Indice dei contenuti per June 2018 in PC & Tech Authority

There’s a scandal brewing, one that could quickly evolve into lawsuits and even anti-competitive government investigations. And Nvidia is at the center of it. It all centers around a new contract Nvidia has recently rolled out known as the GeForce Partner program (or GPP). It’s a contract between Nvidia and OEM graphics card companies (i.e. Asus, MSI etc.), and it requires that these partners cease selling competitor products under their gaming brands. So, that would mean, for example, that Asus could no longer sell AMD Radeon products under its premium and much-loved ROG brand. Why Nvidia would do that is clear and sadly obvious. It’s purely to hurt AMD in the market. But why an OEM partner would even consider signing the GPP contract is where it gets really evil.…

Repairing PCs can be anything from easy, to impossible, with shades of intrigue and frustration in between. Problems like John from TI Computers raised in the Shop Talk section are the best kind, somewhat easy to diagnose and extremely easy to fix, the sort you walk away from feeling like a total boss because it takes just of a few minutes to solve. Then you get down right strange ones like Jaimie’s tale from Leader Computers that will live with you forever. I recently had an interesting PC repair which started with me arriving at work to find someone’s PC on my desk. I’m told it “blew up” and to check it out and fix it. After asking some questions, I establish that this PC had started filling up the…

“a world immersed in IoT is coming, and it needs to be a safe one” Back in the depths of computing history, when Microsoft was the dark side and Linux was a pasty young up-start, a thing happened. Specifically, Microsoft went from hoping Linux would just silently go away to an all-out campaign to discredit it, culminating with that most famous of quotes in 2001 from Steve Ballmer calling Linux a ‘cancer’. Today, Microsoft has just released its own Linux distribution. One might be compelled to look outside to see if the sky is, indeed, falling but in truth it’s not that much of a surprise. Ever since Satya Nadella’s turn at the helm, if not a little before, Microsoft has steadily moved from ‘Linux is the enemy’ to ‘Linux…

No high end motherboard comparison would be complete without an entry from the Asus ROG series. Now that Ryzen is well and truly shaking up the market, the Crosshair has a lot more eyes upon it. Like the Maximus or Rampage, the Crosshair is suddenly a critical product for Asus, a flagship product that serves as the torchbearer for the entire Asus AM4 range. Can it continue to enhance the ROG legacy? As you’d expect from any ROG board, the feature list is comprehensive. A single 8 pin power connector is adequate for normal overclocking operations, and Asus has included an extra 4 pin connector if you need the extra juice for chasing some HWbot points. Asus’ software suite is also worthy of praise, being particularly comprehensive and functional. A…

Is this the smartwatch that breaks into the mainstream? Fitbit hopes so. It’s stripped away the non-essentials from its first smartwatch, the Fitbit Ionic, to provide a cut-down price and a cut-down size. In doing so, it also hopes to attract more ladies to the smartwatch party, which until now has been dominated by men. Albeit the kind of men who glance nervously at their smartwatches and and refuse to dance. The obvious benefit is the size of the watch on the wrist. I’m used to wearing a bulky Garmin Fenix 5X, so the Versa feels ridiculously compact and lightweight in comparison. Women who are used to wearing delicate and featherlight watches may not feel quite the same, of course. Admitedly, it loses out to designer watches for style, despite…

The Samsung Galaxy S9+ is, as you’d expect it to be, a bigger version of the Galaxy S9. It has a larger screen and a bigger battery than its smaller sibling, and (inevitably) a significantly higher price. Last year, that’s where the differences ended between the two Galaxy S8 phones, and I was reluctant to recommend the Galaxy S8+. This year, the gap has widened: Samsung has finally added dual-camera capability to one of its mainstream flagship phones, and the result is that the Samsung Galaxy S9+ now has much more to recommend it. As a camera, it’s nigh-on identical to the Galaxy S9, right down to the f/1.5 aperture and the odd way it catches images in bright light. Here, though, the second camera provides a telephoto view -…

