Indice dei contenuti per May 2018 in Computer Shopper

THE BIRTH OF social media means we’re all much better informed nowadays, about everything from events on the other side of the globe to the local church fête. This is a mixed blessing, as it also means we hear a lot more about the bad things going on in the world at large, and our own backyards. I’m a member of my town’s Facebook community page, and several times a week I’m warned about burglars or car thieves attempting a break-in just around the corner from my house. The official stats show that burglary and car crime have indeed both risen in recent years – but I’m more affected by the reports from my neighbours of specific incidents going on right now, than generic figures based on last year’s data.…

Tech pioneer and all-round good egg letters@computershopper.co.uk ONCE UPON A time there was a First Secretary of State called Damian Green, who was a habitual naughty boy when it came to matters of expenses and pornography. He got the sack, but not because he got caught with his electronic pants down. He got sacked because he thought he could lie about how certain files got on to his computer and get away with it. When Damian Green and I formed our boyhood habits, data-streaming and downloads had yet to be invented, but we could nip to the newsagents and raid the top shelf for a copy of Razzle or Horse & Hound, and nobody would be any the wiser. And if we needed to dispose of our auto-erotic stash, we…

£40 STARTING PRICE OF THE FIRST ANDROID GO SMARTPHONES 800,000 800,000 Daily visits from malware-infected Android devices to cryptojacking websites 880MB/s The seriously fast read speed of Western Digital’s experimental PCI-E SD card 100 MILLION Number of cyber attacks on councils over the past five years 95% Amount by which MIT’s neural network chip can reduce mobile power consumption 2Gbit/s Download speed of Qualcomm’s nippy Snapdragon X24 LTE modem 200 NUMBER OF NHS TRUSTS THAT FAIL TO MEET SECURITY STANDARDS SET AFTER THE WANNACRY RANSOMWARE ATTACKS £600,000 HOW MUCH THE UK GOVERNMENT SPENT TO CREATE AN EXTREMISMBLOCKING TOOL…

Boston Dynamics creates an arm-equipped, door-opening, four-legged robot DOOR-OPENING ROBOTS are set to play a part in the rise of the machines, as US robot maker Boston Dynamics has demonstrated with its new SpotMini bot. The company showcased a streamlined version of its quadruped robot equipped with an back-mounted articulating arm. In a video demonstration (tinyurl.com/363news), a SpotMini trots up to a door and uses its arm to grab the handle and open the door for a non-armed SpotMini to pass through. Deftly gripping objects takes a lot of clever programming, but Boston Dynamics has kept tight-lipped on the engineering and computing smarts behind the new SpotMini. While the robot could potentially be used to collect and pack goods in warehouses or patrol the grounds of restricted sites to ward…

£780 • From www.lenovo.com VERDICT This compact PC crams in more power for entertainment, work and even gaming use than you might think THE IDEACENTRE BRAND tends to evoke, at least in our minds, sensible all-in-one PCs such as the IdeaCentre AIO 520 and its new replacement, the IdeaCentre AIO 520S. It’s a diverse line, though, also containing the gaming-focused 700 series and the 600 series of compact desktops. The latter has been a little bare recently – it’s been two years since the launch of the slightly weird, projector-equipped IdeaCentre 610S – but that’s changed with the IdeaCentre 620S, a gimmick-free home entertainment PC that’s even shorter than the magazine you hold in your hands. MICRO MANAGED Despite standing upright like a tiny tower desktop, this could certainly be…

£235 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT This Coffee Lake motherboard rewards your investment with impressive overclocking and water-cooling capabilities WE’VE ALWAYS TENDED more towards Asus’s Prime series motherboards than its ROG Maximus range, largely because the latter are invariably far more expensive. With the release of Intel’s Coffee Lake CPUs and accompanying Z370 chipset, it seems that won’t be changing any time soon: the ROG Maximus X Hero starts at £235, £80 more than the Prime Z370-A we’ve seen in a few PCs. To be fair, ROG Maximus motherboards have always offered more than a scariersounding name, and the ROG Maximus X Hero particularly excels in cooling support. There are a full eight 4-pin headers scattered around, including one dedicated watercooler pump header and one with H-Amp support for more powerful…

£223 • From www.pcworldbusiness.co.uk VERDICT Elegant looks and a 144Hz refresh rate can’t make up for poor colour accuracy and a low contrast ratio IF YOU’RE AN avid PC gamer, you’ll definitely want a 144Hz gaming monitor. A fast display provides a huge leap over a regular 60Hz screen, assuming your PC and graphics card can keep up. The smoother frame rate will make sim games more lifelike, help you see enemies faster, and allow you to make reactions a crucial millisecond sooner. What’s more, 144Hz just looks better in general, even just moving the cursor around. Best of all, you don’t have to spend a fortune, as the £223 AOC Gaming G2590PX shows. It’s not alone in providing 144Hz on a budget, however: the 24in Acer XF240H sells for…

