows 10 PC didn’t come with Microsoft Office, so I have switched to using the brilliant free alternative, LibreOffice. One thing that annoyed me was the appearance of the LibreOffice logo (also known as a splash screen) when you launch the program. It only appears for a short time, but I was

glad to learn there’s an easy way to skip this and go straight to the main options (choosing which LibreOffice program you want to use). To remove the splash screen, rightclick the LibreOffice icon on your desktop, then click Properties at the bottom. Now, do the following in the Target field: following the text already in there insert two spaces, then two hyphens, then type nologo (see

the Browse button, select which folder you want to extract these photos to, then click Extract. By default, Google Photos uploads your photos in ‘High quality’, meaning it will shrink your photo size, but you do get unlimited storage. If you want to upload your photos in their original resolution, you only get 15GB of storage (which is more than enough for my purposes). To maintain your photos’ original resolution, go to photos.google. com, log in with your Gmail account, click the three lines at the top left, then click Settings. Now select Original, then return to the website. To upload your extracted Flickr photos to Google Photos, simply drag and drop them into the website. Brian Stead

Buy it on Amazon www.snipca.com/21616

screenshot below left). Next, click Apply, Continue, then OK. From now on, LibreOffice will skip the splash screen and go directly to the main screen. David Trend

link beside On Facebook at the top. Finally, click the On dropdown menu beside ‘Live videos’ at the bottom, then click ‘All off’ (see screenshot below). Lee Bentley

SOCIAL MEDIA

WINDOWS 7

Recently, I’ve been receiving lots of Facebook notifications on my phone informing me that one of my friends ‘has gone live’. Apparently, it’s a new feature when someone decides to video what they are doing as a live broadcast via the app. While it may be useful to some, I find it irritating, so decided to find out how to turn it off. To do that, go to www.facebook.com on your PC and log into your account. Next, click the small down-pointing arrow at the top right (beside the lock icon), then click Settings. Here, click Notifications on the left, then the Edit

The other day I noticed a pop-up notification from CCleaner saying that it could remove 2GB of junk from my Windows 7 PC. After letting CCleaner do its cleaning job, my PC was no doubt a little faster, but I found that all my Start menu shortcuts were gone. Thankfully, my grandson came to the rescue and showed me how to retrieve them. Open the Start menu, then click All Programs at the bottom. Now right-click the program you want to add, then click ‘Pin to Start Menu’. Repeat this for other programs you want to add. Apparently, this happened because the Start Menu Shortcuts box in CCleaner’s settings was ticked. So if you want to retain your Start menu items, always ensure that this box is unticked before running CCleaner. Laurie Wells

Turn off Facebook’s live video notifications

Retrieve shortcuts that CCleaner removes

18 – 31 January 2017 43

Phone and Tablet Tips ANDROID

Give your phone’s home screen a makeover

Android phones have a category of apps called ‘launchers’. These let you customise your home screen and app drawer (the screen that displays all the apps on your device). One of the best free launcher apps is Nova Launcher (www.snipca.com/23001), which comes with lots of customisation options. When you first open the app, you need to choose a theme (light or dark), how you want your app drawer to look and whether you want to use a button-press or swipe to launch your app drawer. Next, tap Nova Launcher in your list of apps and you’ll see a new home screen without any icons. To add these, tap the

circular icon with six dots or swipe up your screen to access your app drawer, then drag the app icons (one by one) and arrange them on your home screen. Open the Nova Settings app within the app drawer. Here, you’ll see several sections that let you customise the look and feel of your phone (see screenshot below left). For example, tap Desktop for options relating to how many rows and columns of apps you want on your home screen. You can also add a Google search bar to it, customise this search bar and change the side-scroll effects (when moving between pages of your home screen). The ‘App & drawer widgets’ section lets you customise the app drawer in the same way. Dock lets you change how the stationary icons at the bottom of your home screen appear. Folders lets you customise how apps will look when you drag and drop them on top of each other to create folders. To set Nova Launcher as your default home app, select it, then tap Always in the notification that appears. If you don’t see this, go to Settings, tap Home, then select Nova Launcher.

Best New Apps FotoSwipe

Android: www.snipca.com/23002 iOS: www.snipca.com/23003 FotoSwipe lets you quickly transfer files between devices. Select the files you want to send and swipe right. You’ll see a code which you need to type on the receiving device to instantly download your files there. To send and receive files on your PC, go to www. fotoswipe.com.

44 18 – 31 January 2017

Brilliant things to do on your device ANDROID

Save web pages to read offline

The latest version of Chrome (Android’s default browser) has a new Downloads section. As well as letting you access any files you have downloaded, it lets you download entire web pages to read offline at your convenience. To do this, open Chrome, then open any article you want to save for later. When it loads, tap the three dots at the top right, then the Download icon at the top (see screenshot above left). You’ll see a notification when it finishes downloading. To read this content when you’re offline, open Chrome, tap the three dots at the top right, then tap the Downloads section (see screenshot above left). You’ll see all your saved web pages – simply tap the one you want to read. These pages take up space on your device, so it’s a good idea to delete them after reading. To do that, go to the Downloads section, then tap and hold an unwanted web page until it’s highlighted. Now select all web pages you’ve finished reading, then tap the bin icon at the top right to delete them.

What you should install this fortnight My British Coins

Free Android: www.snipca.com/23004 Ideal for all avid coin collectors, this app lists every British coin ever minted and lets you tick off those you already have. There are four tabs – 50p, £1, £2 and Other coins (pennies). It also tells you approximately how much your old coins are now worth.

Spoticast for Spotify

£3.89 Windows Phone: www.snipca. com/23005 Windows Phone has an official Spotify app, but Spoticast has more features. As well as letting you access all your playlists and download songs to listen to offline, you can watch YouTube videos of your favourite songs and cast videos and music direct to your smart TV or via a Chromecast.

ANDROID, iOS & WINDOWS PHONE

Type faster

These two tips will help you type faster using any default Android, iOS or Windows Phone keyboard app. The first tip involves switching between upper case and lower case letters. By default, whenever you start a new sentence, only the first letter will be capitalised, but there’s an easy way to make all letters upper case or all lower case. For lower case, tap the arrow (Shift) key at the bottom left once (you’ll see a small line under the key indicating you’re typing in small letters). To type upper-case letters only, double-tap the Shift key (it will now change colour with an underline – see screenshot below). There’s an alternative way to add a full stop. As well as tapping the full-stop key, you can also double-tap the spacebar.

Amenities section at the bottom to see if the place you want to visit has wheelchair access (see screenshot below left). If a listed place you know has the wrong information, you can contribute to this feature by tapping ‘Suggest changes’, scrolling to the Amenities section, then tapping ‘Wheelchair accessible’. WINDOWS PHONE

Turn off sound alerts

By default, you’ll hear sound alerts whenever you lock and unlock your phone, take a photo, or tap a key while typing. There’s an easy way to turn off these alerts. First, swipe down from the top of your screen to access your notification centre, tap ‘All settings’ at the top right, type Sounds in the search bar, then tap that option. Here, you’ll see the option to change your

ringtone and below that boxes that you can untick to turn off sound alerts when you tap keys on your keyboard, take photos, and lock/unlock your device (see screenshot above).

Games With Kids

What to play together on your phone and tablet AGES 0 5

Cosmic Paul

ANDROID

Find out which places are wheelchair-friendly

Google recently updated its Maps app with a new feature that lets you check whether restaurants, shops and other public places have wheelchair access. This can help not only those who use wheelchairs, but also parents with prams. To use it, open the app, type the name of the place you want to check, then tap the correct auto suggest option. Next, tap its name at the bottom to see more info. You’ll see a small arrow below its description (below Call, Save, Website). Tap the arrow, then scroll to the

89p www.snipca.com/23006 (Android) 79p www.snipca.com/23007 (iOS) This game will help your kids identify letters and learn how to spell easy words. They play as Paul the cat who needs to select letters in each scene to form the word outlined at the bottom of the screen. AGES 6 10

Trivia For All*

Free www.snipca.com/23008 (Android) Free www.snipca.com/23009 (iOS) Free www.snipca.com/23010 (Windows Phone) In this game, your child will see pictures that provide clues to filling in missing words. They then need to complete those words by tapping the correct pair of letters in the section below. AGES 11 16

Lichess

Free www.snipca.com/23011 (Android) Free www.snipca.com/23012 (iOS) If your child knows how to play Chess, then Lichess can help advance their skills. You can create a profile to challenge them on your device, or they can play against the computer in offline mode. You can also set time limits for each move. *Contains in-app purchases

18 – 31 January 2017 45

Make Windows Better

Clever tips for every version

WINDOWS 10

Shut down your PC more easily

Shutting down your PC can be a little long-winded. You need to open the Start menu, click the power button, then click ‘Shut down’. You can speed up this process by creating a desktop shortcut that when clicked lets you swipe down your screen with your finger (if you have a touchscreen) or click and drag downwards on your screen using your mouse.

To create this shortcut, right-click any blank area on your desktop, move your cursor to New, then click Shortcut. In the screen that opens, type %windir%\ System32\SlideToShutDown.exe (see screenshot above), click Next, rename your shortcut (optional), then click Finish. Now whenever you want to shut down your PC, click (or tap) this shortcut to see a panel with a message. Drag the panel down with your mouse (or finger) to shut down your PC.

WINDOWS 10

Use Microsoft’s stunning images as your desktop background Whenever you log into your Windows 10 PC, you’ll see breathtaking landscape images (provided by Microsoft) on your login screen. If you’d like to use these as your desktop background image, it can be quite a palaver to find and transfer them to a folder on your PC. Thankfully, a program called Windows Spotlight Tool (though not made by Microsoft) simplifies this process by copying all these images to a folder of your choice. First, create a folder to accommodate the images. Next, download the tool from www.snipca.com/22923 – scroll down, click the Download Now link, then run the downloaded setup file. When it opens, ensure ‘Add .jpg

extension to files’ is ticked, click the button with three dots, select the folder you created, then click OK. Finally, click Export to start moving the Microsoft images to your folder (see screenshot), then open the folder. Most images will have thumbnail previews and each will have a long, convoluted file name. To delete the images that don’t have thumbnails, press Ctrl, click to select them, press Shift+Delete, then click Yes. To rename your images, press Ctrl+A, click Rename at the top and type a name (such as Wallpapers). Press Enter and all the images will be named Wallpaper followed by a number (1,2,3, etc). Now right-click the image you want, then click ‘Set as desktop background’.

WINDOWS 7, 8, 10

Print multiple photos on a single page

If you’d like to send a photo to several people, instead of printing it on one sheet multiple times, you can save paper by printing several smaller versions on a single sheet, then cutting them out with scissors. First, navigate to the photo you want to print, right-click it, then click Print. You’ll see three dropdown menus at the top. Use these to set the correct printer,

paper size and quality (highest available). On the right, you’ll see the choice of photo sizes, along with – in brackets – the number of photos you can print on one sheet. For example, ‘9 x 13cm (4)’ means four photos can appear with those dimensions on your page. By default, the preview pane only displays one photo, but you can change the ‘Copies of each picture’ dropdown menu to 2, 3 or 4 (depending on what you want – see screenshot left). Click Print when you’re happy with your selection. WINDOWS 7, 8, 10

Make Command Prompt easier to read

By default, your Command Prompt window has white text on a black background. However, if you find black text on white easier to read then you can change it to this. 46 18 – 31 January 2017

Press the Windows key+R to bring up the Run box, type cmd into it, then press Enter to open the Command Prompt. Now right-click its header, then click Defaults. Next, click the Colors tab. Select Screen Background, then choose the white tile from the colour panel (see screenshot above). Next, select Screen Text, then choose the black tile. Click OK when you’ve finished and close Command Prompt. You’ll see your changes applied the next time you open it.

Make Office Better

Expert tips for every program

OUTLOOK.COM

Attach your Facebook photos to emails One of Outlook.com’s handy new features is an easy way to attach photos from your Facebook account to an email. You need to set it up and give Outlook permission to access your Facebook account. Once that’s done you can easily attach any Facebook photos you’re tagged in or you’ve uploaded. To set it up, go to www.outlook.com and log in using your Microsoft account. Next, click the New icon at the top left to start writing your email, then click Attach at the top when you’ve finished. You’ll see options to connect various accounts to Outlook (including Dropbox, Google Drive and

Facebook). Click Add Facebook, then click the blue Continue button. Now enter your login details and grant the necessary permissions. You’ll now see two categories of Facebook photos (see screenshot). ‘Photos of me’ are those you’ve been tagged in, and ‘My photos’ are those you’ve uploaded. Select a category, tick to select the photos you want to attach, then click Next to attach them to your email. You’ll see a dropdown menu next to each photo containing options to preview your photo, upload it to OneDrive, download it and move it to the main body of your email. Finally, send your email.

