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It shocked me when I read how many Britons had admitted to hacking their neighbour’s Wi-Fi. A survey in 2014 said that a third of people had connected to a nearby router other than their own – and they didn’t need advanced hacking skills, or the support of a rogue state. They simply guessed their neighbour’s password using trial and error, entering the kind of information that’s freely shared or easily discovered, such as pets’ names, licence plates and birthdays. One solution is to give your cat a 45-character name containing numbers and symbols. More realistic are the tips we suggest in our Cover Feature. You’ll learn how to protect your Wi-Fi not just from opportunistic neighbours, but also from hackers who have more criminal intent. On a different note,…

WATCH OUT FOR… Locky ransomware in fake invoices What’s the threat? Email messages that claim to have invoices attached – but actually contain ransomware such as Locky – are the biggest malware threat facing computer users, according to security experts. Researchers at US cyber-security company Proofpoint say phishing emails are now the “number one infection vector” for ransomware, which has cost victims $1 billion (£830 million) in 2016 alone. Fake invoices demanding payment account for almost half of all recorded phishing campaigns, making them the top trap by far (see screenshot for an example). Other common phishing traps, according to Proofpoint’s new report of the top five email “lures” (www.snipca.com/22153), include: ‘Click here to open your scanned document’, ‘Your shipping receipt is attached’, ‘Please verify this transaction’ and – more…

SYSTEM TOOL Ultimate Settings Panel 5.1 www.snipca.com/22079 What you need: Windows 7, 8/8.1 or 10 The Control Panel used to be your PC’s nerve centre, with all settings in one menu. Now, Windows 10 scatters them all over the place - Control Panel, Settings app, System Configuration and more. Ultimate Settings Panel (USP) restores order with its Windows 10 panel, a new feature in version 5.1 that lets you access all your PC’s controls from one neat window. You don’t actually control your PC using USP. Instead, it helps you navigate the settings you’ve already got. Click a tab (Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 10) to open a panel, and then click the buttons to go straight to those settings in Windows. Buttons are in alphabetical order - for…

Last year’s 8in Fire HD (see our review, Issue 461) was the best of a questionable bunch of tablets from Amazon. At £129, it cost more than twice as much as the very cheap 7in model, but worked more smoothly. With the same number of pixels as the 10in, its screen looked sharper. Given the plunging pound, £129 in last year’s dollars is about £165 at the time of writing, yet Amazon is asking just £90 for the 2016 model. That would make it a bargain even if it wasn’t any better. And it is. For a start, it comes with 16GB of storage instead of 8GB. You can double this again to a very practical 32GB for an extra £20, or add a microSD card for up to 200GB.…

When we tested Wileyfox’s £90 Spark phone (see Issue 482) we liked its reasonably well-made hardware, decent screen and customisable Cyanogen software (an open-source version of Android), but were disappointed by its slow performance, short battery life and terrible camera. The Spark X, currently selling for £50 more, tries to be bigger and better, but doesn’t quite succeed. The ‘bigger’ part is undeniably achieved by the 5.5in screen, but it still has the same low 1280x720-pixel resolution, making it coarse at this size, and with only 85 per cent of the sRGB colour range covered it actually looks worse than the Spark. At least it’s bright. The processor is the same, and although doubling the memory to 2GB has helped it to run slightly more smoothly, it’s still sluggish for…

Which photo scanner do you recommend? Q I’m looking for a photo scanner, and thinking about the Epson Perfection V550 Photo (pictured). I want to scan 2x2in colour slides, 35mm film strips and 2¼in-wide negatives of the old 120/620 format. Have you tested this scanner, and is there a better alternative? Roy Smalley A We haven’t reviewed this model in Computeractive, but for the best photo quality across all types of material your choice (excluding seriously expensive options) is between the V550 (£180 from Amazon www.snipca.com/22222) and the Canon 9000F Mark II (£164 from PC World Business www.snipca.com/22221). Both give excellent results, remove dust and minor scratches, and include carriers for the film sizes you mention. The V550 is a little slower, but no scanner in this price range is…

Find out what other products we liked. Buy our new 2015 Back Issue CD: £15 fromwww.snipca.com/21619 LAPTOP Asus ZenBook UX305CA £676 from www.snipca.com/21900 Tested: Issue 475 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. 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. £529 from www.snipca.com/21650 DESKTOP PC Palicomp AMD Avenger £500 from www.snipca.com/20927 Tested: Issue 479 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…

PULL OUT & KEEP Issue 488 Office programs contain tabs on the Ribbon – Home, Insert, Design, and so on. Each of these have groups of customisation options. In most tabs, you’ll usually only use one or two of these options. For example, you may only use the font-formatting options in the Home tab or the Hyperlink option in the Insert tab. To make tabs more useful you should create your own one containing your favourite options. Here’s how to do it in Word. STEP 1 New customised tabs can only be added in Microsoft Office 2010, 2013 and 2016. If you’re not sure which version you have, click the File tab at the top left, then Office Account (or Account 1 ). In the Product Information section 2 ,…

