Table of contents for March 2018 in PC Pro

PICTURE THE SCENE: Bill Gates up on stage, beaming in response to wild applause from the Microsoft-salaried acolytes near the front of the auditorium as he shows off the latest version of the Tablet PC. This was Comdex 2001, my first international trade show, where I watched as an innocent young(ish) reporter. Even then, I wasn’t so naive as to believe what I was seeing. If my memory serves me correctly, there was one toe-curling segment where Bill was sitting on a sofa as he and a colleague awkwardly talked through what they said would be the future of computing. With stilted dialogue and half-working demos of how a “typical day” might pan out, an Apple keynote this was not. Sadly, I can’t find much video evidence, but the press…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Dell XPS 13 (2017) Ultraportable from £1,149 from dell.co.uk Dell only needed to refine its brilliant XPS 13 design to keep top spot, and that’s what it does: it’s slightly quicker and adds more options, but it’s the edge-to-edge 13.3in display and compact chassis that lift it above the opposition. Oh, and it’s now available in Rose Gold. REVIEW Issue 270, p54 Issue 270, p54 SMARTPHONES Samsung Galaxy S8 Android, 32GB, £689 from samsung.com/uk The Samsung ads that claim the S8 reinvents the phone may be a little over the top, but it has created something beautiful. With the screen spreading across almost every surface, including the left and right edges, it’s stunning to behold. The price is equally stunning, but in return you get an excellent camera,…

@bazzacollins “Don’t be evil” is, of course, Google’s infamous mantra. Not that anyone really believes it. Using its own customers as pawns in its war with Amazon is evidence enough that Google has a devilish streak. At the time of writing, Google is embroiled in a childish, corporate tit-for-tat with Amazon. Over the course of the past few weeks, Google’s yanked YouTube from Amazon Echo devices and now my newly acquired Fire TV Stick is warning me that Google’s about to pull YouTube from Amazon’s TV streamer, too. So what’s Google getting shirty about? Early official explanations suggested an unspecified infringement of YouTube’s Ts&Cs. The actual reason is even more petty: Amazon has long refused to stock the Google Chromecast because it didn’t support Amazon Prime Video. In recent weeks,…

“I think we can get this wrapped up in about ten seconds,” said Darien, introducing the Hot Hardware of the Week on the PC Pro Podcast. “Barry, it’s a Chromebook and it costs around a thousand pounds.” “Cold.” That was my gut reaction to the announcement of the Chromebook Pixel. Yes, it looks fabulous and the screen’s lovely, but if I’m going to pay a grand for a laptop, I want more than a glorified web browser. I want it to actually do stuff. Unperturbed, Darien kept going. These things run full-blown Android apps now, he explained, and it’s got a Core i5 processor and 8GB of RAM, so it won’t run aground the moment you ask it do something more than check your email. For another £99 you can…

PRICE 64GB, £360 (£432 inc VAT) from gearbest.com First, let’s address the elephant in the room. Right now, the only way to buy the Mi Mix 2 is through an international Chinese gadget retailer: we found the best prices from GearBest, which at the time of writing – prices jump up and down – charged £360 for the 64GB model, £457 for 128GB and £484 for 256GB. None of those prices include VAT, which you’ll have to pay when the goods arrive at customs. There’s no import duty to pay, thankfully, but one final caveat is that this product is being shipped from China, so it won’t arrive overnight. So why bother? Simply because this phone – based on an original design by Philippe Starke – is gorgeous, from its…

PRICE £167 (£200 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/281aoc The jump from 1080p to 1440p may not sound much, but actually doubles the number of pixels. That’s why 1440p monitors tend to be substantialy more expensive than Full HD alternatives, especially 32in monsters such as this one. Even if the AOC Q3279VWF had such shocking image quality it made you want to cry, for only £200 you’d still feel like you grabbed something of a bargain. Especially considering the panel natively runs at 75Hz and comes with AMD FreeSync, providing a smoother experience for gamers compared to a regular 60Hz monitor. Before you buy, though, make sure you have space. This display consumes 730 x 425 x 153mm at its most compact, and compared to the Philips opposite it’s a shot putter…