$79.95 • www.cvygnett.com/au • Score: 4/5 The Cygnett wireless desk charger is disk shaped device, around the same size as a beer coaster. It charges any device Qi certified. Simply plug in with the cables provided, then lay your chosen device on the base station, voila – charging begins. It supports 9V fast charging so your device won’t take forever to get juiced up, it also has a non-slip surface which helps when your phone has an incoming call it won’t vibrate off the charging station. It can charge through your protective case (provided said case is under 3mm thickness) While it is an elegant solution the fact that it is powered by a micro USB cable that needs to be plugged into a socket makes me question why wouldn’t…

$109 • www.hyperxgaming.com • Score: 4/5 Many RGB mice have passed under our palms but this is hands-down the nicest looking. It carefully straddles totally over the top with relative subtlety, creating a sharp line of illumination that looks gorgeous. You can of course go gaudy and have rainbow cycling, but I think it looks grand enough with a static colour. It’ll do cycling and static red with no software, or pretty much whatever you want with the NGenuity app installed. I think this is my new favorite mouse. The lightness means easy speed of movement and the comfort is bang on perfect, with it arched just enough for palm-resters but with room for claw grippers to feel right at home. DPI runs up 16,000 which is definitely at the…

It’s tempting to see two-bay NAS appliances as entry-level devices, but the AS6302T proves that this doesn’t have to be the case. As well as an Apollo Lake Celeron processor and 2GB of RAM, expandable to 8GB, it packs an impressive number of inputs and outputs: one USB-C and three USB 3 Type-A ports, a 4K-capable HDMI 2 output and S/PDIF. This enables the Asustor to double as both media server and player through the Asus Portal and ever-popular Kodi app. It’s well designed, with a robust steel chassis and slide-out caddies, although the two drives have to be screwed into these. The flashing blue and green status LED bars on the front are a little exuberant, but can be toned down. It’s also a frugal beast, using around 14W…

It’s not often you find a NAS that’s eye-catching – the best you can usually hope for is discrete – but the ReadyNAS 422 makes a bigger first impression. It’s larger and heftier than your usual two-bay NAS with a bright two-line LED display, but it’s the cross-shaped layout of cursor controls that dominate the flap that sits front and centre of the NAS. The display provides useful info and comes in handy if you need to reset the NAS, and underneath the flap you’ll find the drive bays, featuring ingenious tool-less caddies that make fitting disks easy (although 2.5in drives will need to be screwed in). The overall build is well thought out and reassuringly robust. Sadly, you can’t use the onboard controls to initialise the NAS. Instead you…

Effectively a two-bay version of the N4810, the Thecus N2810Pro gives you the same features and performance inside a smaller chassis. Like its larger sibling, it’s a hugely versatile NAS, particularly if you’re looking for a unit that can also work as a media streamer sitting under a monitor or TV. Hook up the NAS using the HDMI 2 or Display-Port 1.4 video outputs, and you’re equipped for downloading, storing and sharing 1080p and 4K video files. It has the spec to play them, too, with a Celeron N3160 quad-core processor and 4GB of RAM, which is upgradable to 8GB if you’re happy to disassemble the NAS and chuck away the existing SODIMM. We’re not 100% convinced by the physical design: the N2810 isn’t as elegant as Synology’s DS218 and…

When we looked at NAS back in 2014, the big news was the development of cloud-style sync capabilities. Synology, Qnap and Netgear had imbued their high-end NAS appliances with remote access share and sync features, then backed those up with desktop apps that synced specific folders between the NAS and multiple PCs – plus mobile apps for access on the move. Effectively, you could run your own Google Drive or Dropbox from within your home or office, only with terabytes of free capacity and none of the third-party privacy implications. Since then, things have moved on. Some firms, notably Synology and Qnap, have developed Notes apps that sync text and images between your NAS and a desktop client, or allow you to edit notes stored online within your browser. WD’s…

