Computer Shopperの February 2019 の目次

By the time you read this, it will be December (or possibly 2019, for any latecomers), and hopefully you’ll be filled with festive cheer, or at least a few mince pies and Quality Street. But as I sit writing this, I’m filled with anything but good tidings for my fellow man, as it happens to be my least favourite day of the year: Black Friday. A relatively new phenomenon in the UK, this day of pure, unbridled consumerism has appeared on our shores from across the pond. For our American cousins, Black Friday makes sense, falling as it does on the day after Thanksgiving. It’s their answer to Boxing Day, with its traditional post-Christmas sales. But here in the UK, Black Friday just seems an excuse for retailers to put…

JOJO CALLS ME on the phone. I do not take the call. I really don’t want to talk to Jojo. I don’t want to talk to him for two good reasons: first, because he is the crazy-maker I met at a conference and was forced to share a table with; and second, because I am outside the crematorium waiting for a hearse to arrive. Ten minutes later, my phone vibrates to suggest I call Jojo back. Next it offers to help me out and dial his number for me. It then goes through a series of emotions ranging from sulky to offended to downright stroppy, as it keeps reminding me what to do and how it can help me do it. Jojo now sends me a Gmail communication, involving someone…

China is invading the UK with its top tech brands SAY WHAT? INVADERS ARE COMING! But said assault on UK soil is not coming in the form of a military invasion or some animal to disturb Blighty’s natural balance; instead, Chinese tech firm Xiaomi is landing on Britain’s shores. The company has decided that after enjoying enormous success in its home nation, it now wants to extend its reach further into Europe, opening stores in France and Italy earlier in 2018. By the time you read this, Xiaomi’s new Authorized Mi Store will have opened in west London’s Westfield shopping centre, bringing a swathe of the company’s consumer tech within the easy reach of Brits. The company will be selling everything from flagship smartphones to smart bands and electric scooters,…

Germany Windy tech You can’t swing a digital cat in the world of technology without hitting someone harping on about cloud computing. But as useful as it is, the data centres that support the systems suck up vast amounts of power. German electricity company WestfalenWIND IT’s WindCORES initiative aims to power IT cloud infrastructure with green energy. It puts power-efficient Fujitsu hardware into a wind turbine to create a near zero-emissions data centre. This places the data centre as close as possible to a green power source, reducing the carbon footprint of cloud computing and data centres. USA A matter of life and death When it comes to deciding whether to save the lives of a young couple or an OAP with a dog, people think it’s better a driverless…

“There are very few people who actually say they’re trying to create life in artificial intelligence”Dr Beth Singler, an anthropologist researching artificial intelligence at Cambridge University, doubts AI development will lead to a modern-day Frankenstein monster “Only through collaborative action will the UK be the safest place to be online”Margot James, Minister for Digital and the Creative Industries, wants tech firms and government to work together on internet safety “We have lost the feeling of individual empowerment, and to a certain extent also I think the optimism has cracked”Father of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee is disappointed by the current state of his creation “The concerted effort to steal, rather than simply purchase, commercially available products should offend every company that invests talent, energy and shareholder money into the…

£800 •From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT Flashy looks aside, the Orion 3000’s core components leave it open to being outperformed WEALTHY PC GAMERS may already be familiar with the Acer Predator Orion 9000: a titanic £4,000 dual-GPU desktop that’s so proudly and intentionally oversized, it comes with its own set of wheels so that you can drag it around like a suitcase instead of carrying it. It sort of works as the computer equivalent of a concept car, but we’d never suggest actually buying one. There are, however, a couple of options for those who want the Orion 9000’s sci-fi styling in a more manageable (physically and financially) package: the Orion 5000 and the Orion 3000. The Orion 3000 that we have on review is the cheapest in the entire range, comprising…

£143 • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT Despite some rough edges, strong performance and easy assembly make this a great CPU cooler WE COULDN’T LET the year pass without looking at one more RGB all-in-one (AIO) watercooler. If you don’t count Nvidia’s RTX cards (and we’re not, until developers actually start adding ray-tracing to their games), this particular subset of CPU coolers has been the closest thing 2018 has had to breakout PC tech. Taipei’s Computex show was filled with them, and we’ve long had a favourite in the Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240R RGB (Shopper 366). What, then, makes the Thermaltake Floe Riing RGB 240 TT Premium Edition stand out, other than an abundance of syllables? CONFIDENCE BUILDING One thing is its straightforward installation. It needs to be assembled, naturally, but this…

£221 • From www.uk.insight.com VERDICT A fine office monitor, but there are alternatives with even better picture quality IF YOUR PC setup is geared more towards work than play, a monitor with a taller 16:10 aspect ratio can be just the thing. The extra height translates into more room for applications, enabling more efficient multitasking in turn. The Iiyama ProLite XUB2495WSU-B1 is obviously and unabashedly one such office monitor, albeit one that will be within the budgets of many home users as well as business buyers. It has a 24in, 60Hz, 1,920x1,200 IPS panel, so while it’s not a huge screen overall, it’s got that crucial 16:10 aspect ratio. ADJUST CAUSE Its no-nonsense sensibilities are also evident in the design. Aesthetically, it’s a mixed bag: the ultra-slim bezels around the…