Google Wallpaper Free Android: www.snipca.com/22260 Google’s new wallpaper app is brilliant if you want to bring your homescreen to life. It lets you choose from several categories - Earth, Landscape, Cityscapes, Life, Textures and Live Wallpapers. You can set it to automatically display a different wallpaper from your chosen category every day. Duolingo* Free Android: www.snipca.com/22263 iOS: www.snipca.com/22264 The best way to learn a language is to talk to people who speak it, but that’s often easier said than done. This app lets you chat with artificial-intelligence (AI) ‘chatbots’ in French, German and Spanish, so you can master them from the comfort of your home. Anytime, by Utelly Free iOS: www.snipca.com/22265 Anytime lets you access all your catch-up TV services (including BBC iPlayer, 4oD, ITV, Netflix and Amazon) from one…

OFFICE Link text to websites and other files It can be very useful to link text in your Office files to a website or other files. We’ll show you how to do this in Word, but the process also works for Excel and PowerPoint First, select the text you want to link, click the Insert tab, then Hyperlink (in the Links section). To link your text to a website, copy the website’s URL, paste it into the Address field at the bottom, then click OK. To link it to another Office file on your PC, click Browsed Pages on the left of the Insert Hyperlink window, click the small folder icon (see screenshot), navigate to the file you want to link text to, then click OK. Similarly, you can link…

32bit A measure of how much data a PC can process at once. 64bit A technology that processes information in larger chunks. 802.11ac A standard for wireless networks that allows for higher transfer speeds than 802.11n. 802.11n A standard for wireless networks. API Application Programming Interface. A system built into a programme so that other software can work with it. APTX A codec that’s used to compress audio so it can be transmitted over Bluetooth with minimal loss in quality. Benchmarking Comparing software and products with an accepted standard. BIOS Basic Input-Output System. Essential software built into every PC that connects the vital components. Bitcoin A digital currency, not controlled by governments, that can be used to send money to individuals. Botnet A group of infected computers connected via the…

Tell us what’s on your mind Email: letters@computeractive.co.uk Facebook: www.facebook.com/computeractive Twitter: @ComputerActive www.twitter.com/computeractive Your PC is only as old as your software I was intrigued by your ‘When Will Your PC Die?’ feature, and found it a useful way to work out the potential lifespan of my Windows 8.1 computer. But I would like to point out that it doesn’t matter how old a PC is if you only run software that it can cope with. For example I have a Toshiba laptop running Windows 95, and still use Word 7.0 on it. I do this more for my own curiosity than for real efficiency. Obviously, I don’t expect it to run Skype or Stellarium. But I enjoy the challenge of keeping it alive. It’s been on life support a…

We tell you what software to use Which website-building software should I use? Q Some years ago, I produced a couple of websites for local groups using Serif WebPlus. Not being HTML-literate, I found Serif’s ‘WYSIWYG’ method easy to use. I’ve now been asked to make a site for a small business, but WebPlus has been discontinued. Can you recommend an alternative, preferably free? David Trivitt A WYSIWYG (‘what you see is what you get’) makes site-building easy by letting you drag and drop elements – such as page headings, menus and photos – on to a template and move them around. Handiwork of this magnitude used to require big programs like WebPlus, but now the best web-building tools are online, and many are free. Weebly (www.weebly.com) has a free…

It’s getting hard to keep up with Sony’s expanding range of phones, but this is their latest budget model, and it’s rather attractive – albeit very similar to last year’s Xperia Z5 Compact (see our review, Issue 462). This time it’s matt plastic instead of metal but the minimalist shape looks classier than most devices in this price bracket. The 1280x720-pixel 5in screen isn’t very sharp by today’s standards, but at this size it’s adequate, and with plenty of brightness and contrast the display looks fine. Less than 84 per cent of the sRGB colour range is covered, though, and on closer inspection images were a little dull. Picture quality is also a weakness of the rear camera, which we found produced a lot of noise even in bright conditions.…

We’re in favour of silent PCs. Nobody wants a bunch of fans doing their best impression of Heathrow’s flight path when you’re trying to work or watch a film. But we can’t say we’ve ever felt the need for a quieter mouse. Even in an open-plan office, colleagues’ clicks are drowned out by the clattering of their keyboards. And who uses a mouse in the quiet carriage on a train? Nonetheless, Logitech has applied itself to this non-problem and come up with the M330 Silent Plus, a mouse that doesn’t roar. To drive the entirely absent point home, it comes with a set of anti-noise stickers with which you can passive-aggressively decorate your workspace. So far, so obviously conceived by a PowerPoint of marketing executives (yes, that’s the official collective…