PRICE £133 (£159 inc VAT) from store.google.com At times, using Google’s Pixel Buds feels like gazing into the future. When you press your ear and ask how to say something in Russian, and Google Assistant chirps back a phrase, it’s hard not to be impressed. Not that I’m in any position to tell if this is an accurate translation – for all I know, it might just be saying “Google Plus is better than Facebook” – but the magic is there, and the magic feels real. The trouble with things feeling like the future, though, is that they’re demonstrably not cut out for the present. Google’s Pixel Buds shouldn’t be in your present. Not yet. Not in their current form. There’s potential here, but as things stand, this feels more…

PRICE £150 inc VAT from pcpro.link/281bose With so much competition, they’re doesn’t seem much to recommend this set. Battery life is unexceptional at around six hours. They’re sweatproof, but not IP-rated. And there are only three pairs of ear tips supplied in the box, so you may not find a snug fit. Most people do, though, and you’ll find the way they sit outside the ear canal – so you can hear what’s going on around you – a sensible approach. In my experience, the rubber wings that hook them into place mean they never fall out. My one caveat is that the battery, remote control and microphone box sits on the part of the cable that leads out from the righthand earpiece, so, as you bounce down the road,…

PRICE £14 (£17 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/281mk270 In many ways, the Logitech MK270 is a steal. For only £2 more than the Perixx Periduo-711B, you’re buying a branded wireless mouse and keyboard – when you factor in the two AAA batteries and single AA battery Logitech supplies, which Perixx doesn’t, arguably the price is identical. Especially when you consider that Logitech promises a typical three-year battery life for the keyboard and 18 months for the mouse. Nice quality touches abound, too. There’s the separate media playback keys at the top of the keyboard, complete with a handy shortcut for the calculator. There’s even a discreet Caps Lock indicator next to the manual on/off switch. Plus, you can use Logitech’s Options software to customise the scroll button, for example to switch…

We wanted to give the broadest possible workstation advice, so we used a wide variety of software for testing – as the huge number of graphs on these pages shows! To start with, we ran our standard PC Pro benchmark suite to assess image processing and video encoding abilities, and then multitasking (see results on p91). Each of these categories has an individual score, which indicates relative speed compared to a Core i7-4760K desktop PC with 8GB of RAM. If a machine scores 150 in a test, it’s 50% faster than the reference PC. All these results are combined into an overall score, giving an indication of ability in these contentcreation tasks as well as general activities. On top of our regular benchmark suite, we added tests specifically aimed at…

This month’s workstation Labs looks like an outtake from the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey – eight sizeable black slabs hinting at understated power within. In past years, we have seen one or two smaller form factor systems, and the question still remains – what’s available if you want something a bit more compact, or even portable? To find an answer, we got our hands on a powerful mobile workstation and put it through its paces. The system in question is the WS63 7RK from MSI, and the specification we were sent cost the same £2,500 inc VAT as our lower category in this month’s group test. Despite being a workstation, the WS63 7RK is a portable 1.8kg and 17.7mm thick. The 15.6in IPS screen has a Full HD…

PRICE Model C505S, £1,094 exc VAT from printerland.co.uk Xerox’ VersaLink C505 colour MFP is aimed at mid-sized workgroups – and users should be able to hit the ground running thanks to the company’s ConnectKey technology, which uses a standard control-panel interface across all devices in the family. It’s very easy to use. The big 7in colour touchscreen presents a selection of chunky icons for one-tap access to each ConnectKey function, including printer settings, job status and cloud access for Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive. And the clever part of ConnectKey is that additional functions can be installed via the Xerox App Gallery. After logging in, we were easily able to add new capabilities to the printer, free of charge, with just a few taps. These included the Scan To app,…

Bring Your Own Device schemes (BYOD) have been gaining ground for 20 years, but their popularity has been patchy. Highergrowth economies have been most enthusiastic, while mature markets have been more cautious. An Ovum survey of 2012 found that less than half of workers in the latter group – countries such as the UK and US – were likely to use their own laptop or mobile at work. It compares poorly with the 75% who, in countries such as Russia, Brazil and India, have a say over the hardware they use from Monday to Friday. If countries like these are expanding much faster than us, the question has to be asked: could allowing your staff to use their own kit make them more productive? It may, but for many organisations,…