Building better batteries will take years – but our smartphones will run out in hours. In the meantime, Dr Tazdin Amietszajew has your back. Rather than invent a completely new battery – with the materials science, chemical compounds and threat of explosion that involves – the researcher at the University of Warwick and his colleagues have instead created sensors to embed in existing battery designs. These let manufacturers know exactly how far we can push those technologies for faster charge times and more capacity. Right now, the threat of overheating means that we don’t push batteries very hard, but better data means we can expand their capabilities without dangerous consequences. For us, that means a smartphone or laptop that lasts longer and charges faster – without pesky explosions. We spoke…

THE ACCESS KEY REGISTRATION FOR THESE APPS CLOSES ON 01/07/18 HOW TO GET YOUR FREE APPS Simply visit www.apps.pcauthority.com.au and enter the unique Access Key for this issue of PC & Tech Authority, along with your email address. The access key for this issue is: bGR7bfMHjy. You can then view the current apps and download, install and register (if required) them. That’s it, simple. We hope you get good use from the apps! TROUBLESHOOTING AND CONTACT INFO We have general help information on the PCTA Apps site (www.apps.pcauthority.com.au). If you are having trouble using the Access key or are having issues registering the Apps please contact us via feedback@pcauthority.com. au. Please note that we can’t help you with any issues you might have using the apps themselves, but each app…

If you’re the “techno-hero” for your friends and family, I salute you. Our business has been providing technohero services to home users since 2003 and we’re needed now more than ever. I’m not using the term as a self-aggrandising label, but it’s the kind of compliment given after rescuing customers from tech snares, scams and other nonsense. Obviously, customers do ridiculous things – such as sawing the end off a stick of DDR RAM to fit it into a laptop. However, most make rational assumptions with the vague information given by tech firms that often presume too much knowledge. Take the term “wireless”, for example. One lady reported that her laptop wouldn’t connect to Wi-Fi, but her other wireless device was fine. We discovered that her router was faulty and…

CPU PATCH SLOWDOWNS I have applied the Microcode Updates to an Ivy Bridge laptop with Intel RST RAID in mirror mode (RAID 1) Performing a RAID initialization I noticed a massive decrease in performance while the array was being initialised due to the high number of read and write operations (at least 30% longer). These microcode patches will bite if there are a large number of disk operations being performed. Intel RST is a software RAID solution, therefore it uses the CPU to do its RAID functions. This means a lot of system calls to the OS to allow reading and writing to the array. I would hate to see what the performance impact would be on other software based RAID solutions using older x86-64 processors with other RAID levels.…

CPU RYZEN 2 HITS A SIXER With new Ryzen 2 processors hitting the market, many owners and reviewers alike will of course be pushing them to the limits to see how well they overclock. With regular 24/7 overclock voltages of around 1.25v it seems 4.0 or 4.1GHz is obtainable (on all cores). Typically, a couple of hundred better than the first-generation Ryzen parts. For some folks though, this isn’t enough. Asus invited some of the top overclockers in the world, including Der8auer and Neo, to its headquarters in Taiwan to try and smash some records, namely the 5.9GHz clock speed record from a previous gen six core Ryzen. Using an Asus ROG Crosshair VII HERO motherboard, they managed to get an R7 2700X up to an amazing (but unstable) 6009MHz…

CPL ONLINE RYZEN 5 GAMING PC RYZEN 5 GAMING PC $1,079 • https://tinyurl.com/y9s9lmuc A hexacore gaming PC for just over a grand? It sounds nuts, but thanks to CPL it’s a reality. This system is best suited for cheaper or indie game titles, the GTX 1050 Ti with just 4GB of memory won’t be of much use with monitors above 1080p resolutions, and even then, potentially with visuals lowered depending on the title. The CPU is interesting, capable for gaming but even more so if you do any heavy productivity work, or perhaps Twitch streaming on the fly. The big red cross against this system is the system memory. A single stick of 2133MHz is not only underrating the CPUs preferred memory speed, it also robs the system of running in…