WORD

Keep track of when you access your documents

Adding headers and footers to your documents is a great way to organise them, but did you know you can set Word to insert the exact time you open your document in these sections? This is useful if you tend to print your documents because you’ll instantly see when you last accessed it. To do this, double-click the bottom of your document to create a footer (or at the top to create a header). In the Design tab that appears on the Ribbon, click ‘Date and Time’ at the top left. You’ll now see several formats. Select the one you want, tick ‘Update automatically’, then click OK (see screenshot above right). From now on, your document will automatically be updated with the time and date you open it.

ONENOTE

EXCEL

OneNote has several useful features, including optical character recognition (OCR). This makes it easy to extract text from any image you’ve added to OneNote, then paste it wherever you want. To add an image to OneNote, first click the ‘+’ tab at the top and name your new note. Now click the Insert tab, click Pictures, select the image you want to add, then click Open. To extract text, right-click the photo, then click ‘Copy Text from Picture’ (see screenshot left). Now place your cursor wherever you want to paste the text, then press Ctrl+V. Some text may not transfer properly, but it’s probably still quicker to just edit this than type all the text from scratch.

If you’ve already applied an Excel formula to calculate the value of multiple cells, there’s an easy way to quickly apply it to adjacent columns. In our example, we’ve used a formula to calculate the total of column A and display it in A5. But we also want to find the totals of columns B and C using the same formula. To do this, first click cell A5 and use a formula to calculate the total of cells A1 to A4. There are different ways to do this, but you can refer to the ‘Calculate column totals using a keyboard shortcut’ tip in Make Office Better, Issue 489. Once you’ve got the total in A5, simply move your cursor to the bottom of cell A5 until it turns into a plus symbol (see screenshot above). Now drag this to the right to instantly see the corresponding totals for columns B and C.

Extract text from a photo

Apply the same formula across adjacent columns

18 – 31 January 2017 47

Secret Tips For…

Chromecast

Cast Chrome to your TV, play Pictionary, view photos on your iPad and change Chromecast’s default home screen Cast the Chrome browser’s contents to a TV

It’s not immediately obvious, but your Chromecast can mirror the contents of your PC’s Chrome browser on your TV, including video from sites such as YouTube. Open Chrome on your PC and download and install the Google Cast extension (www.snipca.com/22991). To cast Chrome from the PC to your TV, click the Google Cast extension button in the top-right of the Chrome window (see screenshot below) and select your Chromecast. Once it has started casting, you can switch away from the tab in your browser and your TV will still display the

Click the Google Cast extension button to view your PC’s Chrome browser on your TV

original tab. To cast from a different tab, click the Google Cast button in Chrome followed by Cast. To stop a tab casting, click the Google Cast button, then Stop.

Cast photos from iPhone or iPad

If you want to display photos and videos stored on an iPhone, iPad or even an iPod Touch on your TV, your best bet is the Photo Video Cast app (www.snipca. com/22993). Install and launch the app, tapping Yes when it asks for permission to access your photos. Then tap any of the photo albums listed, or tap Videos at the bottom of the screen to see your videos. The app will cast the photo or video, optimising the image automatically to match your TV’s resolution. If you’re casting an image, you can use the icons along the bottom of the app’s display to choose a resolution. From left to right, these icons let you fit the image to the screen, fill and pan or fill and centre the image. Ignore the face-detection option on the far right because it’s only available in the Plus version of the app, which costs £2.29.

Replace Chromecast’s default home screen Chromecast displays its home screen whenever you connect it to your TV. You can customise this by opening the Google Home app on your Android or Apple device and tapping the Devices icon at the top-right, then the three vertical dots and ‘Backdrop settings’. You can then turn types of content – including Google Photos, Art, Weather and Featured photos – on and off. The default home screen offers limited options, however, so you may prefer to replace it with an alternative, such as Dashboard Cast

48 18 – 31 January 2017

Cast a slideshow of your photos (with accompanying soundtrack) from an iPhone to your TV using the Photo Video Cast app

(Android only: www.snipca.com/ 22995). Install and open it, then tap ‘Add new widget’ and choose a widget type (from Weather, RSS feed, Calendar and more). Click the ‘+’ button to add widgets, and tap the three dots next to a widget to set your preferences. You can even use the Audio widget to play BBC Radio stations. To choose one, tap ‘Sample audio streams’ (see screenshot)and pick a radio station. To add further stations, search online to find their audio-feed URL and type this into Dashboard Cast’s Audio widget.

You can also create a slideshow of your photos, complete with a soundtrack of songs from your iTunes library. Tap the Slideshows button at the bottom of the app’s home screen, then tap the ‘+’ button in the top-right and enter a name for the slideshow. Tap the photos you want to add (or tap Select All to add the whole library) and tap Done when you’ve finished. Then tap the middle icon at the bottom of the screen (see screenshot above) and move the Soundtrack slider to the right. Tap Select and follow the instructions to add songs. The process is very similar to that for adding photos. Now press the Play button (bottom-left) to play your slideshow complete with a a musical accompaniment.

Play ‘Pictionary’

Doodlecast (www.snipca.com/22990) is a free Android-only app that lets you play a Pictionary-style game on your TV. Whoever fancies showing off their artistic flair gets to pick from three choices, and the other players try to guess the word. Anything you draw on your phone or tablet’s screen appears on the TV. All that’s missing is a timer and scoreboard, so you’ll have to provide those yourself.

Host your own gameshow

Free game Big Web Quiz (Android: www. snipca.com/22997 and iOS: www.snipca. com/22998) borrows facts from Google to generate questions. Participants can simply connect their phone or tablet to the Chromecast to take part in their very own gameshow. Perfect entertainment for your next dinner party.

Next issue Secret Tips For… PrivaZer

What’s All the Fuss About...

Green Screen of Death Green is the new blue according to Microsoft What is it?

A new colour for the infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSoD), technically called a ‘Stop error’, which appears on your computer when Windows crashes. It was first spotted by a Windows user, named Chris123NT on Twitter, who took a photo of it, then posted it on the socialmedia site (www.snipca.com/22983).

Why the change?

We’re not sure, but it’s likely to be for a more significant reason than Microsoft merely thinking green is ‘in’ for 2017. A clue came from the company’s program manager Matthijs Hoekstra who confirmed on Twitter that the Green Screen of Death (GSoD) will be seen only by people running the Insider Preview versions of Windows 10. So perhaps Microsoft wants to make it easier for users and its own support team to distinguish the source of a crash – blue for the full version of its operating system, green for preview builds.

Does the Insider Preview crash often?

Yes, but that’s to be expected because it is a testing ground for new features. Windows users signed up to the Insider Program are happy to be guinea pigs, trying cutting-edge tools in order to report any flaws they find to Microsoft.

What does the GSoD message say?

in capital letters (separated by underscore lines), advice on what you need to do, and the actual error codes (such as ‘0x00000ed’). Microsoft thought this looked too intimidating, and so simplified it for Windows 8, and made the typewriterstyle font easier to read. It also added a sad ‘smiley’ face to ease the pain, which many found patronising. This was joined in Windows 10 by a QR code that takes you to http://windows.com/ stopcode, which is a fairly basic troubleshooting page.

Nothing that helps you understand what’s happened. In fact, it’s identical to some BSoD messages: “Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart. We’re just collecting some error info, and then we’ll restart for you”.

Try typing the error message into Google to see how other people have fixed the problem. In Windows 8.1 and 10 you’ll see this message at the bottom after ‘Stop code’ - in the screenshot above it’s ‘CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED’. You should also install BlueScreenView (www.snipca.com/22972), one of the best tools from prolific software developer Nir Sofer. It displays in a table all the BSoD information, including the file name of the ‘minidump’, which is the log Windows creates to record the details of the crash, such as the time it occurred and the probable cause. You’ll find the minidump file on your computer in C:\Windows\MiniDump.

Does the screen of death come in other colours?

Didn’t BSoD messages contain more info?

Yes, mini essays in Windows 7 and earlier versions (see screenshot right). These would tell you the name of the error

How can I tell what caused a crash?

Blue Screens of Death in Windows 7 contain lots of crash information

Yes, a veritable rainbow of ruin. Microsoft previously used black and red screens, while Firefox used yellow. Some Apple devices show a white screen when they crash, and brown screens appear when your PC is unable to play a game, possibly because you need to update a driver. They’ll all turn you purple with rage. 18 – 31 January 2017 49

here was a time when your antivirus (AV) simply had to keep your PC free of threats lurking on the internet to keep you happy. These days you have greater expectations of your AV. We receive as many letters from readers complaining that their AV is slowing their PC, as we do about how well (or otherwise) the

THE PRODUCTS WE TESTED • • • • • •

Avast Bitdefender BullGuard ESET G Data Kaspersky

• • • • •

McAfee Norton Panda Trend Micro Windows Defender

software is protecting their computer. We considered all these concerns when we planned our current AV test. The level of protection provided by each product is of course the main criterion, but we wanted to make sure the software runs smoothly, and that any extras – system cleaners, firewalls, etc – don’t have a negative impact on Windows and other programs. This is reflected in the ‘system-impact’ scores you’ll see throughout the feature. We chose AV-Test to run this year’s test – a technology lab that has specialised in antivirus research for 15 years. AV-Test bombards the leading antivirus programs with the most dangerous malware and viruses around. It also uses new and old computers to see how each AV behaves

across a range of devices to better mimic how it might affect your home PC. Of all of the findings AV-Test came up with, the most shocking was how little protection Windows Defender provides. In fact, the AV ‘protection’ that comes bundled with Windows only managed to protect our test PC from 74 of the 84 viruses and malware threats inflicted. At first glance, this may not seem too bad. But, if you were told there was a 12 per cent chance that a smoke alarm would fail to go off in the case of a fire, you wouldn’t trust it to protect your home and family. Why then, would you trust Defender with your PC’s security? Here, we reveal the best AV you can buy, the runners-up and the best free alternative.

Antivirus group test

KASPERSKY INTERNET SECURITY 2017 ONE MORE THING YOU SHOULD KNOW

Pric £19. Price: £19.95 per year (see our Reader Offer, www.snipca.com/21532) Online help: https://support. kaspersky.co.uk Tel: 0203 549 3495 Email: [email protected]

There is a more expensive AV from Kaspersky called Total Security. We tested this too and found that beyond offering a few extra tools – such as more parental control options – it wasn’t worth it. Stick with the cheaper Kaspersky Internet Security 2017.