Win 1 of 2 Kingston SSDNow UV400 480GB SSDs Winner of a ‘Great Pick’ award in Issue 487, this solid-state drive (SSD) is one of the best budget models you can buy. It reads and writes files very quickly, significantly boosting your PC’s performance. SSDs use flash memory, which doesn’t contain any moving parts. This means they last longer than traditional hard drives, and don’t need to be defragmented. To enter, email your address to cacomp@dennis.co.uk with ‘kingston’ in the subject line by midnight 22 November. These 480GB SSDs are available to buy now priced £110 from Amazon: www.snipca.com/22127. You can also buy 120GB, 240GB and 960GB versions. For more information on Kingston’s products visit www.kingston.com, and follow @kingstontech on Twitter.…

What you need: Rainmeter; Any version of Windows (XP to 10) Time required: 30 minutes To see useful information about your PC – such as memory data or CPU usage, you need to open Task Manager. A better alternative is Rainmeter – a brilliant, free program that makes this info readily accessible on your desktop as tools called widgets. We’ll show you how to use the program to display vital data about the health of your PC. It also lets you add widgets for weather forecasts, internet speeds and volume controls. STEP 1 To install the program, go to www.snipca.com/22197 and click the Download link below 4.0 Beta Release 1 . If you use Windows XP or Vista, click the Download link below 3.3.2 Final Release 2 . The beta…

AGES 0-5 Hey Duggee Colouring £1.99 www.snipca.com/22266 (Android) £1.99 www.snipca.com/22267 (iOS) This new CBeebies app lets your kids colour in over 40 images from their favourite CBBC TV programmes. There are several colouring tools (including paint, pencils, spray cans and glitter) and colour palettes to choose from. AGES 6-10 Spelling: Andrew Bodie Basics £2.99/£8.99 www.snipca.com/22268 (iOS) Install the relevant app for your child’s age group (for £2.99) or the bundle for all age groups (for £8.99). Produced in accordance with the UK National Curriculum, each app has simple tests and quizzes which will help your child prepare for their SAT school tests. AGES 11-16 Flow Free: Hexes* Free www.snipca.com/22269 (Android) Free www.snipca.com/22270 (iOS) In Flow Free, your child needed to swipe to connect dots with matching colours on a grid.…

Synchronise files across several folders FreeCommander (www.snipca.com/22132) is a useful alternative to Windows File Manager and features a split view, tabbed browsing, clever renaming tools and more. One of its best features is the ability to synchronise folders – either across the same hard drive, or between your hard drive and a USB stick or external hard drive. This will ensure both locations have the latest versions of files. First, select the two folders you want to synchronise (for example, the My Documents folder on your C drive and a backup My Documents folder on a USB stick). Click Folder, then Synchronize and select the far-left and far-right arrows (see screenshot above right). This tells the program to look for unique files in both folders. Click Compare and any files…

PhotoSync Format: iOS, Android, Windows (XP and later) Website: www.photosync-app.com Price: £2.49 for app (free for Windows) Free trial period: N/A I’m a hoarder of digital photos, there’s no other way to put it. Stunning sunset? I’ll snap a picture. Spectacular scenery? Must capture it. And if it snows, I go into something of a phototaking frenzy. The trouble is, I don’t do anything with the photos I’ve taken. They just sit on my phone, ignored and neglected. Laziness is the main reason. It means having to dig out the cable that connects my Android phone to my PC, and then negotiate my phone’s multi-layered (and far from logical) folder set-up. I could move them to my iPad, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day to overcome the…

I remember my first mobile phone with some fondness. I don’t recall the specific model but it was a Nokia, because two decades ago pretty much all mobile phones were Nokias. It was rudimentary by today’s standards, but it did everything I needed. I could make calls, send and receive text messages, and store hundreds of contacts. Sometimes I’d even play the game Snake. My Nokia travelled with me everywhere. It wasn’t exactly small or stylish but it fitted comfortably in a jacket pocket, and it would even slip into a trouser pocket without too much embarrassing bulge. “Today’s gizmos might be incredibly beautiful, but how many would manage a week between recharges?” But that’s enough aimless reminiscing about archaic gadgets. Let’s talk about Christmas. It’s just over a month…

WARNING: JUNK AHEAD Junk offender: SlimCleaner Free Our PCs are landfill sites of digital junk (temporary files, caches, duplicates, Windows Update leftovers. and so on). We therefore crave and trust programs that promise to magic these things away with one click. And the makers of these programs take full advantage of that trust. Step forward, SlimCleaner Free. The program’s new version 4.0 seemed a shoo-in for the lead product in next issue’s Best Free Software. It’s well known and receives glowing reviews, and its website (www.slimwareutilities.com) offers to blitz toolbars and other PUPs. It even lists its targets – Bing Bar (boo!), Ask Toolbar (hiss!), Cyberlink PowerDVD (to the Tower with it!) So I gave it a whirl, taking care to use the developer’s own installer (which is a tiny…