If you asked a computer enthusiast what the most important features were when buying a new monitor, they may well talk about size, price, display and gaming performance. But there’s a sizeable group of buyers that care only about one thing: realism. This means having colour reproduction that isn’t just better than everything else on the market but accurate enough to ensure that what you see in the real world is what gets accurately reproduced on-screen. This is the realm of expert design professionals, content creators, draftsmen, videographers, filmmakers and photographers. For this group, any deviation in colour expectations can lead to costly reproduction errors and delays. It’s for these people that Asus has created its Ultra High Definition monitors that consistently produce stunning colours in a manner that can…

2D TESTS Desktop PCs and laptops are tested using our own custom bench testing suite, which has been carefully designed to test all aspects of a system and rate them in a way that’s useful to you. Our benchtesting cover three main tests: a typical video editing test, a demanding 4K video editing test and a multitasking test that stresses all aspects of the system. We look at the time it takes for each test to run, which is then compared to our reference PC to produce a normalised result. This score is shown on a graph, and to help you understand just where the PC we’re reviewing sits in the grand scheme of things, we will often include other system’s scores. On occasion we will run publically available bench…

The latest AMD Ryzen processors come highly recommended. The first generation offered a great combination of excellent performance, efficiency and value that has only been enhanced with the release of the second generation Ryzen 2000 series. A CPU release wouldn’t be complete without drool worthy new motherboards to accompany them, and so here we are. Despite the new processors being compatible with 300 series motherboards, there is no question that you should be considering an X470 motherboard only. X470 models generally feature improved power circuitry and heatsinks, better memory performance and compatibility along with additional optimizations and more refined BIOS implementations. It goes without saying that X470 motherboards incorporate all the lessons learned over the first generation X370 and there is no reason to purchase a new X370 motherboard now.…

Gigabyte’s Aorus brand may not have the long standing reputation of Asus’ ROG brand, but they are making great strides towards building their own legacy. They typically strike a great blend of high end features without breaking the bank, something we see repeated here, with the Aorus Gaming 5 going for just $349 at the time of writing. That’s really great value. We’d never describe Aorus boards as subtle, but Gigabyte has clearly toned down the rather extreme use of RGB in favour of a more discrete or refined look. There’s still plenty of lighting adorning the board, but the overall look is a much better blend of bling and functional aesthetics. We like it. The board ships with a default orange theme. Orange is a colour that can appear…

$59.95 • www.razer.com/au • Score: 4/5 The Golithus ‘Chroma’ is an updated version of Razer’s best-selling soft mouse pad that now includes an RGB edging. It’ll do all the usual RGB tricks – breathing, spectrum cycling and reactive, as well as your own custom efforts. When used in conjunction with the essential Razer Synapse software other compatible Razer devices can sync up and RGB in unison. The pad is a soft and flexible cloth and felt terrific with the new HyperX Pulsefire I’m also reviewing. I did use it for a while with a very old mouse with worn Teflon and it occurred to me that these old worn mice are terrible on hard pads, but still nicely glidey on this soft one. So there’s something to consider if your…

$179.95 • www.logitech.com • Score: 5/5 This lovely lump of keyboard is as classy as heck, and that’s half of what it has going for it. The other half is Logitech’s Romer-G switches which I’ve really grown to like. In a world of almost nothing but Cherry switches, and some Razer, these offer a genuine alternative and I wouldn’t be surprised if many people liked them best of all. There’s Linear, which are Cherry Brown-like with a smooth throw and fast rebound, or Tactile which are Cherry Reda-likes with a slight actuation point you can feel mid-press. Frankly I like the Romer-G’s better than Cherrys. They are quieter and less clattery and just feel more premium. Speaking of premium, the 512 Carbon is magical, with a great slab of nice…