£154 • From www.brainwavzaudio.com VERDICT These retro over-ear headphones are neither the best sounding nor the most practical STUDIO HEADPHONES ARE almost always larger than their wireless counterparts, but nothing can prepare you for the size of the Brainwavz HM100. To give you an idea of their scale, they’re accompanied by a solid case that measures 260x240x130mm. That’s an 8L cubic capacity, or the same as a small backpack. Naturally, you don’t have to pack them away every time you’re finished using them, but the fact they won’t fold away into a small pouch tells you everything you need to know about the HM100s: they’re not designed with portability in mind. Instead, Brainwavz boasts that these headphones offer accuracy, clarity, and a wide soundstage – important attributes for audio monitoring…

£739 • From store.google.com VERDICT The Pixel 3 is Android’s new standard-bearer, and the best in its class for photography SOMETIMES A SMARTPHONE doesn’t need fancy hardware gimmicks to achieve greatness. The Pixel 3 is a perfect example: it represents no major departure for handheld technology, but with some well-executed core features and a single camera, it’s become one of our favourites of 2018. The is the smaller of Google’s two new phones, and as you can see from the Pixel 3 XL (opposite), this one has a much cleaner, notch-less design even if the two have largely identical internals. They’re also the same on the back, with an unusual but pleasant-feeling mix of glossy and matt-finish glass and a circular fingerprint reader. NATURAL ORDER These are the first Pixel…

£299 • From www.carphonewarehouse.com VERDICT Nicely designed and with a great camera, but otherwise this is uninspired NOKIA’S COMEBACK SHOWS no sign of slowing up; the Nokia 7.1 is the eighth handset to launch in 2018 alone. For £300, it looks lovely. It’s crafted from a single piece of aluminium, with attractive chamfered edges. It’s also well equipped for connectivity, with both USB Type-C and 3.5mm audio ports, a combined nano-SIM and microSD card tray and Bluetooth 5.0 support. The 5.84in, 2,244x1,080 IPS display has a notch in the top, but it’s still a quality screen, covering 99.4% of the sRGB colour gamut and hitting a high peak brightness of 524cd/m2. A contrast ratio of 1,373:1 helps counter glare further, and the display is capable of showing HDR content from…

£87 • From www.adobe.com VERDICT With a lack of essential new features, this once-peerless package is getting past its prime PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS, THE consumer-friendly version of the industry-standard photo editor, has been trundling along for many a year. A scattering of new features are added every autumn to justify a fresh version, but in an era when tablet and smartphone apps are becoming ever-more sophisticated and enthusiast-grade editors are getting cheaper, it’s getting harder to justify Photoshop Elements’ very existence. In Adobe’s defence, it’s easy to forget how much editing power lies beneath this software’s consumer-friendly surface – plunge into Expert mode and you’ll find many features that are present in full-blown Photoshop. Finding a justification to upgrade for those who own a recent edition of Elements, however, is a…

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 15.6in screen and weigh over 2kg, 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 15.6 or 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 a…

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 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. Most hard disks and solid-state drives (SSDs) use the SATA3 interface, which enables faster speeds than the older SATA2. Pretty much every motherboard released in recent years will have multiple SATA3 ports, allowing you to connect several storage drives at once. 02 SSDs can make the most of SATA3’s high 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 mechanical hard disks, they’re significantly faster. More expensive SSDs use the NVMe…

HOME ENTERTAINMENT LENOVO IdeaCentre 620S This is the cheapest and least powerful (on the CPU side) Windows 10 PC of the eight we’ve covered, so it’s much better suited to the living room than the home office. Its silvery upright design looks great next to a TV, where it can be ably used as media PC – you don’t need a beefy processor to watch all those downloaded movies and TV episodes, after all. The relatively high storage capacity is perfect for keeping as many hours of video (and music) as possible, and there’s even a GTX 1050 Ti graphics card, should you want to engage in some light 1080p gaming as well. WORK AND PLAY MSI Trident 3 Arctic The Magnus ER51070 has a minor performance edge in more…

£781 • From www.pcworldbusiness.co.uk VERDICT It has a great CPU and lots of room for upgrades, but the Optiplex 5060 isn’t as versatile as other small desktops BOXY AND INDUSTRIAL, Dell’s Optiplex PCs would sooner be found mass-deployed in an office than sitting at home. Nonetheless, the small-form-factor Optiplex 5060 has a certain no-frills appeal. Slim it most certainly is: the Optiplex 5060 measures just 93mm wide, as well as 292mm tall and 290mm deep, so it’s easy to tuck away. Dell itself produces a fairly hideous monitor stand with a built-in mount for this and other Optiplex PCs of similar dimensions, but since the PC has a set of rubber feet on the right side panel as well as on the underside, it’s fine to simply lay on its…