O

ur current ‘Buy It!’ recommendation maintains its position at the top of the pile for an eighth consecutive test. Kaspersky Internet Security blocked all 84 threats we subjected it to. It also reported zero false-positive warnings, so you can rest assured that Kaspersky won’t waste your time by crying wolf over non-existent threats. We’re happy to report that Kaspersky will have a minimal impact on the performance levels of your PC. We barely noticed the impact when opening programs or browsing the internet. To put this into numbers, Kaspersky has a system-impact rating of 9.54 per cent. This represents the percentage increase in time you’ll have to wait for Windows and your programs to load and complete tasks. So, for example, a program that takes five seconds to load may take 5.5 seconds with Kaspersky installed on your computer. All in all, we think that’s a small price to pay for its excellent protection. Kaspersky scored similarly well when it came to its tools. Upon first installing Kaspersky you’ll see a main menu with six options: Scan, Database Update, Safe Money, Privacy Protection, Parental Control and ‘Protection for all devices’. Safe Money, Kaspersky’s hacker-proof browser extension, activates

For maximum privacy select ‘Block data collection’ and untick ‘Allow data collection…’

whenever you visit banking websites (you’ll see a green frame around your browser window to show it’s enabled). The idea is that Safe Money (once switched on) shields your browser to an even greater degree when it’s activated so that no one can snoop on your account details. Privacy Protection has two parts to it. Webcam Access lets you control the programs that can use your webcam to thwart hackers aiming to exploit it. The Private Browsing tool, meanwhile, protects you against websites intent on gathering and storing your browsing data. This is enabled, but by default only counts attempts to collect data. However, click the ‘Block data collection’ button and your activities will be all but invisible. We also advise unticking ‘Allow data collection on the websites of Kaspersky Lab and its partners’ (see screenshot above). The Parental Control settings will be of interest to anyone with kids or grandchildren. It can be used

to schedule times when the internet is accessible on your computer (see screenshot below left). It also has options to enforce screen breaks, which locks the computer so that your kids don’t spend all day in front of the PC. You can prevent certain programs from being opened, or certain types of file (videos or programs, for example) from being downloaded. The ‘Protection for all devices’ tool lets you monitor the security of other PCs, tablets and phones that have Kaspersky installed. Just click ‘Connect to My Kaspersky’ and sign into (or create) your account to see the other devices registered to your My Kaspersky profile. Click the More Tools button and you’ll find even more useful additions. Browser Configuration scans your browser for vulnerabilities and plugs any holes. And the Trusted Applications tool blocks any program or background process from running if it hasn’t been approved by Kaspersky. We also found the System Watcher to be particularly useful. It monitors the programs on your PC and reports any unusual activity. This lets you carry on using old, unsupported programs without worry because if they are hacked, you’ll be alerted by Kaspersky. If Kaspersky detects malware or a virus it displays a warning message with two options: ‘Disinfect and restart the computer’ and ‘Try to disinfect without computer restart’. We’d recommend the former option to be sure of removing the malware – just make sure you save what you’re working on before clicking. OUR VERDICT Kaspersky Internet Security barely puts a foot wrong and is, once again, a worthy winner of our antivirus test and remains our ‘Buy It!’ recommendation. We can’t find fault with a program that offers 100 per cent protection while barely impacting the speed of your PC.

Control access to your computer using Kaspersky’s Parental Controls

18 – 31 January 2017 51

NORTON INTERNET SECURITY 2016 Price: £25 per year Online help: https://support.norton.com Tel: 0207 616 5600 Email: n/a

N

orton came closer to toppling Kaspersky than ever before. It proved just as good at stopping malware in this test (blocking all 84 threats). Norton also matched Kaspersky in terms of system impact with an identical score (9.54 per cent). The one area where Norton lagged behind was that it reported four false positives and therefore seems a little trigger happy in blocking legitimate programs.

Over the years Norton has added to its ever-expanding toolkit. Aside from the scanning tools you would expect, there’s a password and financial information manager as well as a performance-monitoring tool that checks the impact of the programs that load when your computer boots. One useful feature here is the ability to delay some of those programs for five minutes to guarantee a smoother start-up. To access these settings double-click Performance in Norton’s home screen and click Startup Manager. Then tick the box in the Delay Start column next to every program you want to delay and click Apply (see screenshot below). Norton also offers a CCleaner-type

system cleaner, though we still prefer the ever-dependable CCleaner (see page 16). There’s also a browser toolbar, but we’d recommend you don’t enable this during Norton’s installation because it may slow down your web browser. Most of the popular browsers already incorporate similar malware-detecting features anyway. Norton Internet Security Deluxe and Security Premium are also available, but cost more (£35 and £40 respectively). Both use the same basic protection as the cheaper Internet Security, but add extra features, including phone and tablet security apps and online (cloud) storage. We’d recommend going with the standard Norton Security as the additional features aren’t essential for the average user. OUR VERDICT If you currently use Norton on your computer then you’re in safe hands. It’s an effective AV that’s also undemanding of system resources. Only a few false positive warnings prevented it from taking top spot in our test.

Tick program boxes in the Delay Start column to speed up your PC’s boot time

TREND MICRO INTERNET SECURITY Price: £45 pe per year Online help: https://esupport.trendmicro.com Tel: 0203 549 3300 Email: [email protected]

B

ronze medallist Trend Micro Internet Security also detected and contained all 84 threats thrown at it and only reported one false positive. But its system-impact score of 11.65 per cent kept it below Kaspersky and Norton. However, we also disliked Trend Micro’s interface. Its menus are irritatingly animated so that they unfold and jump about the screen as you click (see screenshot right). Of course, you won’t need to access these menus all the time, but easy-to-use, unobtrusive settings are an important part of all software.

52 18 – 31 January 2017

It’s a shame because Trend Micro has several useful tools. For example, click Device in the home screen to access PC Health Checkup. This scans your PC for programs that are slowing its startup time and junk files taking up space on your hard drive. What we liked about Health Checkup is that it’s not overly paranoid – it won’t suggest your PC is about to explode due to these problems. Instead, it provides practical advice that you can follow to prevent any potential setbacks from occurring in future. The Family button on the home screen will be useful for households with younger family members. It lets you set time limits on internet access and how long certain programs (such as games) can be used. You can also generate a report showing what your children do when your back is turned.

Trend Micro’s interface suffers from over-thetop animations

OUR VERDICT Trend Micro is held back by its systemimpact score and its cluttered interface – just let us click the settings we want without the animations, please. If Trend Micro can fix these before our next test there’s every chance it could jump higher in our rankings.

Antivirus group test

BEST FREE ANTIVIRUS Avast Free Antivirus ONE MORE THING YOU SHOULD KNOW

Price: Free Online help: www.avast.com/contacts Tel: n/a Email: n/a

Avast Free requires a licence to run properly. This is free to obtain, but you must register at www.snipca. com/22928 to get it. As you will see, the licence lasts for only 12 months, but you can repeat this process every year for as long as you use Avast Free. To check how long your current licence has left to run, right-click the Avast logo on the taskbar and click ‘Registration information’.

O

ur test included three free AV programs: Avast Free, Panda Free Antivirus 2017 and Microsoft’s Windows Defender (see page 55 for more on that). Of these, Avast Free was by far the best and therefore remains our free AV of choice. It blocked an impressive 83 of the 84 threats and produced no false positives. On the downside, Avast did slow our PC considerably more than Kaspersky and Norton. In fact, with a system-impact score of 28.59 per cent, it was one of the most resource-sapping programs we tested. This lag was noticeable and affected all tasks, from opening programs to browsing the web. But don’t turn the page just yet. There are ways to limit Avast’s impact on your computer without compromising its levels of protection. For example, try uninstalling SafeZone Browser, ‘Security browser extension’ and ‘SafePrice browser extension’. These really aren’t necessary because your

Uninstall some of Avast’s less useful features to speed up your PC

Just ignore Avast’s irritating pop-ups

browser is very likely to have similar features built in (Edge uses SmartScreen Filter to flag up unsafe sites, for example). To uninstall the above components click the cog icon on Avast’s home screen, Components (on the left), then scroll down and expand the three components in turn. Click Uninstall Component followed by OK each time (see screenshot below left). While you’re here, scroll further down and turn off SecureLine VPN, uninstall Passwords (under Privacy) and turn off Cleanup (under Performance). The other obvious disadvantage of using Avast Free is how it constantly urges you to buy its paid-for version. It will bombard you with pop-ups to upgrade (see screenshot above), and try to trick you into buying other Avast products when you run a scan. Unfortunately, there’s no way to switch off these upgrade-nagging pop-ups without paying for the full version (though you will quickly learn to ignore them). There is, however, something you can do about the promotions for other Avast products. To sample these nags, simply open Avast’s home screen and click the Smart

Scan button. When it finishes you will undoubtedly see a few disapproving white crosses. One of those will, inevitably, sit next to ‘Performance issues’. Irritatingly, this is because Avast wants you to buy its Avast Cleanup system-cleaner (see screenshot below left). In our tests Avast provides this result no matter how fast your computer is. To stop this warning click the cog icon on the home screen, then click General and scroll down and click the Smart Scan dropdown menu. Next, slide ‘Scan for performance issues’ to the Off position (see screenshot below) and click OK. From now on Avast will skip the ‘Performance issues’ section of the scan and you will no longer be subject to these promotional nags. OUR VERDICT Avast Free’s pop-ups and poor systemimpact ratings shouldn’t necessarily put you off. It still provides a stout defence against viruses and malware and there are ways and means to minimise the irritating nags.

Stop Avast nagging you to buy its other products (left) by switching off ‘Scan for performance issues’ (right)

18 – 31 January 2017 53

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Antivirus group test

WINDOWS DEFENDER – FREE, BUT NOT VERY GOOD Price: Free Online help: https://support. microsoft.com Tel: n/a Email: n/a

W

indows Defender came rock bottom of our antivirus test, allowing 10 of the 84 threats to infect our PC. This simply isn’t good enough, and so you shouldn’t use Defender as your main AV. Defender failed to redeem itself when it came to the effect it had on our PC’s speed. A system-impact score of 23.38 per cent is a lamentable return from a Microsoft product. We expected it to integrate perfectly with the rest of Windows, but this wasn’t the case. Defender offers a couple of silver linings. First off, it’s free. Second, it’s the only AV program here that you can run alongside others without any conflicts. This means you can use it as a second line of defence behind your existing AV software, letting you take advantage of Defender’s one genuinely useful feature: its Scan Offline tool. It looks for malware while Windows isn’t running, which exposes viruses that can hide within the operating system. To run Defender alongside your main AV, click the Start button, then Settings, ‘Update & security’ and choose Windows

This is the message you’ll see when (or if) Windows Defender detects malware

Defender (on the left). Click ‘Turn on Windows Defender’ and click the ‘Turn on’ button in both windows that pop up. Assuming you have a separate AV installed, you’ll be left looking at a Defender home screen that says ‘Real-time protection: Handled by another AV program’ and ‘Virus and spyware definitions: Up to date’ (see screenshot below left). Now return to Settings, ‘Update & security’, then Windows Defender and make sure the Limited Periodic Scanning slider is set to On. Scroll down the settings page and turn off ‘Cloudbased Protection’, ‘Automatic sample submission’ and ‘Enhanced notifications’ to stop Defender slowing your PC any more than it has to. Carry on scrolling to the bottom of the page and you’ll see the Scan Offline tool at the bottom (see screenshot below right). We suggest you run this 15-minute scan once a month to ensure your PC isn’t carrying any malware – just be sure to save anything you’ve been working on first as your PC will restart during the process. OUR VERDICT If you’re using Windows Defender as your sole AV software we suggest you switch to one of the other programs covered in this feature immediately. Defender simply isn’t robust enough to fend off the threats facing your computer. That said, you can still take advantage of its Scan Offline tool by following the instructions above.

HOW DOES AV SOFTWARE ACTUALLY WORK? There was a time when antivirus software worked by simply checking the programs and processes on your computer against a list of known ‘signatures’. All valid software has a registered signature – a unique code – that identifies it. That was then, but today’s malware is far more sophisticated. It can pose as signed software and bury itself into the depths of your hard drive. When it first arrived, this new type of threat reduced the effectiveness of AV software, forcing security developers to adapt. The result is that current antivirus software now monitors the behaviour of the processes on your PC. If a program, a browser or a line of computer code does something unusual, your antivirus software will recognise this activity as a potential threat. Even the cleverest virus will eventually fall into this trap – usually when it attempts to access the internet in order to upload the contents of your hard drive. Alternatively, it will try to give hackers control of your PC and thereby reveal itself to your antivirus program. That’s why some of the antivirus software we tested detected and neutralised all the threats posed. And why it’s inexcusable that Windows Defender looked the other way while all kinds of internet nasties invaded our test PC.