Paul owns an agency that helps businesses exploit the web, from sales to marketing and everything in between @PaulOckenden I’m a huge fan of the idea of using crowdfunding for the development of new products – it’s a system that has resulted in several interesting items coming to the market that might otherwise have remained as an idea stuck in the recesses of someone’s brain. Plus, it goes a lot further than simply “products”. Crowdfunding is great for the performing arts, books and comics, charity projects, and all manner of other things that might fail to attract traditional investment. But while I love the idea of crowdfunding, I also tend to be a cautious backer. It’s important to treat crowdfunding websites – from the well-known ones to the more obscure…

Steve is a consultant who specialises in networks, cloud, HR and upsetting the corporate apple cart @stardotpro Reputation is hard to measure. Which is a shame, because it’s the final arbiter of buying decisions all over the world – yet we don’t have a column for it in our labs tests. This is because the labs guys don’t like to make judgement calls without support from hard numbers – and quite right too. Still, reputation can be the make or break factor when it comes to the choices people make. Case in point. I recently met with G-Technology, the low-key brand that appeared without fanfare within Apple Stores almost a decade ago. The intervening years have done little for the firm’s mainstream reputation. Despite being persistently hit with questions about…

Barry Collins What happens when you replace a hardcore Windows user’s main PC with a Chromebook? We gave Barry a Pixelbook to find out. See p30 James Morris If you want to invest in super-fast computing hardware, that isn’t a quantum computer, then read James’ group test of workstations from p74 Dr Zhenhua Feng The iPhone X is the tip of facial recognition tech. We speak to a researcher at the University of Surrey to see what the future holds on p128 Benedikt von Thüngen Continuing our recognition theme, we speak to the man behind a company that can create accurate transcripts from live audio. See p22…

BACKGROUND INFO ON INNOVATIVE BRITISH COMPANIES KEYFACTS Speechmatics is a British company that provides speech recognition technology for filmmakers, journalists, lawyers and more FOUNDED 2006 HEADQUARTERS Cambridge STAFF 40 WEBSITE speechmatics.com “The transcript that we produce would be anywhere between 90% and depending on the quality of audio and news. Well that’s what we are. But they are invariably going to be mistakes that we are. But what they have done they have a smart top. Does that allow you to correct those mistakes to produce a perfect transcript.” It’s not perfect. Clearly. What Speechmatics’ CEO, Benedikt von Thüngen, actually told me in that opening sentence was that “the transcript that we produce would be anywhere between 50 and 90% accurate, depending on the quality of the audio and use…

@njkobie Have a cheesy television addiction? Stream silly pop tracks when no-one’s around? If so then Netflix and Spotify know how terrible your taste is – yet it always raises eyebrows when the services pull out “fun” facts about our streaming habits to put in their year-end advertising and marketing tweets. This time, the US account for Netflix tweeted: “To the 53 people who’ve watched A Christmas Prince every day for the past 18 days: Who hurt you?” The message raises a host of questions. Did 53 people really watch the film – a festive romcom about an undercover reporter investigating a “playboy prince” – and if so, how does Netflix know? Such a specific fact suggests the marketing team has been rummaging through our data. While plenty replied saying…

Having read your excellent articles in last month’s edition (issue 280) it’s clear to me there is a common thread that links almost all of the world’s problems. Tim attempts to justify a £1,000 phone that costs that much only because people like him will pay it (p7), Barry laments the subscription model but then fuels it with his own cash (p27) and Nicole is scared by the power of social media but convinces herself it makes no difference whether she opts out or not and instead asks for government meddling to save us from, very literally, ourselves (p28). These are all genuine problems that have only one solution: vote with your feet! In a capitalist world the only way of guiding the market is by the individuals, each and every…