£1,390 • From www.box.co.uk VERDICT Armed with a Core i7 processor, the Trident 3 Arctic offers true desktop power in a livingroom-friendly package GAMES CONSOLES ARE essentially locked-down PCs, at least in hardware terms, so it makes sense that we’d eventually get PCs that resemble consoles. The Trident 3 Arctic is one such system: it’s a lot thicker and wider than, say, the Intel NUC Kit, but in true console style can easily fit within a tiered TV stand, or even propped up on the floor, thanks to the bundled stand that holds the whole thing upright. COMPLETE EDITION This is also the only gaming-focused PC in this group test to come fully built, complete with 16GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD, a 1TB hard disk and Windows 10 Home…

£144 • From www.printerbase.co.uk VERDICT The Pixma TS8250 is classy and fairly capable, but its ink is expensive LOOKS AREN’T EVERYTHING when it comes to an MFP, although there’s no shame in wanting something that looks special – and Canon’s Pixma TS8250 certainly does. Made from glossy black plastic, brightened up with chrome trim, and controlled by a huge colour touchscreen, this MFP is as uncluttered and classy as they come. It’s highly specified, too, with a socket for printing from or scanning to SD cards, and comprehensive support for cloud services including Google Drive. The TS8250 is aimed at creative use including photography, and to this end its six-ink printer combines the typical black, cyan, magenta and yellow tanks with an additional pigment black for strong text, plus a…

£226 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT The LaserJet Pro M227fdw is a decent mono MFP, but it quite simply costs too much ON THE ONE hand, HP’s LaserJet Pro M227fdw is a slick, modern multifunction peripheral with features including wired and wireless networking, automatic duplex printing and a fancy colour touchscreen. On the other hand, it’s built around a mono laser printer, something that these days might as well run on coal. That said, while a mono laser isn’t for everyone, they’re typically more compact and cheaper to run than an equivalent colour laser. And while the best office inkjets are now very good, only a handful get close to a mono laser printer when it comes to delivering page after page of crisp black text. If that’s what you’re after,…

The devil you know I had a subscription to Kaspersky Internet Security. When it expired I decided I’d try to save money and get by with Windows 10’s protection. I think it may have been a mistake: I was just using Microsoft Edge to view a video online when a warning came up and I wasn’t able to navigate away. I panicked somewhat and rebooted my PC, but now when I reopen Edge the same warning comes up; now I read it properly, it’s telling me not to reboot. It’s shaken my confidence a bit, and I decided it would be best if I reinstalled Kaspersky Internet Security. It hasn’t found any infection, but I’m stuck with the unskippable message, which is making browsing very difficult. Additionally, Windows Live Mail…

Shoot video with multiple cameras Setting up a second camera adds a lot of flexibility to your production. Ben Pitt explores the possibilities VIDEO IS EVERYWHERE on the web, and there are far more people creating video content than ever before. Some of it is produced with big budgets, but the vast majority is made on a shoestring. Businesses, charities and other organisations want video content to get their message across on social media, but it’s hard for smaller operations to justify spending thousands of pounds on a professional production. If you’re in this predicament, how do you make videos that look like professional productions without spending lots of money? The big expense these days isn’t so much the equipment. A mobile phone can capture serviceable-quality video, and for most…

@Old school I was surprised to read that children are expected to learn on Windows 7 machines, with most of them faulty (Rants & Raves, Shopper 370). That flies in the face of other reports that some schools are issuing students with expensive iPads or similar, a lot of which get broken or stolen. I didn’t have that problem at school; they seemed to find the cost of supplying us with paper notebooks a bit of a problem. I did find my old hymn book the other week. That gave the school good service for nine years, as the previous user started school in 1959. I wonder where Sandra J Nicholl is now. She certainly had better handwriting than me! Trevor Wainwright @Meet your Maker Regarding Paul Martin’s letter about…

I’VE SAID IT before, and I’ll say it again: hacks are all about making money. We’ve seen cyber criminals target users directly with the likes of cryptolockers, and we’ve seen them infest people’s computers, making them part of a botnet for rent. Now there’s a new trick on the horizon: fake Twitter messages and accounts designed to extort money from you, usually in the form of cryptocurrency. WRONG PROFILE The first thrust of this new type of attack came from fake profiles. For example, someone would copy Elon Musk’s profile, but subtly change the letters around: @elonmsuk, for example. With the same profile picture and description, these fake profiles look real enough at a cursory glance. Next, the criminal would reply to a thread by the real account, but use…

For the shelf After all our grumbling about third-gen Fossil smartwatches not having GPS, NFC and optical heart-rate sensors as standard, the release of the fourth-gen Fossil Q Explorist – which has all three – should have been a cause for celebration. Instead, it’s another disappointment, as it fails to deal with the previous generation’s fourth and biggest problem: slow performance. Fossil has opted for the ancient Snapdragon Wear 2100 processor, which means next to recent Apple and Samsung wearables, it feels sluggish and unresponsive. It’s hardly the most efficient chip, either, as you’d be lucky to get more than one day out of the Q Explorist’s battery. (Page 46) For the den For a £999 soundbar/subwoofer combo, the Samsung HW-N850 is lacking in some of its stablemates’ fancier features.…