£800 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT This brilliant soundbar is versatile, sounds great and produces phenomenal bass without the need for a sub SAMSUNG IS ARGUABLY best known for its smartphones and its TVs, but it has fingers in a lot of other pies as well, notably soundbars. And it’s pretty good at those, too. Recently, there’s been a string of Samsung soundbars with an innovative distortion reduction system, the latest of which is the HW-MS750 – and it might just be the best one yet. This is a soundbar that’s best suited to larger TVs and rooms: it measures 1,150mm across, so pairs well with TVs 49in and larger in size, and it can be wall-mounted using the bundled bracket, or attached beneath compatible Samsung TVs with the optional TV…

£440 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The View 10 is a fine handset, even if it’s outmanoeuvred in a few places by the competition HONOR AND ONEPLUS have spent several months locked in a kind of smartphone arms race: in 2017, the Honor 9 (Shopper 359) tried to take on the OnePlus 5 (Shopper 356) and narrowly lost, owing to the latter’s superior battery and camera performance. Since then, both have set up for a rematch, bringing out new 18:9 handsets with the OnePlus 5T (Shopper 361) and this, the View 10. Its display doesn’t roll off the edges, but it’s close enough to being bezel-less, and even with an aluminium rear panel (instead of glass, as on the Honor 9) the View 10 is a striking phone. In fact, in…

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 Wireless routers each use a number of Wi-Fi standards, so you shouldn’t have any trouble connecting your computer or phone wirelessly if you get an 802.11n or 802.11ac router. Nearly all routers support 802.11n, so even a cheap model should provide decent performance. You can expect a transfer speed of around 40Mbit/s at a distance of 10m from an old 802.11n router. All of the latest routers use the 802.11ac standard, which provides tremendously fast transfer speeds. For older devices, 820.11ac routers are backwards-compatible, so you shouldn’t have any connection issues. 02 If you subscribe to an ADSL broadband service, you should buy a wireless router that has a built-in ADSL modem. This will cost more than the equivalent cable router, but it allows you to connect your router…

THANKS TO BROADBAND and the increasing speed of mobile data, security cameras have become a lot more popular in recent years. Now, with our fast internet connections, it’s possible to monitor our homes and possessions in stunning HD (or higher) resolutions from practically anywhere on the globe. Even better, that means that if an alert goes off, you can see exactly what’s going on and, if necessary, alert the police. There are lots of different types of security cameras, and we’ll take you through everything you need to know about choosing the right model for your home. INSIDE OUT The first choice you need to make is whether you want an indoor camera or an external one. Indoor cameras tend to be cheaper to buy and easier to install, as…

£189 • From www.hivehome.com VERDICT A clever camera that has a battery-powered mode, but it lacks an option to save captured footage BEST KNOWN FOR its smart thermostats, Hive has been expanding its smart home products in recent years. Last year, the company launched its first security camera, which was a little basic; it’s back this year with a far more interesting and accomplished product, the Hive View. Few security cameras are truly attractive, but the Hive View is one of them. Its small cuboid body looks great, magnetically attaching to the metal stand, which provides plenty of movement and adjustment so that you can perfectly capture the area you want. The Hive View is available in black and brushed copper, or white and champagne gold. Both look great, and…

£229 • From shop.somfy.co.uk VERDICT A quick and easy way to add home security, but a few annoyances prevent it getting full marks AT FIRST GLANCE, the Somfy One looks like a fairly standard indoor security camera. With its built-in camera, this is a fair assumption to make. However, it’s not just a camera, but a complete integrated security system with a siren. You can expand your options further by adding Somfy’s range of security accessories, including the IntelliTAG, which can detect someone trying to break in through a door or window, and the indoor motion sensor. If you’re looking to build a smart security system, then, this neat integrated package seems like a good way to get started. I SPY Setting up the Somfy One is simple using the…

£179 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT A powerful app, simple installation and great image quality make this a winner, but subscription services are pricey A BIG PROBLEM with many external security cameras is that many of them need installing by an electrician, using a dedicated power feed. This can make them complicated to get going with. Not so with the Nest Cam Outdoor, which is designed to be easy on the eye and simple for most people to install. Rather than having to drill holes through walls and physically wire in the camera, the Nest Cam Outdoor has a weatherproof USB connector that you can plug into an outdoor power socket. To mount the camera, you just have to attach the magnetic disk to a wall (you will have to drill…

£170 • From www.screwfix.com VERDICT A great way to monitor inside or out, but the relatively high cost could put off some ONE OF THE biggest hassles with installing an outdoor security camera is having to find a way to power it. The Swann Smart Security Camera Wire-Free HD (or SWWHD-INTCAM) aims to make things easier thanks to its integrated battery, so you can place it anywhere. The camera has an IP65 rating, so it’s suitable for using both indoors or out in the rain. FULLY CHARGED Netgear’s Arlo is a similar battery-powered option, but the SWWHD-INTCAM is arguably easier to deal with as it has an integrated rechargeable battery, which you can charge via the camera’s Micro USB port. To save battery life, the camera only activates when its…