Thecus pitches the N4810 as a “high value NAS” and it’s hard to disagree. This four-bay appliance includes dual Gigabit Ethernet connections, HDMI and Display-Port video outputs, a quad-core Celeron N3160 processor and 4GB of RAM, yet you can still find it for close to $600. For this reason alone, we are willing to cut the N4810 a certain amount of slack. General build quality is perfectly good, but the design isn’t as stylish or as effective at noise dampening as Synology’s, and the lockable slide-in caddies feel rougher sliding in and out. Also, the pins on the clips that hold the drives in place are tricky to fit into the relevant holes. On the plus side, remove the casing and you can easily upgrade the RAM from 4GB to…

A sustor’s four-bay NAS won our previous NAS Labs test and is still a contender nearly one year on, combining a powerful spec with some extremely versatile software. The move up from the two-bay AS6302T takes you from the dual-core Celeron J3355 to a quad-core J3455, while RAM leaps from 2GB to 8GB. This gives you scope to run a more demanding set of apps, including virtual servers through VirtualBox and a full Linux desktop with Asus’s Linux Center app. Connect a display to the HDMI port, and a mouse and keyboard via USB, and your NAS can moonlight as a working PC. Moving up the Asustor lineup also nets you a two-line LCD status display along with four navigation buttons, enabling you to check and configure the network connectivity,…

Where there used to be a gulf in capabilities between your basic, budget two-bay NAS and the allsinging, all-dancing appliances, it’s one that’s being bridged by models such as the Synology DS218. $475 buys you a speedy two-bay NAS with all the features of Synology’s DSM operating system plus enough performance to take advantage. The design is classic Synology, with the two tool-less bays protected by a nicely bevelled matte black plastic chassis and the drive bays covered by a curved magnetic flap. With the drives removed you can access an additional SODIMM slot, enabling you to add a further 4GB to the 2GB of installed RAM. It’s a shame that you can’t connect this quiet NAS to a TV and use it as a media player, with no HDMI…

I If you opt for a barebones NAS enclosure, you still have to fill the appliance with drives. This doesn’t necessarily mean filling a four-bay unit – you can start with two drives in a RAID1 configuration and add more – but you are looking at an investment of between $200 and $2,400, with the latter price assuming your NAS can accommodate four 12TB drives. While you can fill a NAS with standard desktop drives, we recommend resisting this approach. Desktop drives are built for the needs of desktop applications and a single user over an average working day; they aren’t designed for 24/7 activity with multiple users and workloads involving many simultaneous read/write operations. Specialist NAS drives are optimised for these conditions and workloads, prioritise resilience over raw throughput…

Like a fine cheese, the NAS market has matured nicely over the past few years. Historically, NAS drives were the preserve of techies and IT managers alone, but they are now commodities: open to all and, if you buy the right one, straightforward to use. At the same time, they have become more powerful. With their quad-core Celeron processors and 4GB to 8GB of RAM, there’s not much to differentiate a mid-range NAS from an entry-level server. And all these appliances now run the same kind of software: a multi-window GUI with a built-in app store, offering a broadly similar range of apps. How, then, do you differentiate between them? Not in terms of pure performance. When it comes to large, sequential transfers you’re more likely to hit the limits…

With the NAS group test this issue we have updated all of our recommendations in that category. PREMIUM LAPTOPS DELL XPS 13 Ultraportable 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. ALTERNATIVES MICROSOFT SURFACE BOOK 2 A unique and versatile laptop with a screen that detaches to become a tablet. LENOVO YOGA 920 An ultra-thin convertible from Lenovo that not only looks great, and has supreme power, but lasted for over 12 hours in our battery tests. HP SPECTRE 13 The best laptop on the market for anyone wanting…