£1,449 •From www.pcworld.co.uk VERDICT Don’t let its last-gen parts fool you: this is a perfectly capable PC and then some CROSSOVER EVENTS DON’T happen much in tech, but when they do it’s guaranteed to turn heads. Here’s one we especially didn’t see coming: a PC Specialist desktop system, branded by the eSports production firm ESL. It’s an eclectic mix, but there’s nothing too out-there about the PC itself. Contained inside the lovely Cooler Master Masterbox K500 (Shopper 371), this is a high-end gaming system using familiar high-end gaming parts, including a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card and an Intel Core i7-8700K CPU. The latter is overclocked to 4.7GHz, the chip’s standard Turbo Boost speed, but it will run at this higher speed all the time instead of only when…

£106 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT This NVMe SSD shows the importance of keeping speeds up even when the price is, relatively speaking, low IT’S HARD TO tell what’s so professional about the XPG SX6000 Pro. It’s one of the first NVMe SSDs to be based on Realtek’s latest RTS5763DL SSD controller, but otherwise the only significant differences between this and the existing SX6000 are modest read and write speed increases, up to 2,100MB/s and 1,500MB/s respectively. Still, perhaps it’s a good thing that Adata isn’t exactly aiming squarely at the top-spec enterprise market. All three of the XPG SX6000 Pro’s capacity options are remarkably affordable by NVMe standards: the 512GB model we tested is the best value, working out to just 20.8p per gigabyte, while the smallest 256GB and largest…

£1,249 • From www.microsoft.com VERDICT It’s not perfect, but the Surface Laptop 2 is a worthwhile update to Microsoft’s original clamshell JUST LIKE THE Surface Pro 6 (page 22), Microsoft’s new ultraportable is visually indistinguishable from its 2017 predecessor. However, it also atones for greatest sin of the original Surface Laptop (Shopper 356) by ditching Windows 10 S in favour of Windows 10 Home, so it’s already an improvement. Despite the lack of external upgrades, it’s still a beautifully sleek and light laptop. At 1.25kg it’s no burden at all to carry, and dimensions of 308x223x14.5mm make it nice and slender, too, even if it’s not the absolute thinnest device in its class. DRYING WISH As before, the sturdy aluminium chassis is beautifully complemented by hydrophobic Alcantara fabric that surrounds…

£999 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT It’s worth splashing out on this superb-sounding, hassle-free audio system IN RECENT YEARS, Samsung has used some clever audio technologies for its soundbars. For instance, the HW-MS650 (Shopper 367) introduced a distortion-cancelling feature that delivers a tighter low-end response, while the HW-N650 (Shopper 368) uses acoustic beam technology to bounce sound waves around your room for a surround-sound effect. With the HW-N850, however, the focus is squarely on sound quality. Samsung has partnered with audio specialists Harman Kardon to produce a tempting alternative to its own current flagship soundbar, the HW-K950. LUCKY NUMBER The HW-N850 uses a whopping 13 drivers, spread across two upward and two sideways-firing speakers, plus a wireless subwoofer. That gives it plenty of punch and volume, and lots of scope for…

£879 • From store.google.com VERDICT It’s bigger and better than before, but the Pixel 3 XL is threatened by its own smaller counterpart PLUS-SIZED SMARTPHONES are often designed to be better as well as bigger, whether it’s with a higher-resolution display, longer battery life or an extra camera. The Pixel 3 XL has the first two over the Pixel 3, and yet it still looks to have an uphill struggle in convincing potential buyers to choose it: the Pixel 3 isn’t just cheaper, but its 5.5in display will appeal to big-screen fans much more than the 5in Pixel 2 did. The Pixel 3 XL’s answer is to become even bigger itself. The screen now measures 6.3in diagonally, with a resolution of 2,960x1,440, although some of that space is eaten up…

£139 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT Google’s latest smart home device is so useful, the biggest struggle is deciding where to put it TAKE THE HOME Hub – Google’s answer to the Amazon Echo Show (Shopper 361) – out of its box and you might first think you’ve bought a 7in tablet glued on to a pumice stone. This is no Android slate, however – it’s a dedicated smart home control station, in the same vein as the Google Home (Shopper 353), and that chalk-coloured stand is a non-removable speaker. It looks odd, although that isn’t the same thing as looking ugly, and its diminutive footprint makes it easy to accommodate on any bedside table, kitchen worktop or sideboard. On its bezel, the Home Hub’s screen has a two-mic array for…

