Table of contents for No.286 - August 2018 in PC Pro

AS THE THERMOMETER tipped over 30°C in the shade, my regular conference combo of jeans and jacket was proving overkill. But this is the problem of a work trip abroad: you’re there for the briefest of times, you’re normally in a mad hurry to pack, and you anticipate spending most of your time in an air-conditioned conference centre. Instead, I was wandering the sun-scorched New York streets in search of interesting tech and gaudy souvenirs – although I spent almost as much time people-watching. Aside from the tourists, everyone in New York is locked in their own world, cocooned by earphones. Most frequently, the faintly ridiculous Apple AirPods, which at least Londoners have had the good sense to ignore. Indeed, it’s aptly named the Big Apple. The brand’s dominance was…

1 Chip flaws strike again Security researchers at Google and Microsoft have uncovered a fourth flavour of a processor flaw similar to Spectre and Meltdown that could be exploited by scripts within software such as JavaScript. The newly discovered speculative execution vulnerability (CVE-2018-3639) could be used to sniff data by malicious software or anyone logged into systems using many modern Intel, AMD, ARM and IBM processors. 2 Researchers warn of major router malware threat Researchers from Cisco’s Talos labs have uncovered a possibly state-level malware targeting home and small office routers, claiming it was already installed on 500,000 devices. Primarily targeting Ukraine, the researchers say VPNFilter has been spotted in 54 countries and that it can steal website credentials, kill infected devices and “has the potential of cutting off internet…

KEY FACTS SatoshiPay is a blockchain-based micropayments company that seeks to help web publishers sell their content to consumers LOCATION Berlin, but the company is registered in London FOUNDED 2014 EMPLOYEES 10 WEBSITE satoshipay.io If I had a fiver for every company who tried to convince me they’d cracked the problem of micropayments over the years… well, I wouldn’t be writing a story about another one. SatoshiPay’s Meinhard Benn says his company has created the “pocket change” of the internet. And if you’ve nodded knowingly at the first part of the company’s name, you’ll know by now that he’s using cryptocurrency to do it. The Satoshi is the smallest unit of Bitcoin, the crypto equivalent of a cent or a penny, and named after Bitcoin’s shadowy founder Satoshi Nakamoto. However,…

@njkobie The difference between software and a software licence isn’t something most of us concern ourselves with – Windows comes installed on our laptops, and that’s the end of it. But for people who run their business’s IT or refurbish old machines, it’s a fine line that can be very costly. Just ask Eric Lundgren. He has plenty of time to mull the distinction, as he’s been jailed for 15 months over this key distinction. He’s a tech entrepreneur who’s focused on e-waste and recycling – a problem that sees Americans chuck out 3.4 million tons of devices each year. Recycling is key to battling that waste and, when it comes to computers, that often means extending their usable lifespans by refurbishment. Rebuilding a PC means you need to reinstall…

The ideal home server is quiet, reliable and light on power – just like the Raspberry Pi. Better yet, the Raspberry Pi is cheap. The board itself costs less than £40 and the Raspbian operating system is free. If you have an old monitor, keyboard and mouse going begging, you can usually power it using a regular USB power supply, so all you need to add is a microSD card to boot from. Over the next four pages, we’ll show you how you can turn a regular Raspberry Pi into a fully-fledged home server for photos, storage and media streaming – in half an hour or less. We’re using the new Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, but the instructions are the same if you’re using one of its predecessors. The…

PRICE Free for existing Windows 10 users from windowsupdate.microsoft.com The latest major update to Windows 10 – the fifth since its original release in 2015 – is here. Clearly Microsoft continues to take seriously its promise that Windows 10 will be a constantly evolving platform, with new free features coming along at regular intervals. The official name “April 2018 Update” doesn’t make any grand claims, but it’s more unambiguous than some of the airy previous names such as the “Anniversary Update” and the “Creators Update”. It wouldn’t be Microsoft if there wasn’t a small catch, though: while Microsoft did make the update available on 30 April 2018, the nature of Windows Update means the vast majority of users didn’t get the opportunity to upgrade until well into May. The other…