I brought a new hoover. In fact, a new Hoover, given that this was actually from the company of that name. It wasn’t expensive, at just over a hundred notes, but being the irrepressible geek that I am, I went for the one that’s Wi-Fi-attached. I wasn’t quite sure what adding my Hoover to the Wi-Fi would achieve, but I was fairly sure it wouldn’t magically turn it into a Roomba-esque device that would drive itself around the house on my behalf. Indeed, the IoT Hoover is just that – a normal upright Hoover that has some Wi-Fi. Now I’ll confess that I’m not the world’s greatest housekeeper, and I rely on the patience and kindness of my husband for such domestic matters. But I was intrigued to see what…

Anyone who’s ever gone through the rigmarole of installing, or renewing, a SSL/TLS certificate will appreciate what a ball-ache it can be. From generating a certificate signing request (CSR) code to configuring it via cPanel or Plesk, not to mention navigating the vagaries of whether you have a text-based certificate or a CRT file to deal with, it’s all stupidly bothersome. Once up and running, though, your site is secured and visitors get the now required browser client confirmation. This all used to be optional, but a better understanding of security hygiene has led to SEO penalties for sites that aren’t properly secured. From July, the Chrome browser client will flag all unencrypted sites as insecure and display the dreaded “site not safe” message that decimates traffic. According to Google,…

So the whole problem of Facebook and data, specifically Cambridge Analytica, has exploded onto the news. Commentators are “shocked”, “appalled” and “deeply worried”. Politicians demand to have Mr Zuckerberg himself come to grovel in front of them. Mrs Williams of Centennial Park is now scared to do her weekly online shopping at BWS, in case her proclivity for the occasional bottle of gin “just as a pre-dinner drinkie, dear” marks her out as a raving alcoholic. It’s hard to know where to start. Was this predictable? Absolutely, yes – and we have been predicting such an incident for years. Was it avoidable? Absolutely, yes. Is Facebook complicit in this? Without a doubt. Will it happen again? Of course. Is Facebook in trouble over this? Hopefully, yes. The stark reality is…

THE LATEST TRENDS AND PRODUCTS IN THE WORLD OF TECHNOLOGY The facebook data scandal could be the tip of the iceberg, according to privacy experts, who warn that the social network’s willingness to hand over users’ data will result in further leaks. In an investigation led by news organisations, researchers discovered that psychoanalytical influencer Cambridge Analytica had gained access to huge swathes of Facebook users’ data, which was originally collected by a personality testing app on the social network. That information was sold to Cambridge Analytica, who allegedly used it to target voters who might be sympathetic to Donald Trump. According to experts, the fact that Facebook allows app developers to access so much data makes scandals inevitable. “What Cambridge Analytica is doing is just what you can do with…

Microsoft’s current hardware is pretty slick, with the Surface range offering swish tablet-cum-laptop hybrids and the Xbox One X holding the crown as the most powerful games console ever made. But the Redmond company has plenty of failures to go alongside its successes. Back in the early 2000s, Microsoft was doing well, with Windows XP dominating the operating system market and the original Xbox challenging Sony’s PlayStation 2. So Microsoft decided to take a swipe at the iPod, the device that helped fuel Apple’s resurgence. To take on Steve Jobs’ company in the portable media player market, Microsoft came up with the Zune brand. Consisting of media players, software and a music subscription service dubbed Zune Music Pass, Redmond hoped to steal the iPod’s thunder, which had been building since…

Who would have thought that an online bookshop would end up winning the AI game? Google and Apple are playing catch-up, but Amazon’s Alexa is way out in front. The company’s almighty retail presence, and its ability to sustain deep price cuts, has helped make Alexa unstoppable. Once the Echo is settled in your home, though, what exactly do you use it for? For many of us, Alexa is little more than an interactive replacement for the radio. Yet there’s a lot more that your always-listening, ever-ready assistant can do. Here’s a guide to some of the clever ways you can customise the Echo and make the most of its extensive capabilities. 1 THE NAME GAME Out of the box, your virtual assistant is called Alexa – but opening vowels…