It’s worth activating Windows Defender even if you have another antivirus in order to take advantage of its Scan Offline tool

18 – 31 January 2017 55

THE BEST (AND WORST) OF THE REST… G Data Internet Security

DETAILS

Like the best AVs in our test, G Data blocked all malware and was caught out by only one false positive. What stopped it troubling the top three was a slightly higher system-impact score (16.66 per cent) and BullGuard blocked this file but let through four threats in our test its price – £35 may not seem that much to pay for peace of mind, but G Data has fewer includes plenty of useful tools, such as its tools on offer than our test winners. Vulnerability Scan, which looks for potential security holes in your system, ESET Internet Security and an Autopilot mode that automatically ESET repeated its high performance of makes security decisions on your behalf recent tests, matching Kaspersky with a – perfect for anyone irritated by pop-ups 100 per cent success rate at stopping constantly telling them what tweaks they threats and recording no false positives. must make to bolster their PC’s defences. Its system-impact score of 27.73 per cent was, however, markedly higher and we BullGuard Internet Security found that websites were particularly Alas, BullGuard let itself down badly in slow to load. We did like ESET’s our test. It let through four of the 84 Anti-Theft tool (see screenshot below), threats and wasted our time with three which lets you track your laptop if it’s false positives. It’s a shame because stolen. It will even attempt to take a photo otherwise BullGuard is a flexible and of the thief and email it to you, as long as comprehensive program with good the laptop is connected to the internet. parental controls that even let you stop your kids buying in-app purchases in Bitdefender Internet Security games and software. Bitdefender also did well in our test, and we expect it to make a real push for the McAfee Internet Security top three next time. It too had a perfect The once mighty McAfee hasn’t score in repelling threats, though it did challenged Kaspersky and Norton for flag three false positives. It made up for years. True, it had a low system-impact that with a low system-impact score of score (11.79 per cent), but it let through 15.15 per cent, meaning it shouldn’t slow one piece of malware. That’s not a terrible your PC noticeably. The software also result, but given that Avast performed

ESET’s Anti-Theft tool will track your laptop if it goes missing or is stolen

56 18 – 31 January 2017

G Data Internet Security www.gdatasoftware.co.uk Price: £34.95 Tel: 0800 032 3228

ESET Internet Security www.eset.co.uk Price: £39.99 Tel: 0120 254 8888

Bitdefender Internet Security

www.bitdefender.co.uk Price: £24.99 Tel: 0208 819 2649

BullGuard Internet Security www.bullguard.com Price: £49.95 Tel: N/A

McAfee Internet Security www.mcafee.com/uk Price: £69.99 Tel: 0800 587 1085

equally well for free, why pay for McAfee? While we’re talking price, £70 is more than double what you’d pay for some of the top AVs in our test. McAfee does boast a raft of tools – including password manager, parental controls, encryption software and protection for your tablet and phone – but we don’t think they are worth the extra money.

McAfee offers all kinds of data protection, network and parental controls tools, but charges £70 for them

Antivirus group test

WHICH AV IS BEST IF YOU HAVE AN OLDER PC?

P

art of our test was to run each AV product on an old computer (running Windows 10) to measure its impact on performance. We wanted to find out how much it would slow down everyday tasks such as opening programs and browsing the web. We’ve put the results into a chart (right) showing how all the programs fared on the older PC. These figures differ from the system-impact scores quoted earlier in this feature because they were an average of all the PCs (including new ones) used during testing. Norton just pips Kaspersky on older PCs, while the disastrous impact of Windows Defender is clear for all to see.

Impact rating on an older PC (less is better) Norton

8%

Kaspersky

11%

Trend Micro

13%

G Data

13%

Bull Guard

14%

McAfee

16%

BitDefender

17%

Panda

19%

Avast

23%

Windows Defender

26%

ESET 0

29% 5

10

15

20

25

30

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO NOW Upgrade your antivirus

Without realising it, you may not be using the most current version of your antivirus. Most companies release a new version of their AV each year and you can usually upgrade for free using your existing licence. As a rule, you need to download the latest version then uninstall your current one (saving the activation code), before immediately installing the latest version (and re-entering the activation code). If in doubt, contact your AV’s customer support.

Move to one of our recommendations

If you don’t currently use one of our top three AVs (and we also recommend

G Data Internet Security, ESET and Bitdefender) we strongly advise you do so. Don’t rely on Windows Defender alone because it’s just too much of a security risk. If you want to go with a free alternative then we suggest moving to Avast Free Antivirus.

Give your AV a helping hand

You can never be too careful with your PC’s security. We recommend you install Malwarebytes (go to www.malwarebytes. com and click the Free Download button) and run it every month to double-check your AV hasn’t missed anything. You can also use Kaspersky’s free TDSSKiller (download directly from www.snipca. com/22947, see screenshot above right) to

Use Kaspersky TDSSKiller alongside your AV to detect rootkits on your system

check for rootkits buried among your files. We suggest you use it once a month to ensure your PC’s security and enjoy peace of mind. ON SALE

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Subscribe to Computeractive at www.getcomputeractive.co.uk 18 – 31 January 2017 57

Get 272GB of online storage for

FREE

Save yourself the cost of buying a new hard drive. Jonathan Parkyn explains how you can get gigabytes of cloud storage for nothing

I

f your once-roomy hard drive is files between your computer and your document shared via the cloud. And beginning to feel claustrophobic – or if mobile devices. Better still, and unlike a many services, including Dropbox, you’ve started seeing dreaded ‘Low hard drive plugged into your PC, online Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, Disk Space’ warnings – then you’re storage is virtually immune from theft or automatically keep a version history of probably considering buying more damage. Even if your entire computer your files, meaning you can restore a file storage. An external USB drive is the spontaneously combusts, files stored you accidentally delete or make unwanted obvious choice, though these aren’t online will still be safe. changes to. cheap; expect to pay around £50 for a The best services offer desktop-syncing 500GB model. tools that copy any files stored on your Unify your cloud storage But there’s a way to get more space for physical hard drive to your online space, The drawback of using a combination of your files without paying anything at all creating an instant backup without you different websites is that your files end – by using free online (cloud) storage even having to think about it. Online up awkwardly split across a variety of instead. Many cloud companies offer a storage is also great for collaborating and services and locations. But there are ways small amount of free space, and often sharing. You can share a folder of photos to make the experience more manageable. provide ways to increase your free with family members, for example, or If you’re using services that sync with a allowance. Dropbox, for example, offers work together with colleagues on a folder on your PC, you can move all these 2GB for free to new customers folders so that they’re all housed and an extra 500MB for every in the same location. For friend you refer, or 125MB for example, you could create a following the company on Here we’ve listed the best online storage services that ‘Cloud’ folder on your C drive Twitter. Better still, there’s currently offer free accounts: that keeps your Dropbox, nothing to stop you from OneDrive and Google Drive Service Amount (GB) URL signing up for multiple free folders in one handy place. Google Drive 15GB www.google.com/drive cloud accounts to build up a The process of moving the OneDrive 5GB https://onedrive.live.com decent amount of free storage. cloud-storage service’s folder Dropbox 2GB www.dropbox.com In fact, we managed to rack up a that appears on your PC varies iCloud 5GB www.apple.com/uk/icloud whopping 272GB of free online from service to service. With storage – see the box right to Dropbox, for instance, click the Box 10GB www.box.com find out how. Notification Area icon, then iDrive 5GB www.idrive.com the settings (cog) icon, then Jottacloud 5GB www.jottacloud.com Advantages of Preferences and click the Sync.com 5GB www.sync.com cloud storage Account tab in the Preferences WebStorage 5GB www.asuswebstorage.com The most obvious benefit of panel that opens, followed by Syncplicity 10GB www.syncplicity.com storing files online is that you Move. All you have to do then is MediaFire 10GB www.mediafire.com can access them from just about select the Cloud folder (or MiMedia 10GB www.mimedia.com anywhere, as long as you have whatever folder you have pCloud 10GB www.pcloud.com an internet connection. Not just created to collate your cloudMega 50GB https://mega.nz from PCs, but also via phones storage folders). hubiC 25GB https://hubic.com and tablets, too. This instantly Or, on OneDrive, right-click solves one of your biggest niggles the OneDrive cloud icon on the Degoo 100GB https://degoo.com – the problem of transferring taskbar and choose Settings.

HOW TO GET 272GB FOR FREE

58 18 – 31 January 2017

OTHER WAYS TO GET FREE CLOUD STORAGE

You have to unlink OneDrive from your PC before moving the location of the folder

If you have a Google Drive icon on your taskbar, you already have it installed

Then click ‘Unlink this PC’ (see screenshot above), find the OneDrive folder in File Explorer (it’s usually in C:\ Users\[your username]) and select it. Then, go to the Home tab and select ‘Move to’, then ‘Choose location’ and Move (or click Edit, then ‘Move to folder’ on Windows 7). Click the Cloud drive you created and click OK (this could take a while if you have a lot of files to move). Now go back to the OneDrive cloud icon, double click it and click ‘Get started’ (or sign in if prompted) and follow the instructions until you’re prompted to ‘Change location’. Click ‘Change location’, then browse to the Cloud folder you created, and click Select Folder. A warning will pop up saying ‘Files already exist in this OneDrive folder’ – click ‘Use this location’ and follow the rest of the instructions to set up your OneDrive folder. Now open File Manager, then your cloud drive and you’ll see all of your OneDrive files syncing in their new location. To add a Google Drive folder to your PC, go to www.snipca.com/22901, click ‘Download for PC’ and follow the installation instructions (you’ll be prompted to reset your PC to complete the process). Once it restarts, find the Google Drive folder in the Start menu and click Google Drive, then sign in. Click Next until you see the ‘Sync options’ button. Click it, then click Change (next to the Folder location address) and browse to your Cloud folder. Create a new folder (called ‘Google Drive’) and select it, then click Continue, ‘Start sync’ and

‘Continue syncing’. If you already have Google Drive installed on your PC, right-click the icon on the taskbar, click the three dots, then Preferences (see screenshot above). Click the Account tab and Disconnect Account, then sign in again and click next until you see the ‘Sync options’ button.

Use a cloud storage manager

If moving all of the services you use is proving a hassle, you could use a third-party tool that does the job. Currently, our favourite free option is odrive (www.odrive.com), which supports a large number of cloud services, including Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and Box, as well as several others via WebDAV – an online file-transfer program supported by many cloud providers. You can even include Facebook and Instagram accounts to sync photos stored on these services. Install the odrive desktop app, add your accounts (you’ll just need your sign-in details) and you’ll get instant access to all your cloud services from one handy location in File Explorer. Not only that, but you also get some very useful extra options, such as the ability to manually manage file-syncing or a tool that splits large files – ideal for services like Box, which impose file-size limits (see screenshot below).

Are there any downsides?

A physical hard drive won’t suddenly slash the amount of space it provides, as Microsoft did last year when it cut its free OneDrive allowance from 15GB to just 5GB. Unlike recently killed- off cloud services such as Copy.com, Pogoplug and Logmein’s Cubby, your physical storage won’t suddenly go bust, either – saving you the headache of migrating your files elsewhere. It’s also worth remembering that if Odrive lets you unify and manage all your cloud-storage accounts you lose access to the and provides extra tools, such as a file splitter

In addition to the free cloud-storage plans offered by the providers we’ve mentioned in this feature, there are a number of other ways to obtain free storage. If you subscribe to Amazon Prime, for example, you get 5GB of free space to store music, photos or whatever you like. Own an Amazon Fire device? Then you might well have another 5GB of free Amazon Drive space. Log in at www.snipca. com/22880 to find out. Your ISP is another potential source of free web storage space. BT, for example, recently increased the amount of BT Cloud space it offers its customers. If you’re signed up to BT Broadband, Unlimited Broadband, BT Infinity 1 or Unlimited BT Infinity 1, you’re entitled to 50GB. Customers of BT Unlimited Broadband extra and Unlimited BT Infinity 2 get even more – 500GB. BT Cloud isn’t activated by default. Sign in at www. bt.com/mybt and click ‘Manage your extras’ to activate it yourself. Other ISPs offer similar deals with their packages, so it’s worth investigating.

internet, you lose access to files that are stored online, too. This is less of an issue if you’re syncing a desktop folder with a cloud service (as you’ll still have copies of the files on your PC), but it underlines the fact that you can’t rely on cloud storage exclusively. Think of it more as a means to store the files you want to keep, but don’t constantly access – like old photos, videos and albums. Free services often impose file-size limits on free users. Box.com, for example, won’t let free users upload individual files larger than 250MB. Others enforce bandwidth restrictions. Opendrive.com, for instance, restricts users of its free service to 1GB of bandwidth per day and throttles transfer speeds to a slow 200KB/s. Our advice is to avoid storing large files on it, such as videos, so you aren’t left waiting while it syncs. You may also find adverts alongside your files (as with MediaFire) or you may discover that the full range of syncing and sharing options aren’t available unless you pay. WebStorage’s free account holders, for instance, are limited to sharing with a maximum of five users (www.asuswebstorage.com). 18 – 31 January 2017 59

Find it tricky to type on your phone and tablet? Jane Hoskyn recommends apps that will make it easier, whether you use Google’s Android or Apple’s iOS

A

ndroid users recently woke up to find a brand new default keyboard on their phones and tablets. Though the thought of Google tinkering with your phone when you’re not looking is perturbing, we think Gboard is one new feature that’s well worth taking the time to get used to. And here we’ll show you how to get the very most from it. Gboard is far from the end of the mobile-typing story though, because there are plenty of new tools that make typing on a tiny screen a pleasure (yes, really). Here we reveal the best of the bunch.

