Inhaltsverzeichnis für April 2018 in Computer Shopper

THE YEAR BEGAN on a sad note at Shopper HQ, as our news editor Dave Neal passed away on 3rd January, aged 43, after a long and incredibly brave battle with cancer. Dave was diagnosed with medullary thyroid carcinoma at the age of just 31. Despite receiving this worst of news at such a young age, he carried on living life to the full, working full-time from home, taking trips abroad, getting married, and keeping us all entertained with his wonderful wit. Dave began working on Computer Shopper back in 2012, writing his monthly Byte Back column; he then took on the role of news editor in March 2016, and was also a daily news reporter on The Inquirer website. Despite regular hospital visits, and various (often gruelling) treatments and…

MEL CROUCHER Tech pioneer and all-round good egg letters@computershopper.co.uk I HAVE SOME confessions to make. I confess that I like to complete my annual tax return early. And I also confess that I like to pay exactly £5 extra tax a year in preparation for my next encounter with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs Inspector. I still cherish the memory of the Inspector’s crumpled face the last time my tax return was investigated. It was the moment he realised he’d been snookered, and was forced to admit I was not the international tax evader he suspected but just some joker who was due a tax rebate. The reason I like paying tax is because it affirms I am still alive, still solvent and still contributing to the wellbeing of the…

“Ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii. Seek immediate shelter. This is not a drill”The message Hawaiian residents received after the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency chose ‘Missile alert’ instead of ‘Test missile alert’ from a drop-down menu “We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologise”Apple responds to criticism that it deliberately slows down the performance of older iPhones “I think it is a matter of when, not if, and we will be fortunate to come to the end of the decade without having to trigger a category one attack”Ciaran Martin, head of the UK National Cyber Security Centre, expects a major attack within the next two years “As we seize these opportunities of technology, so we also have to shape this change to ensure it…

£349 • From www.htc.com/uk HTC HAS BEEN extremely busy in the past year, and not just because a chunk of its team was bought by Google for a cool $1.1 billion. It’s also launched a flurry of smartphones based – frequently loosely – around its flagship U11 (Shopper 355), including the larger U11+, the dual-front-camera-equipped U11 Eyes and this, the stripped-down, slightly more budget-friendly U11 Life. At a glance, the HTC U11 Life isn’t a radical departure from the regular U11. Its display is slightly smaller, at 5.2in to the U11’s 5.5in, but they share the same general design. On the back, for instance, the U11 Life is coated in the same beautifully coloured ‘liquid glass’, which glares different shades of blue or black depending on the angle that light…

£2,800 • From www.overclockers.co.uk THE RENDA G3-CS is branded as a ‘graphic design workstation’, which might be a point of contention – workstations are traditionally designed to solve technical problems in an enterprise environment, but with its GeForce GTX 1080 Ti graphics card and consumer-grade Intel Coffee Lake chip, this has strong hints of home use and gaming pretensions. This split focus doesn’t preclude the Renda G3-CS from being a good PC. The GTX 1080 Ti (a factory-overclocked Asus ROG Strix model) brings all of its 11GB of video memory to bear, and the hexa-core, 12-thread Core i7-8700K CPU has also received a speed boost from 3.7GHz to 5.1GHz. Almost as important, from a computer-aided design (CAD) perspective, is the generous 32GB of DDR4 RAM. HEY BIG RENDA With a…

£50 • From www.currys.co.uk IF THERE’S ONE problem with the Amazon Alexa range of products, it’s that there’s no battery-powered portable model that you can take everywhere with you. Ninety7 aims to redress the balance with the Vaux, a portable speaker dock for the Amazon Alexa Dot. A sleek column covered in a fine mesh, the Vaux is a rather natty-looking speaker. Certainly, compared to the main competition, the Vaux looks as good as some big-brand Bluetooth speakers. You can buy the speaker dock in both black and silver so that you can match the model to your decor. Both the black and white Echo Dots look great with the Vaux in either colour. DROP IN As the Vaux is a speaker dock, there’s a minor amount of assembly required.…

