Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2019 i APC

It sure has been wild watching AMD shake up the CPU scene over the last two years since Ryzen landed. Intel’s full response is still taking shape, with its sub-14nm process just about ready for prime time. We will see big news out of Computex from Intel, where major announcements are expected. We’re off to the big annual show as this issue goes to print, and will give you a full report next month, covering what AMD and Intel are bringing to battle – and to your next PC, perhaps. What we do know is that AMD will announce the first 7nm Zen 2 CPUs, and they’re expected to increase both core count and frequency in the 3rd-generation Ryzens. Intel will almost certainly counter with new 10th-gen Core CPUs built…

Google’s Security Blog has published research on the effectiveness of “basic account hygiene”, finding that “simply adding a recovery phone number to your Google Account can block up to 100% of automated bots, 99% of bulk phishing attacks, and 66% of targeted attacks that occurred during [the] investigation”. The blog post details the automatic account security measures that Google employs – these include ‘knowledge-based challenges’ such as verifying the last sign-in location of your device, the associated phone number and secondary email addresses. While these weaker challenges prove successful in blocking most automated bot attacks, they are significantly less effective against both bulk phishing and targeted attacks. However, ‘device-based challenges’ thwarted almost every automated or bulk phishing attack that was thrown up against it, and performed considerably better against targeted…

SEAGATE BACKUP PLUS ULTRA TOUCH The ‘Touch’ in the name means it feels good. $139 | SEAGATE.COM.AU We do commend Seagate for continually figuring out new ways of making portable hard drives somewhat interesting. This one has a cloth backing on one side of it. So, for something that is a data tool there’s no denying it’s a little bit fancy. On the practical front it includes both password protection as well as 256-bit hardware encryption, which you can apply on a per-folder basis if you like. It benched at just a nose past 120MB/s, both read and write, in line with portable hard drive expectations. Locally, only the 2TB model is available, with the 1TB model missing our shores. AMAZON ECHO INPUT Turn your favourite speaker into…

600 NUMBER OF TRACKS CREATED BY ENDEL – THE FIRST APP TO BE REWARDED A MAJOR LABEL MUSIC DEAL. THE TRACKS ARE SHORT ‘SOUNDSCAPES’, IDEAL FOR USE AS BACKGROUND MUSIC IN APPS AND VIDEOS, AND ARE CREATED USING AN ALGORITHM. 1 MILLION NUMBER OF ASUS PCS VULNERABLE TO THE ‘SHADOWHAMMER’ MALWARE ATTACK THAT LANDED IN MARCH. The malware, which posed as a security update, was discovered by anti-virus vendor Kaspersky, which said 57,000 of its customers were affected; while Symantec said 13,000 of its users were. Asus has since issued a patch to fix the issue. 24 NUMBER OF HOURS THAT CLIPPY RETURNED BEFORE BEING KILLED OFF AGAIN. The former MS Office assistant reappeared in March as a free-to-download animated sticker pack for Microsoft Teams on GitHub, but one day…

When it comes to transferring data and power, choice of bus is king. The battle between aging champion Universal Serial Bus and plucky new contender Thunderbolt has been an exciting one to watch, and now we’re here to put it to bed – for a little while, at least. USB might have had more time to integrate itself into as much technology as possible, but Thunderbolt from Apple and Intel is hot on its heels, and both have their advantages and failings. Which is truly superior, though? Round 1 VALUE Our first showdown is easy: It’s USB, without a doubt. Even the more recent 3.1 and 3.2 iterations aren’t much more expensive than USB 3.0, affordable both for manufacturers to implement and for consumers to purchase – USB drives and…

N AS units are more than simple file servers these days. They run all sorts of server apps that require faster CPUs and faster storage than the humble NAS units of the past provide. Synology’s new DiskStation DS1019+ is kitted out with hardware features that reflect the demands placed on NAS units in 2019. The DS1019+ is built around an Intel Celeron J3455, quad-core, 64-bit CPU. This CPU contains not only hardware video transcoding support (Intel QuickSync), but a hardware encryption engine (AES-NI) as well. These features mean applications like Plex or Emby can transcode video, or you can encrypt your storage array without an impact on overall performance. Also inside the DS1019+ is 8GB of DDR3L RAM. That’s quite a fair chunk of memory for a NAS, so it’ll…

Budget motherboards are one of the most overlooked of all PC components. They’re so… well, ordinary. They omit extraneous extras, instead focusing on the core connectivity and expansion options that a basic PC needs. They’re also high volume sellers for motherboard manufacturers, often finding their way into OEM PCs with customers being none the wiser. If you’re looking to build a basic PC on a tight budget, selecting a simple ‘board is always the best starting point – and a surprising amount of users will still be served well by motherboards with likes of Intel’s H310 and AMD’s A320 chipsets. Even today’s low-end desktop PCs are quite capable of performing tasks that are impractical (if not impossible) on phones, laptops and tablets. And cheap does not necessarily have to mean…