PRICE £183 (£220 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/286moto If Game of Thrones has taught me anything, it’s that the titular throne is tough to hold onto. The budget smartphone crown is similarly competitive, albeit with a lot less bloodshed. For Motorola, the latest twist in the saga is good news. After a couple of disappointing generations where it lost ground to both Honor and Huawei, the Moto G6 is a phone worthy of the Moto G name. ▪ Winning by design It starts with the stunning design. As with the rest of the industry, Motorola has enthusiastically adopted the tall and thin 18:9 aspect ratio display, and it looks a million dollars here. Clad in Gorilla Glass 3 on the front and back, and with a stylish curved design all the…

PRICE £83 (£100 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk The MK750 is Cooler Master’s latest mechanical keyboard, and arguably its most accomplished. It only requires one USB connection to power it, with added flexibility thanks to its USB-C port and detachable cable. You don’t even need to preload your computer with the software: a 32-bit ARM Cortex M3 processor and 512KB of RAM mean it’s intelligent enough to pick from predefined colour settings at the press of a button. This doesn’t mean Cooler Master skimps on effects: an understated colour bar sits on the base to complement the individually backlit keys, and you can customise any number of effects using the software. Cooler Master also provides a wrist rest, which magnetically attaches to the front of the keyboard when you need it.…

PRICE £133 (£159 inc VAT) from logitechg.com Logitech’s gaming division is no stranger to mechanical keyboards, with six models that range from £100 to £159. This, then, is the top of the range beast, and it certainly looks the part. In fact, it’s the most stylish keyboard here, with a brushed aluminium finish that lends a subtle counterbalance to the RGB lighting of the keys. These don’t light up from the bottom, with only the characters glowing: the keys themselves stay black. This means that, when switched off, the keyboard doesn’t scream gaming in quite the same way. Logitech also defies the norms by using its own switch technology rather than Cherry’s. You can choose Romer-G Tactile (similar to MX Brown) or Romer-G Linear (MX Red), and while the numbers…

“Use it on a still day or take it indoors and it’s probably one of the easiest to fly drones I’ve encountered” As you may remember from issue 279, I’m a huge fan of DJI’s £400 Spark drone. Sure, it doesn’t quite offer the image quality of its bigger brothers, the battery life or even the range. But it’s small, relatively quiet, and plenty of fun. I was excited, then, to see it gain a little brother. Excited, yet apprehensive. The thing is, I’ve played with lots of “toy” drones and helicopters over the years – and they’ve been rubbish. Hard to fly, easy to crash, and quickly consigned to the back of my “why the hell did I buy this” cupboard – everyone has one of those, right? I’d…

“I’ve seen laptops consigned to the tin shed of posterity and decay, often by a basic viral infection” Be honest: how many “don’t touch it” machines do you have in cupboards? How many laptops that, no matter how patient you were, you were unable to restore to working order? I’ve seen some sin-bins of tens of laptops, consigned to the tin shed of posterity and decay, often by a basic viral infection. This simple accusation, that it was “virus wot done it”, often gets me into trouble, because the people carrying the keys to those tin sheds can’t match up what they saw happening to my assertion about the machines they can’t fix. “But,” they say, “XYZ antivirus didn’t say anything about finding a threat.” Sounds logical, but the truth…

Moore’s law is dead. However, researchers have their eye on new ways to meddle with electrons for faster-than-ever chips with new materials and methods. You may have heard of “spintronics” – but the next big chip design is called “valleytronics”. If researchers can get it to work, at least. What is valleytronics? Aside from a great name for a band, valleytronics is a way of storing information: that all-important binary on and off position. Instead of switching the charge of an electron, as with standard chips, or tracking the spinning up or down of electrons, as with spintronics, this method uses something called the “wave quantum number” of an electron held in a crystal state. Wait, what? Let’s try that again. In valleytronics, we need to dump electrons into two…