£400 • From www.currys.co.uk POOR BLACKBERRY. THE once-great smartphone maker has never managed to recapture its earlier success, with decent but uninspiring handsets such as last year’s KEYone (Shopper 355) failing to ignite the same passion the world once had for the firm’s products. We saw a fitting but saddening sign of this lack of luck at the most recent IFA tech conference, where BlackBerry was operating from a tiny one-man booth. Perhaps the new Motion will have better luck. While it lacks the signature BlackBerry keyboard, it does things a little differently to most Android phones, especially in terms of design. Take the soft-touch plastic rear, complete with a textured carbon fibre-style pattern surrounded by an asymmetrical frame that has sharp corners at the top and curved ones at…

01 A basic PC costing around £350 will be able to run everyday office, multimedia and education software and will easily cope with surfing the internet. It might even be able to run some modern games. Many PCs can be sold either with or without a monitor. If you don’t like the display that the manufacturer is offering, you can always use your current one, or buy another one separately. 02 If you want to play games, you’ll have to upgrade the graphics card. Budget cards such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 will cope well with many 3D games, but to play the latest 3D games smoothly (and enjoy the best-quality graphics) it’s worth upgrading to a more powerful card such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070. 03 All…

01 All tablets rely on an operating system (OS) to run apps. You have three main choices: Apple’s iOS, which runs on the iPad, Android, which Google licenses to various manufacturers, and Windows 10, which is slowly becoming more common in hybrid tablets and convertibles. If you own an Apple or Google smartphone, you can download your apps, music and so on to a tablet that runs the same OS, so it makes sense to stick with a compatible device. 02 It’s important to pick a tablet that has a good-quality high-resolution screen. Many budget tablets have 1,280x800-resolution displays, but better tablets have Full HD 1,920x1,080 panels, and we’re starting to see tablets that have even higher screen resolutions. Some are as high as 2,560x1,600 or even 4K. Entry-level tablets…

01 A 32in Full HD TV costs around £200 and will suit smaller living rooms. TVs look much smaller in the shop than in your home, so measure the space available before you buy. Curved TVs are becoming increasingly more common, but bear in mind that these typically take up more floor space than a traditional flat set. 02 A 1,920x1,080-resolution TV can display a 1080p image. You can still buy TVs with a 720p (1,366x768) resolution, but they’re no cheaper and the image won’t be as sharp. 3,840x2,560 Ultra HD resolution, or 4K, TVs are finally available at reasonable prices, although you’ll still pay a premium for one over a 1080p model. 03 Consider the number of inputs you’ll need to connect the rest of your equipment. Two HDMI…

01 Wearable tech can include anything from chest-strap heart-rate monitors to augmented reality glasses, but the two most common types are smartwatches and fitness trackers. Both are designed to sit unassumingly on your wrist, and are almost always meant to be used in tandem with a paired smartphone. 02 Smartwatches are typically more complex and expensive, though more closely resemble a traditional wristwatch. You can use them to receive and reply to text messages and emails, quickly check maps and even play games – like a smartphone, most smartwatches allow you to install your own choice of apps. 03 Fitness trackers are much more dedicated to healthy pursuits. Step counters, heart-rate monitors and even sleep tracking are all common, and the data collected is fed back to you so you…

01 A network-attached storage (NAS) device lets you store documents, media, and other files on its hard disks so you can share them with other devices on your network. Some have disks already installed, while others are empty enclosures into which you install your own disks. Buying an empty NAS can often be the more cost-effective option, as they’re usually less expensive and give you the freedom to expand the number of disks at a later date. You should buy one with a Gigabit Ethernet interface, as these provide the highest transfer speeds. To use a NAS device at these speeds, you’ll need computers with Gigabit Ethernet network adaptors and a Gigabit Ethernet switch or router. Computers with Fast Ethernet adaptors can still access the NAS device, but only at…

