Computer Shopperの February 2018 の目次

Madeline Bennett (2016-) I’m a newbie on Computer Shopper, having joined last year after 17 years as a business technology journalist. In this short time, I’ve been impressed by two standout elements. The first is the scale and thoroughness of the testing that goes on in our lab – a real rarity in today’s world, where everything seems to be about speed and immediacy over quality and rigour. The second is the insights I’ve gained from our readers’ letters. These show us what you, the readers, are looking for from the magazine, and help shape the articles we write. I also love the fact that so many of you take the time to write in to help other readers facing their own problems; it feels like being part of a…

Tech pioneer and all-round good egg letters@computershopper.co.uk MY PHONE RANG. It was a heavy old phone, with twisted wires, a handset for collecting spit and earwax, and a metal bell that went ring-ring. A voice said, “Do you know who Felix Dennis is?” Yes, I knew who Felix Dennis was; he was a successful publisher who had been imprisoned for “conspiracy to deprave and corrupt the morals of the Young of the Realm”. My kind of guy. The voice went on, “Do you want to help set up a thing for Felix Dennis?” Yes, I wanted to help set up a thing for Felix Dennis. My caller said, “Meet me in the Marquis of Granby,” then hung up. The Marquis of Granby is a London pub, famous for its literary…

James Archer RAVES LIKE ANY REPUTABLE chicken restaurant chain, KFC will now sell you a Faraday cage for $10,000. It’s billed as an ‘Internet Escape Pod’, ostensibly designed to provide sanctuary from the blitz of Black Friday and Christmas advertising that occurs late every year. This silvery mesh igloo is a gag. Yet it’s reminded me of the various weird gadgets that were revealed this past year, either as a bold prototype or, against the odds and in defiance of sense, something that made it all the way to market. Take Razer’s Project Valerie, a gaming laptop equipped with two additional fold-out screens. This hilariously wide notebook certainly caught the eye of an unscrupulous CES attendee, who somehow managed to swipe Razer’s sample off the show floor, from which it…

For the den The 2017 Amazon Fire TV with 4K UHD isn’t a perfect media streamer, to be sure – it lacks support for Sky Now TV, for instance – but otherwise, it’s a brilliantly well-featured one, especially for just £70. Despite having shrunk from the 2016 model’s box shape to a more discreet HDMI dongle, the internal hardware is better and faster than ever, and the bundled remote’s microphone allows for very effective voice control via the Alexa assistant. There’s a fairly extensive list of 4K content and streaming services to choose from, and added HDR ensures you’ll get the most out of a compatible TV. (Page 33) For the wallet Like Amazon’s Echo Dot, the Google Home Mini is a nifty way to get a smart speaker in…

Amazon launches service that enables delivery drivers to open your front door FED UP OF those pesky couriers that wait until you’re out before trying to deliver your package? Amazon thinks it may have the answer with its new Amazon Key system, which will let its delivery drivers open your front door and pop your package in when you’re out. Users that sign up for the service, which is currently only available in the US, pay a hefty $249 up front for a smart lock and Cloud Cam security camera. According to Amazon, when a delivery is made the courier requests to enter your home with their handheld scanner. Amazon’s back-end service verifies that the package is in the right place, turns on the Cloud Cam and unlocks your door.…

£285 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT It’s not as fast as we hoped at stock speeds, but the Core i5-8600K’s six cores take very well to overclocking THE PAST FEW months in the desktop CPU market have been the most interesting in years. AMD finally made itself relevant again with the Ryzen 7, 5 and 3 lines, as well as the more enthusiast-focused Threadripper. Intel, whose laurel-resting was evident in the underwhelming Kaby Lake generation, responded with a range of premium Kaby Lake-X and Skylake-X chips that were so expensive that they were out of most people’s reach. Not long after, Intel came up with even more surprises. First, its 8th-gen line-up would include not just the main 14nm Coffee Lake chips, but a series of updated ‘Kaby Lake refresh’ parts…

£999 • From store.google.com VERDICT A beautifully designed laptop with plenty of power, but it could be more flexible THE GOOGLE PIXELBOOK elicits gasps of appreciation when people first set their eyes on it. It’s a staggering bit of work, just 10.3mm thick with a distinctive profile. Make no mistake: this is a highly desirable laptop. There’s not much room on a chassis this thin, so you get just two USB Type-C ports. They’re Thunderbolt 3 models, though, so can be used with converters to hook up the Pixelbook to an external screen. The Pixelbook will also elicit gasps when the price is revealed: a starting price of £999 puts this firmly into premium Windows 10 laptop territory, yet this is a Chromebook. Aren’t they supposed to be cheap? Clearly,…