Dropbox can serve as a handy platform for web development, using a tool such as Wamp (wampserver.com). Wamp installs Apache, MySQL and PHP, and can be easily configured so that your default web folder is inside your Dropbox account. With this done, amendments made to the development site on one machine will then be automatically synchronised across each of the others. To do this, you just need to create a new folder called “htdocs” in your Dropbox folder, then edit the “httpd-vhosts. conf” file in your Wamp installation. You’ll find this in “C:\ wamp64\bin\apache\<your Apache version>\conf\extra\” Change all of the references on lines six and seven from “${INSTALL_DIR}/www” to the path to the new htdocs folder on Dropbox. You’ll also need to update your database. Open “my.ini” in the folder…

GOOGLE Google has become one of the world leaders in building quantum computers in a relatively short space of time. It opened its quantum artificial intelligence lab in 2013, and within just three years had developed a quantum processing array of nine superconducting qubits. In 2017, not only has the company developed a 20-qubit prototype, but claims it will have a 49-qubit chip imminently. This may still not be enough to reach quantum supremacy, as conventional computers are getting faster all the time. But it is very, very close. IBM IBM has been involved in quantum computing research as far back as 1984, when IBM scientists Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard unveiled the world’s first quantum cryptography protocol, BB84. In 2016, IBMQ, unveiled a five-qubit quantum computer, and followed this…

PRICE £1,125 (£1,350 inc VAT) from lenovo.com With a 13.9in Full HD screen, Dolby Atmos sound, an eighth-generation Intel Core chip and looks to kill, Lenovo’s Yoga 920 is a premium convertible with plenty of attractions – not to mention a special Star Wars edition with a 4K screen. You can either choose a “light side” platinum Rebel Alliance finish or a “dark side” black Galactic Empire one, and they both look stunning. But only true Star Wars fans need apply: not only do you pay a £400 premium for the privilege of the themed lid (there are no other touches; not even changing YOGA to YODA on the palmrest!), but you also get the more basic of the two current specifications. That’s a shame, because I’d be far more…

PRICE 8GB, £192 (£230 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/281oasis Say what you like about Amazon, it knows how to build an e-reader. Take the new Kindle Oasis: it’s an update to a product that was so close to perfection that I’d have understood perfectly if Amazon had chosen to leave well alone. Somehow, though, Amazon has made its flagship Kindle even better than the original – and not through a series of minor tweaks. For this Kindle Oasis is no mild update. It’s an across-theboard revamp, with a larger 7in display, better battery life, water resistance and one brand-new killer feature: support for Audible audiobook playback. Despite the larger screen, Amazon has chosen to stick with much of what made the original Oasis so good. The new model is still thin…

PRICE £167 (£200 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/281phil If you’d asked me to recommend a colour-accurate 24in monitor for under £200 before this Philips arrived, I would have said sure, before pointing you to the fairy dust aisle in Tesco. This monitor resets all the rules. Not only do you get a colouraccurate 23.8in IPS panel, but also a fully adjustable stand, a stunning design and even an integrated 2-megapixel webcam. It’s this monitor’s sumptuous design that first strikes you. The top and side bezels are so slim as to be nigh-on borderless, making it seem as if the image is floating in space – and cutting down the room it consumes. Better yet, Philips includes its SmartErgoBase, which provides height, swivel and tilt adjustment. You can also pivot it 180°,…

Apple AirPods PRICE £145 inc VAT from pcpro.link/281app Just like the original white iPod earphones, the AirPods have a unique, recognisably Apple design. There’s no physical connection between the two pods, with each sitting individually in your ears, with no physical controls at all: you pause audio by tapping on a pod and invoke Siri by double-tapping. The audio cleverly pauses if you remove either AirPod from your ear. Apple gives a rough guideline of five hours battery life, which is fair in my experience. However, they come with a nifty little charging case, shaped like a stubby TicTac box, that flips open to hold the earphones and incorporates its very own battery. Expect around 24 hours of continuous use. You also get “smart” Bluetooth pairing: to pair them with…