On sale 12 July 2018 LABS Multifunction printers Whatever your printerbased needs, our group test of 14 big-name contenders will help you pick the perfect model. Subscribe today Start your subscription to PC Pro and claim a free Hama flashlight while stocks last. You can read PC Pro in print, on your iPad, iPhone or Kindle Fire. See p108 for details. Subscribe today FEATURES Create a bomb-proof PC Want to give someone a computer they can’t ruin with viruses? We explain how to configure a PC that won’t induce headaches, whoever you give it to. 7 reasons to dump Google Whether you want to move away from Google for privacy reasons, or you’re just looking for superior products, we reveal the best alternatives on the market. Take control of your…

Darien Graham-Smith Ever wondered how to get the most from the Windows Registry? We asked Darien to go explore, and he came back with over 20 hacks. See p30 Kevin Partner Long-time contributor Kevin makes a welcome return to our pages with three underrated Google tools, along with tips on how to use them. See p116 Davey Winder Davey for president? Sadly, it will never happen, which is a shame as – with the help of experts – he puts together a convincing case for smart guns from p38 Nik Rawlinson The Raspberry Pi has plenty of rivals – see p113 – but we love its latest incarnation. Find out how to turn it into a home server from p42…

HP EliteBook x360 1030 G3 HP has updated its Elite and Envy ranges, with the most interesting features appearing in the business-centric HP EliteBook x360 1030 G3. Featuring four form-factor modes, the lightweight convertible is aimed at professionals who work in a range of light conditions, with the EliteBook x360 1030 G3 offering several different screen options. The five available 13.3in touchscreens all feature Gorilla Glass 4, but there are key differences that set them apart. The flagship option is a glossy 4K Ultra HD (3,840 x 2,160) screen with a respectable brightness of 500cd/m2, but more interesting for anyone that works outdoors is the anti-glare 1,920 x 1,080 option that throws out 700cd/m2. The brighter displays feature HP’s Sure View privacy system, which enables users to switch the screen…

Repair costs mean consumers often have to think long and hard whether to replace a cracked screen or depleted battery, or upgrade the entire device. Microsoft’s Surface Pro 3 is at an age where a battery replacement might be required, but the company explains on its website that “your Surface will be replaced with a refurbished Surface (repair usually costs more than sending a replacement).” The cost listed on the site for out-of-warranty repairs is £492. Even going to a third party – which Microsoft cautions against – can be eye-wateringly expensive because of the way the device is designed. “The LCD screens on the Surface Pro 3s are very delicate and there is a greater than 50% chance that the screen will crack during the repair process,” explains device…

@dariengs It was a bright, cold morning in 1995, and the clocks were striking eleven. Some Might Say was playing on the radio, and I’d just sat down at my computer desk with a cup of coffee. I opened my telnet client as usual, and connected to the university email service to see what my friends were up to that day. And there it was: my first piece of spam. It’s hard to fully describe the feelings that swirled inside me. This was the only internet account I had ever known, and it was more than just an inbox to me – it was the locus of my identity. Even in person, friends addressed me unironically by my user ID, “deg20”. Now, my online home was being invaded. I fired…

The casual dropping of the “e” was a bravado touch (and I don’t imagine it had anything to do with Oulipo), but when I joined in 2006 I still found Flickr rather an odd name, simply because for we Brits a “flick” is a motion picture rather than a still. Okay, Flickr did later admit video content, but it’s very much a platform for still photography. And it’s not half so odd a name as SmugMug. SmugMug is the US firm that, back in April, bought Flickr from its previous owner Yahoo. It recently emailed me with an assurance that my Flickr account would remain unchanged for the foreseeable future, but also to invite me to try its own offering (which, to my surprise was founded in 2002, two years…

PRICE £224(£269incVAT) fromcarphonewarehouse.com What makes the G6 Plus different from its standard-sized sibling? First, the screen: it measures 5.9in to the 5.7in of the G6, with the same 18:9 display and 1,080 x 2,160 resolution. But you would be hard-pressed to notice unless the two were side by side. It’s a minor upgrade in terms of screen quality, too. While the percentage of the sRGB colour gamut it reproduces is slightly lower (83.8% versus the G6’s 86.3%), it delivers more contrast (1,255:1 to 931:1) and is far brighter. The G6 peaks at 408cd/m2, the G6 Plus’ climbs to 536cd/m2. In bright sunshine, the Plus will be much easier to read. The G6 Plus also benefits from a nice specification bump over the G6, which is clear in the benchmarks. An…