£889 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT A good-quality monitor, but it’s expensive and doesn’t cope with certain games very well THE PREDATOR X34A is a 1440p ultrawide monitor that offers all the right design elements you’d want from such a display – and just as well, considering how much it costs. With its tiny bezels on the top and sides, it resembles a stretched-out version of Acer’s own XF270HUA gaming monitor. The stand provides tilt, pivot and height adjustments, and its impressive build quality reverberates across the entire monitor. Better still, an adjustable LED strip under the monitor lets you switch between colours to add a colourful hue to your desk. As for connectivity, there’s a single DisplayPort and HDMI video input and a 3.5mm headphone jack for audio output. Four…

From £380 • From www.microsoft.com VERDICT Mixed Reality makes VR more accessible, but the lack of apps is a problem LAST ISSUE WE reviewed the Fall Creators Update, which introduced Windows 10’s VR platform. This month, with matching headsets landing from all the big PC names, including Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo, we’re taking a more in-depth look at how the system works, how it holds up to the competition and which product (if any) you should buy. Currently, despite the name, the platform is solidly VR, competing with the likes of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. To run it you need a PC with the right specs, including a powerful enough GPU: Microsoft has a Windows Mixed Reality PC Check app available in the Store that will tell…

£241 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT A very fast NAS, but the basic interface and high price slightly let it down ALTHOUGH CLOUD STORAGE has really taken off, you can’t beat a NAS if you want fast local storage for sharing files. With a barebones NAS, such as the Netgear ReadyNAS 212, you also have a handy way of reusing any old mechanical hard disks that you’ve got lying around. A small shoebox-sized device, the ReadyNAS 212 is relatively easy to set up. Open the front door, and you’ve got two 3.5in hard disk bays that pop out, so that you can fit your hard disks. There’s support for up to 20TB of storage via two 10TB hard disks. Netgear uses a screwless design for its NAS, with plastic retaining clips…

£220 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Moto G5S is a step in the right direction, but at this price it’s hard to recommend AFTER THE DISAPPOINTING Moto G5 (Shopper 353) launch earlier in the year, Motorola has gone back to the drawing board. Its latest ‘budget’ handset, the Moto G5S, seeks to learn from the mistakes of its predecessor, with a larger battery, an upgraded camera and a newly refined design. There’s one problem: the G5S’s asking price is £45 dearer than its smaller G5 sibling, and £70 more than the trusty Moto G4 (Shopper 343). So is the new G5S really worth paying the premium for? Design-wise at least, the G5S marks a big step up from its predecessor. Where the G5 merely had an aluminium rear panel, the…

£350 • From www.maplin.co.uk VERDICT Great image quality, but a fiddly interface and lack of cloud storage hold this security system back ONE OF THE issues with security cameras is that motion detection can be set off too easily, flooding you with alerts. This is a particular problem with outside cameras, where there’s a lot more movement to deal with. Swann thinks that it has the answer with its Heat-Sensing Camera CCTV Kit. Rather than monitoring the video for motion, the system uses passive infrared (PIR) sensors, similar to those on security lights or security systems, to detect heat and motion. The result should be that only large warm objects trigger alerts, rather than trees blowing in the wind. CABLE TIDY Rather than using wireless cameras, all four of the…

£290 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A good-looking fitness watch with a great screen and battery life, but it’s afflicted by a multitude of niggles FITBIT HAS LED the way in the fitness band market for some time now, but in the smartwatch arena, it has struggled. Its first watch was the Surge, which worked well for fitness duties but struggled to compete with smartwatches for style or smart features. Its next effort, the Fitbit Blaze, wasn’t that much better, upping the ante on the style front, but omitting key features such as waterproofing and GPS. Finally, it seems as if there’s a Fitbit watch that fixes these problems: the Fitbit Ionic, which looks great, has GPS and waterproofing and combines all that with smartwatch-style features. The Ionic is Fitbit’s most…