It seems that privacy is short on the ground. Your private details are worth a lot of money to companies, aiming to target you with ads. Personal information is just as important to hackers, as they can use these details to create elaborate scams or hack into your accounts. No wonder, then, that your personal information is being gobbled up at an alarming rate. So what can you do to keep yourself more hidden online? In this feature, we look at the best ways to protect yourself, from building your own VPN in order to hide your network traffic, to blocking ad networks, locking down your social media accounts and more.…

clive@computershopper.co.uk Use AI and bots to make life easier There are plenty of apps and services that use AI to automate tasks or suggest new possibilities, and none of them threatens our existence. Clive Webster takes you bot-hunting WHILE HOLLYWOOD REMINDS us of the folly and risks of relying too much on AI, there’s no doubting the usefulness of tools that automate tedious and monotonous tasks. From scheduling jobs more efficiently to just choosing an interesting meal to cook in the evening, bots and AI can help us achieve what we need to and leave us with more time for the human things in life. We’ll take you through some of the more useful and practical AI apps and services currently available, as well as some of the more silly…

letters@computershopper.co.uk Mini super When I saw talk of mini computers on the front cover (Shopper 360), I was taken back to the likes of Digital Equipment Corporation’s machines, like the PDP range and others of this vintage. The name now seems to be being reused to describe machines like the Raspberry Pi. My background was in large-scale supercomputer mainframes with mini computers from makers such as DEC acting as secondary machines for doing anything from graphics to wide-area communications. This somewhat predated the wide-scale arrival of PCs, which eventually displaced those in-the-middle mini computers. Any long-in-the-tooth people could probably fill you in with regard to the original scope of this term. For learning coding and becoming aware of it, might I suggest another route: Donald Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming…

CONTACTLESS CARDS HAVE transformed the way that we pay for goods or use some transport systems, such as the London Underground. By just tapping a card on a compatible reader, payments of up to £30 are taken automatically without needing a PIN. That kind of convenience can make it far quicker to pay for things, but there’s also a security risk associated with this kind of payment. You should check your credit card statements carefully each month for any unauthorised payments SCANNER SCAMMERS There has been a lot of information about the threat of contactless scammers, using handheld scanners to read your card details automatically and charge small amounts of money. In practice, there’s little evidence that this kind of crime is large scale. There are a few barriers to…

▸ For the wallet At £900, the Medion Erazer X5361 G might not be what most would consider a bargain purchase, but it is in one very specific way: this is the cheapest way we know of to get your hands on a full Windows PC with a genuine 8GB GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card. This piece of high-end hardware is typically found only in systems costing hundred of pounds more, and while certain sacrifices have seemingly been made in maintaining this price – there’s no SSD, for instance, and the CPU is an older model – its price-to-performance ratio in games is utterly superb. (Page 22) ▸ For the den What’s better than a smart speaker? A smart speaker that’s both wireless and waterproof. Ultimate Ears’ Megablast is a…

£50,000 Games firm Capcom is offering a reward to anyone who can prove the Loch Ness monster exists 40% People worried about corporations misusing their personal details (Source: Tripwire) 190,000 How many Swiss francs a Tag Heuer Connected Full Diamond smartwatch will set you back 30 TalkTalk broadband customers per 100,000 complaining to Ofcom 21% PEOPLE WORRIED ABOUT CRIMINALS MISUSING THEIR PERSONAL DETAILS $300M THE AMOUNT SPENT ON THE APPLE APP STORE ON 1 JANUARY 2018 7 Sky customers per 100,000 complaining, the lowest number £400,000 CARPHONE WAREHOUSE WAS FINED AFTER A HACK OF THREE MILLION CUSTOMERS’ DATA 95% UK HOMES CAN NOW ACCESS SUPERFAST BROADBAND OF 24Mbit/s OR FASTER…

£900 • From www.box.co.uk LAST ISSUE WE looked at the Medion Erazer P4408 D, a desktop PC that passed on certain hardware features (such as a current-gen CPU or SSD) in order to provide massive graphics performance at a low price. This issue, we’re looking at the Medion Erazer X5361 G, a desktop PC that passes on certain hardware features in order to provide massive graphics performance at a low price. The systems share a general approach to part-picking, and have the same processor: a quad-core, 3GHz Intel Core i5-7400. However, the Erazer X5361 G aims higher, with a more distinctive chassis, 16GB of DDR4 RAM and an 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070. Just as the P4408 D threw in a GTX 1060 for much less than you’d pay for…