Can I get a refund for a Galaxy Note 7 bought overseas? Q Now that Samsung has told Galaxy Note 7 phone owners to stop using the devices because they might catch fire, how do I get a refund for one I bought while in the US? And what about refunds for accessories? Jenny Struthers A In general, goods bought abroad need to be returned to the retailer. Normally, we’d advise Jenny to do this, but Samsung’s exploding phones may be a special case. She should phone the company on 0330 726 1000 to see if it has any specific plans for helping customers in her position. If you bought your Note 7 in the UK, visit Samsung’s website for advice: www.snipca.com/22190. It tells you to contact the retailer first,…

These Aldi coupons buy nothing but spam I want to warn readers about fake Aldi supermarket coupons that scammers are using to spam people’s Facebook friends. These fake coupons are posted on Facebook and claim to give you up to £85 off your shopping, to celebrate Aldi’s 55th anniversary. If you click the coupon you’re taken to a survey page, which you’re asked to share on your timeline - and this lets the scammers spam all your friends with the same offer. Aldi says the scheme is a complete fake, and my local newspaper in Birmingham says the coupons may contain malware. Warn your fellow readers about scams at letters@computeractive.co.uk…

New products tested by our experts With sterling sinking, prices rising and the economic outlook looking uncertain, this isn’t the easiest time to be shopping for a new PC. So we went looking for the cheapest system that will run a full range of Windows 10 tasks smoothly while offering room for expansion. And we might just have found it. Building a budget PC, of course, is about compromise. To play 3D games smoothly, you’d need to set aside a chunk of cash for a dedicated graphics card. We’re assuming that’s not your priority, so your money should go into a powerful CPU – but even that single component can be pricey. Like it says on the tin, the Gladiator Intel Core i5 6500 contains one of the latest mid-range…

On 27 November 2015, Amazon sold 7.4 million items, a 24-hour record for the store in the UK. The reason? It was Black Friday. This has been a huge shopping event in the US for years, as shops mark the first Friday after Thanksgiving by slashing prices. It has also arrived in the UK, leading to fights in high-street stores. To avoid that madness, shop online instead. In 2015, Amazon slashed prices on 7,000 products – that number will surely be higher this year. Many products we’ve reviewed in 2016 are bound to be included. Here, we’ve selected some of our favourites (all four- or five-star rated) to keep an eye out for, complete with the price on 21 October (so you can compare come Black Friday). All the links…

There are fewer than 100 copies left on Amazon at www.snipca.com/21619 (or search for ‘computeractive cd’) What your fellow Computeractive readers say about our Back Issue CD: This exceeded my expectations. You tend to forget the amount of information there is in each issue. Simply wonderful. KeithHollobone ★★★★★ 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. DavidNelson ★★★★★ 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…

 ANDROID See traffic delays with a single tap Google recently updated its default Android Maps app to include local traffic congestion. Better still, you can add this as an icon to your homescreen so you can see traffic jams in your area with one tap. First, open Google Maps, tap the blue arrow icon at the bottom right, tap the car icon at the top left, then tap the new See Traffic In Your Area option. You’ll see any delays in your local area, with an estimated delay (in minutes) for each busy route. To add this info as an app shortcut to your homescreen, tap Add Shortcut at the bottom. ANDROID & iOS Write or draw on photos you want to share One of our favourite free text-messaging apps,…

WINDOWS 7, 8, 10 Record audio messages There’s an easy way to record audio messages on your PC, which you can then share with others. Windows 7 and 8 have a built-in Sound Recorder tool, while Windows 10 has a Voice Recorder app. First, you need to make sure your PC has a mic connected to it (most laptops have a built-in one). In Windows 7 and 8, search for sound recorder, open it, and you’ll see a small panel with a Start Recording button, a timer and a green volume indicator. Click Start Recording, record your message, then click Stop Recording. You’ll now see the option to rename the file and save it. In Windows 10, search for and open the Voice Recorder app. Click the mic icon, say…

Front ports no longer work Having USB ports at the front of your PC’s case is convenient but they can often cause problems. If yours have stopped working, it could be an internal connection problem. To check, shut down your PC, then turn it off at the mains socket. Press the power button to discharge any residual power, then touch something metallic (a radiator valve, for example) to discharge any static. Remove the side panel of your PC and locate the cable connecting the faulty USB port to the motherboard (this is known as a USB header and will be labelled USB). Make sure the cable is properly connected to the motherboard by pushing it firmly into its slot (see image below). Replace the side panel, turn your PC on…