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

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

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

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

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

Chat and Communication Evernote 6.7.5.5825 Store your notes, ideas and plans in the cloud, and synchronise them between computers. UPDATED Mailbird 2.4.24.0 A free desktop email client for Windows. Miranda IM 0.10.75 Chat with friends across multiple messaging platforms, including AIM, Facebook, IRC and MSN, all from one simple interface. NEW VERSION Skype for Windows 8.11.76.3 Make internet voice and video calls for free, and buy credit to make calls to mobiles and landlines. Telegram 1.1.23 This free IM app synchronises your conversations across multiple devices, and can spruce up chats with stickers and GIFs. UPDATED WhatsApp Desktop 0.2.6967 A free PC and Mac version of the popular messaging app, letting you chat from your desktop. Customisation iolo System Mechanic Free 17.0.1 Speed up your system with Iolo’s PC optimisation…

£52 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT A brilliant computer for projects, with almost double the Raspberry Pi 3’s performance NOT MANY MAJOR tech firms have made a serious challenge to the Raspberry Pi series’ hold on the single-board computer market, with even Intel’s Arduino 101 being discontinued recently. Perhaps Asus will have more luck with the Tinker Board, a more powerful – and expensive – rival to the Pi 3. For compatibility reasons, Asus has used the same layout as the Raspberry Pi 3. From the 40-pin header (with 28 GPIO pins) to the CSI connector and USB, HDMI and 3.5mm audio ports, everything is where you’d find it on the Pi 3, and even the physical dimensions are identical. This allows the Tinker Board to fit into most Raspberry Pi…

£637 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT With dedicated graphics, great storage and extensive connectivity, this is an attractively versatile mini PC LOOK THROUGH THESE pages and you’ll find that most mini PCs generally try to get by with the essentials – CPU, RAM and a single storage drive – while barebones systems start off with even less. It’s therefore rare to see a tiny Windows computer that is as internally well equipped as the VivoMini. Specifically, we’re using the VM65N-G072Z model; the VivoMini family has about as many different configurations as a Rubik’s Cube, starting with the Intel Celeron-based UN45 and scaling all the way up to our VM65N spec. This sits very close to the top of the line, with a dual-core Intel Core i5-7200U, 8GB of RAM, both a…

£339 (not including RAM, storage or OS) • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT With performance a letdown, it’s up to excellent design and easy customisation to make the Cubi 3 Silent worthwhile CUBI IS ONE of the most reliable sub-brands in the mini PC market; we particularly liked the original MSI Cubi (Shopper 331) for its low price and tiny form factor. Fast forward two years and we now have the Cubi 3 Silent, a brand new model that’s both bigger and more expensive but comes with a fanless case that runs without so much as a whisper. It is, like previous Cubi models and the Zotac Magnus ER51060 on the opposite page, a barebones system. In other words, it arrives with the CPU already installed, but you’ll need to provide your…

£369 • From www.argos.co.uk VERDICT The DMP-UB900 was the best of the early 4K Blu-ray players, but its lingering high price does it no favours ONCE UPON A time (well, 2016) there were really only two 4K UHD Blu-ray players to choose from. One was the lower-priced Samsung UBD-K8500, and the other was this, the high-end Panasonic DMP-UB900. Panasonic’s player comes with all the bells and whistles you’d expect. That includes two HDMI outputs, one HDMI 2.0 for video and audio, and one HDMI 1.4 for audio only. By isolating sound from the video stream, Panasonic claims it can reduce clock jitter when it’s connected to a separate amp. This allegedly reduces the number of errors and unwanted noise, but we’ve never found this to be a problem on ordinary…

£289 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT It’s no bargain, but the UBD-X800 is quick and quiet with excellent video quality FEW 4K BLU-RAY players can challenge the Microsoft Xbox One S on pure value, but the alternative – emphasising image and audio quality as well as connectivity and extra features – can produce decks so expensive that even dedicated homecinephiles may be put off. Sony’s latest player, the UBD-X800, occupies the middle ground. At £300, it’s cheaper than the Oppo UDP-203, Panasonic DMP-UB900 and the Samsung UBD-M9500, but aims for a higher-quality, generally more premium experience than what entry-level alternatives can offer. HANDSOME DEVIL For one thing, it looks great in an AV cabinet. Its all-black aluminium chassis and glass contours are very handsome indeed, though there’s no LED display, which…

For some scientists, making a bigger and faster disk is simply not enough. They want to push the boundaries of storage, making data that will last for thousands of years, fit in a tiny space or have unbreakable encryption. Here’s our pick of the craziest experimental storage tech. DNA According to researchers at Swiss company ETH Zurich, a gram of DNA could theoretically hold 455 billion gigabytes of data. However, even once you’ve encoded your data in DNA – the researchers have so far managed to store 83KB – you have the problem that DNA degrades quickly. ETH’s solution is to encase the DNA “in silica spheres with a diameter of roughly 150 nanometres”. ETH estimates that such DNA, if stored at low temperatures, could retain its data for over…