PRICE £83 (£100 inc VAT) from box.co.uk I’ll be frank. There’s very little difference between the MasterKeys Pro L RGB and the newer MK750, and almost all the differences that do exist point to you buying the latter: the port is micro-USB, not USB-C; there’s no magnetic wrist rest or strip lighting along the base; and it loses out on the four media playback keys above the number pad. Instead, the Pro L RGB includes four shortcut keys – P1, P2, P3 and P4 – that allow you to quickly flip between the profiles. These can be set up to crazy levels of customisation to suit games, your mood or even (bizarrely) to play a version of Snake on your keyboard. The lights illuminate as the snake travels around, and…

PRICE £142 (£170 inc VAT) from steelseries.com In what can only be described as unfortunate timing, SteelSeries sent us the M800 just as the product went to end of life. You can still buy it from the company, but only in German, Belgian or Portuguese versions. That’s a shame, because the key technology behind the M800 is interesting – with a 3mm total travel distance, and 1.5mm actuation, they promised gamers who sought the quickest possible reactions a tempting alternative to Cherry’s MX Red 4mm/2mm technology. SteelSeries called this switch technology QS1, and sadly it doesn’t exist in any of the company’s other mechanical keyboards. Oddly, in use the Apex M800 doesn’t feel or sound like a mechanical keyboard at all. There’s a solidity to the keys, but they’re quieter…

I’m both thrilled and mildly disappointed by the PCs in this month’s Labs. I’m thrilled because these are incredibly fast systems, with the kind of processing and graphics horsepower I couldn’t even have dreamed of when I built my first PC two decades ago. I’m no stranger to next-gen consoles but there’s a part of me that will always be a PC gamer, and that part loves to switch the resolution to 2160p and slide the detail settings to Ultra. At that level, even these machines can’t deliver a smooth 60fps, but, heck, I remember playing Doom shrunk down into a window in the middle of my screen at 15fps: a steady 30fps to 40fps at 4K seems pretty good to me. Even the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X…

Here’s the bad news: the old SEO tricks for trying to fool Google into ranking your website are not only dead but more likely to do harm than good. The good news? Everything you must now do to help your pages rank on Google will also be the exact things that will help conversions, attract leads and build your brand. With Google increasingly using data on how users interact with each site to decide who to feature, making your pages better for users is the safest bet to see them rise up the rankings. Whether it’s speeding up load times, providing a clean design or writing engaging content, they all play a part in making sure your website is sending the right signals to Google – all the while supporting…

“I suspect Google knows more about me than I’d be comfortable with–but it’s so darned useful” Over the years, I’ve found myself increasingly relying on Google for day-to-day work. Chrome replaced Firefox, Gmail took over from Thunderbird, Docs and Sheets supplanted Word and Excel. I suspect Google knows more about me than I’d be comfortable with, but it’s so darned useful I can’t get myself too exercised about that. But not every Google project hits the big time. Some – especially its ham-fisted attempts at social networking – launch to a fanfare before being quietly withdrawn or left to wither on the vine. Others fulfil a niche purpose and bumble along, useful to those who know about them and invisible to everyone else. Here are my three favourites. Forms Google…

Historically, the web has been free – giving the idea away without charging royalties was Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s main innovation, after all – but a number of factors point to a paid-for future. Most scary of all: it might be controlled by a Google paywall or yet another Apple subscription. It started with music. Record labels tried their best to digitally protect albums and songs, but the ease of piracy and rise of Napster meant that a generation of web users saw paying for music as voluntary to the point of being stupid. This culture didn’t change due to harsh crackdowns on music pirates, but because of the simplicity of buying songs and subscription streaming services such as Spotify. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, music revenues in…