£429 • From www.apple.com/uk VERDICT The Apple Watch Series 3 is the best smartwatch you can buy, and has a markedly improved fitness tracker ONE THING THE previous generations of Apple Watch was lacking was the ability to use internet-connected tools without a smartphone, even while things such as GPS and water-resistance were added to boost fitness-tracking credentials. That’s changed with the Apple Watch Series 3, which has LTE 4G-enabled models starting at £399, although you can get a GPS-only version from £329. These prices are for the smaller 38mm variant, and the particular model we tested (42mm with 4G) pushes it up to £429. In other words, it’s one seriously expensive piece of kit. EE-ASY 4G Still, even this larger model was comfortable and light on the wrist, while…

£130 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Vivosport is a comfortable and affordable GPSequipped tracker, let down by its miniscule display THE GARMIN VIVOSPORT is a newcomer to Garmin’s Vivo series of wearables, but in terms of design and features, it’s easiest to compare it to the Vivosmart line of fitness trackers. Like the Vivosmart HR+ (Shopper 343), the Vivosport includes GPS tracking, but also adds a whole host of other new features that were first introduced on the Vivosmart 3. These include stress tracking, VO2 Max estimation and more frequent heart-rate measurements, taken at one-second intervals. Protruding only 11mm from your wrist, with an inoffensive rubber band, it’s considerably less chunky than the Vivosmart HR+ – by 4mm to be precise – and this is partly due to the optical…

£199 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Gear Fit2 Pro adds better waterproofing and full swimming tracking to one of our favourite fitness bands LAST YEAR’S SAMSUNG Gear Fit2 (Shopper 355) was and still is an excellent fitness tracker; we gave it our Recommended award, in fact. It provided all the right features to accurately track runs and workouts, to the extent that it only really missed out on one aspect: you couldn’t use it to track swimming. It did have modest waterproofing, being able to survive depths up to 1.5m for half an hour, but that was more to protect against showers and rainfall than doing lengths. The new, upgraded Gear Fit2 Pro changes that, adding proper waterproofing of up to 5ATM of pressure – around 40m. You can take…

Some manufacturers make the flashing process rather tricky, as they encrypt their phones’ bootloaders. Such manufacturers include HTC, Lenovo and Motorola. There’s no way to install your custom recovery on such a device without decrypting the bootloader first (and trying to do so may render your phone useless). To unlock the bootloader, you need to go through the manufacturer’s official process. This will also wipe all data from your phone, so make sure you have everything backed up first. We unlocked the bootloader of an HTC One X+ using the official instructions at htcdev.com, and found it worked perfectly; the only difficulty was having to use Notepad to reformat the unlock token downloaded from the phone, before submitting it to HTC. For other manufacturers’ phones, search Google for the model…

Clive Webster has been tinkering with computers ever since Windows 98 forced him to manually install his drivers clive@computershopper.co.uk THERMAL CAMERAS USED to cost thousands of pounds. If you were trying to identify heat leaks in your home’s walls or roof, you’d have to hire one for hundreds of pounds a day. But thanks to a cheap infra-red sensor from Panasonic, you can now make a thermal camera for under £100 and use it for all kinds of useful – or silly – reasons. A thermal camera can help identify pipes under the floor, you can map where the hot and cold spots are in your oven, or gauge how effective your thermal blinds really are. Or you could just run around the house pretending to be the Predator. AT…

Lightroom with a view I agree with much Ben Pitt has said about Adobe Lightroom being the best Raw workflow software around (Multimedia Expert, Shopper 362). However, there are many, like me, who use Lightroom/ Photoshop Elements but only as and when needed. A yearly subscription is simply far too expensive and unnecessary for our needs. Remaining with our own copies of Lightroom seems reasonable, providing Adobe continues to support the standalone version. If changing software is the preferred option, you recommend DxO PhotoLab, but note that it does not support layers. I suggest you look at ON1 Photo Raw 2018, which supports layers, interacts with Lightroom and Photoshop and can be used as a standalone or a plug-in. Hope it’s not too late for it to appear in your…

CYBER CRIMINALS ARE motivated by money. They’ll try any trick that can get them the most cash in the easiest way. The latest scam is to use your PC to start mining cryptocurrencies, earning the criminals coins at the expense of your computer’s processing power. Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin work through a process called mining. With a cryptocurrency network, nodes (known as miners) verify all transactions, combining a series of them into a new block. As the verification process is processor-intensive and complex, this takes a lot of computational power. To motivate people to devote computing resources, cryptocurrency networks reward miners that create new blocks of transactions with coins. Typically, the trade-off is that the miners have to spend a lot of money on their rigs and face large electricity…

▸ For the den Simply put, the Samsung HW-MS750 is the best standalone soundbar money can buy. Admittedly it costs a lot of money, partly since this is a big, 1,150mm-wide unit designed for 49in TVs and upward, yet listening to it will convince you that it’s worth every penny. Despite lacking a subwoofer and side speakers (these can be easily added via the HW-MS750’s enormous assortment of ports), the depth, richness and positional sensation that comes out of this soundbar is magnificent. Samsung’s anti-distortion tech also helps deliver a powerful, impactful low end, and absolutely not at the expense of more delicate songs and soundtracks. (Page 40) ▸ For the wallet There are limitations to the Now TV Smart Stick, chiefly that it will only stream in 720p until…