There are many way to make your laptop safer, and most of them are either free or inexpensive. We show you how to lock down your portable PC clive@computershopper.co.uk WHETHER YOU’RE WORKING in a café, checking emails at the airport or you just don’t trust your kids, it’s useful to prevent other people accessing your laptop. This article won’t go over the obvious advice; you’ve surely already got a strong password, know the merits of using a VPN and keep all your software up to date. Instead, we’ll focus on tools and gadgets that specifically make your laptop more secure when you’re out in the big wild world. A DILEMMA WHEN working in a public place is what to do when nature calls. Do you pack everything up and take…

letters@computershopper.co.uk Photo finish @ I think it is a great idea for you to review computers suitable for photo editing (‘Snap decisions’, Letters, Shopper 359). In my experience of buying computers for this purpose, I have found that many vendors have a poor understanding of what is required. When I rang a wellknown online computer supplier to ask for recommendations, on three different occasions, I received three different recommendations. Personally, I always insist on a large case with a large power supply, so there’s plenty of scope for adding extra hard discs. Upgradability is also useful for when more resources are needed. Bill Edwards @ Applications such as Adobe Photoshop take ages to launch on my desktop PC. I sometimes want to send multiple files from a full-frame CSC from Lightroom…

Software and systems developer letters@computershopper.co.uk Almost all of 1988’s big names in both hardware and software are long gone WELL, HELLO THERE. Like some grisly combination of a boomerang, a bad penny and Terminator, I’m back! Albeit just for this 30th anniversary issue. While preparing for the dreadful ritual of sitting down before a blank screen desperately thinking up what to write, I unearthed the first issue to grace my presence, number 5 (August 1988), and a special 10th anniversary supplement to issue 121. Preserving relics such as these is useful in sharpening the perspective you get on the history and development of the PC in this country, and the best magazine that reports on it all. Issue 5 had 128 pages, was 98% monochrome and cost 78p. Ten years…

The Faroe Islands Ewe tube Google has finally provided the Faroe Islands with Street View imagery, thanks to cameras mounted to the top of sheep. The Sheep View campaign was launched in 2016 by Faroe resident Durita Andreassen, and was quickly picked up by Google. In August 2016, the firm loaned the Faroese a Street View Trekker and 360º cameras so that residents and tourists could assist the sheep in capturing even more images of the beautiful archipelago. Images were captured using selfie sticks, bikes, backpacks, cars, kayaks, horses, ships and even wheelbarrows. Czech Republic Out for the count A number of websites belonging to the Czech statistical office have been subjected to a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack during the counting process of the recent parliamentary elections. According…

“We built Xbox One X to give game creators the most powerful platform to bring their visions to life and to give gamers the best console to play the games of the past, present and future” Phil Spencer, head of gaming at Microsoft, blows smoke up the Xbox One X launch day “While it is for political parties and campaigners to determine how best to use the campaign techniques now available, our priority is to make sure that transparency is maintained and to ensure voters’ confidence in the system” Bob Posner, the UK Electoral Commission’s director of political finance and regulation, wants to know if someone fiddled with the Brexit vote “I fear that AI may replace humans altogether. If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that improves…

£1,300 • From www.palicomp.co.uk VERDICT Stuffed with high-end components, the potent AMD Galaxy is worth both the money and the noise THE AMD RYZEN 7 1700 is a fantastic octa-core CPU, yet we haven’t seen any PCs that use it. Palicomp’s AMD Galaxy finally adds one to the list, overclocking (as is the norm for premium Palicomp systems) the Ryzen chip from 3.0GHz to 3.8GHz – an ambitious boost that has also has required a 240mm Auraflow all-in-one watercooler to be fitted. There’s also an 8GB GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card, making the AMD Galaxy look a very attractive prospect: a combined 4K-ready gaming rig and straight-faced workstation, all for a relatively reasonable £1,300. DOING DOING DONE It got off to a great start in our 4K tests. The overclocked…

£250 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT It’s not powerful, but with a Full HD display and bundled keyboard, the 12X64 is a bargain TWO-IN-ONE laptops are proving to be increasingly popular, but most tend to be pretty pricey. Not so with the Linx 12X64, a Windows 10 tablet with a bundled detachable keyboard and a 12.5in Full HD multitouch display that costs just £250. The design is uninspiring: the Linx’s hard plastic shell is bland and nowhere near as attractive as the colourful HP Stream 11 or the Asus Transformer Mini (Shopper 356) with its stunning aluminium frame. We like the aluminium kickstand, however. It’s fully adjustable, just like the far more expensive Microsoft Surface Pro (Shopper 356), and allows you to prop up the 12X64 on a desk or your…