ASRock seem to have carved out a niche for themselves in an era where motherboard branding seems to be increasingly targeted towards gamers. While in reality a gaming board might share 99% of its DNA with any other motherboard, the Taichi branding does seem to be successfully engaging non-gaming power users with their excellent combination of useful features and affordable price. The X470 Taichi is the latest entry in the series and on paper, promises to be yet another sweet spot Taichi product. The X470 Taichi looks like a high end board and it has features to match. It really is lovely looking with the chipset heatsink’s gears and cogs being a nice artistic touch. Sure, it’s only a chipset heatsink, but this has to be one of the nicer…

MSI have aggressively targeted the PC gaming market more than any other manufacturer, having transformed almost their entire high end branding over to a gaming theme. This trend continues with the release of MSI’s X470 motherboards where the Gaming M7 WiFIis for now the highest end AMD offering from MSI. As you’d expect in this price range, MSI have equipped the M7 with an enthusiast feature set. The board appears to be running a 12+2 phase power delivery system that’s cooled by chunky metal PWM heatsinks. It seems that VRM cooling is no longer a concern as none of the tested boards had any heat related issues. MSI have clearly built the board to withstand a heavy overclock. It’s also the only board in the test to come with dual…

The Raspberry Pi is a quirky thing. When first released in 2012, it was positioned as alightweight, almost disposable computer for kids to learn to program on and for hobbyists to build their electronics and robotics projects around. Aside from the green PCB, it felt less like a piece of tech and more like a toy, and it was priced like one too. That was part of its charm. Since then, though, the Raspberry Pi has evolved into a capable little machine. Now, the latest generation is here: the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. The name is becoming a mouthful, but perhaps that’s appropriate for a platform that’s progressively gaining more features. JUICY UPGRADES The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ brings two major upgrades to the Pi design. The first…

For the Galaxy S9 to stand out in an ocean of equally competent Android smartphones in 2018, Samsung knew that its camera had to be the best. To make that happen, it’s pulled out all the stops. First, by fitting it with an f/1.5 aperture camera – the brightest aperture ever seen on a smartphone – and second, by implementing dual aperture, so the camera can adapt to different light conditions. By combining this with a new 12-shot multi-frame noise reduction, Samsung hoped to maintain its position as the manufacturer of the world’s best smartphone for yet another year. On paper, it’s a winner. That aperture is a huge 28% brighter than the primary camera on last year’s already impressive Galaxy S8. At the launch, Samsung demonstrated this by pointing…

$119 • www.corsair.com • Score: 5/5 GOOD GEAR IN BITE SIZED CHUNKS You can find this for under $100 and if you’re after a classically simple case with plenty of room inside and good ventilation it’s a steal. The slab of tinted tempered glass consuming all of one side is a treat that belies its bargain price. Our review unit was white and looked very smart. The test build was effortless. No snags or hiccups were encountered. It ships with two 120mm fans, one in the front and rear. I added another to the front, and fitted a 240mm radiator to the top, and it will take radiators up to 360mm. The top vent grill is magnetic and removable. It looks a little odd, like it’s just a sheet of…

$129 • www.primeautech.com.au • Score: 4/5 We’re not exactly starved for choice with IP cams, with the traditional low end now under attack from fancy numbers like the Nest IQ. But for around a hundred bucks there’s the Ezviz C6T IP cam. It delivers a reasonably clear 1080p image, though areas in shadow aren’t perfectly clear, nevertheless its basic camera functionality is certainly good enough for home monitoring. But its party trick is the rotating camera inside the little dome. You can move it around via the app, there’s a little lag but that’s to be expected. Or, when it detects motion it can follow the cat/baby/burglar around. There’s also a two-way speaker, though it’s not particularly loud so we wouldn’t recommend this for regular video chatting. FOV is a…