After the autonomous Uber crash that killed a pedestrian, there’s been a lot of debate as to whether driverless cars will ever be good enough to take the wheel from us humans – and while it’s impossible to predict when fully self-driving cars will hit our streets, we do know how good the tech is now. That’s thanks to reports by the California Department of Motor Vehicles, which demands statistics from self-driving trials in the state. Alphabet-owned Waymo’s cars are leading the pack in one key metric: disengagements, or when a human needs to take over the controls. Over 352,545 miles, the Waymo car only asked for help 63 times – but that’s still 63 more than is needed to call itself truly driverless. Others faced more serious concerns, according…

It’s been coming. The drip became a stream, which became a torrent, which became a tsunami and we now find ourselves fully submerged in GDPR hysteria. The result: I’m drowning in a flood of emails from companies asking me to click on their link to enable them to continue to send me emails. For some strange and unfathomable reason, I’ve been loath to do so. What’s more annoying are data requests from companies I’ve actually done business with. You wouldn’t believe the amount of information that some of them have demanded, right down to detailed and intricate descriptions of the storage policies, locations and justifications for said locations of all of the lab’s data. Now, while this could be seen as a sensible box-ticking exercise, there’s always the risk that…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Dell XPS 13 9370 Ultraportable from £1,249 from dell.co.uk This 2018 update to the all-dominant Dell XPS 13 keeps tweaks to the minimum: slimmer bezels, eighth-generation Intel Core processors and the promise of even longer battery life are the most important benefits. Just keep in mind that Dell has embraced USB-C ports at the expense of the old-fashioned Type-A variety. REVIEW Issue 284, p54 ALTERNATIVES Microsoft Surface Book 2 A unique and versatile laptop with a screen that detaches to become a tablet – the £1,830 version is our pick of the bunch. From £1,034 from microsoft.com/store REVIEW Issue 281, p48 Lenovo Yoga 920 An ultra-thin convertible from Lenovo that not only looks the part, and has supreme power, but also lasted for a very impressive 12 hours in…

@bazzacollins How do you know it’s me writing this column and not some terrifyingly literate algorithm? It’s not as if AI hasn’t already branched into journalism. Go to any financial news website and the vast majority of the stories about earnings reports will have been written without any human intervention. Sure, the style is dryer than a Jacob’s cracker, but the algorithm doesn’t call in sick, need a pension or drink heroic quantities of tea on the company’s tab. You know this column is written by me because no algorithm could write similes as weak as the one in the last sentence. There’s something quintessentially human about my prose. It’s grammatically imperfect, hackneyed, full of all the flaws that only a 40-year-old dragged up through an Essex comprehensive could get…

Cherry MX Board 3.0 PRICE £48 (£57 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk Cherry provides the mechanical keyboard components for many brands, offering four switch types with different characteristics. For example, Black provides a “linear” feel with a stiffer spring; Red is designed for fast reactions (making it popular for gamers); Brown has a more tactile feel that typists should love; while Blue is for lovers of old-style IBM keyboards with a loud click. The MX Board 3.0 can be supplied with all four different switches – Cherry sent us the MX Red keyboard for review (code G80-3850LYDGB-2) – but whichever you choose, don’t expect a lot of RGB colour. This is a business-like slab, with the only colour supplied by a backlit Cherry logo at the top of the keyboard and…

PRICE £145 (£174 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk Corsair is a dominant force for gaming keyboards, with its £105 K70 being the top choice of our sister magazine Custom PC. But it’s the company’s top-of-the-line keyboard that we tested here, with its most unusual feature being a volume wheel at the top right. The K95 features six macro keys on the left, which are textured slightly differently so you don’t press them by accident. The top chassis is made from brushed aluminium, which explains the high cost, and extra compensation comes in the form of a large, soft-textured detachable wrist rest, which does a great job of providing support while typing. You also get dedicated media control keys and two sets of replaceable textured grey keys for the much-used WASD and…

