PC Pro December 2017

@PCPRO FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO HUMANS MANAGE TO straddle the twin posts of cleverness and stupidity with extraordinary levels of grace. I’m not just talking about the apparent dichotomy of a civilisation that has both mastered fire and created TOWIE – I’ll leave that one for future historians – but that we virtually drown ourselves in ephemeral information while ignoring the important data that should be guiding our decisions. The data I’m talking about here stems from over 6,000 people taking part in our Excellence Awards; outside of the ever-excellent Which?, ours is the only in-depth, longterm, British investigation into how good the tech products we buy actually are. Which begs the question, why? First, of course, it’s difficult. While the survey doesn’t take too long to complete – just under eight minutes…

Darien Graham-Smith After testing 14 tablets for a month, Darien’s tablets Labs has a few surprise winners, along with a couple that are rather more predictable. See p74 Dave Mitchell Every month, Dave puts the best business technology to the test in his lab, with desktop scanners under scrutiny this time. Turn to p92 for his verdict Nicole Kobie As well as revealing the future of technology from p124, Nicole has taken a light-hearted look at the tech we’ll need to survive the apocalypse from p48 Clementine Vioux As an ex-product manager for a company in crisis, Clementine has advice about how to succeed with projects – and explains why so many fail. See p116…

@PCPRO FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO SOFTWARE FIRMS ARE facing a crisis of trust if they can’t protect the delivery mechanisms used to distribute their wares online, say security experts. The warning comes after a wave of malware infections were passed on to end users by reputable software companies after their distribution systems were compromised. The latest attack affected security company Avast, which recently bought system scrubber CCleaner – software that has millions of users globally and is a particular threat because it has access to Registry files. Hackers sabotaged CCleaner for at least a month, inserting a backdoor into updates to the application that landed on some two million PCs. “In the CCleaner case, we have a legitimate bit of software being distributed directly from the vendor, and it seems to have been…

1 Uber dealt London blow Uber ’s miserable 2017 – which has seen the company hounded over claims of sexism, bullying and not tackling driver safety – continued when Transport for London (TfL) chose not to renew the ride-hailing company’s licence for the capital. TfL bosses said the company’s “ approach and conduct demonstrated a lack of corporate responsibility ”. 2 Equifax hack: a catalogue of incompetence Red faces all round at the credit rating company Equifax after a breach that impacted 143 million customers and 400,000 UK consumers revealed basic weaknesses in the company’s privacy protection plans. British users ’ details were only stored on the US servers due to a five year “ process failure ”, and the hack was made via an Adobe vulnerability that should have…

► SanDisk Ultra Plus microSD UHS-I 400GB Storage stalwart Western Digital has released what it claims to be the world’s highest capacity microSD card, with the SanDisk 400GB microSDXC doubling the capacity of its two-year old predecessor. The firm says the storage will be ideal for Android handsets and tablet users, as it’s part of the SDXC standard that has seen handset makers talk about their wares being expandable up to 2TB. Whether or not consumers will be willing to part with over £200 for an admittedly hefty slice of storage remains to be seen. “The only use case I can see for this higher capacity is for connected cameras and for users who use their phones as a camera a lot with new features, such as portrait mode, as…

@PCPRO FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO THE SCIENCE AND technology committee, which advises government on issues relating to industry, policy and research, has come under fire for unveiling a list of tech-illiterate men. At a time when UK education and industry policy has championed the importance of improving gender representation in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects and jobs, the initial selection of committee members listed eight men and no women. Ironically, one of the central streams of work for the previous committee was “closing the STEM skill gap”, and a Campaign for Science and Engineering spokesperson told PC Pro the all-male committee was “a blow to the community”. Gender aside, it’s also debatable whether many of the members are qualified to sit on such a committee. Only two of the initial eight-man…