Type a famous name to get an instant search link from Gboard, then tap it to browse

Get instant web links while you text

Finding a web link to include in a text message (or note, tweet or anything else you type using your mobile keyboard) used to be a cumbersome process. You had to switch to your browser app or home screen, search for a link, copy it to your clipboard, go back to the messaging app and then paste it in. Now, Gboard – free for iOS (www. snipca.com/22915) and installed automatically on Android – has Google search built in. To use it, tap the colourful G above the keyboard then enter your search. You’ll be offered web links, photos, videos (including YouTube

CHANGE YOUR DEFAULT KEYBOARD Android has always welcomed third-party keyboards. You can install as many as your storage space will allow, and enable all of them at once. Go to Settings, ‘Language & Input’ and then tap all the keyboard apps you’ve installed, along with ‘Google voice input’ and any languages you want to add to Gboard. To switch between them, tap the keyboard icon that appears while you’re typing in any

60 18 – 31 January 2017

app, then tap a keyboard in the list (see screenshot). iOS added third-party keyboard support in iOS 8. To enable a newly installed keyboard, go to Settings, General, Keyboard, then Keyboard again. Tap Add New Keyboard and then tap your new app. Tap Allow. From now on, you can switch between keyboards by tapping the globe icon when typing.

links), weather forecasts, travel directions, sports scores and more (depending on your search term). Tap one to add it to your message or post, then continue typing. You can also search by selecting a word or phrase in the text you’re writing. Long- tap to select it, press the dots in the Cut/Copy/Paste box that appears, then tap Web Search. Gboard also lies in wait while you type, instantly offering a search shortcut if you type a name it recognises, be it Andy Murray (see screenshot left), Victoria Wood or HRH The Queen. We can almost hear Gboard saying “oh I know this one, Miss!” as it offers a blue shortcut for each person. There are limitations though. At the time of writing it only recognises a name if its followed by a punctuation mark (presumably the full stop or comma indicates to Google that the name is complete). It’s also possible to insert shortcuts to place names in the same way, but right now it only recognises London. This will certainly be expanded in the fullness of time.

Type with a swipe

Swipe typing (or ‘glide typing’ in Gboard’s jargon, which seems to invoke the letter G wherever possible) is the art of typing by stroking your finger from letter to letter. It’s faster than traditional typing on a touchscreen, but only if you’re using a keyboard app that can accurately decipher your swipes – and Gboard is a big improvement on its predecessor. Microsoft’s SwiftKey (free for Android and iOS, https://swiftkey.com) is even more accurate. Flow (swipe) is enabled by

Shuffle all the keys to one side using Chrooma, then type one-handed

Improve autocorrect by adding words to your keyboard dictionary

default, but you can tap to type as well – within the same sentence if you want – so there’s no need to switch between modes. There’s also a Gesture option that lets you swipe to delete words. SwiftKey’s creators have now released a parallel beta for Android, SwiftKey Beta (www.snipca. com/22920), which lets you try experimental features such as doubleword prediction and an excellent clipboard.

type one-handed using an eye-catching dial – but it’s only available in the US at the time of writing.

Type with one hand

SwiftKey may not have Gboard’s built-in search, but it’s unbeatable for typing tricks. For example, there’s a floating Dock keyboard you can drag around your screen. You can also split the keyboard in two, and shift the keyboard to one side for typing one-handed using your thumb, perhaps while holding a cup of tea in the other hand. Find these options by tapping SwiftKey’s icon (three horizontal lines – sometimes called the ‘hamburger’ icon). Gboard also has a one-handed option – tap the G, then tap the icon in the middle. For easier one-handed typing on tablets, try new app Chrooma (free for Android, www.snipca.com/22919). It’s less sophisticated than SwiftKey or Gboard, but its ‘Thumb typing option’ shifts the keyboard further to the side (see screenshot above), so you can thumb-type on a larger screen without needing a thumb that’s as long as a dessert spoon. To enable this in Chrooma, long-press the three tiny dots to the left of the space bar, slide your finger on to the Settings cog then tap Left or Right. Microsoft’s superb new iOS app Word Flow (www.snipca.com/22922) lets you

Turn off autocorrect

Keyboard apps love to correct you, and frankly it’s infuriating. The best solution is to switch off autocorrect while keeping spelling suggestions. The steps are similar across all apps but we’ll use Gboard as an example. Tap the G, then the cog, and then ‘Text correction’. Scroll down (by swiping up) and then tap ‘Auto-correction’ so that the switch is grey. Leave ‘Show suggestions’ switched on unless they annoy you too. Keyboard apps ‘learn’ your habits over time, but you can speed up the process. In Gboard, tap Dictionary and then ‘Personal dictionary’, then tap the plus sign to add a word or name you use often, such as ‘Computeractive’. If it’s a word you’ll type often, add a shortcut, such as ‘ca…’, then tap the tick to save (see screenshot above). If you don’t want anyone or anything learning your words, then use SwiftKey’s Incognito mode. Switch it on, and SwiftKey won’t notice a thing you type.

Get a better clipboard

All keyboard apps support basic copying and pasting, but a couple of free new Android apps from Microsoft do it better than most. Hub Keyboard, currently a preview (www.snipca.com/22918), stores a full clipboard history and has Microsoft Translator built in, so you can type in English for automatic translation. Clip Layer (www.snipca.com/22917)

Save and share more precise clippings from nearly any app using Clip Layer

HACK YOUR IPAD KEYBOARD Apple blocks certain features in thirdparty apps, such as voice input, which is part of the native keyboard anyway. On the upside, that native keyboard has some great tricks up its sleeve. Our favourite is the ‘Etch-A-Sketch’ move. If you make a mistake and want to clear your typed text, shake your iPad or iPhone then tap Undo. Less excitingly, you can type numbers without having to switch to the numerical keypad: longpress the ‘.?123’ key and then slide your finger to a number. If you’ve got an iPad you can split the keyboard in two by long-pressing the keyboard icon then tapping Split. Officially, the iOS keyboard doesn’t support one-handed typing, but app developer Steve Troughton-Smith discovered a hack for doing this and for adding clipboard buttons (www. snipca.com/22921). Unfortunately, this only works if you jailbreak your device, and that’s too risky for us to recommend.

isn’t a keyboard but works alongside your keyboard(s) to make cutting and pasting more powerful and precise. First you need to set it as Android’s default ‘Assist app’ so that it launches over any other app when you long-press the Home key. Then you can easily select text for pasting into a message or saving to your clipboard. Clip Layer lets you copy text from apps that don’t usually support this function – but not from BBC apps, alas. 18 – 31 January 2017 61

Problems Solved PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT

Why is it so difficult to free up space in my iPad’s storage? I have a 16GB iPad 3 that recently had all but run out of space. After some agonising about what to delete I removed one very big game app that I no longer play much. According to the Usage page in Settings, this game occupied 1.1GB of my storage but, having deleted it, the free space went up by only 100MB! I tried restarting my tablet but it was the same. So, I then removed a second, smaller app, which was supposedly taking up 350MB, but again my free storage didn’t increase by the same amount — about 50MB this time. I gave up and had a cup of tea and when I returned, about 20 minutes later, my free space had magically increased by another 200MB! Do you have any idea what happened here? And is there any way to delete apps properly so that I get all the storage back? Mervyn Jones

Q

When you delete an app from your iPad, iOS — Apple’s mobile operating system — begins an automated clear-up process. However, this can take a while, so the occupied space isn’t immediately shown as available. The intention is to allow you to get on with using your iPad rather than having to wait while the cleaning finishes. The downside is it looks like the space hasn’t been freed. Moreover, if you continue using the iPad — as you did for a while — then the storage-reclamation process is further

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delayed. This is because iOS prioritises your tablet’s computing resources to deal with whatever it is you’re doing currently. You went on to delete another app, so you added a bit more work to iOS’s queue. When you returned later iOS had auto-restored 200MB of the ‘missing’ space, and by now all of it should be available. There are countless apps in Apple’s App Store that claim to be able to clean up your device to free up space, but none of them are able to do anything you can’t do with iOS itself — because all apps, other than Apple’s own, run in a ‘sandbox’. This means the operating system is designed to prevent apps from having the kind of low-level access that would be necessary for ‘cleaner’ tools to be effective. Short of ‘jailbreaking’ your device — which means hacking iOS to allow access to blocked areas — then this is the way it will remain. We don’t recommend jailbreaking because, quite apart from being difficult, it will expose your iPad to all sorts of security risks. One thing you can do in iOS to free up space in a hurry is clear the Safari web browser’s history and cache. First, tap Settings followed by Safari. Then, to clear everything in one fell swoop, tap ‘Clear History and Data’ and confirm by tapping Clear (see screenshot below). Or, for fine control, tap Advanced followed by Website Data and then Edit. Next to an unwanted entry, tap the minus (‘-’) button and then tap Delete.

You can free iPad space by deleting apps (left) or clearing History and Data in Safari

64 18 – 31 January 2017

How can I consistently size images in Word? I maintain a simple newsletter for my bridge club, with the last page showing photos of the various teams and members. The members email me head-and-shoulder shots of themselves, but the pictures vary in size. When I paste them into Microsoft Word I have to drag the corners of the images to make them all the same size. This is fiddly work and I never seem to get it quite right, so some images are a little smaller or larger than others. I’d really love to find a way to make every image exactly the same dimensions — about 3cm square. Is there a simple way to do this in Word itself, so I don’t have to buy yet another program? Sally-Ann Barnes

Q

You can give photos a uniform size by rightclicking them and specifying height and width

Word has a resizing option that’s easy to use. Right-click an image and choose ‘Size and Position’. If you want the images to be exactly square then, in the Scale section at the bottom, you’ll need to clear the tick from ‘Lock aspect ratio’. Now type your desired dimensions in the Height and Width boxes, and click OK (see screenshot). However, note that by setting square dimensions for height and width you might alter the aspect ratio for some images. This means some might look a tiny bit squashed or stretched. However, they’re all head shots so this shouldn’t be a big problem.

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Our experts solve all your tech problems Email us your problem and we’ll try to help: [email protected]

Why does clicking YouTube links display an error message? When I type a subject into Google to find videos to view on YouTube, I get an error telling me that Google’s systems have detected “unusual traffic” from my computer network. This message prevents me from viewing the clip I want to watch. I have run AdwCleaner and anti-malware tools with no success. I’ve also contacted Virgin Media (my internet service provider). The Virgin assistant apparently made some adjustments to various settings on my account, but still no joy. Is there anything else I can try? Terry Sutton

Q

This is a fascinating problem that’s neither the fault of Virgin nor Google (YouTube’s owner), but equally caused by them both. The reason is quite technical but we’ll try to keep our answer as simple as we can. You have the Virgin Media website set as your web browser’s home page, or you’re visiting it to do Google searches for YouTube videos. We know this because

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A clash in the way Google and Virgin Media encode web links causes this YouTube error alert

the Google search widget on the Virgin Media home page returns web links containing what’s known as ‘per cent encoding’, whereby some characters are represented by percent symbols (‘%’). This is done for better compatibility but, ironically, it’s the cause of your problem. YouTube links, for example, contain both a question mark (‘?’) and an equals symbol (‘=’). However, the Google widget on the Virgin home page encodes these symbols respectively as ‘%3F’ and ‘%3D’. This is common, and such encoded characters are often interpreted without a problem. Indeed, when you look for them, you’ll notice them a lot online. However, YouTube currently interprets

percent-encoded symbols as being generated by an automated script. As it assumes automated scripts are the work of online robots trying to ‘watch’ videos to increase hits for ad revenues, it blocks such attempts. Unless Virgin changes its widget or Google changes its policy for incoming YouTube links, this is how it will remain. In the meantime, the simplest fix would be to visit YouTube directly (at www. youtube.com) and search for videos there. Alternatively, you could hack the URLs that Virgin’s Google widget puts in your browser’s address bar: just click in the bar to edit, change ‘ %3F’ to ‘?’ and ‘%3D’ to ‘=’ and then press Enter. The video will play just fine. This method’s certainly not easier, but it is a satisfying way to both understand and fix the problem.