£270 • From www.johnlewis.com MOST SMART SPEAKERS require a power lead and cannot be taken around with you on the go, but the Ultimate Ears Megablast is different: it has a built-in battery and is waterproof, like a conventional Bluetooth speaker, so you can play your favourite songs by the pool, check the weather with Alexa and even order goods with your voice. The Megablast is built like a tank, and looks beautiful – especially its textured mesh cover. It weighs 1.2kg, is 237mm tall and has an 88mm diameter. It’s not something that will fit in a jacket pocket but it can be carried from hotel room to the pool in a bag without any trouble. The cylindrical speaker has a hard rubber coating wrapped around the top, bottom…

£150 • From shop.ee.co.uk NOW THAT IT’S been firmly established that smartphone manufacturers are not going to have mercy and stop charging upwards of £700 for their best models, it’s more important than ever that the budget end of the market maintains a good assortment of handsets at accessibly low prices. Following on from the modest success of 2015’s Harrier (Shopper 332), the British network provider EE is once again offering a possible escape from smartphone-induced bankruptcy. Continuing its avian naming tradition, the EE Hawk is the firm’s latest entry-level smartphone for 2018, and for a scant £150 it’s an enticing proposition. The Hawk isn’t much to look at, but neither is it outright ugly. The only big issue is that its glossy rear is dreadful for picking up oily…

01 A basic laptop costing around £300 will run everyday office, multimedia and education software, but it won’t be suitable for 3D gaming or processor-intensive tasks such as video editing. Many laptops at this price have a 15.4in screen and weigh around 2.4kg, so they’re best used around the house and for occasional journeys. 02 If you want to play modern games, you’ll need a laptop with a dedicated graphics chip such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060M. Good gaming laptops tend to have large 17in screens and weigh around 3kg, so they’re best suited to use at home. 03 If you want a laptop that you can take everywhere, look for a model that weighs less than 2kg. For the best portability, buy one that has an 11in or…

01 A basic digital camera will suit someone who wants to take pictures to view on their computer and create 7x5in prints. It should cost around £80, but there may be hidden downsides such as slow performance and very basic user controls. 02 Spend a little more and you’ll get a higher resolution. A 16-megapixel sensor has the potential to produce sharp prints up to A3 size, but only if it and the lens are of a suitably high quality. Very high resolutions in compact cameras tend to boost noise more than detail levels, so many of the best models strike a sensible balance by using a 12-megapixel sensor. Back-illuminated CMOS sensors tend to produce less noise than CCDs, but check our reviews to find out how a particular model…

01 If you don’t have space in your home cinema setup for a set of surroundsound speakers, a soundbar is the next best thing. Whether you opt for a soundbar (which typically sits in front of your TV stand) or a soundplate (which sits underneath your TV), you’ll be getting significantly better audio than the weedy speakers today’s flatscreen TVs provide. 02 If you want to cut down on cable clutter, look for a soundbar with multiple HDMI inputs and outputs as well as Audio Return Channel (ARC). Not all soundbars use HDMI, with many making do with digital optical audio connections instead. This means you’ll have to connect Blu-ray players, games consoles and set-top boxes to your TV and run all audio through a single cable. Also look for…

01 A smart thermostat can save you a lot of money by intelligently controlling your heating. Most smart heating devices are designed to be used with hot water central heating systems, with the boiler directly controlled by the system. These typically require a relay to be wired into your boiler, with a wireless thermostat giving you direct control. Smartphone apps then tie into the system to give you remote control. While it’s possible to fit controls yourself, you may want to pay an experienced plumber to do the job: expect to pay around £150 for a typical installation. If you have electric heating, there are very few choices, and the big names (Nest, Honeywell and so on) do not directly support these systems. 02 Want smart hot water control? If…

01 A basic 1TB internal hard disk should cost around £40. This will be fast enough for general use and will provide enough storage for most users. Make sure the hard disk you choose has the appropriate interface type for your PC. Some mechanical hard disks still come with SATA2 interfaces, but newer models and most solid-state drives (SSDs) have faster SATA3 interfaces. You’ll need a motherboard with a SATA3 port if you want to benefit from SATA3’s faster speeds; SATA3 disks will work with SATA2 ports but can only transfer files at SATA2 speeds. 02 SSDs can make the most of SATA3’s extra bandwidth for fast file transfers. They use flash memory similar to that found in USB flash drives, and although they tend to provide less capacity than…