The latest mirrorless camera from Canon, the EOS M50, is the fourth installment in Canons mirrorless camera line and is aimed at people wanting to step up from their basic or smartphone cameras to something with a litte more control and capability. The M50 looks great and it feels nice in the hand, it’s light and ergonomical pleasing to use. The build quality although feels slightly plasticky is strong and pretty robust thanks to its polycarbonate chasis. The EVF is sharp and smooth (2.36 million-dot resolution) and there’s a handy pop up flash onboard. The M5 has a single mode dial on top which isn’t as daunting for beginners as something like the M5 which has three dials, and the button layout on the back has been streamlined with the…

Make no mistake: this NAS means business. Relatively compact but impressively heavy, the 5210DN looks purpose-built for the corporate data centre. There’s an enormous 8cm fan at the back of the unit, and this kicks in when the appliance is turned on with a ferocious roar. It’s much quieter in general operation. It’s also the sole unit that you can only buy with drives preinstalled, you can replace the drives yourself. It’s not the easiest NAS to set up and configure. Forget automatic discovery – you have to browse to a device-specific URL and download Buffalo’s NAS Navigator utility. You use this to discover your NAS and configure basic settings or map network shares, then use the web-based configuration panel for more in-depth work. The user interface isn’t that friendly,…

With the My Cloud EX2 Ultra, Western Digital isn’t targeting those who want to run virtual servers or a website, but those needing fast, centralised storage for files and media. Bear this in mind, and the EX2 Ultra has a lot going for it, particularly when it comes to ease-of-setup and everyday use. Even installing the drives is a simple job – just push the catch to open the flap, unscrew the lid and slide your 3.5in drives into place. Once that’s done, the browser-based configuration takes you through setting up your RAID and connecting the NAS drive to a My Cloud account. Cleverly, it encourages using part of the hard disks in a RAID1 configuration to cover resilience and the rest spanned, giving you a balance between file protection,…

We’ve replaced the still-wonderful Samsung monitor in The Beast with the new Alienware 34-incher (review on page 63). We’ve also upgraded the Beast’s memory to a 3466MHz quad channel kit. We’ve chosen G.Skill Trident Z for the RGB – which looks absolutely fantastic on these RAM sticks. 3466MHz was chosen to provide maximum performance but not ridiculously fast or it could cause issues. The new Ryzen 7 2700X and 2600X CPUs are top performers but Intel is still just in front. That may change next month when we look at the next Ryzen 3 budget CPUS, plus we’re also group testing new Intel Coffee Lake budget B360 motherboards. MINI For lounge room gaming and streaming CPU + COOLING Intel Core i5 7500 w/stock cooler $259 intel.com MOBO ASRock Z270M-ITX/AC Motherboard…

Following on from my GDPR-themed column two months ago, readers got in touch to ask about the various “rights” they’ve read about in the press – “the right to be forgotten”, for example – and how these relate to the new dataprocessing principles. It’s actually the same thing. Whether you look at the new regulation from the point of view of the data processor, as I did last time, or the individual, as I’m about to do here, the underlying rules are identical. We’re simply coming at things from a different angle. This alternative view of GDPR is worthwhile, however, because it exposes nuances that aren’t obvious when simply looking at the dataprocessing principles. Much like those principles, the individual’s rights can be broken down into a number of categories,…

For only the second time in my entire career, I’ve seen what looks remarkably like a case of spontaneous computer combustion. As with the previous incident, this was a desktop PC displaying a narrow swath of extreme heat damage starting from the central connectors on a standard SATA power plug. Unlike my last experience, the owner of this machine was convinced his device wasn’t driving something with a heavy power draw. Its only external connection was to a CD drive, which looked clean and tidy to me. He’d followed the wisps of black smoke to the offending PC – that being the first sign of trouble. In common with most office PCs these days, the machine wasn’t busy at the time. It should have been in a sleep state, not…