How do I access my new PC’s BIOS? I’ve just waved goodbye to my faithful XP PC because I couldn’t cope with the malware worries. On my old computer I’d entered the BIOS to change the driveboot order to stop the PC looking at the CD-ROM drive before Windows started. I’d like to do the same on my new PC, so that it doesn’t waste time looking at the DVD-RW drive, but I can’t figure out how to access the BIOS. On my XP computer I just tapped the Delete key soon after switching on, but this doesn’t work on my new Windows 10 computer. Am I pressing at the wrong time, or is there some other method I should use? Walter Hall

You can access UEFI via Settings and ‘Update & security’

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Modern PCs no longer have a traditional BIOS. Instead, your new computer will have what’s known as a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, or UEFI. Many of them look very similar to old-school BIOS

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interfaces, but access is via Windows 10 itself. To reach yours, click Start followed by the Settings cog, and then ‘Update & security’ followed by Recovery. Now, under ‘Advanced startup’, click ‘Restart now’ (see screenshot). Next, click Troubleshoot followed by ‘Advanced options’. Now click UEFI Firmware Settings, followed by Restart. We can’t tell you where the bootorder setting is in your UEFI, but it’s probably under the Boot tab. Use the cursor (arrow) keys to navigate, Enter to make the change, then press Escape (Esc) to quit, pressing Yes to save.

18 – 31 January 2017 65

Problems Solved Can I call Cortana by another name?

Where are my laptop’s memory slots?

I enjoyed Ken Rigsby’s column about home-automation devices (The Final Straw, Issue 490). It reminded me of my own annoyance with Microsoft’s automaton — Cortana. I actually use it quite a lot for little things, like asking for the weather or to perform quick calculations, but I always feel a bit of an idiot when I’m forced to say, “Hey Cortana!” to ask for her help. I’d just like to say something else, like “Oi, Windows!”, or even just plain old “Cortana!”. I’ve looked through all the settings but can’t find any way to change the greeting. Is it possible? Will Miller

Q

I recently purchased a Dell Inspiron 3558 laptop and would like to upgrade the RAM. Crucial’s memory-checker tool, at www.snipca.com/22790, confirms this model can be upgraded to a maximum of 16GB. However, unlike every other laptop I’ve ever owned, there’s no underside panel that allows access to the memory modules. Do I have to completely remove the base? Any guidance would be appreciated. Andrew Cummings

Q

The quick answer to your question is that you have to venture in from above, by removing the keyboard. That might sound scary but it’s actually straightforward. First, disconnect the mains power and push the spring clip to remove the battery. Then, at the top of the keyboard, insert a flattipped plastic tool into the tabs and gently lift this top edge free. You should then be able to flip the keyboard over — gently! — to access the memory slots. Before you touch anything be sure to earth yourself, either by wearing a dedicated wrist strap or by touching an earthed metal object, such as a radiator. Incidentally, the full procedure is detailed in the manual that should’ve been supplied with your machine. But if you bought the laptop secondhand or otherwise don’t have it, download it from www.snipca. com/22791: the instructions start on page 32 (pictured below).

Windows 10 doesn’t yet offer any way to alter the way Cortana is summoned, but there’s a great free tool that does the job perfectly. It’s called MyCortana and you can grab it from www.snipca.com/22810. The program’s easy to use and doesn’t even need to be installed, so just doubleclick the MyCortana.exe file to launch it. Now click Settings followed by the plus (‘+’) button. Type what you want to say as the greeting to wake Cortana, then click OK (see screenshot). You can add up to 10 commands. To delete existing ones, click to highlight them, then click the minus (‘-’) symbol. We’d also suggest ticking the ‘Run at Startup’ box. This ensures MyCortana is always listening. Finally, just yell one of your commands — Cortana will appear.

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66 18 – 31 January 2017

MyCortana allows you to create your own greeting to wake your computer’s personal assistant

Why won’t Windows Vista update? My problem is that since June last year I’ve been unable to update Windows Vista on my old laptop, which I use for backup purposes. I have looked at several websites for help but none of them appear to have an answer, and it seems other people have the same problem. Do you have any idea how to overcome the problem? My other laptop runs Windows 10 and doesn’t suffer this problem. Nigel Govett

Q

This is actually a known problem that, somewhat ironically, is fixed by a Microsoft update — which of course your Windows Update isn’t able to download. To get around this chicken-and-egg

situation you’ll need to download and install the patch yourself. So, visit www. snipca.com/22802, click Download and then double-click the downloaded file to apply the fix (see screenshot). When you restart your PC, Windows Update will once more work fine.

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Download Microsoft’s Security Update to repair a well-known fault that prevents Windows Vista from updating

Why won’t my euro key work?

PassMark KeyboardTest lets you quickly check whether your keys are working correctly

Up until recently in Microsoft Word I used the Control (Ctrl)+Alt+4 keyboard combination to type the euro symbol — €. However, for reasons unknown, this has stopped working. Instead, I have to produce the symbol in an Excel worksheet and then copy and paste it into my Word document. Is this due to a Windows update forgetting about the euro sign? Stan E Clarke

Q

We doubt it’s down to a Windows update, and the operating system is unlikely to ‘forget’ about the symbol for a major currency. We’re not entirely sure what you mean when you say that you ‘produce’ the symbol in an Excel worksheet. If you mean that Ctrl+Alt+4 still works in Excel then it’s possible that Word’s language

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settings have been inadvertently switched. In Word, click File followed by Options, then Language, and make sure that ‘English (United Kingdom’) is set as the default. If it isn’t, click to select it, then click ‘Set as Default’. Or, if Ctrl+Alt+4 isn’t working in Excel either and you’re using currencyformatting tools to acquire the symbol,

Why won’t my Skype update? I have Skype version 7.30.80.130 and every time I switch on my computer FileHippo App Manager tells me that an update to version 7.30.85.130 is available. When I click on ‘Download and install’ it goes through the processes, but when I open Skype and check what version I have, it shows that I still have 7.30.80.103. If I go to the FileHippo website it shows 7.30.85.103 as the latest version, but if I download from this site I still end up with my original version. As this happens repeatedly, I wonder if any of your team can tell me what is going on? James Munroe

then one of the keys might be faulty. Test them using PassMark’s KeyboardTest (www.snipca.com/22808 — it’s a 30-daytrial version, but you’ll only need it for a few moments). There are other ways to type the euro symbol, including Ctrl+Alt+E and AltGr+E, or hold down Alt and type 0128 on your numeric keypad. You can find Skype’s ‘Check for Updates’ option in the Help menu

Q

We’re can’t say for sure, but we have a theory. As we went to press, the current version of Skype for Windows is 7.30.80.105. FileHippo lists the same version number, so currently that is the up-todate version. We suspect that some or other database hiccup at FileHippo has

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caused App Manager to tell you that a newer version was available. However, in reality there wasn’t at that time a more recent edition available from Microsoft, so the process went through the motions but actually left your Skype installation alone — because you had the latest version installed. We’ve tried FileHippo App Manager with Skype and it works, so we think the error has been fixed. However, if it’s still happening, it’s easy enough to update Skype manually. Launch Skype, then open the Help menu and

choose ‘Check for Updates’ (see screenshot top). If there’s a newer version available, just click Next to begin the installation process. You can check your current Skype version by selecting About Skype, which is also on the Help menu.

18 – 31 January 2017 67

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Problems Solved

?

Whatever happened to... netbooks?

Shifting things around ound in my garage recently, I came ame across a ‘netbook’ computer er that I bought about 10 years ago, and in fact was recommended by yourself elf back in the day. It still works but only ly has Windows XP, and I don’t think ink it’d run Windows 10. But I really likee the smallness of this gadget, and d wonder why netbooks aren’t ’t a ‘thing’ still. I imagine a modern netbook would be really powerful. What specifically ifically was a netbook, and why isn’t ’t anyone making them now? Daniel el O’Connor

Chromebooks are today’s equivalent of the once-popular ‘netbook’ PCs

It’s important to understand that there’s no single, fixed definition of a ‘netbook’. The term was broadly used to describe laptop-style PCs that were small, light and cheap — typically around £200£300. To hit this price point, manufacturers had to equip their netbooks with basic processors,

restricted memories, small screens and limited amounts of storage. That might not sound terribly attractive today but netbooks proved massively popular during the brief period between around 2007 and 2010 when ‘proper’ laptops cost hundreds of pounds more, and cheaper, sleeker tablet computers had yet to arrive. For people who needed

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to carry out a few simple tasks, such as we web surfing and word-processing, ne netbooks were an attractive option. But then Apple’s iPad arrived in 2010 an and changed everything. The basic mo model’s initial selling price (£429 in the UK UK) pitched it a bit above netbooks, an and it wasn’t much more powerful. Ho However, the iPad’s introduction pr prompted a slew of cheaper rivals, and so soon tablets were everywhere. Today, yo you can buy a half-decent Android ta tablet for £50, and a really good one for no not much more than £100. Chromebooks are probably the ne nearest modern equivalent to netbooks, th though they run Google’s ChromeOS rather than Windows. However, they’re generally small, light, great for basic computing needs — and generally very cheap. Shop around and, for example, you can pick up Acer’s CB3-131-C3SZ (pictured) for around £150. Want to know what happened to your favourite program, website or technology? Email [email protected]

How do I make Firefox launch? In Issue 485 you ran an article Do you know what’s happened, and about making programs as could you suggest a solution? good as new, which I’ve only Alan Henbest recently read. A section of this referred Yes, your Firefox user profile has to making Firefox run better, and I become corrupted. This might’ve followed your instructions to reset the happened because you pressed browser. All appeared to go well until I Escape before Firefox had finished, but reached the ‘Almost there’ box with the status bar. This quickly reached the finish, and, as I guessed it was tying up loose ends, I left it for around 15 minutes. But then nothing had changed, with both the box and status bar in the same place. It occurred to me that the program had hung, so I hit Escape. This cleared the box but since then Firefox has refused to start, posting an error that says my profile cannot be loaded. There is a second Windows account on the machine, and Firefox is If your Firefox user profile has become corrupted, you can behaving normally in that. delete it and create a new one

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equally the browser could’ve crashed. Either way, the fix is pretty simple, and involves deleting the corrupted profile. When you do this, Firefox will create a new, clean profile the next time the browser is launched. To do this, press Windows key+R to summon the Run box, then type %AppData%\Mozilla\Firefox\ and press Enter. This will launch File Explorer (or Windows Explorer), and open the folder that contains the corrupted file — called profiles.ini. Right-click this file, then click Delete followed by Yes to confirm. Now launch Firefox in the normal way.