CHILLBLAST FUSION BLIZZARD GAMING PC chillblast.com/blizzard £1499.99 incl. VAT and delivery This award-winning PC is Chillblast’s recommend computer at this price point. With a powerful Intel Core i5-8600k hex core CPU and GeForce 1070 Ti GPU, it has the power needed to blast through Fortnite, PUBG and all of 2019’s AAA PC games. iiyama G-MASTER BLACK HAWK 75HZ GB2730HSU-B1 Amazon £169.99 Inc Vat The iiyama Black Hawk 27” Gamer Display features a full HD 1ms LCD Display, adding real power to your gaming experience. Armed with Black Tuner function and FreeSync Technology, it lets you respond to every situation with clarity. D-LINK MYDLINK™ PRO WIRE-FREE CAMERA KIT (DCS-2802KT-EU) Amazon £459.99 inc VAT The mydlink Pro Wire Free cameras are discreet, weatherproof, and completely wire free, so you can place them…

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, especially since Microsoft has discontinued support for its OS. Apple iOS and Google Android both have thousands of apps available. 02 All smartphones have colour screens, but their resolutions vary. Basic models have 1,280x720 pixels, but text can be indistinct. Look for a display that has at least 1,920x1,080 pixels so it’s easier to read text and watch Full HD videos. 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…

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-to-digital 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 single-function 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 As with Intel motherboards, you’ll need to make sure you match an AMD processor with a compatible motherboard. This is relatively simple for AMD hardware, as most of its recent chips use the same AM4 socket, and the most recent second-generation Ryzen processors are backwards-compatible with first-generation chipsets, such as the X370 and B350. 02 Budget APU and a minority of Ryzen processors have integrated graphics, so to make use of this, ensure that your motherboard comes with video outputs such as DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. For Ryzen chips that lack integrated graphics, or if you want more graphics power, install a dedicated graphics card into one of your motherboard’s PCI-E x16 slots. This also has the benefit of providing a greater range of video outputs to choose from.…

Chat and Communication UPDATED Evernote 6.16.4.8094 Store your notes, ideas and plans in the cloud, and synchronise them between computers. UPDATED Mailbird 2.5.23.0 A free desktop email client for Windows. Miranda IM 0.10.80 Chat with friends across multiple messaging platforms, including AIM, Facebook, IRC and MSN, all from one simple interface. UPDATED Skype for Windows 8.34.0.78 Make internet voice and video calls for free, and buy credit to make calls to mobiles and landlines. UPDATED Telegram 1.4.3 This free IM app synchronises your conversations across multiple devices, and can spruce up chats with stickers and GIFs. UPDATED WhatsApp Desktop 0.3.1475 A free PC and Mac version of the popular messaging app, letting you chat from your desktop. Customisation iolo System Mechanic Free 18.0.1 Speed up your system with iolo’s PC optimisation suite.…

£799 • From www.apple.com/uk VERDICT Costing twice as much as its previous version, the new Mac Mini is a welcome upgrade at an unwelcome price THE NEW MAC Mini is part of a one-two revival punch from Apple in 2018. Like the new MacBook Air, it’s a major update to a platform that’s spent the past few years somewhat languishing in the wilderness. In fact, this is the first time Apple has touched its much-loved compact computer since way back in 2014. That’s a long time in computing terms, and a lot has happened in the intervening years. Intel has run through four new generations of CPUs, Apple itself has launched seven new iPhones, the iPad has gained a ‘Pro’ suffix – and technology, in general, has increased dramatically in…

£853 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT With a little help from AMD, Intel’s revamped NUC is its most powerful barebones system yet ONE LOOK AT the NUC8i7HVK’s glowing blue skull decoration and you can tell this is a radical departure from Intel’s previous boxy grey NUC (Next Unit of Computing) barebones PCs. Besides the wider, darker chassis, the innards of the new NUC Kit (codenamed Hades Canyon) are centred around an unlikely sounding collaboration between Intel and arch rival AMD: the Core i7-8809G, a quad-core, eight-thread CPU with Radeon RX Vega M GH graphics. Unlike most integrated graphics, the Vega processor has its very own 4GB of HBM2, so it’s not jostling with the CPU cores for RAM. This should, in theory, help it outperform integrated GPUs that share memory with…

£32 • From thepihut.com VERDICT It’s a minor update, but the Pi 3 Model B+ remains the ultimate project computer THIS IS, WE’LL admit, something of an odd one out: while the Raspberry Pi Model 3 B+ is a fully functioning computer, it’s a very distinct device to the petite desktops in this roundup. Like all Raspberry Pis, it’s designed to be hand-built into your own technological creations, whether it’s a robot, a router, a portable games console, a music player or a camera, to name just a few possibilities. The Pi 3 Model B+ was a long time coming. The last time we had a new ‘full fat’ Pi computer was the Model 3 (Shopper 340), which came out back in 2016. Nevertheless, this is an incremental update, focusing…