GETTING STARTED The download instructions on the card insert (overleaf) show you how to connect to the download site. Make sure you type in the web address exactly as shown. You’ll need your coupon code the first time you log on to the site. ANY PROBLEMS If you need help with any of the software this month, please send an email to support@creativemark.co.uk. We check this inbox regularly. Please include the issue number of the magazine and your coupon code. WHY DOWNLOADS In order to provide us with free software, publishers now require us to offer the applications as a download and require online registration. You need to use the unique code printed in the box on the card insert to register and download the software in this issue. The…

9. USE YOUR BROWSER’S INCOGNITO MODE The Incognito mode on a browser prevents the browser from storing any cookies or site information from a website you’re visiting. It’s useful if you want to escape any tracking information being stored on your computer. In Chrome, press Ctrl-Shift-N to open a new Incognito window. 10. OPT OUT OF EMAIL MARKETING When you sign up for a new service, there are typically two opt-in options. The first allows the company you’ve signed up with to email you. The second allows that company to sell your details to third parties so that they can email you. Opt out of all communication that you don’t want. 11. USE ONE EMAIL PER SERVICE For safety, you can create a free email for each main service that…

ben@computershopper.co.uk Lightroom CC and the future of Raw processing Adobe Lightroom is moving to the cloud. Ben Pitt explains what this means for your Raw workflow LIGHTROOM HAS BEEN the market leader for photo library management and Raw processing since its launch in 2007. It took the Raw engine from Photoshop and wrapped it in an interface that was keenly focused on a photographer’s workflow. Its image-processing quality is outstanding, it has the most comprehensive support for cameras’ Raw files, and its fully non-destructive workflow avoids unnecessary complications. Available as a standalone purchase for £100 or bundled with Photoshop CC as the Creative Cloud Photography Plan for £119 per year, Adobe had the market pretty much sewn up. In October 2017, Adobe announced a brand new application called Lightroom CC.…

DS I love you In your review of the Synology DiskStation DS418 (Shopper 361), you mention that you’ve harped on about the brilliance of DiskStation Manager and the strength of Package Manager, which lets you add new features such as a Google Docs rival and automated backup. I agree. I’ve been a Synology user since 2011 when my first DiskStation – a venerable DS411j – provided the music library for my Sonos system. A few upgrades later my DS916+ has taken over those tasks and I am running Photo Station, Drive, Office, WordPress, Mail Plus and toying with Moments. The DS411j now serves as a backup target. Judging by the membership of a great Facebook group I belong to, Synology users fall into two groups: IT professionals who install and…

James Archer RAVES THE ‘COMMUNITY’ ASPECT of online gaming has a reputation – often deserved – for hostility, sometimes to the extent that using ‘community’ to describe a game’s player base is less accurate than ‘gaggle of screaming children and adults who should know better.’ One obvious solution is to play with friends, something I’ve rediscovered this month after a period of running solo. Protected from toxic elements by a barrier of pre-existing camaraderie, I’ve been enjoying my time online with a vigour I hadn’t felt for ages. Part of this is our current game of choice, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which rewards teamwork more than most. Yet the best aspect isn’t the ability to minimise exposure to strangers – it’s the pleasure of heading out on an adventure with some mates.…

£1,029 • From www.pcspecialist.co.uk AT A TOUCH over a grand, the Enigma X 02 goes head-to-head with the £1,053 Wired2Fire Pyro Reactor (Shopper 358), one of our Best Buys. They’ve clearly been pieced together with similar thinking: forgo any big luxuries and focus on delivering fast, if ultimately mid-range, performance across the board. So the Enigma X 02 doesn’t try to impress with water-cooling, built-in Wi-Fi or a glass side panel (there is a window, but it’s acrylic). However, it has been built around a formidable set of components, namely the latest Intel Core i5-8600K, a Z370 motherboard, 16GB of DDR4 RAM and a 6GB GeForce GTX 1060. STOCK AND ROLL As we’ve seen several times in recent issues, the Core i5-8600K’s six cores (from the Core i5-7600K’s four) hugely…