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• Why can’t I install iTunes? • Why won’t my UEFI work on HDMI? • Can I transfer data from my old gadget? ...And many more Subscribe to Computeractive at getcomputeractive.co.uk 18 – 31 January 2017 69

Problems Solved

Reader Support

Having a problem getting any of the programs we’ve covered to work? Email [email protected] and we’ll do our best to help

Welcome to our new section

the TV directly via an HDMI cable, In our ongoing efforts to make our or use a surrogate streaming device content more relevant to you, we’ve such as Chromecast (£30 from John decided to replace our Fast Fixes Lewis, www.snipca.com/22985) or section with this Reader Support Amazon Fire TV (£35 from Amazon, page – dedicated to solving problems www.snipca.com/22984). You can you may have experienced relating find instructions on how to use to any tips, tools and programs we’ve Kodi with Chromecast at www. covered in recent issues. If you need snipca.com/22970 and with an help with anything from the last Amazon Fire TV at www.snipca. few issues simply email editor@ com/22971. Turn to page 48 for more computeractive.co.uk and provide Chromecast tips. as much information as you can If Gaia Sky keeps crashing, try turning down its graphics regarding your problem, and we’ll Can I use Gmail with settings until you find the levels that work on your PC try to include it here. FastStone? to launch, it probably means your PC is I took your advice and downloaded Why does Gaia Sky crash? too old to run it. FastStone Image Viewer (Issue 490, I rather took a fancy to the Gaia If it has loaded successfully, press the page 19). It’s a great program for sending Sky astronomy program (Issue Escape key to close Gaia Sky and then multiple photos over the internet at 490, page 35, www.snipca.com/22410). re-open it. This time try turning up one reduced sizes. However, I need to know All went well until I got to opening it or two settings – ticking V-sync, changing how to change the default email program to confirm my default settings – then ‘Graphics quality’ to Medium and setting to Gmail. Any ideas please? nothing happened. I have subsequently the resolution to 800x600 are all good John Scoote uninstalled it, but I would like to try it starting points. Using trial and error you again. I am running Windows 10 with can slowly increase the graphics levels Unfortunately, FastStone doesn’t the 32bit installer. Should I have done until you hit the point where it crashes. support web-based email clients such something else? Once it does, undo the last setting you as Gmail and Yahoo, but there is a handy Colin Gooding adjusted and use Gaia Sky with these workaround. Open FastStone as usual, settings from now on. select the photos you want to email, You’re not the only reader who has then choose a size. Once you’re happy emailed us to say that Gaia Sky is Can my Tizen TV work with Kodi? with your selection, tick the ‘Compress giving their PC a headache. You don’t I have just read your Workshop in images into one single file’ box, choose mention the specifications of your PC, Issue 491 (page 35) explaining how ZIP from the dropdown menu, type a but we’re going to hazard a guess that to stream video from your PC to TV using file name and click ‘Copy to Folder’ (see it’s getting on a bit. Unfortunately, Gaia Kodi. I’m afraid it’s not as simple as the screenshot below). When the pop-up Sky eats into your PC’s resources and will Workshop makes out. Samsung has a window appears, choose a destination struggle to work on older computers. large share of the smart-TV market and folder and click Copy to save a ZIP folder We suggest you run Gaia Sky at the (some of) its TVs are incompatible with containing your photos. Now open Gmail, least demanding settings and see how it Kodi. The reason being that they run, not create your email and attach your freshly gets on. To do this, launch Gaia Sky as on Android, but on the Tizen system. You created ZIP using the ‘Attach files’ button. normal so that it displays the settings may well be aware of a fix that I screen. In the Graphics tab, select am not, but I don’t think so. ‘Fullscreen mode’ then choose 640x480 Brian W McGinty in the dropdown menu. Next, set ‘Graphics quality’ to Low, Anti-aliasing to The Tizen operating system ‘No anti-aliasing’, ‘Line style’ to ‘GL lines’ is indeed incompatible with and untick V-sync (see screenshot above Kodi and you’re right that there’s right). Now click the ‘Launch application’ no way to stream Kodi directly button (the program can take up to 10 to a Samsung Tizen TV. Instead, Use FastStone’s ‘Copy to Folder’ button to make minutes to open). If the program still fails you can connect your laptop to compressed folders of your photos to send via Gmail

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70 18 – 31 January 2017

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No.24 Elephant Inks

£30.99 £8.99 £7.49 £54.99 £16.99 £12.99 £14.99 £3.99 £3.99

Originals: £107.99 No.24 Set of 6 £52.99 £10.99 No.24 Colours 4.6ml each £8.99 No.24XL Set of 6 £87.99 £44.99 No.24XL Colours 8.7ml each £14.99 £4.99 Compatibles: No.24 Set of 6 £22.99 More Canon Inks... No.24 Black 7ml £3.99 Originals: No.24 Colours 7ml each £3.99 PGi520/CLi521 Set of 5 £49.99 PGi520 Black 19ml £11.99 No.26 CLi521 Colours 9ml £10.29 Polar Bear Inks PGi525/CLi526 Set of 5 £49.99 PGi525 Black 19ml £11.99 Originals: £35.99 CLi526 Colours 9ml £10.29 No.26 Set of 4 £9.99 PGi550/CLi551 Set of 5 £43.99 No.26 Black 6.2ml No.26 Colours 4.5ml each £8.99 PGi550 Black 15ml £10.99 £63.99 CLi551 Colours 7ml £8.99 No.26XL Set of 4 No.26XL Black 12.1ml £16.99 PGi550/CLi551XL Set of 5 £59.99 No.26XL Colours 9.7ml each £15.99 PGi550XL Black 22ml £12.99 CLi551XL Colours 11ml £11.99 Compatibles: £14.99 PG540 Black 8ml £12.99 No.26 Set of 4 £3.99 PG540XL Black 21ml £19.99 No.26 Black 10ml No.26 Colours 7ml each £3.99 CL541 Colour 8ml £16.99 CL541XL Colour 15ml £19.99 PG545XL Black 15ml £15.49 T0481-T0486 CL546XL Colour 13ml £16.99 Seahorse Inks Compatibles: Originals: PGi5 Black 27ml £4.99 Set of 6 £89.99 CLi8 Colours 13ml £3.99 Colours 13ml each £18.99 PGi5/CLi8 Set of 5 £19.99 Compatibles: PGi520 Black 19ml £4.99 Set of 6 £19.99 CLi521 Colours 9ml £3.99 Colours 13ml each £3.99 PGi520/CLi521 Set of 5 £19.99 PGi525 Black 19ml £4.99 T0541-T0549 CLi526 Colours 9ml £3.99 PGi525/CLi526 Set of 5 £19.99 Frog Inks PGi550XL Black 25ml £4.99 Originals: £112.99 CLi551XL Colours 12ml £3.99 Set of 8 £14.99 PGi550/CLi551XL Set of 5 £19.99 Colours 13ml each BCi6 Colours 15ml £2.99 Compatibles: PG40 Black 28ml £12.99 Set of 8 £27.99 £3.99 CL41 Colour 24ml £16.99 Colours 13ml each PG50 Black 28ml £12.99 CL51 Colour 24ml £14.99 T0591-T0599 PG510 Black 11ml £13.99 Lily Inks CL511 Colour 11ml £15.99 PG512 Black 18ml £13.99 Originals: £102.99 CL513 Colour 15ml £15.99 Set of 8 £12.99 PG540XL Black 21ml £13.99 Colours 13ml each CL541XL Colour 15ml £14.99 Compatibles: £27.99 PG545XL Black 15ml £11.99 Set of 8 £3.99 PG546XL Black 21ml £12.99 Colours 13ml each Many more in stock!

Photo Papers

More Epson inks >>>

E&EO. Prices may be subject to change, but hopefully not!

PP-201 Plus Glossy II 275gsm: 6x4 50 sheets £9.99 7x5 20 sheets £11.99 A4 20 sheets £11.99 A3 20 sheets £27.99 A3+ 20 sheets £36.99 SG-201 Semi-Gloss 260gsm: 6x4 50 sheets £10.99 A4 20 sheets £11.99 A3 20 sheets £27.99 A3+ 20 sheets £44.99

Smooth Pearl 280gsm: 6x4 100 sheets £12.99 7x5 100 sheets £18.99 A4 50 sheets £18.99 A4 50 sheets £18.99 A3 50 sheets £35.99 A3+ 25 sheets £28.99 Oyster 271gsm: 6x4 100 sheets £12.99 7x5 100 sheets £18.99 A4 50 sheets £18.99 A3 25 sheets £22.99 A3+ 25 sheets £28.99 Gloss 271gsm: 6x4 100 sheets £12.99 7x5 100 sheets £18.99 A4 50 sheets £18.99 A3 25 sheets £22.99 A3+ 25 sheets £28.99 Double Sided Matt 250gsm: A4 100 sheets £24.99 A3 50 sheets £27.99

Premium Gloss 255gsm: 6x4 40 sheets +40 FREE £10.99 7x5 30 sheets £10.99 A4 15 sheets +15 FREE £10.99 A3 20 sheets £38.99 A3+ 20 sheets OFFER £25.99 Ultra Gloss 300gsm: 6x4 50 sheets £13.99 7x5 50 sheets £14.99 A4 15 sheets £15.99 Premium Semi-Gloss 251gsm: 6x4 50 sheets £8.99 A4 20 sheets £15.99 A3 20 sheets £39.99 A3+ 20 sheets OFFER £25.99 Archival Matte 192gsm: A4 50 sheets £16.99 A3 50 sheets £36.99 A3+ 50 sheets £52.99 Heavyweight Matte 167gsm: A4 50 sheets £12.99 A3 50 sheets £32.99 A3+ 50 sheets £46.99

More Ink Cartridges... T0711-T0714 Cheetah Inks

Originals: Set of 4 Black 7.4ml Colours 5.5ml each Compatibles: Set of 4 Black 7.4ml Colours 5.5ml each

£42.99 £10.99 £10.99 £14.99 £3.99 £3.99

T0791-T0796 Owl Inks

Originals: Set of 6 Colours 11.1ml each Compatibles: Set of 6 Colours 11.1ml each

£88.99 £14.99 £19.99 £3.99

T0801-T0806 Hummingbird Inks

Originals: Set of 6 Colours 7.4ml each Compatibles: Set of 6 Colours 7.4ml each

£67.99 £11.49 £19.99 £3.99

T0871-T0879 Flamingo Inks

Originals: Set of 8 Colours 11.4ml each Compatibles: Set of 8 Colours 11.4ml each

£76.99 £9.99 £27.99 £3.99

T0961-T0969 Husky Inks

Originals: Set of 8 Colours 11.4ml each Compatibles: Set of 8 Colours 11.4ml each

Many more in stock!

£78.99 £9.99 £27.99 £3.99

Originals: No.300 Black 4ml £12.99 No.300 Colour 4ml £14.99 No.301 Black 3ml £10.99 No.301 Colour 3ml £13.49 No.302 Black 3.5ml £10.99 No.302 Colour 4ml £12.99 No.350 Black 4.5ml £14.99 No.351 Colour 3.5ml £17.99 No.363 Black 6ml £17.99 No.363 C/M/Y/PC/PM each £11.49 No.363 SET OF 6 £49.99 No.364 Black 6ml £8.99 No.364 PB/C/M/Y 3ml each £7.99 No.364 SET OF 4 £26.99 No.364XL Black 14ml £15.99 No.364XL PB/C/M/Y 6ml each £15.99 No.364XL SET OF 4 £59.99 No.920XL SET OF 4 £51.99 No.932XL SET OF 4 £50.99 No.950XL SET OF 4 £79.99 Compatibles: No.15 Black 46ml £3.99 No.21 Black 10ml £6.99 No.22 Colour 21ml £11.99 No.45 Black 45ml £6.99 No.56 Black 24ml £6.99 No.57 Colour 24ml £11.99 No.62XL Black 12ml £14.99 No.62XL Colour 12ml £15.99 No.78 Colour 36ml £8.99 No.110 Colour 12ml £9.99 No.300XL Black 18ml £12.99 No.300XL Colour 18ml £13.99 No.301XL Black 15ml £12.99 No.301XL Colour 18ml £13.99 No.337 Black 21ml £9.99 No.338 Black 21ml £10.99 No.339 Black 34ml £11.99 No.343 Colour 21ml £11.99 No.344 Colour 21ml £12.99 No.350XL Black 30ml £13.99 No.351XL Colour 20ml £15.99 No.363 SET OF 6 £19.99 No.364 Black 10ml £3.79 No.364 Colours 5ml each £3.29 No.364 SET OF 4 £12.99 No.364XL Black 18ml £4.99 No.364XL Colours 11ml each £4.29 No.364XL SET OF 4 £16.99

Albums & Frames

We now stock a comprehensive range of frames, mounts, albums and accessories. The full range can be viewed on our website, with detailed close-up images of each product to help you choose the perfect way to display your printed photographs. Below is just a tiny sample of what we offer: Grace Albums

Available in Burgundy or Blue.

Travel Albums

Emilia Frames Distressed wood shabby chic effect. Blue or White.

Rio Frames

Handcrafted solid wood with 30mm wide profile, in four colours.

Over a dozen designs in stock.

Grafton Albums

Available in Burgundy or Blue. Frisco Frames Simple, basic design available in a huge range of sizes & colours.

Baby Albums Multiple different designs available.