Raw power: that’s what this month’s machines are all about. These systems sport AMD and Intel’s latest and fastest CPUs. They pack high-end graphics cards that, alone, cost more than many computers found in PC World. They’re housed in casings designed for optimal cooling and maximal expansion. They have ultra-fast SSD storage combined with high-performance, high-capacity hard disks, and they’ve been tweaked to hell and back to eke out every last MHz or MB/sec. These are the PCs you buy when the mid-range looks measly and even a grand won’t get you what you want. Why do you need a PC with this kind of performance? Maybe you’re a gamer looking to go beyond the console experience with true 4K visuals, ultra-wide screens, VR or multiple displays. Maybe you’re working…

PRICE £354 exc VAT from netxl.com DrayTek is one of the premier names in the business router market – and the new Vigor 2862Lac is probably the company’s most impressive offering yet. Replacing the previously A-Listed Vigor 2860Ln, it doubles firewall performance to 400Mbits/sec, expands VPN options and has WAN redundancy features in abundance. What do we mean by that? Well, for starters, the price includes support for 32 IPsec VPN tunnels – and up to 16 SSL VPNs as well. Then, alongside the ADSL2+/VDSL2 port, the 2862Lac also features both a 3G/4G SIM card slot and a USB socket that will accept a secondary 3G/4G USB adapter – so you won’t be knocked offline unless three different networks go down at once. Alternatively, you can set multiple WAN connections…

If you’re a small business using off-the-shelf software, you may think you’re safe from gorilla syndrome – leaving aside the possibility of industry titans such as Microsoft and Google turning your infrastructure upside-down for reasons of their own. But take the example of a classic IT support company. This used to be a merry and varied field of largely free services, but over the past few years, things have converged onto a very small number of products. I won’t name the specific remote-access tool I have in mind here, but it has user counts and installs now up in the billions – and sure enough, it’s started to act like an 800lb gorilla. One way this manifests is licence fees. An annual business licence currently comes in at around the…

“I rebooted, only to have a Dellboot icon tell me that it needed to spend an hour contemplating its navel” It was a somewhat grey and wet April Saturday. With a deadline looming, I’d come into the lab to try to get ahead with some work, and I needed a Windows machine to hand. My normal methodology here is to run everything in a VM, using either Parallels or VMware Fusion, both running on a decent spec of Mac. I like the separation of “church and state”, by having the base OS be something entirely different to the host. This is especially true when you’re testing antivirus and network security software. Handling Windows malware is somewhat easier when you know it can’t infect the base OS. And the Windows session…

“The point remains: regular patching is a vital part of any defence-in-depth approach to security posture” Last month I wrote about how secure future versions of the Android OS will be, but this month I’m concerned with how secure the current one is. The fractured nature of the Android platform ecosystem makes receiving timely security dates, or any security updates, something of a handset and network operator lottery. That will surprise nobody, least of all me. Prior to the Samsung Galaxy S8+ I use as my main phone these days, I trusted a Google Nexus 6P to bring me both platform and security updates as soon as they were available. Front-of-the-queue access to updates is one of the drivers for owning a “Google” phone, after all. Samsung is further down…

BLENDLE This Dutch startup was backed three years ago by no less than The New York Times, which is one of a dozen US publications to sign up to the micropayment platform. Rather than offer one-off subscriptions, Blendle acknowledges that many of us want to read from a range of sources, including The Times as well as Vanity Fair, The Washington Post and The New Yorker. The site recommends popular reads and suggests articles based on your preferences. Each story can cost a different amount: a 15-minute-long The New Yorker story on healthy eating is priced at $0.49, while a seven-minute-long Times feature on a serial killer will set you back $0.19. So far, it doesn’t seem possible to link it to your existing subscriptions, so if you already pay…

It’s official: video games are art. If more proof was needed, just look at the serious consideration of the subject at the V&A Museum’s forthcoming exhibition, Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt, which opens in September. The exhibition isn’t the museum’s first look at gaming – it’s even advertising for a video game designer in residence – but it could be the most fun, with curator Marie Foulston promising there will be plenty of “playable works”. “The content of the exhibition is extremely eclectic,” Foulston told PC Pro. “From beautiful indie games such as Journey and Kentucky Route Zero to blockbuster titles such as The Last of Us and Nintendo’s Splatoon. The exhibition also highlights the incredible ways fans and players engage with games, from fan art and esports to the amazing building projects…