£227 • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT The Pixma G4510 is a good-value MFP with refillable ink tanks – just make sure you’re not in a hurry With slow printing, as well as unexceptional features and controls, the Pixma G4510 would be lacklustre if not for its low running costs INK CARTRIDGES ARE expensive, but until now the only alternative has been risking third-party refills or buying one of Epson’s EcoTank printers. Step forward Canon’s Pixma G4510, one of a small range of refillable ink tank MFPs now available in the UK. Like Epson’s EcoTank ET-4750 (Shopper 361), the G4510 competes with home office MFPs around the £80-£100 mark. It costs significantly more up front, but cheaper ink means it will cost less in the long run – if you use it…

£564 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT Quick and capable, the EcoTank ET-7750 is a great MFP for busy amateur snappers Photo printing is a notorious drain on ink, but the ET-7750 arrives with enough ink for 3,400 prints WE’VE LONG ADMIRED Epson’s EcoTank system, which shuns cartridges in favour of refillable ink tanks – it’s similar to, and predates, the tank system on the Canon Pixma G4510. The problem has always been Epson typically failing to implement it on a printer or MFP that is, ink system aside, a great product in its own right. That finally looks to have changed with the EcoTank ET-7750. For one thing, the high-capacity tanks are a perfect fit for an A3-capable MFP such as this. Photo printing is a notorious drain on ink, but…

£96 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT HP’s LaserJet Pro M28w is small and simple, but limited. We’d rather have an inkjet We’d suggest that ‘Pro’ is something of a misnomer for this strictly no-frills device IF YOUR IDEA of a laser printer is something too big, hot and noisy to share a desk with, HP’s LaserJet Pro M28w may be a pleasant surprise. It’s a multifunction peripheral built around a basic mono laser printer, and the end result is about as compact as a typical home office inkjet MFP. With no vents to spew hot air, and a slow-ish 18ppm print engine keeping the noise down, it’s as easy to live with as laser devices get. Politely, we’d suggest that ‘Pro’ is something of a misnomer for this strictly no-frills device.…

Protect your data We all know we need a backup system, but who’s actually got one? Clive Webster walks you through this five-minute process, and the extra bonuses a backup service can deliver OUR LIVES ARE increasingly digital, with all our important records, correspondence, photos and videos stored on our computers and laptops. So what happens when one of these devices fails? Far too often, the response is to curse never putting in a robust backup system; you’ve lost too many memories and documents. If you’re lucky, you might spend the next few hours cobbling together your files from old hard disks, phones, SD cards and email archives. If not… It’s time to back up your data: do it now! THE MAIN BENEFITS of a backup system are hopefully obvious,…

@IntrepidExplorer Computer Shopper publishing a Retro feature on Internet Explorer – now I do feel my three-score-plus years (Shopper 371). I remember Mosaic as my first web browser in the early days and moved to Netscape before being sucked into Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in the 1990s. Going back on my own Retro voyage, I started in operational roles in manufacturing and came to be involved with computers as a user providing input for the development of bespoke order processing, production and inventory systems on IBM mini computers in the 1970s and early 1980s. By this time, PCs with Lotus 1-2-3 were being used in finance and we began to use PCs as dumb terminals with the ability to access data on the IBM mini computers. The introduction of PCs was…

Madeline Bennett RANTS THE OLD ADAGE used to be, ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’. But thanks to smartphones, we’ve moved beyond the pen to become a race of touchscreen swipers. We now spend so much time tapping away at our phone and tablet screens, and so little time using our hands for practical skills like writing, we are losing the ability to perform certain tasks. The gravity of the situation has been recently highlighted by the professor of surgical education at Imperial College, London, the perfectly named Roger Kneebone. He has been warning that young people have so little experience of craft skills that they struggle with anything practical, leaving them unable to do core medical tasks such as sewing up patients. “We are talking about the ability…

£13m HOW MUCH VIRGIN MEDIA AND EE WERE FINED FOR OVERCHARGING CUSTOMERS FOR BROADBAND 48 CORES INTEL’S HIGH-END XEON PROCESSORS ARE SET TO INCLUDE 115 Russian accounts deleted from Facebook over concerns of election interference 7,000 Britons still watching black-and-white TV 16 CITIES EE IS SLATED TO ROLL OUT 5G TO IN 2019 12,000 Satellites belonging to Elon Musk’s Starlink, planned to beam high-speed internet from space £799 COST OF ASUS’S GAMINGFOCUSED REPUBLIC OF GAMERS SMARTPHONE £30bn AMOUNT WIPED OFF APPLE’S VALUE AFTER SLUGGISH iPHONE SALES…

A brace of NASA’s venerable spacecraft drift to their deaths in space SPACE MIGHT BE the final frontier for humanity, but it’s also the final resting place for NASA exploration craft. Kepler, NASA’s first ever planet-hunting telescope-cum-spacecraft, has been firing information from space back to Earth for nine-and-a-half years. Sadly, its fuel has run out and, with it so far from Earth, it’s destined to spend the rest of its existence drifting through the Milky Way. Kepler’s 12kg (just over three gallons) of hydrazine fuel allowed the spacecraft to travel 94 million miles from Earth, extracting roughly 31.3 million miles per gallon. But now its fuel reserves have run dry, NASA’s last commands to Kepler will order it to disable its on-board software and turn off its transmitters, leaving it…