Iceland Mining digital gold Cryptocurrency mining in Iceland is consuming so much power that it’s overtaking the nation’s domestic electricity use. That’s according to Icelandic energy firm HS Orka, which says it may not be able to produce enough electricity to satisfy demand. Mining cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin involves tasking computers to crunch through equations to generate virtual coins; this can suck up an enormous amount of energy. Many companies looking to get into the Bitcoin boom have set up mining operations in Iceland due to its abundance of energy. Germany Facebook under fire Facebook’s privacy standards have come under fire, with a court ruling that the social network had not sought the consent of users to access their personal data. The Federation of German Consumer Organisations found that parts…

“It’s kind of silly and fun. But silly and fun things are important” Elon Musk, Space X CEO, on sending a Tesla sports car into space “The technology is there. There are tools out there that can do exactly what we’re asking for. For smaller companies, this could be ideal” Home Secretary Amber Rudd has high hopes for a new extremistcontent blocking tool “Creating in an interactive medium is totally different from doing that in a passive medium” Nintendo’s top video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto on the plans to bring Mario Kart to smartphones “I didn’t see it happen, but I mean, it was already fried. You can see flame damage” Florida gym fan Jason Colon believes one of his Apple AirPods spontaneously combusted “We see these mining scripts on…

£1,600 • From www.chillblast.com VERDICT The Fusion Saturn delivers on premium performance, but high noise (and a high price) bring it down to earth CHILLBLAST’S ASTRONOMICAL NAME for the Fusion Saturn is fitting, because it runs and sounds like a rocket. Inside, there’s plenty of brawn from an 8GB Asus ROG Strix GTX 1070 Ti graphics card, as well as 16GB of DDR4 RAM and an up-to-date Intel Core i5-8600K, overclocked from 3.6GHz to 4.5GHz. This speed boost has, as you would hope, been accommodated by an AIO watercooler: a 120mm unit affixed where the rear exhaust fan would usually sit by itself. The bad news is that this component is entirely responsible for the distracting whirr that emits from the Fusion Saturn when it’s faced with anything approaching an…

£125 • From www.yoyotech.co.uk VERDICT The H400i is a luxurious case for smaller motherboards – just don’t expect to stuff it with hard disks AS IF THE name didn’t give it away, it’s clear that the H400i is a shrunk-down, microATX version of NZXT’s mid-tower H700i (Shopper 361). There’s the slightly flared, vented trim around the front, the full tempered glass side panel, the otherwise metal-rich construction, the dotted PSU shroud and that chunky cable management bar – it’s all here, just in a smaller box that sticks to microATX and Mini-ITX motherboards rather than stretching to ATX and EATX as well. THAT SMARTS That’s not to mention the ‘smart device’, NZXT’s signature addition to its i-branded cases. This small box, mounted inside, is peppered with fan and RGB lighting…

£250 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT A smart and powerful router, with a couple of unique tricks available to it TP-LINK HAS MADE some of our favourite routers, so we were keen to get our hands on its latest model, the Archer C5400. As well as having the latest wireless standards, this router also integrates with IFTTT, giving you a couple of neat tricks that can help you automate your home or add extra security. As with previous TP-Link routers, the Archer C5400 has a neat design. From inside its square body, the router’s eight antennas fold up to give you the best wireless signal. It makes initial setup of the router easy, as you don’t need to attach antennas and stand them in the best position. At the back, there…

£559 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The EOS 200D is a good performer that’s both cheap and compact by DSLR standards THE CANON EOS 200D is a low-cost DSLR designed for people making the transition from a smartphone or compact camera. It’s remarkably small and light for an SLR, coming in at around 8mm less in all three dimensions than the Canon EOS 800D (Shopper 362). It isn’t as compact as its predecessor, the Canon EOS 100D, but the addition of a fully articulated touchscreen and a more substantial handgrip make that easy to forgive. Its diminutive proportions make it a viable option for people who might otherwise be tempted by a compact system camera (CSC). CSCs tend to be smaller than SLRs as they dispense with the optical viewfinder and…

£699 • From www.htc.com/uk VERDICT HTC squeezes a little more screen on to the U11+, but raises the price even higher THE BIG SMARTPHONE bandwagon of 2017 was 18:9 screens, with most of the major manufacturers jumping on board. HTC missed out on the initial wave, but it’s now put that right with the launch of the HTC U11+. Aside from the bezel-less display (more on that later), the U11+ looks and feels eerily similar to the original HTC U11 (Shopper 355). As before, the rear is coated in a mirror-finish rear panel topped with glass that veers between a subtle reflective grey and a darker black, depending on where you catch the light. It’s still a marvellous sight, although we can’t say we’re not disappointed at the lack of…