£70 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Amazon’s latest Fire TV does 4K and HDR and it does them well – it’s the best TV streamer if you don’t want Now TV AMAZON’S ORIGINAL FIRE TV with 4K UHD (Shopper 324) wasn’t the roaring success it could have been when it launched in 2015, largely thanks to the paucity of 4K content at the time. Nowadays, there’s both a lot more content and a lot more competing media streamers, many with HDR support, making it Amazon’s turn to catch up. So, besides shrinking down from a set-top box to a more slimline form factor that can hang discreetly from your TV’s HDMI port, the new Fire TV with 4K Ultra HD supports both HDR10 and Dolby Atmos audio, provided you have a…

£323 • From uk.insight.com VERDICT The imageFormula DR-C230 is a good document scanner for a busy small office IF YOU’RE HANDLING paperwork in a busy office, or you want to get rid of boxes of old correspondence, nothing beats a sheet-fed document scanner. Canon’s imageFormula DR-C230 is a typical mid-range desktop example, capable of scanning one or both sides of a document at once. It can reach speeds of up to 30 pages per minute (ppm), or 60 A4 images per minute (ipm). Its 600dpi maximum resolution is typical for the class, and plenty for office work. The DR-C230 is about the size of a high-end deskphone, with three buttons and a simple display allowing you to choose, start and stop predefined scan jobs. At the top, there’s a well-engineered…

£49 • From store.google.com VERDICT A neat-looking and cheaper way to get the Google Assistant, but you can’t hook it up to a better stereo THE ORIGINAL GOOGLE Home (Shopper 353) was a neat smart speaker, but at £129 it was never going to be a convenient way to put the Google Assistant in every room in your house. Learning from Amazon’s cheaper Echo Dot, Google has decided to follow a similar path this year with the smaller, cheaper Google Home Mini. As good as the Amazon Echo Dot is, it’s a rather functional-looking product that doesn’t blend in particularly well with its surroundings. It’s not a mistake that Google has made: the Home Mini is a sleek, pebbleshaped device that’s been designed to look as good as it is…

£719 • From www.motorola.co.uk VERDICT Motorola’s tough phone is back, and building on the ambitions of its predecessor WITH ITS RUGGED, shatterproof housing and long-lasting battery, the Moto X Force (Shopper 347) was one of our favourite smartphones of 2015, hence the disappointment when its 2016 follow-up – the Moto Z Force – failed to reach UK shores. Blighty hasn’t been forgotten this year. The Moto Z2 Force is here and it looks to strengthen the indestructible qualities of the original, with up-to-date internals and an intriguing pair of dual rear cameras. The Moto Z2 Force cuts a familiar figure. Its brushed metal exterior may look identical to Motorola’s previous efforts, but as with the Z2 Play (Shopper 357), there are a handful of subtle improvements. For starters, the Z2…

£144 • From www.ballicom.co.uk VERDICT This camera is stylish, but it’s expensive, and there are better, cheaper alternatives ZYXEL’S AURORA VIDEO camera looks great. Its triangular head reminds us of a Star Wars robot, 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 wallmounted 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…

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…

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

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

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

£30 • From uk.rs-online.com VERDICT The latest version of the budget maker board builds on the success of its predecessors IT MAY HAVE sold more than eight million of its Pi mini-computers, but the Raspberry Pi Foundation wasn’t resting on its laurels when it came up with its latest flagship model. The Pi 3 (or, to use its full name, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B) can claim an impressive list of features of features and upgrades from the Pi 2, including a speed boost (the Foundation claims a 50% increase) as well as built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capability. The inclusion of Wi-Fi is particularly handy, as it means you’ll no longer need to take up one of your precious USB ports with a Wi-Fi adaptor. There have also been…

£1,150 (including audio module) • From store.hp.com VERDICT This smart-looking modular PC performs well, but not well enough to justify the price 2015 SAW THE release of the Acer Revo Build, a modular PC that allowed you to add various bits of hardware by stacking blockshaped, clip-on modules on top of each other like an expensive sandwich. The idea never really took off (it certainly hasn’t changed how we customise and upgrade traditional PCs), but the concept was sound. Perhaps the sleeker, flatter, more powerful HP Elite Slice will have better luck. This is, strictly speaking, a business PC, which means you get Windows 10 Pro instead of Windows 10 Home, and security features, such as built-in drive encryption. Performance has also been prioritised, as there’s both a 256GB NVMe…