PRICE £300 inc VAT from snugs.com Buying a pair of Snugs is a unique experience. First, you get your ears scanned at your local audiologist – the process takes around 90 seconds per ear. The custom-fit earphone tips sit on a pair of thirdparty earphones, in this case Jabees BTwins, and deliver both noiseisolation and intimate sound quality. It’s not a completely balanced sound: the BTwins favour higher notes while struggling to deliver a convincing amount of bass. The result is a slightly cold, brash sound. I prefer more low-end grunt. Just like the Apple Airpods, the Snugs True Wireless are supplied with a small box that doubles as a portable battery pack and charger. The earbuds last around three hours per charge, but when they run out you pop…

CherryB.Unlimited 3.0 PRICE £63 (£75 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/281cherry In the same way that Porsche would never produce a family runaround, you can be confident that Cherry will never produce a low-quality keyboard. Even before I removed the B.Unlimited 3.0 from its box, I expected a pleasant typing experience. So it proved. This keyboard uses Cherry’s SX switch technology, which has a hint of mechanical keyboards but with much less clack. It isn’t silent, but there’s a soft edge to the noise when you press down. All the keys are large and easy to hit, reflecting the keyboard’s width, with a set of handy shortcuts – calculator, email, homepage and lock – above the number pad. Another plus is that the letters are lasered on, so this board should last…

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the fight of the century! We have a truly mouth-watering line-up for you, with eight heavyweight contenders battling for the undisputed Labs winner belt. When the fighting ends, there will only be one winner – but that doesn’t mean it’s the machine you should choose. Every contender here has some appeal, depending on exactly what you want a workstation for. It’s been one heck of a build-up. With an upper right, AMD gave Intel a bloody nose when it released the Ryzen Threadripper. Intel then struck back with a body blow thanks to its Coffee Lake chips and its Extreme Core i9 range. Meanwhile, in the green corner Nvidia knows it must keep its prices competitive if it’s to fend off the rising AMD Radeon…

James Morris is a workstation expert and lecturer in digital journalism at City, University of London @CyberWest In early 2017, it looked like AMD was making a big comeback. The Ryzen processor won hearts and headlines due to the amount of consumer-grade performance it offered for the money – and twice the cores of Intel’s equivalents. Then the Threadripper arrived and provided top-end Xeon core counts for the price of an Intel Core i7. Even Nvidia had reason to be scared, with the Radeon Vega promising to rekindle contest in the workstation graphics arena. Looking at this Labs, you might wonder what happened. Intel has successfully headed off the challenge by releasing a slew of products earlier than planned, and Nvidia found that it wasn’t facing a significant threat. In…

Before you give staff choice in the machines they use, you must first invest in the right kind of central systems to support those choices. If you have already seen the light of Web 2.0 as a delivery platform for internal databases, applications and information then transitioning to an open choice of devices will be a breeze. The key compatibility platform is Google Chrome or Firefox, not the hardware or the operating system. This is just as well, because that dream of a uniform, web-presented business software self-service “shop” of apps isn’t something that most industrial or commercial software developers truly take to heart. For one thing, the pace of security updates for browsers and web code is comprehensively faster than the world of sector-specific databases, HR systems and workflow…

Ian Thornton-Trump is CTO for Octopi Managed Services, a managed security service provider and cyberthreat research lab @phat_hobbit There’s no shortage of numbers when it comes to cybersecurity. But, as CTO of a company that provides security services for all sizes of business, I know that those numbers usually mean something – and that, equally, on occasion they can be misleading. Take this bullet point from the Enterprise Phishing Susceptibility and Resiliency Report by PhishMe (pcpro.link/281phish): “91% of cyberattacks and the resulting data breaches begin with a phishing email attack, and, of those attacks, 93% of them are ransomware payloads”. The first part of that statement proved to be exactly the case when I received a phishing email from a client in the medical profession. The email included a web…

FACIAL RECOGNITION IS everywhere, unlocking new iPhones, helping police with surveillance and cutting queues at border control. In the future, it will be used for everything from logging into accounts to replacing your paper train ticket. But before that happens, the technologies behind facial recognition need work. The Metropolitan Police tested facial recognition tech at 2017’s Notting Hill Carnival, reportedly arresting an innocent person. Regular studies by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology have also revealed that systems developed in the US and Europe work better on Caucasians, while those created in China and Japan worked best on Asian people. A University of South Florida study found one system failed twice as often when identifying black people. Part of the problem is the lack of diversity in the…