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 If you’re ready to step beyond the basic controls of a compact camera, or you want greater flexibility than an ultra-zoom can offer, a compact system camera (CSC) is the next logical upgrade. With interchangeable lenses, manual controls and stellar image quality, these cameras give proper digital SLRs a run for their money. 02 There are three competing types of CSC mount, and the one you buy determines the number of compatible lenses and accessories you have available. Samsung’s NX-mount is arguably the most limited in terms of lens selection, and the company has confirmed that it’s shutting down its European camera business, so it’s best to avoid these altogether if possible. Sony’s E-Mount has a slightly wider range, but Micro Four Thirds offers the widest variety. Both Panasonic…

01 Bluetooth speakers come in all shapes and sizes, so you’ll need to decide what you want to do with the speaker before you buy. If you don’t plan to take your music outdoors or around the house, look for a wired speaker. These are typically cheaper than speakers with built-in batteries. If you do want a portable speaker, however, pay particular attention to how much it weighs. Ruggedised models should be able to survive accidental drops, water spills and unexpected rain showers. 02 Many of the cheapest Bluetooth speakers use the lossy A2DP Bluetooth protocol, which is prone to compressing your music and discarding detail compared with the original recording. It’s hard to tell the difference when listening to pocket-sized speakers, but if you’re looking for a speaker to…

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…

Homes are incredibly personal, full of our most important and treasured possessions. The thought of someone breaking in and taking any of our stuff fills the hardiest of us with horror. There are two main ways you can protect your home and things: make it harder for burglars to operate, and provide a method of collecting evidence. SECURITY CAMERAS Security cameras are a good way to deter burglars and to collect evidence along the way. Both internal and external security cameras are available. Our group test of the best cameras (see page 82) shows you the best models and how to choose the right system for your home. We also cover where to place the cameras, so you can get the best coverage and collect the right type of evidence.…

£159 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A smart all-in-one security system that can detect unusual sounds in your home THERE’S USUALLY A degree of setting up and configuring that goes with any new security camera. The Cocoon Security system aims to be better than that, and is designed to be set-and-forget, combining a camera with a siren for an all-in-one system. Configuring the Cocoon is easy using the accompanying app. You just create a user account, enter your network details and then tap the button to transmit the details to the Cocoon; the data is transmitted using audio, like an old-fashioned modem. Once the Cocoon is connected to your network, it’s designed to be plug and play. The main difference between the Cocoon Security system and its rivals is the built-in…

£299 • From store.nest.com/uk VERDICT It’s beautifully made, with great image quality and incredible face recognition, but the Cam IQ is very expensive ADVANCES IN CLOUD processing, faster broadband speeds and better mobile processors should mean that smart security cameras are capable of much more than just online remote control and saving footage to the cloud. Nest seems to think so, too, as its Cam IQ is one of the smartest cameras around, using a 4K sensor at its heart. From the outside, the Cam IQ looks similar to the Nest Cam Outdoor (page 92). Its conical body, covered in high-quality plastic, looks just as good inside the home as it does outside. Indoor use has slightly different requirements to external use, so the Outdoor Cam’s magnetic mount has been…

£130 • From www.y-cam.com VERDICT A great price, small body and decent quality make the Y-cam Evo a winner, but its cloud storage is expensive GOOGLE’S NEST CAM has reinvigorated the market for simple, easy-to-use home security cameras in recent times, to the point at which they’ve become mainstream products. We’ve never come across one as small as the dinky Y-cam Evo, however. It measures just 12.8mm thick, is 52mm wide and tall, and weighs a tiddling 49g; in fact, it’s so small that it would be barely noticeable if you hid it on top of a bookcase, or even in a hollowed-out hardback (although it would have to be something fairly hefty: War and Peace, perhaps, or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). Despite its tiny size, the Evo…

£250 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT Smart motion detection and an integrated security light make this a great front door camera THE FAR GREATER range of movement outside, compared to indoors, means that you can get swamped with alerts from some external security cameras. The Netatmo Presence is designed to be smarter, and can detect the difference in movement, so you’re only notified about the events that interest you. Throw in its integrated security light, and it comes across as the perfect answer to front door security. SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED Installation of the Presence is a bit of a pain, as it has no plug and needs to be wired directly into the mains. If you already have an outside light, you can use the existing wiring; if not, you’ll probably…

£290 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A good-looking fitness watch with a great screen and battery life, but afflicted by a multitude of niggles THE IONIC IS FITBIT’S most fully featured tracker to date – in fact, it would be more accurate to call it a fitness watch – but it’s also the firm’s most expensive. In exchange for your £239, you get both waterproofing and Bluetooth (both absent on its spiritual predecessor, the Blaze), not to mention some utterly gorgeous looks. True, some might prefer a slimmer band or rounded watchface design, but to our eyes the Ionic’s square-edged profile looks fantastic, and the textured rubber wristband (both small and large sizes are included in the box) can be swapped out for £25 two-tone rubber or £50 leather straps. The…