£699 (not including RAM, storage or OS) • From www.zotac.com VERDICT This bulky barebones box focuses on gaming, but is a capable all-rounder too WHILE THERE ARE no hard and fast rules on how big a mini PC can be, the Magnus R51060 is pushing it. At 128mm tall and 225mm wide, it’s large enough that you could (figuratively speaking) fit the VivoMini, Elite Slice and Intel Compute Stick inside it all at once. Nevertheless, it’s not quite a complete PC when you get it out of the box. This is another barebones system, so you’ll need to buy a separate M.2 SSD, operating system and some SO-DIMM RAM to get it working. The good news is that, otherwise, the Magnus ER51060 has the specs of a decent mid-range gaming…

£160 • From www.appliancesdirect.co.uk VERDICT The UBD-K8500 is a highly capable Ultra HD Blu-ray player, and it’s excellent value, too LIKE THE PANASONIC DMP-UB900, the UBD-K8500 was one of the first Ultra HD Blu-ray players to launch, and it remains a seriously good option, especially now that its price has dropped from over £400 to £160. While Samsung’s player lacks some of the more advanced features that come with the DMP-UB900, and doesn’t double up as a fully fledged games console like the similarly cheap Xbox One S, in terms of design it has a slicker, lower-profile look owing to its streamlined set of connections round the back. It also has a slightly curved design to match the style of Samsung’s top-end TVs. A small remote control is included, which…

Send your problems to businesshelp@computershopper.co.uk Ticks all the boxes I’ve created a Word 2010 document with tickboxes in it. It all works as expected, but when I send it to another member of our club, if he cuts and pastes it into his own online documents the tickboxes are changed to question marks. I don’t have details of what application the other person is using. Is there a way to convert them all to a static version as a single action? There are a lot to do manually. Leon Maclean You can convert the active tickboxes to a square symbol quite simply by saving a copy of your documents in Word 97-2003 format. When you choose this format, you’ll be warned that some features of the document aren’t supported by…

Fake news @ There are various reports of fraudsters using fake SSL certificates on scam websites. To have the green padlock sign against your website and an ‘HTTPS’ start to its web address, it must have a valid SSL certificate issued by a certificate authority (CA), of which there are more than 200. Unfortunately, some CAs don’t check the validity of the website they’re issuing to. They are supposed to verify that the website is owned by the applicant and that it’s an authentic company. Some fraudsters are registering domain names that are close to legitimate websites by just substituting, for example, a ‘1’ for an ‘l’ or an ‘O’ for a ‘0’. These domain names should be checked against such registrations but some CAs don’t, and issue certificates for…

It’s not hard to imagine a future where AI scammers are talking to AI victims in an endless loop THERE’S NOTHING QUITE like the schadenfreude derived from an email scammer getting their comeuppance. Remember that spate of comedy postings a while back, such as the one where the would-be victim convinced his scammers to go to extraordinary lengths, such as carving a Commodore 64 out of wood? As fun as these were to watch, the work that went into pulling them off was not insubstantial. But what if you could take yourself out of the equation and get AI to take over the role of harassing the fraudsters? CHATTY MAN The good news is that you can. All you have to do is forward a scam email to Re:scam (me@rescam.org),…

17% PROPORTION OF UK OFFICE WORKERS THAT ARE PREPARED TO PAY £20 ON A COLLEAGUE’S SECRET SANTA GIFT, ACCORDING TO GOOGLE SEARCH TRENDS 25% Black market passwords that can be used to access online accounts, according to Google Research 2021 THE YEAR BY WHICH PHILIP HAMMOND EXPECTS UNATTENDED DRIVERLESS CARS TO BE CRUISING ROUND BRITISH STREETS €30,000 The amount Microsoft must pay in fines for not handing over customer access data demanded by Belgian authorities £160m How much the UK government will spend to support development of 5G networks 19 THE NUMBER OF YEARS IT TOOK LINUX TO DOMINATE THE TOP 500 SUPERCOMPUTER LIST…