Background and analysis on all the important news stories INTEL AND MOTHERBOARD makers are fighting a battle to fix a series of vulnerabilities that have shed light on a secretive, controversial operating system that runs in the background of Windows and Linux machines. The Intel Management Engine (IME) and its server relatives are largely undocumented pieces of software that run outside Windows or Linux, but play a significant role in the majority of machines sold since 2008. Researchers from security firm Positive Technologies first discovered some of the vulnerabilities, but kept them quiet until Intel had completed a review and eventually prepared fixes for ten vulnerabilities, eight of them classified as high risk. “The vulnerability [we found] lies in the Intel Management Engine, a subsystem built into most Intel chips…

Widespread age verification brings the fear that huge databases of porn site visitors will be vulnerable to attack – data that could easily be used to blackmail site visitors, as the Ashley Madison cases showed in 2015. What will the providers do to guard against such attacks? According to industry watchers, two age-verification products are leading the pack. MindGeek’s AgeID looks likely to be among the first launched, a situation that concerns privacy campaigners, who fear that a company with such clout and so much information would be an irresistible target for hackers. The company claims its system’s structure would mean that websites or hackers would get scant data. “AgeID is essentially an authentication platform using a federated login, similar to ‘login with Facebook’,” the company told PC Pro. “AgeID…

PC Pro readers and experts give their views on the world of technology @dariengs “In the past five years I’ve somehow accumulated almost as much new data as I had previously amassed in my entire lifetime” Friends have been recommending the TV series Silicon Valley to me for years – and this month I’ve finally taken the plunge. I have to say I’m enjoying it greatly. It paints a humorously recognisable picture of the absurdities and extravagances of the tech industry, and it doesn’t hurt that the lead character, Richard Hendricks, reminds me ever so slightly of our own editor-in-chief. It’s also refreshing to see a mainstream TV show with such an unapologetically geeky premise. After you’ve sat through a thousand boy-meets-girl stories, it all starts to feel a bit…

I got suckered into watching The Robot Will See You Now during Channel 4’s November week of robot programmes. Shoddy though it was, it conveyed a truth often missed by more technically correct offerings. Its premise: a family of hand-picked reality TV stereotypes is given access to robot Jess, complete with a “cute” flat glass face, and they consulted it about their relationship problems and other worries. Channel 4 admitted that Jess operates “with some human assistance”, which could have meant somebody sitting in the next room speaking into a microphone, but Jess was immediately recognisable to me as ELIZA in a new shell. ELIZA was one of the first AI natural language programs, written in 1964 by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT – and 16 years later by me while…

It’s not strictly necessary to go to the expense of buying new hardware to get yourself a Chromebook. If you’ve got an old – or even not so old – laptop lying around, that can easily be pressed into service as a Chromebook with software called CloudReady. In the same way the Chrome browser is built on the open-source Chromium browser, Chrome OS is built on the open-source Chromium OS. CloudReady is effectively a fork of the Chromium OS and comes in several different versions. There’s a Home version that you can install for free for personal use, although you can forget about anything in the way of support or management features. Then there’s the Enterprise version, which costs $99 per year, per machine, which includes support for centralised Chrome Device…

Dropbox’s sharing capabilities aren’t just about behind-the-scenes syncing. If you’re running Dropbox for Business then the Dropbox Badge integrates directly into Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint – you’ll see it attached to the right of the program window. At its simplest, this adds basic Dropbox services to your Office applications; you can click on it to copy a link to your document for sharing with others, view the file’s history on the Dropbox website – and optionally roll back to a previous state – and see who else can access it. Where things start getting clever is when two or more people are editing a file simultaneously. When someone else opens a file you have open, their picture and initials pop up, and Dropbox lets you know they’re editing it…