£30 • From www.amazon.co.uk LIKE MOST HARDWARE with eSports branding, the Arctic Freezer 33 eSports One won’t necessarily provide you with much advantage in competitive gaming, but let’s see if can at least prove itself a desirable air cooler. It’s essentially a single-fan (and thus cheaper) version of the £45 Freezer 33 eSports Edition, which has two fans to create a push/pull airflow effect across the radiator. The Freezer 33 eSports One thus makes do with pull alone, but otherwise it’s all the same. That includes some seriously good looks: with its matt black radiator and two-tone BioniX F120 fan, it’s a lot more handsome than most of Arctic’s dreary grey coolers. For those who prefer a bit more colour, there are red/ black, green/black and yellow/black versions, though this…

$369 (around £260) • From neeo.com MANY HOMES ARE awash with remote controls and apps, creating both clutter and laborious ways of doing simple things. Neeo aims to change that, with a remote control and smart bridge that can control your IR devices and smart home all at once. Neeo comprises three components: the Neeo Remote, the Neeo Brain and a smartphone app. The Brain acts as the central control for Neeo, broadcasting IR signals to your home entertainment devices and connecting to other smart home devices via your home network. The Remote connects to the Brain via a proprietary low-power protocol with range similar to that of Bluetooth, while the app connects using your home network. LINE OF SIGHT Setting up the Neeo is straightforward and requires the app.…

£260 • From www.amazon.co.uk THE HONOR 6X (Shopper 351) was one of 2017’s big surprises, offering a dual 12-megapixel camera, a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor, a snappy Kirin 655 processor and a Full HD, 5.5in display – all for the ludicrously cheap price of £225. With such a tough act to follow, the Honor 7X was always going to have its work cut out, but it looks to be even better: Honor has squeezed in an edge-to-edge display, with the price only rising to £260. That’s £190 cheaper than the OnePlus 5T, one of the most affordable handsets with an 18:9 screen. Measuring 5.93in with a 2,160x1,080 resolution, the Honor 7X’s display is a sight to behold. And despite its lower price, the whole thing is beautifully built, clearly taking design…

£230 • From www.amazon.co.uk THE GARMIN VIVOACTIVE 3 is following a bit of a trend this year in wearable tech, especially in the realm of fitness watches. Although it’s primarily a multisport watch like the Garmin Fenix 5 or the TomTom Adventurer, Garmin wants you to wear the Vivoactive all day, every day – and that’s why it’s added key features such as NFC payments and notification responses to the standard fitness wearable formula. This is a fitness wearable that you won’t want to take off when you leave the gym. You can wear it while you’re exercising, but also while you’re going about your daily activity, walking around the house, to and from the shops, and while you’re sleeping. It can be used to track swims as well as…

01 A smartphone’s operating system (OS) dictates its basic features and which third-party software you can install. There are three main contenders: Apple’s iOS, which is found on the iPhone, Google’s Android, which is used by various handset manufacturers, and Windows Phone, which has few options. Apple iOS and Google Android have the most apps available but Windows Phone is slowly catching up. 02 All smartphones have colour screens, but their resolutions vary. Basic models have 800x480 pixels, but text can be indistinct. Look for a display that has at least 1,280x720 pixels so it’s easy to browse web pages. Don’t worry too much about built-in media players or Office document editors; you can always install apps to replace these with better versions later. The image quality of smartphone cameras…

01 A basic 24in LCD monitor costs around £100. It will be fine for typical Windows work but is likely to have poor viewing angles, so you’ll need to sit straight on for the best picture quality. Its colour accuracy may not be very good, either. 02 A VGA input lets you use the monitor with any PC, but the quality may not be as good as it is over DVI or HDMI. Both are digital connections and require a compatible graphics card but they avoid the need for digital-to-analogue or analogue-todigital conversions, which can reduce image quality. A digital connection achieves the best picture automatically, so you won’t have to adjust clock or phase settings as you do with analogue connections. Many DVI and all HDMI connections support HDCP,…

01 Media streamers have come a long way from the hard disk-based set-top boxes of a few years ago. They now come in two main forms: flash drive-sized dongles that plug directly into the HDMI port in the back of your TV, and larger microconsoles that sit under it. Whichever model you choose, it will stream content from the internet rather than storing media files locally. 02 Most streamers use their own operating system, which you can navigate with a bundled remote control, but Google’s Chromecast dongle requires a paired smartphone, tablet or laptop to stream content on the big screen. If you’re looking to set up Netflix for someone who doesn’t have a smartphone, buy a standalone streamer such as a Roku or Amazon Fire TV device. 03 A…