£178 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT These fitness-tracking headphones may or may not be the future, but they’re certainly an interesting and often successful experiment HERE’S SOMETHING A bit different: a fitness tracker than takes the form of AI-powered in-ear headphones, rather than a wrist-mounted watch or band. Besides being cheaper and looking less daft than other major efforts (namely the Oakley Radar Pace, a ghastly pair of sunglasses with ear buds on either arm), the Vi appeals straight away with its minimalism: it connects to your phone via Bluetooth, but the earbuds are hard-wired to a plastic collar that fits comfortably around the neck. From there, you can control the volume and switch it on and off, and it also has a microphone built-in so you can talk to your…

£283 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Gear Sport is Samsung’s first fully waterproof smartwatch, but it falls short of being a proper multisport watch THE GEAR S3 (Shopper 350) was an outstanding smartwatch, in both its sporty Frontier and formal Classic guises, and we were particularly impressed by its whopping five-day battery life. Rather than immediately get to work on a Gear S4, however, Samsung’s next big wearable turned out to be the even more fitness-focused Gear Sport, which slots in just below the Gear S3 in the Korean firm’s product hierarchy. This means it costs a bit less, but crucially also makes a few compromises in terms of features. It’s not all bad news, however. The Gear Sport is Samsung’s first smartwatch (it precedes the Gear Fit2 Pro, although…

Send your problems to businesshelp@computershopper.co.uk Staying in the background I’ve got an exploded pie chart that I want to use in a document I’ve created in Word 2010. However, the chart has a background, and I’d rather just have the pie segments without the overall chart background. I don’t have access to the original data or the program that created the chart. Is there a way to prevent Word showing the background of an image? Ronnie Allen There’s an option in Word that will remove fills and backgrounds from images and clip art, though its effectiveness varies depending on what it is that you’re trying to show, and what you’re removing. It works well on clearly defined shapes, so your pie chart should be fine. If you were attempting to…

Back to Basic Further to the interesting BBC Micro article (Retro, Shopper 361), BBC Basic was sophisticated for the time, with procedures, functions, indirection operators, long variable names and Repeat…Until loops. It gave extensive access to the operating system and an in-line assembler, which ran code directly from Basic CALLs. More importantly, it lives on, in a much-enhanced form running on PCs as BBC Basic for Windows. It now uses all the Windows graphics modes, with 24-bit colour, links to the Windows API, libraries, hardware interfacing, a comprehensive help window and sets of examples. It can even compile code to an EXE file. Line numbers are optional; for example, only for legacy GoTo/GoSubs, which can be recoded out anyway. It also offers IEE64 precision floating-point variables. Like the original Basic,…

Madeline Bennett RANTS VAR. WHOEVER KNEW that this combination of three simple letters could cause misery to thousands, and stand testament to why technology and sport shouldn’t always mix? As of 28th February, I certainly do. For the uninitiated, VAR stands for video assistant referee. For many years, technology has been creeping into the sports arena, mostly with positive results. The introduction of Hawk-Eye has meant quick and accurate decisions over whether the ball was in or out in tennis matches, and has given cricket umpires help with LBW decisions; data analytics has been hailed as the reason baseball team the Houston Astros won the 2017 World Series. One place that has remained relatively untouched by technology has been the football pitch, which still relies on good old-fashioned human insight…

Artificial intelligence An AI called LawGeex beat lawyers at their own game by reviewing nondisclosure agreements in a fraction of the time it took humans to do so Go Android Go Google’s slimmed-down take on Android made a splash at this year’s Mobile World Congress, debuting in cheap and cheerful handsets Legacy phone makers Despite a fall from grace, Nokia has returned to the phone world and is now the UK’s third most popular phone brand Digital digging Cryptocurrency looks to be going mainstream as more and more people invest and ‘mine’ it, legally or in a clandestine fashion Cloudy business Apple’s iCloud service, supporting many online macOS and iOS features, actually uses Google Cloud, which is particularly embarrassing as Tim Cook had previously poked fun at Google’s data hoarding…

£1,400 • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT The ZenBook 3 Deluxe looks good and runs well, but it’s expensive for what it is THE ZENBOOK 3 Deluxe is a follow-up to one of Asus’s best laptops, the ZenBook 3 (Shopper 350). Featuring a larger 14in screen, more ports and a handful of other improvements, the ZenBook 3 Deluxe is a premium ultraportable with designs on unseating the likes of the Dell XPS 13 and Apple’s MacBook Pro as king of the hill. While many manufacturers opt for an understated, business-like black or silver colour scheme for their sleekest laptops, Asus has done the opposite, cladding the ZenBook 3 Deluxe in a rich, midnight-blue chassis with gold detailing, just like the original ZenBook 3. Not only is this significantly more eye-catching than other,…

£448 • From www.shop.bt.com VERDICT An HDR-ready monitor with great build quality and high colour accuracy, but it’s not without blemishes HDR, OR HIGH Dynamic Range, has been making an aggressive expansion from its TV roots: from smartphone and laptop screens to support from streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Video, HDR is everywhere. That also includes desktop monitors, with the Samsung C27HG70 (Shopper 358) and now Philips’ Brilliance 328P6AUBREB adopting the quality-boosting technology. The Brilliance line is filled with well-built, attractive monitors, and the 328P6AUBREB is no exception. Its SmartErgoBase stand provides –5° to 20° of tilt adjustment, 180mm of height adjustment and 340° of swivel, which is about as flexible as a monitor stand can get. It’s also possible to spin the screen 90° and view it…