I stood on the chair and began banging the top of the managing director’s head with this brick of a magazine BACK IN 2007, I’d taken over the reigns of Computer Shopper just in time for its 20th birthday. My big idea was to get the back story behind the magazine, written by the man who started it all and the owner of Dennis Publishing, Felix Dennis. What followed was some of the most entertaining, thoughtful and insightful copy I’d seen. It also captured how warmly Felix thought of the magazine he’d launched. Now, 10 years on, it’s time to reprint the original story in Felix’s own words. With the magazine continuing to evolve, I’m sure Felix would be as proud today of the magazine as he was back then.…

£779 • From www.pcspecialist.co.uk VERDICT A respectable all-rounder with plenty of room for upgrades and additions THE ENIGMA K6 seems quite expensive for an Intel Core i3-based system, but there are two good reasons for that. First, it has a brand new Coffee Lake CPU, the Core i3-8100. It could be argued that lower-end chips such as this stand to gain the most from Intel’s core-adding strategy; the Core i3-8100 now has four, a full doubling of the core count on its dual-core Kaby Lake predecessor, the Core i3-7100. It comes with the trade-off of a slightly lower clock speed – 3.6GHz, from 3.9GHz – and a higher 65W TDP, but having twice the cores is no joke. Second, this PC is equipped with the best mid-range gaming GPU around,…

£260 • From www.lambda-tek.com VERDICT It’s expensive, but this product makes connecting a laptop to external displays a doddle TRYING TO HOOK up a laptop to a monitor or projector to do a presentation is often an exercise in futility. Whether it’s trying to find the right cable, or just getting a picture to be displayed, these things seem to go wrong more often than right. Wouldn’t it be better if there was a simpler, more straightforward way of getting connected? With the Airtame Wireless HDMI Streamer, you can stream your screen over your wireless network. DING DONG Similar to Google’s Chromecast, the Airtame Wireless HDMI Streamer is a small dongle that plugs into an HDMI port on the device to which you want to connect. It should be able…

£99 • From store.google.com VERDICT A fun way to experience VR through your phone, but this headset is only a minor improvement on last year’s GOOGLE MADE ITS first foray into VR with the fun and cheap Cardboard, before having a more professional go with the Daydream View headset. This year, the company is back with a revamped Daydream View. As with the original, Daydream View works with an existing handset, which you slip into the front to act as the screen and brains of the VR experience. Last year, only the Google Pixel and Pixel XL were compatible with the headset, but this year you have the Pixel 2, Pixel 2 XL, Samsung Galaxy S8, Galaxy Note 8, plus handsets from Asus and Motorola. The list of compatible headsets…

£380 • From www.box.co.uk VERDICT Plenty of features and a neat design with great performance, but the price makes this kit hard to justify over the competition MESH WIRELESS NETWORKING systems make a lot of sense for most people, giving a way to upgrade wireless performance without having to replace your router. The latest to get in on the act is Asus, with its Lyra system. As with the main competition, Lyra consists of three discs that you can place around your house to expand coverage into any black spots that you might have. Each Lyra access point can be placed flat on its feet, or you can wall-mount them, which may be easier if you want to place the access points in a hallway or just out of the…

£595 • From www.three.co.uk VERDICT With a slick 120Hz screen, the Razer Phone is unique, but isn’t without its flaws RAZER HAS LAUNCHED a smartphone. Yes, just when you thought the handheld release calendar was winding down and all the main players had launched their flagships for the year, along comes a gaming peripheral outfit – of all things – with the high-end Razer Phone. This is no ‘me too’ smartphone either, and Razer has done something that no other smartphone manufacturer has done: the 5.7in display runs at an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate. There’s also a Qualcomm Snapdragon 825 processor, 8GB of RAM and a massive 4,000mAh battery. For £595 on pay-as-you-go, that’s a pretty fine specs list. Its design, sadly, isn’t the prettiest. Razer’s characteristically high build quality…

£120 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT A respectable, no-frills ATX board for Coffee Lake, helped along by a user-friendly BIOS AS IS USUALLY the case, if you want to put one of Intel’s new desktop CPUs in your PC, you’ll have to shell out for a replacement motherboard as well. Indeed, while these 8th-gen Coffee Lake processors share the same LGA 1151 socket as their Kaby Lake forebears, the accompanying Z370 chipset puts paid to any hopes of backwards compatibility: Coffee Lake chips only work in Z370 motherboards, and Z370 motherboards will work with Coffee Lake chips only. Where to start, then? We’re trying this, the MSI Z370 PC Pro. Design-wise, it resembles a cut-price version of MSI’s Kaby Lake-era Z270 SLI Plus: all black, grey and aluminium, with the expansion…