01 Laser printers used to be much more expensive than inkjets and were typically restricted to offices. They are now much more affordable, however, and offer several benefits over inkjets, including lower per-page printing costs and faster print speeds. 02 A decent laser printer will typically cost around £80, and will happily print hundreds of black-and-white pages per hour. If documents are your priority, you’ll want a high minimum speed and low print costs. However, you’ll probably be limited to black-and-white printing at this price. 03 Although you can still buy singlefunction laser printers, multifunction peripherals (MFPs) are now far more common. These models can scan and photocopy documents as well as print them, and some of them also have fax capabilities. Laser MFPs start from around £200. 04 Heavy-duty…

01 It’s essential that you buy the right type of motherboard for your processor. Intel’s older Haswell processors require a motherboard with an LGA1150 socket, but newer, fourth-generation Skylake chips need an LGA1151 socket. A board for a Haswell processor must also have an H97 or a Z97 chipset, while Skylake processors use the new Z170 chipset. Skylake CPUs also use newer, faster DDR4 memory. 02 All current Intel processors have built-in graphics chipsets, so if you want to use your chip’s built-in graphics, make sure the motherboard has the video outputs you need, such as VGA, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. If you want to play the latest games, you’ll need to fit a dedicated graphics card in the motherboard’s PCI Express x16 slot, although this may block one of…

Chat and Communication UPDATED Evernote 6.8.7.6387 Store your notes, ideas and plans in the cloud, and synchronise them between computers. UPDATED Mailbird 2.4.29.0 A free desktop email client for Windows. Miranda IM 0.10.76 Chat with friends across multiple messaging platforms, including AIM, Facebook, IRC and MSN, all from one simple interface. UPDATED Skype for Windows 8.12.0.2 Make internet voice and video calls for free, and buy credit to make calls to mobiles and landlines. UPDATED Telegram 1.2.1 This free IM app synchronises your conversations across multiple devices, and can spruce up chats with stickers and GIFs. UPDATED WhatsApp Desktop 0.2.7305 A free PC and Mac version of the popular messaging app, letting you chat from your desktop. Customisation iolo System Mechanic Free 17.0.1 Speed up your system with iolo’s PC…

PEACE AND QUIET BOSE QuietComfort 35 II Any pair of half-decent noise-cancelling headphones will be able to cut out the majority of ambient noise, but the QuietComfort 35 II are on another level: putting these on and flicking the ANC switch is like stepping into a vacuum. The silence would be deafening, were you not likely to be filling it with great-sounding tunes. Indeed, while these are a very expensive pair of over-ear headphones, it's hard not to feel the price is justified. They're also well-built and extremely comfortable, no small feat for something weighing 310g and designed to wrap tightly around your ears. BARGAIN HUNTERS BRAINWAVZ B200 These in-ear headphones were a fantastic buy even when they cost £150, and now that they’ve plummeted to £91, less than a…

If you want to control where, when and how you’re tracked, the Ghostery add-on is a great tool to have. It’s available for most browsers. For this guide, we’re using the Chrome version, but settings are similar across the board. BLOCK AD TRACKING Go to ghostery.com/products and click the Add to Chrome button (you can install the add-on for other browsers from this page, too). Click the Add Extension button to install the add-on. You now need to choose the installation option: One-Click Setup chooses the most common settings, while Custom Setup lets you pick the options you want, and is the setting we recommend. From the first option, choose to block ad trackers only and click Next. CHOOSE ENHANCED OPTIONS Ghostery has some advanced features that work automatically to enhance…

There’s no real way to avoid using Google, but it’s a little bit terrifying how much data the company collects on us, and how much information you can give away yourself. Fortunately, Google provides plenty of tools to help you regain control. We’ll take you through them. 14. LOGGING IN WITH GOOGLE Google’s services are without a doubt brilliant. Most of us have a Google account, whether that’s for email, for using the free Google Drive and Google Apps, or just to personalise our search results. Google accounts are also extremely useful for signing into other services. Rather than having to enter the same information into website after website, logging in with a Google account is quick and efficient. The scary thing is that few of us check what we’re…