£1,149 • From www.microsoft.com VERDICT Microsoft’s hybrid is as sleek and powerful as ever – we just wish both it and the Type Cover were better value MICROSOFT HAS WISELY started numbering its Surface Pro devices again; after the fifth iteration dropped the 5, becomingly simply the Surface Pro (Shopper 355), the premier 2-in-1 series is back with the Surface Pro 6. Surprisingly, this is one of the more significant changes from the 2017 Surface Pro. There have been the expected processor updates, but at least on the surface (for want of a better phrase) the only other apparent difference is the new matt black colour option. PREMIUM PACKAGE For the Surface Pro 6 spec we reviewed, you’ll need to pay £1,149. That gets you an Intel Core i5-8250U processor,…

£799 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT MSI’s cooler is effective, but the underlying GPU lacks a generational performance leap NVIDIA HAS TYPICALLY taken a few extra months after the release of its most powerful GeForce graphics card before launching an even faster Ti version, but with the latest-gen RTX models, both the RTX 2080 Ti (Shopper 371) and the RTX 2080 have arrived at the same time. This, happily, gives performance-minded PC builders a choice of options straight away; as mighty as the RTX 2080 Ti is, £1,099 for a single card is a big ask, and with the RTX 2080 also offering 4K resolution capability, ray-tracing and Deep Learning Super-Sampling (DLSS) anti-aliasing, it has the potential to be a more affordable alternative. EARLY ADOPTER Not that much more affordable, mind.…

£250 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A smart mesh system with loads of features, but it’s pricey given the performance WE’RE NOW AT the point where if you want absolutely stable Wi-Fi, you need to have a mesh system. With so many models on the market, it’s hard for companies to distinguish their products, but TP-Link has managed to achieve this with the Deco P7, which has built-in Powerline networking. As good as mesh systems are, the speed of the network is only as good as the quality of the link between satellite devices. For this reason, many mesh systems support an Ethernet backhaul – that is, satellite devices are connected together using a physical Ethernet cable, improving performance. If you don’t have or can’t run Ethernet, things can get tricky,…

£1,871 • From www.lenovo.com VERDICT This cross between Lenovo’s ThinkPad and Yoga series is almost a match made in heaven LENOVO’S THINKPAD LINE is practically an institution. It’s been a standard-setter for security-conscious business laptop owners for over two decades now, with top-notch performance to get the job done. The Yoga range, though more recent, has also earned a reputation of its own, producing several of the best 360° rotatable laptops, including at a time before the concept had fully entered the mainstream. Then there’s the ThinkPad Yoga family. Now in its third generation, it’s a powerful cross-breed between Lenovo’s two best-known series. This latest version of the ThinkPad X1 Yoga packs some serious hardware, but whether it’s really worth the money is a different matter. The ThinkPad X1 Yoga…

£360 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Outstanding image stabilisation, plus a host of other upgrades, make this the finest action camera around HAVING ALREADY CONQUERED 4K 60fps recording with the Hero 6 Black (Shopper 362), GoPro has turned its attention to stability. The result is the Hero 7 Black, which soups up its electronic image stabilisation (EIS) with ‘HyperSmooth’ technology: a mixture of refined algorithms and hardware performance improvements. We’ll see if this lives up to GoPro’s promise of ‘gimbal-like stabilisation’, but first let’s look at the Hero 7 Black’s design. It’s pretty much identical to the Hero 6 Black, but that’s no bad thing: unchanged dimensions mean that any accessories dating back to the Hero 5 Black (Shopper 349) will be compatible. In other words, you still get a 2in…

£120 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Waterproofing and audiobook integration are welcome additions to the latest mid-range Kindle AS FAR AS its hardware goes, Amazon has a proud track record of making incremental changes that go a long way to improving things we take for granted. The 2018 Kindle Paperwhite is a great example of this. You probably won’t notice that it’s 10% thinner than the previous Paperwhite, but coming in at 8.1mm and 184g, you will find it pleasingly light. The display is the same E-Ink Carta 1.2 as the last outing. Again, it’s 300ppi, which looks delightfully sharp on the 6in display. The display is an inch smaller than the one found on the top-of-the-range Kindle Oasis, but the Paperwhite benefits from feature trickle-down in other areas. For instance,…

£249 • From www.fossil.com VERDICT The Q Explorist has all the features you could ask for, but it’s let down by a slow, dated processor FOSSIL’S THIRD-GENERATION smartwatches, like the Q Control (Shopper 362), had plenty of aesthetic appeal but suffered from underwhelming feature sets. The Q Control’s lack of GPS and NFC, in particular, were real deal-breakers. The arrival of Fossil’s fourth-generation wearables has provided the chance to make amends. One of these watches is the new Q Explorist, which does indeed feature NFC and GPS, alongside the Q Control-style optical heart-rate sensor, something that was absent on the previous Q Explorist. A VIRTUOUS CIRCLE The Q Explorist is a great-looking watch, easily passing for a traditional mechanical timepiece with its large, flat glass front, notched bezel and crown-style…