£199 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Sonos, Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant join forces in this great-sounding smart speaker WHEN IT COMES to multiroom audio, Sonos stands head and shoulders above the competition. The reason for its success is simple: the Sonos family of speakers blend superb sound quality, an easy-to-use mobile app and mesh Wi-Fi networking to spread music effortlessly around the home. Now, the Sonos One takes that one step further: it combines Sonos’ multiroom talents with the latest in voice control from Amazon Alexa and, coming some time later in 2018, Google Assistant, too. CAN BE RECYCLED Take one glance at the Sonos One, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’re looking at the other compact speaker in Sonos’s family, the £149 Play:1 (Shopper 345). Indeed, put…

£15 • www.nowtv.com VERDICT Sky has made its streamer much smaller and cheaper, but you still can’t stream 1080p content – for now SKY’S NOW TV streaming service is no stranger to UK homes, but it’s far from flawless. A ‘me too’ alternative to rather pricey Sky Q premium TV contracts, Now TV has been playing second fiddle for years; forced to stream at 720p resolution and lacking any live TV pausing powers. The Now TV Smart Stick might initially look like a continuation of the status quo; it will support 1080p streaming, but not until an as-yet unspecified date in late 2018, so for the time being it’s hard to think of it as much more than a modestly updated Now TV Smart Box (Shopper 346). Then again, the…

£120 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT With its circular display, Amazon’s smart alarm clock is a decent, cheaper alternative to the Echo Show THE ECHO SPOT is the last of Amazon’s refreshed range of Alexa-powered devices to be released, a line-up that includes the likes of the Echo Plus and Echo Show (both Shopper 361), but this is arguably the most interesting of the lot. Indeed, there’s far more to it than its ‘smart alarm clock’ description implies. The main appeal of the Echo Spot compared to the larger Echo Show – besides the lower price of £120 to the Echo Show’s £200 – is its size and the way it looks. It’s spherical in shape and about the size of a grapefruit, with a portion of the bottom sliced off…

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 Action cameras are typically much smaller than a regular camcorder, as they are designed to be mounted to a bike, board or car, or worn on your person. As the name suggests, they are designed primarily for shooting action footage, but because of their small size they are ideal for strapping on to your pet’s collar or your children’s toys for a different perspective. 02 Almost all action cameras will shoot Full HD video, and some will even shoot 4K, but frame rate is arguably more important than resolution when it comes to action video. Higher frame rates will mean smoother clips, and super-high frame rate videos can be played in slow motion to emphasise exciting shots. Keep an eye out for 4k/30, 1080p/60 and 720p/120 models for the…

01 You should be able to buy a decent inkjet printer for less than £40. High-quality printing is possible on such a printer, but it will be slow. The actual print speed of an inkjet can be half the quoted (maximum) speed for text documents, and even slower when printing graphics. Budget inkjet printers such as these are designed only for light use and can be expensive to run. 02 For £60 you can buy a much more capable printer that’s either faster and better built or better at reproducing photos. If documents are your priority, you’ll want a high minimum speed and low print costs. Look for inkjets that can handle all your office media, such as envelopes and labels. 03 If photos are your priority, speed is less…

01 You really don’t have to spend much to buy a decent graphics card that can drive multiple monitors. The AMD Radeon R7 250 costs less than £60, for example, and while it isn’t suited to playing the latest games in Full HD, it is perfect for watching videos, browsing the web and playing basic games. 02 You’ll need to spend more money if you want to play the latest games. A good mid-range gaming graphics card is the Nvidia GTX 1050, which is powerful enough to play any of the latest games. High-powered cards tend to be more expensive, so expect to pay over £300 if you want to play games in Ultra HD at the highest quality settings. 03 Check that your chosen card has the graphics outputs…

£150 • From www.apple.com/uk VERDICT Apple HomeKit compatibility makes this camera stand out, but it’s still a rather basic model APPLE’S HOMEKIT HASN’T really taken off yet, with relatively few products available for the system that’s designed to integrate your smart home control into a single app. It’s refreshing, then, to see the D-Link Omna 180 Cam HD, which is built to work with Apple’s system. When it was first launched, the Omna 180 worked with iOS devices only, but D-Link has recently added an Android app into the mix. That’s much better, as the previous restriction made the camera rather inflexible. GETTING AROUND As you’d expect for something designed for use with Apple products, the Omna 180 is a great-looking camera. Its cylindrical body and metal-effect finish look great;…