Picture a country that runs completely online. A place where internet access is declared a basic human right – much like food and shelter – and the capital city has had a free Wi-Fi network for over 15 years. Welcome to Estonia. The birthplace of Skype and TransferWise, this Baltic state regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Its capital, Tallinn, is the largest city in Estonia with a population of just over 400,000. Take a walk through the narrow medieval alleys of Tallinn’s Old Town and you can see why it’s listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. What might not be as obvious is the fact that this city of Gothic spires is home to one of Europe’s most forwardthinking tech scenes. So how did this unlikely…

PRICE £167 (£200 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/281linx They both run Windows 10, they both have a detachable keyboard, but in reality the Linx 12X64 couldn’t be more different to the Surface Book 2 (see p48). This is a budget 2-in-1 that’s aimed at undemanding users and students, and dismiss it at your peril: if all you’re looking for is a device to take notes on, check email and browse the web – or perhaps a secondary machine for travel – then it should be on your shortlist. Don’t expect dreamy looks: the Linx’s hard plastic shell looks bland compared to the colourful HP Stream 11 or the Asus Transformer Mini with its stunning aluminium frame. I do, however, like the kickstand, which is made from aluminium. It’s infinitely adjustable, just…

Recommended This, quite simply, is a product we would recommend you buy – if it meets your needs. A-List The best buy in its category right now. The product will also feature on our A-List, starting on p16, updated each month. Labs Winner Each month we run a group test, or Labs. This product has managed to beat all others to top position. The pcpro.link Throughout the magazine you’ll see pcpro.link shortcuts. Enter these into the address bar of your browser and it will take you to a particular page, which will either be too long or awkward for us to publish or will take you to the precise shop from which to buy. If it’s Amazon, note that we have an affiliate deal in place so we will receive…

PRICE £109 inc VAT from pcpro.link/281beatx The BeatsX’s two earpods are connected via a cable that wraps around your neck. Two plastic blobs sit either side of your neck that contain batteries, the on/off button, and a Lightning port for charging (you get around eight hours per charge). Also on the left is a set of physical controls in a plastic lozenge that houses the microphone. To my ears, the BeatsX offer a superior – and definitely louder – sound than the AirPods, in part because they’re a true in-ear design. This setup also gives better audio isolation and makes the buds less likely to fall out during exercise. Beats are tuned specifically to have heavier bass and, to my ears, high frequencies. Middle is a bit lacking – there’s…

PRICE £60 inc VAT from pcpro.link/281e10 SoundMagic had already gained many plaudits for its brilliant E10 budget earphones, so it surprised precisely no-one when it released this Bluetooth version. This adds £20 the price, but in return you have a fantastic build quality, a good set of accessories (including a huge selection of eartips and a semi-rigid carry case) and, most importantly, the award-winning sound quality traits from its wired siblings. Its emphasis is on bass and highs, with a warm sound that means you lose subtlety when it comes to vocals. Nor do they support the aptX codec. But thanks to Bluetooth 4.2 support, they do play back 24-bit audio files, have a range of 10m and, ultimately, have an undeniably exciting sound. The right earbud cable has a…

If there’s one company that has reason to be pleased about 2017, it’s AMD. While its graphics cards have landed some punches in the professional market over the past decade, its processors have rarely got past Intel’s stout defences. Now, thanks to a flotilla of recent releases, it’s back in the ring. However, the effect on this month’s Labs is more subtle and indirect. AMD effect, round 1 It all started with AMD’s release of Ryzen, which provided more cores for the money than Intel. The latter had to react quickly – and it did, bringing out its eighth-generation Coffee Lake Core i7 range earlier than expected. Although Coffee Lake chips were in short supply as we put this Labs together, our selection of workstations suggests that Coffee Lake is…

PRICE £266 exc VAT from printerland.co.uk The ADS-2700W is Brother’s replacement for the venerable ADS-2600We desktop scanner, and it brings an impressive 45% boost in scan performance to 35ppm. And that’s not all it has going for it: you get USB, wired and wireless connection options, a 7.1cm colour LCD touch screen for walk-up operations and support for a good range of network scan destinations. It’s an impressive package for the price, yet with a 3,000-page daily duty cycle, the ADS-2700W is rugged enough to satisfy a moderately demanding workgroup. There are a few compromises, though: it doesn’t support NFC, and it comes with a less generous software bundle than Brother’s A-Listed ADS-3600W, lacking the ControlCenter4 (CC4) scan management tool. Still, you do get Nuance’s PaperPort 14 SE digital file…