Memo Style Albums: Grace 6x4 100 photos £5.99 Grace 6x4 200 photos £9.99 Grace 6x4 300 photos £14.99 Grace 7x5 100 photos £7.99 Grace 7x5 200 photos £13.99 Grace A4 100 photos £15.99 Grafton 6x4 200 photos £9.99 Grafton 7x5 200 photos £13.99 Baby 6x4 200 photos £9.99 Travel 6x4 200 photos £8.99 Traditional Style Albums: Grace 29x32cm 100 pages £14.99 Grafton 29x32cm 100 pgs £14.99 Baby 29x32cm 100 pages £12.99 Accessories: Photo Corners Pack of 250 £2.99 Photo Stickers Pack of 500 £1.99

Plastic Bevel, Glass Front: Frisco 6x4 seven colours £1.99 Frisco 7x5 seven colours £2.29 Frisco 8x6 seven colours £2.79 Frisco 9x6 seven colours £3.49 Frisco 10x8 seven colours £3.79 Frisco 12x8 seven colours £4.59 Frisco A4 seven colours £3.99 Frisco A3 seven colours £8.99 Wood Bevel, Glass Front: Emilia 6x4 two colours £4.99 Emilia 7x5 two colours £5.99 Emilia 8x6 two colours £6.99 Emilia 10x8 two colours £7.99 Emilia 12x8 two colours £8.99 Rio 6x4 four colours £5.99 Rio 7x5 four colours £6.99 Rio 8x6 four colours £7.99 Rio 10x8 four colours £8.99 Rio 12x8 four colours £9.99

USB Pen Drives

8GB: £3.29 16GB: £4.49 32GB: £7.99

Memory SDHC & SDXC

Sandisk Blue 33X (5MB/s) 8GB £3.49 16GB £4.99 32GB £9.99 Sandisk Ultra 266X (40MB/s) 8GB £5.99 16GB £6.99 32GB £11.99 64GB £21.99 Sandisk Extreme 600X (90MB/s) 16GB £9.99 32GB £14.99 64GB £27.99

Compact Flash Sandisk Ultra 333X (50MB/s) 8GB £11.99 16GB £15.99 32GB £24.99

Sandisk Extreme 800X (120MB/s) 16GB £26.99 32GB £32.99 64GB £47.99 128GB £94.99

MicroSDHC & SDXC Sandisk Ultra 320X (48MB/s) 16GB £6.99 32GB £12.99 64GB £24.99

Readers & Cases

Delkin USB2 Card Reader £9.99 Delkin USB3 Card Reader £19.99 Delkin SD Card (x8) Case £6.99 Delkin CF Card (x4) Case £6.99 Many more in stock!

Batteries BP-511 for Canon LP-E6 for Canon LP-E8 for Canon LP-E12 for Canon EN-EL3E for Nikon NB-2L/LH for Canon NB-6L for Canon NB-10L for Canon NP95 for Fuji NPW126 for Fuji EN-EL3e for Nikon EN-EL14 for Nikon EN-EL15 for Nikon BLN-1 for Olympus BLC12 for Panasonic FW50 for Sony BX-1 for Sony AA 1300mAh (4) AAA 1100mAh (4)

£12.99 £16.99 £12.99 £12.99 £14.99 £9.99 £9.99 £12.99 £9.99 £12.99 £14.99 £19.99 £24.99 £24.99 £23.99 £24.99 £14.99 £3.99 £3.99

Filters Screw-type Filters 46mm UV / Haze 49mm UV / Haze 52mm UV / Haze 55mm UV / Haze 58mm UV / Haze 62mm UV / Haze 67mm UV / Haze 72mm UV / Haze 77mm UV / Haze

£4.99 £4.99 £4.99 £5.99 £6.99 £7.99 £8.99 £8.99 £11.99 Skylight Filters from: £6.99 Circular Polarising Filters from: £14.99 ND4 and ND8 Filters from: £11.99

P-Type Square Filters 49-82mm Adapter Rings Filter Holder ND2 Filter ND2 Grad Filter ND4 Filter ND4 Grad Filter

£4.99 £5.99 £12.99 £13.99 £12.99 £13.99

www.premier-ink.co.uk Telephone: 01926 339977 or 0800 1077 211 Premier Ink & Photographic 12 Longfield Road, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire CV31 1XB

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In the next issue of our sister title Web User... ●

WHY YOUR WI-FI IS STILL SO SLOW

Hidden causes of sluggish internet – and fixes that really work

●

HACK AND IMPROVE YOUR DESKTOP The best program to use

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WILL IT WORK OR NOT?

How to test the compatibility of software

PLUS ● STOP THE WEB SPYING ON YOU How to use the internet’s best privacy tool

ONLY 30 LEFT ! Buy the Web b Us User 2015 Back Issue CD on Amazon at 72 5 - 18 August 2015 www.snipca.com/19697

Next issue on sale Weds 25 Jan Subscribe to Web User at http://subscribe.webuser.co.uk

Jargon Buster 32bit A measure of how much information a computer can process at once. Most older PCs are 32bit. 4K Video with a resolution of at least 3840x2160 pixels. 802.11ac A standard for wireless networks that allows for much higher transfer speeds than 802.11n. 802.11n A standard for wireless networks that allows for high transfer speeds. AMOLED Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode. An alternative technology to LCD for creating flat-panel displays. Anti-aliasing A graphical technique used to smooth jagged edges of 3D objects in PC software and video games. Augmented reality Lets you view the real world on a digital display and add elements from the digital world. Bandwidth A measure of how much data can be transferred through a connection at one time. Benchmarking Comparing software and products with an accepted standard. Beta A version of software that’s being tested. BIOS Basic Input-Output System. Essential software built into every PC that connects the vital components. It’s visible for a few seconds when the PC starts. Blue light Light given off by PC and phone screens. Can disrupt sleep patterns. Cache A temporary space for storing information. Cast To send content from your PC to TV. Client A program used to access and manage a user’s email. Clock speed The speed at which a PC processor can perform tasks. Measured in Gigahertz (GHz). DDR4 The newest, fastest type of computer memory.

Bust more jargon in our A-Z book: www.snipca.com/21616

DisplayPort A new socket for connecting monitors. Driver A file that tells Windows how to work with a peripheral device. DVD-RW A blank DVD disc that can be erased and recorded to again. DVI Digital Visual Interface. A common type of display connector that can carry a digital signal. Extension A program that adds extra features to your browser. Factory reset A software restore of a device to its original state. False positive When an antivirus program wrongly detects a malware infection. Firewall Software or hardware that prevents unauthorised access to a computer over a network. GHz Gigahertz. A measure of how many instructions a chip can process per second. Gigabit Ethernet A very fast networking standard that can transfer data at up to 1,000Mbps. GPU Graphics Processor Unit. A chip designed to create 3D graphics. Graphics card A component in a computer that produces the image shown on the monitor. Haptic feedback A touchscreen or other controller can give the illusion of tactile feedback by triggering small, finely controlled vibrations in response to an action. HDMI High-definition media interface. A type of connection that transmits high-definition video and audio signals. IP address Internet Protocol Address. A unique set of numbers used to identify computers and websites on the internet. Jailbreak Modifying an iPhone, iPod or iPad to get around Apple’s restrictions. LCD Liquid crystal display. The technology used to create almost all flatscreen monitors.

M.2 A standard specification for internal PC expansion cards and connectors. MB/s Megabytes per second. Memory module A narrow circuit board that holds memory chips. Modifier key A key on a computer keyboard that temporarily changes the normal action of another key when pressed together. NAS Network-attached storage. A hard drive attached to a network that can be shared with other PCs. NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express. An interface that lets solid-state drives work faster. Open source Software that can be modified by anyone, rather than just by the employees of the company that created it. Optical character recognition Software that converts a picture of text into editable text. Pairing Installing identical memory modules in your PC’s motherboard. PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express. A faster version of PCI. Phishing A form of internet fraud that tries to trick you into revealing personal details. Plug-in A small program that adds extra features to software or to your web browser. PS/2 Personal System 2. A set of standards for such things as mouse and keyboard interfaces. PUP Potentially unwanted program. A program that may not be desired, despite the user consenting to it being downloaded. QHD Quad High Definition.

Reading speed How long it takes a hard drive to ‘read’ data. Refresh rate Measured in Hertz (Hz), the number of times per second that the image on your monitor is redrawn. Response time How fast a coloured pixel turns to white and back again. Rootkit Software that gives a hacker administration rights and access to a computer. SATA Serial ATA. An interface for connecting modern hard drives and optical discs to a computer. sRGB A standard RGB colour space for use on monitors, printers and the internet. SSD Solid-state drive. Storage that, unlike a hard drive, uses no moving parts. Tag A keyword used to describe a file or web page. Many programs use tags to organise related information quickly. Thunderbolt 3 A very fast port for connecting external storage to a computer. Can be used to connect monitors, a network and more. UEFI Unified Extensible Firmware Interface. A modern replacement for the BIOS, designed to get a PC into a state where it can launch an operating system. UHD Ultra High Definition. USB 2.0/3.0 Faster successors to USB. USB Type-C A new connector that’s reversible, letting you plug it in upside down. VGA Video Graphics Array. A standard socket for connecting a monitor to a computer.

QR code Quick Response Code. A barcode that can be read using smartphones.

VPN Virtual private network. A technology for keeping all internet communication safe and private even on insecure networks.

Quad core A computer that has four processors on a single chip.

Widget A small program that runs on the Windows desktop.

RAM Random-access memory. The computer’s working area.

Writing speed How long it takes a hard drive to save data.

18 – 31 January 2017 73

The Final Straw This issue Ken Rigsby doesn’t want to keep paying for. . .

KEN RIGSBY is Computeractive’s Mr Angry

Subscription software I

n the olden days – about, ooh, five years ago – you’d buy and install Office and that was that. The software was yours to keep, forever – or at least until Microsoft changed Windows enough to ensure that using your old version of Office was a pain in the asterisk key. But that would still mean many years of happy use, with the reassurance of regular updates and security fixes. Heck, even Office 2003 was officially supported until 2014! You could have bought Office 2003 in, er, 2003 and enjoyed using it safely for well over a decade. And that’s not all. Just because Microsoft stopped supporting Office 2003 three years ago doesn’t mean that it suddenly stopped working. If you have Office 2003 installed on your PC – and many Computeractive readers do – it’ll still work today, just as it did 14 years ago. Indeed, I still have it running on one of my laptops, which I upgraded to Windows 10, and most aspects of it work just fine. I love Word 2003 because it has old-fashioned menus with options that don’t keep shifting around like they do in the modern Office’s ribbon. Microsoft won’t ever add new features, and any

remaining security flaws will remain forever unfixed, but that doesn’t matter if all you do is create a few documents every month. Bear this in mind if you use Office 2007, because support for that version officially ends later this year (10 October, to be precise). But practically, you can just carry on as you are. So what changed five years ago? Simple: Microsoft realised it was tied to a bad business model, because selling fixed-price software that people were

Microsoft invented Office 365 because selling fixed-price software was a financial dead end

able to use for a decade was a financial dead end. So it invented Office 365. This is constantly updated, so Office 365 is never out of date. You get regular new features, and all for as little as £5.99 per month. In fact, when you compare that with buying Office Home & Student 2016 edition outright, for £119.99, six quid a month seems like a bargain. But what exactly does your subscription buy you? Well, a couple of months ago Microsoft introduced the new SAP HANA Connector, with enhancements to the parameter input UX. There’s also the all-new Query Editor ribbon support for scalar values. No, I don’t know what they are either. But how did we ever live without them? In your face Office 2003! With your stupid one-off cost and old-fashioned (in other words, easy-to-use) menus that have served me well for a measly 14 years and counting! I’ve focused on Microsoft but it’s not of course the only company to play the subscription-software sleight of hand. In fact, software as a service (or SaaS) is now very fashionable, banishing to history the simplicity of one-time purchases. However, Microsoft is at the fore because most PCs run Windows, and there’s already an SaaS version of Windows 10 for businesses. But at least the company offered us normal punters a free upgrade to Windows 10. And hundreds of millions of us snapped up the offer, and we’re now getting used to the idea of software that’s constantly updated with features that we never knew we needed. Hold on. That sounds a bit like the SaaS model, doesn’t it? Hmm. Call me cynical, but I wonder if that’s what Microsoft has got planned long term for the consumer version of Windows 10 (that’s the one you’re probably using). Answers on a postcard, please! Do you subscribe to software? Let us know at [email protected]

74 18 – 31 January 2017

Next issue Ken isn’t sold on irritating online adverts

I want to be unhackable. That’s why I want a solution that protects me from online threats and keeps me worry-free.

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