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

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

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

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

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

Paragon Migrate OS to SSD 4 IF YOU HAVE an old system you want to upgrade, one of the best improvements is to swap your old hard disk for a super-fast SSD. With no moving parts, a modern SSD is much faster than your old drive, meaning your PC boots more quickly, applications open more swiftly, and moving files around takes seconds and not minutes. It’s a huge upgrade for any PC. But how do you migrate your system to the new SSD? One way is to install everything from scratch, but this can take ages, and no-one wants to try to find all their old installation discs. The better solution is a tool such as Migrate OS to SSD 4. Simply put, this tool enables you to take your…

BOARD-ONLY RASPBERRY Pi 3 Although newer alternatives have arrived with their own strengths – such as the budget-friendly Pi Zero W or the markedly more powerful Asus Tinker Board – the flagship Raspberry Pi 3 remains the overall best choice for occasional hobbyists and serious makers alike. Its dinky ARM Cortex-A7 CPU shouldn’t be underestimated, having the horsepower to run office software and even some retro games, and its built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support greatly expands what you can do with it. Besides being cheaper than the Tinker Board, it also benefits from a far more active community of users, who can help newcomers with their projects. FULL WINDOWS PC ASUS VivoMini No other mini PC balances value, performance and design as well as the VivoMini. A reliable home office…

£10 • From www.thepihut.com VERDICT A big improvement on the original Pi Zero, this model’s integrated Wi-Fi makes it even more flexible THE ORIGINAL RASPBERRY Pi Zero was quite the creation: essentially a smaller Raspberry Pi, it only cost a mere £4, and was even the first computer to be given away for free with a magazine. Getting the Zero down to its diminutive size (5x65x30mm) meant that a fair few things had to be cut out. Still, progress is an unstoppable beast, and now we have the Raspberry Pi Zero W, an improved model with integrated wireless capability: both Bluetooth and 2.4GHz 802.11n Wi-Fi. This may not be the latest flavour of Wi-Fi, but for the types of jobs that you’re likely to use the computer for, it’s more…

£334 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT It’s not particularly fast, but the pocket-sized Compute Stick can still find a happy home behind your monitor or TV NOT COUNTING BOARD-ONLY computers such as those in the Raspberry Pi family, mini PCs don’t come much more miniature than the Intel Compute Stick. Measuring 11x35x114mm, it’s about the size of a muesli bar. Believe it or not, this is actually an increase in size on the first-generation model that launched back in 2015. The idea behind the Compute Stick is that it can plug straight into the HDMI port of a monitor, or even a living room TV, and instantly turn it into a Windows PC. This can be handy in a business environment – for instance, you could use the Compute Stick to…

£305 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT While there are cheaper players, the UBD-M9500 has plenty of tricks up its sleeve that make it worth the extra cash THE SAMSUNG UBD-M9500 comes with a feature list that almost rivals that of the Oppo UDP-203. Not only does this player have 4K HDR playback, it can also be used to stream your discs to other devices. Kids watching Netflix on the main TV? No problem: you can stream whatever you want to watch straight to your tablet or phone. The UBD-M9500 is a handsome-looking device. Like the older UBD-K8500, the chassis is shaped to match Samsung’s curved TVs, and it’s been finished in attractive brushed aluminium with a pleasingly minimalist layout. A narrow OLED display adorns the front bevelled edge, there are touch-sensitive…

Send your problems to help@computershopper.co.uk Sharing, but not with everyone I am part of a small group of robust men in their 70s who take regular walks out in the countryside, followed by long pub lunches and a couple of pints of ale. I am the photographer and would like to set up a website that my pals and their families can use to see what happened each week. I don’t want a following of any kind; I want to limit it to our small closed group. I’ve got no experience of social media, but I think that two of the options might be YouTube and Facebook. There are probably others, but I don’t know which is best. Can you give me some guidance on how to achieve this while…

Discover the orchestral arranger you never knew was in you with our beginner’s guide to Sibelius First ben@computershopper.co.uk MOST PEOPLE WILL have some experience of music notation, whether it’s from instrumental lessons as a child, composing for GCSE or O-level music, or perhaps playing in an orchestra. Performing music doesn’t end when you leave school, though, and the same is true for notation. It allows groups of people to make music together with the minimum of rehearsals, and keeps everyone aiming for the same musical goals. Whether it’s for a community choir or big band, string arrangements for a pop song or music for a local theatre group, there are lots of reasons to give it a go. The barrier is that it’s often seen as a highly specialised skill,…