Want to make sure a PC isn’t being accidentally left on overnight? Using the Windows Task Scheduler you can make it automatically shut down at a set time every day, as described below. If you’re managing a large network of PCs, you can also implement a scheduled shutdown across a network of Windows clients using Group Policy Editor. Create a new Group Policy Object targeting the machines you want to include in the action, then pick Preferences from Computer Configurations and step through Control Panel Settings to Scheduled Tasks. Invoke the same script at “C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe” with the switches “-f -s”. 1 Click “Create Basic Task…” in the sidebar and name the task. We’re going to schedule a shutdown for 8pm every night so it happens outside of working hours. We’ll…

EXPERT ADVICE FROM OUR PANEL OF PROFESSIONALS The problem with having a lot of disk storage is that you end up using it all. It doesn’t seem to matter how many terabytes are there, data expands to fill it, in a rather “reverse zip” way. The primary NAS in the lab is a Synology DS1815+, which takes eight physical disks. It has an add-on DX513 unit that takes a further five. I’d set it up in a rather lazy way initially, dropping two 128GB Samsung SSD units in slot 1 and 2 for cache purposes, and then filling the rest of the slots with 6TB hard disks. Being clever, I decided to leave one drive as hot spare, because that’s what grown-ups do. I then built the rest as one…

Davey is an award-winning journalist and consultant specialising in privacy and security issues @happygeek Managing a Facebook-based group doesn’t sound like much hassle, but the level of aggravation will depend on many factors: group size, group purpose and the tools made available to help. I have real-world experience running several groups, from small-business ones to large club-based affairs. For the past four years, I’ve been running the Mazda Bongo Owners Club. It’s large, growing and very active. It’s an informal club for people who have, used to have, or would like to have a Japanese import Mazda Bongo campervan. Being old (many vehicles are 20+ years) and imports, the vans require a degree of mechanical and technical support. At the time of writing, the group has 7,866 members; the churn…

Automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning are coming for our jobs, but some of us can out-bot the bots, it would seem. Headlines have been full of terrifying tales of Russian propaganda spread by bots via social media, influencing the US presidential election as well as our own Brexit referendum. Tweet your thoughts on Brexit, whether you favoured Leave or Remain, and you could very well expect a flood of responses, but not all of it would be from humans. The US Senate’s investigation into Russia’s attempts to use social media to sway the election led to an admission by Twitter that it had identified 36,746 bots linked to the country, which had tweeted 1.4 million times in the run-up to the vote. That’s led to a flurry of research…

PC PRO On sale 15 February 2018 DENNISMAGS.CO.UK/PCPRO LABS Whole-home Wi-Fi Time to say goodbye to routers and hello to always-on Wi-Fi. Discover which mesh router system to buy next month Subscribe today Start your subscription to PC Pro and you can claim a free 16GB USB stick while stocks last! You can read PC Pro in print, on your iPad, iPhone or Kindle Fire. See p108 for details. FEATURES Best of CES 2018 We roam the streets of Las Vegas to unearth surprise gems – and review the best new products – from the world’s biggest tech show Create a smart home for £200 Whether your budget is £200, £500 or £1,000, Barry Collins reveals exactly what you need to upskill your home Build a Raspberry Pi server Practical…

I’m trying very hard to be concerned about Bitcoin. No, honestly, I am. Just today it hit the $17,000 mark, before dropping back by $2,500. That’s a rise of some 50% in just one week, and a 2,000% jump in a year. Let’s just look at what this thing is – although even to call it a real “thing” is stretching things. Each bitcoin is code strung together in a chain, and like a limited-edition print there are a restricted number of them. The market has decided that each one has a “value” and is prepared to trade real cash for a bitcoin. I have no problem with this: you can buy all sorts of things with cash, from a banana to a Leonardo Da Vinci painting for $450 million.…