£120 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT A very smart security camera that uses facial recognition to cut down on false alerts IF YOU WANT your security camera to be really smart, the Netatmo Welcome could well be the model for you. Most domestic security cameras provide CCTV-style monitoring and motion-triggered clip recording, but the Welcome goes one better, adding facial recognition to the mix. The result? The Welcome can keep track of anyone entering your home, and even record footage when it sees certain people. Need to know when your kids are back from school or when your partner comes home? The Netatmo Welcome promises to keep you updated. GET GOING Rather than the plastic finishes of its competitors, the Netatmo Welcome is predominantly constructed from sleek, gold-anodised aluminium, harking back…

£146 • From www.ballicom.co.uk VERDICT This camera is stylish, but there are better, cheaper alternatives ZYXEL’S AURORA VIDEO camera looks great. Its triangular head reminds us of a Star Wars droid rather than a security product. That’s good news, as you’re more likely to want to have the Aurora on display, which means that it’s more likely to be noticed and, therefore, may put off any opportunistic thieves. The Aurora attaches to a neat desktop stand, letting you point, tilt and swivel the camera to get the best view of your room. If you prefer, the camera can be wall-mounted using the provided bracket, or you can use its magnetic base to attach it directly to a metal surface. Once powered on for the first time via the provided USB…

£169 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A top system for anyone that wants to monitor inside or out, but the price is quite high IF YOU WANT to monitor both inside and outside your home with one simple integrated system, the Netgear Arlo could well be the product for you. Battery-powered cameras mean you can place them anywhere you like, without having to find a nearby mains socket to power them – or drill holes in your walls to run cables. It also means you can pick up the cameras and move them around whenever you fancy: you can pop a camera on a shelf to monitor the baby when you put them to bed, for instance, then move the camera to the kitchen to keep an eye on the cat…

BIG BUDGETS APPLE Watch Series 3 At £429 for the most tricked-out, 42mm model, the Watch Series 3 is about as expensive as we’ve come to expect from Apple – even Fitbit’s most luxurious tracker yet, the £290 Ionic, doesn’t come close. That said, the Apple Watch is gorgeously well made, and makes an admirable effort to set itself apart from other hybrid smartwatches. For starters, there’s 4G connectivity, which makes this an incredibly flexible fitness aid straight from the off. And, despite the series’ origins as a straight-faced smartwatch, it’s also a near-complete sports tracker, providing much more in-depth data about your activities than on previous models. EVERYDAY MULTISPORT SAMSUNG Gear Fit2 Pro With the addition of full waterproofing and swim-tracking support, Samsung’s premier fitness band is finally complete.…

£240 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT This brilliantly versatile watch delivers multisport tracking, GPS and all-day heart-rate tracking in a slim, lightweight package LIKE THE APPLE Watch Series 3 and Samsung Gear Sport, the Vivoactive 3 aims to mix up the standard fitness wearable formula by including features such as NFC payments and notification responses. Importantly, it’s not a smartwatch in the Android Wear vein, because the range of compatible apps just isn’t that broad. Instead, it’s best to think of it as a wearable that bridges the gap between fitness devices and smartwatches, rather than something that fully combines the two. FIT FOR FITNESS While this may be a perfectly valid design approach, the Vivoactive 3 doesn’t convince on appearance. The brushed stainless steel bezel looks nice enough, but the…

£169 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT It’s big, fat and hard to live with permanently, but the M430 is much better when you break it out for running specifically POLAR MIGHT NOT have the same brand recognition as Fitbit or Garmin, but we’ve become rather taken with its M430 tracker. That’s not to say it’s without its flaws. For starters, it has a watchface that only a parent conglomerate could love: a monochrome 128x128 display with a thick, black bezel around the edge, encased in a design that protrudes 12mm out from the wrist. And chunkiness isn’t its only problem: despite being peppered with holes for breathability, the rubber strap could be a lot more comfortable. It’s not a total design bust, however. The control scheme, comprising five side-mounted buttons, is…

Send your problems to help@computershopper.co.uk Wi-Fi have you forsaken me? I have a problem that seems to defy all logic. I have a Fritz!Box 3490 router (see Shopper 327) and several devices in the house that see a strong signal and can attach to its wireless network. Recently I bought a Kobo Aura Edition 2 eReader, which is when I first encountered the problem. The Aura shows little or no Wi-Fi signal from the Fritz!Box and can’t join the network. Naturally, this means I can’t buy or download books without attaching the reader to a computer. I initially thought the device must be faulty. Last week, however, the plot thickened. My daughter visited, and found that her Samsung phone – which she’s previously been able to use on my Wi-Fi…

Photographer, musician, sound engineer, designer and video producer Ben Pitt guides you through a multimedia project ben@computershopper.co.uk IN LAST MONTH’S Multimedia Expert (Shopper 362), we took an in-depth look at the new, cloud-based Adobe Lightroom CC, and examined what the changes meant for new and existing users. We found a complex array of options for existing Lightroom users, with most involving a price hike. Access to Lightroom now starts at £119 per year; there’s no option to buy it outright. The £119 option offers two choices: Lightroom CC and 1TB of cloud storage, or Lightroom Classic and CC, Photoshop CC and 20GB of storage. To get all three apps and 1TB of storage costs £238. One option we outlined briefly last month was to jump ship and switch to a…