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 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 modern…

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 has become 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 typically use…

01 If you don’t have space in your home cinema setup for a set of surround-sound 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 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 add 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 the much slower…

£250 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT It’s brilliantly affordable and fine for basic computing, but this tiny Chrome OS system has some practicality issues THIS LATEST VERSION of the Asus Chromebox looks only mildly dissimilar to the Chromebox 2, but there have been some crucial CPU updates. On our entry-level review sample, for instance, the 4GB of RAM and 32GB SSD are matched with a dual-core Celeron 3865U chip. It’s still a squat, square little computer: at 40x149x149mm it’s extremely portable and, more importantly, is easy to tuck away somewhere on or below a desk. It’s also VESA-mountable, so can be attached to the back of a suitably equipped monitor, and Asus kindly includes the mounting plate and screws required. Build quality is good for the price as well. It’s all…

£529 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT This compact PC crams in more power for entertainment, work and even gaming use than you might think THE IDEACENTRE BRAND has tended to flit between sensible all-in-one PCs, the gaming desktops of the 700 series and the slightly gimmicky 600 series. With lingering memories of the weird, projector-equipped IdeaCentre 610S, it’s been good to see the 620S go for a more straightforward approach, while still keeping the dimensions tight. LITTLE SAVINGS Despite standing upright, it’s very much a mini-PC. Space-saving SO-DIMM memory and a low-power processor are both used, the latter a quad-core Intel Core i5-7400T; the ‘T’ suffix basically means it runs at lower clock speeds than the main Core i5-7400, dropping from a 3GHz base with a 3.5GHz Turbo Boost to 2.4GHz…

£1,015 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT 4K gaming and quality physical design carry this barebones PC, but the CPU is showing its age THE LAST TIME we gathered together an assortment of small PCs (Shopper 360), one of the highlights was Zotac’s Magnus ER51060. Despite being a barebones system with no RAM, storage or operating system included in its £699 price, it showed up multiple complete PCs with the gaming prowess of its 3GB GTX 1060 graphics card and the multitasking power of its Ryzen 5 1400 processor. This time, it’s the Magnus ER51070’s turn and, besides having a GTX 1070 GPU instead of the GTX 1060, it’s an essentially identical system. That would seem to put it in good stead, although there are a couple of things working against it.…

£107 • From www.printernet.co.uk VERDICT If you want a smart yet simple MFP to use at home, the Pixma TS6250 is a good choice This is a strong MFP for the home, particularly if you’re mostly interested in creative work THE PIXMA TS6250 is a mid-range model from Canon’s latest line-up of home inkjet MFPs. Like the rest of the range, it’s compact, smart, and wouldn’t look out of place next to a stack of considerably more expensive audiovisual kit. It comes in two colours: the black TS6250 pictured here, and the white TS6251. This MFP is aimed at home users, with a bias towards creative tasks. While there’s no fax modem or automatic document feeder for multipage copies, you can connect and share it over a wireless network, working…

£150 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT If you need to print, copy, scan and fax A3 documents, Epson’s WorkForce WF-7710DWF has you covered Sensibly priced, with good performance, good results, reasonable running costs and a great selection of features, the WorkForce WF-7710DWF is an excellent choice THERE’LL BE A moment, after a long day, when you’ll stop believing that Epson’s WorkForce WF-7710DWF is a big, A3-capable multifunction peripheral, and instead start thinking that you’ve shrunk. It’s exactly like a scaled up version of a regular inkjet MFP, with an A3-capable scanner, an A3+-capable printer, and a big colour touchscreen with chunky buttons. Happily, this Alice-in-Wonderland growth hasn’t taken out any useful features: the WF-7710DWF can connect to a wired or wireless network, and print, scan, copy and fax single- or double-sided…

Subject to change I want to be able to change the subject line on emails I receive so that they mean more to me and make them easier to find when I’m looking for them in the future. Is there a way to do this in Outlook? At the moment I forward them to myself with a new subject line, but of course that loses the original sender and date information. Linda Ryan You can change the subject of a message in Outlook by opening the message, selecting the subject and typing over it. This doesn’t look as though it ought to work, as it’s shown in standard grey, but if you try it you’ll discover that you can indeed type into the field. You then need to click Save…

There’s a lot of scaremongering regarding the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), but really it’s very sensible: don’t gather data you don’t need; don’t share data without permission; don’t allow anyone to access that data unless they need it; and do modify, disclose or delete personal data at the request of the person to which it pertains. Implementation can be trickier, but those are not unreasonable principles. As far as backups are concerned, implementation of GDPR needn’t be tricky. If you’re a large organisation, use a business plan or service. These have tools built in to purge personal data from within backup archives. If your organisation isn’t particularly large or rich, a ‘mirror’ system such as Backblaze is perfect. Recital 39 of the GDPR says, “time limits should be…