The Gigabyte H310M-H-2.0 is the definition of a no-frills motherboard. It’s the kind of board that’s probably unlikely to be purchased by a DIYer, instead being included in a PC store’s budget system. The H310M-H 2.0, being one of Gigabyte’s cheapest motherboards isn’t going to win a features checklist comparison. It’s unfair to compare this board to the Asus and MSI H310 models that cost a good 30% more, but we can compare it to the Asrock opposite, which comes in a few of bucks cheaper but also includes a significantly better feature set. It’s the only board in the roundup to lack an M.2 slot and the only H310 board not to include Intel LAN. You do get an HDMI port and a decent audio solution, so if you’re…

Asus might be better known for its high-end and ROG products, but that doesn’t mean it can’t cater for the budget end of town too. The A320M-A is a mATX board that offers terrific value at just $89 dollars. Though it’s not a TUF board, the A320M-A features plenty of electrical tricks including ESD protection for the LAN, USB, VGA and PS/2 ports – worth considering if your area is prone to lightning storms! The rear I/O contains a solid compliment of ports including four USB 3.1 Gen 1 along with a pair of USB 2.0s. There’s a HDMI 1.4b port, VGA and DVI-D ports. The single Gigabit LAN port is controlled by a Realtek RTL8111H controller. A pair of PS/2 ports (does anyone actually have a PS/2 mouse anymore?)…

FREE | WWW.GIMP.ORG GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a superb free photo editor, and comes with a huge array of professional-quality functions for fine-tuning snaps and creating your own artwork from scratch. It includes layers, highly customisable brushes, filters and automatic image-enhancement tools, and support for a huge number of plugins (some pre-installed, and others available to download separately). Its active community of contributors means it’s in constant development, and any bugs are squished in short order. It all adds up to make a truly remarkable free photo editor that’s superior to many commercial programs. You can adjust every aspect of your pictures’ appearance manually, or use the dozens of customisable filters and effects to achieve amazing results with just a few clicks. GIMP comes with a huge…

There’s no need for recriminations – getting caught out by malicious software happens to the best of us. The question is, how do you deal with it? Let’s dive in and look at detecting and removing stubborn infections from malware to browser hijackers. First, open your security software, make sure it’s fully up to date and run a full (not quick) scan. If any security alerts pop up, review them carefully for false positives, but if you’re in any doubt, allow your anti-malware tool to zap the file into quarantine or attempt a full-blown removal. Reboot when done, then scan again to verify the infection is gone. REMOVE DEEP INFECTIONS You may find some infections keep hanging around – give your antimalware tool two or three attempts to scrub the…

You can practically eliminate the threat from a brute-force attack, but you can’t stop passwords being exposed as part of a wider security breach due to mistakes or weaknesses on the part of the online service that is holding your data. So, how do you take steps to protect your account in the event of such an attack? The answer is 2FA, or two-factor authentication. This introduces a secondary requirement to the log-in process: a six-digit code you need to enter in addition to your password. The code changes regularly, and can be delivered via email, text message, or authenticator app. Email is the least secure – what if your account is compromised? – while authenticator app and text are preferable because they require your phone, a separate device outside…

1 SETUP AND REBOOT TO SAFE MODE Download and install Windows Repair from www.tweaking.com – launch the tool, let it perform initial checks and click ‘I Agree’ when prompted. At the main screen, click ‘Reboot to Safe Mode’ to restart your PC in Safe mode. Then go to Step 2: (Optional) and click Open Pre-Scan. 2 SCAN FOR ERRORS The pre-scan scans three specific parts of your system for potential issues – click Start Scan. Reparse or environment errors can be fixed using the repair tools provided; visit www.catalog. update.microsoft.com to download and reinstall missing packages (search by KB number). 3 CHECK HARD DRIVE FOR ERRORS Close the window to return to the main Windows Repair screen. Click ‘>’ followed by Check to perform a disk check. If errors are…

Beneath the surface of Windows lies a seething mass of programs, services and other system files all competing for a share of finite resources. It doesn’t matter how many cores your processor has, how much RAM you stuff into your PC or whether you switch to an uber-fast solid-state drive (SSD), your PC finds a way of gobbling up everything you throw at it. In this section, we’re going to show you how to rein it in. TAME STARTUP The problems begin the moment Windows appears to have finished loading. If your computer had a stomach it would be doubled over with indigestion the way start-up programs and services start demanding attention even before you have managed to log into your user account. BootRacer (www.greatis.com/ bootracer) is a great tool…

Although the world might like to argue – statistics show that Windows 10 has only just, in the last few months, beaten Windows 7 in worldwide usage rankings – Microsoft has made its decision. The hammer will come down on Windows 7 in early 2020, and unless you’re part of a business willing to pony up a whole load of cash, all support for it will be dropped. That means no updates, no security patches, nothing. It’ll be put out to pasture, to live out the rest of its days on a beautiful farm, increasingly infested by worms and open wounds. In truth, you might not be overly worried about this. No more Windows Updates sounds like bliss to some people. Indeed, Microsoft ceased all major updates for Windows 7…

Even the crustiest PC can be scraped back into shape with the right OS. You don’t need to stray far from the trusty Linux standards, either; Lubuntu is a light-weight flavour of Ubuntu that switches out its usual Gnome 3 window manager for the lightweight LXDE desktop, and drops some of the more system-intensive apps in favour of lighter alternatives. It might be dialled down, but that doesn’t mean you can’t dial it up again, as Lubuntu is compatible with standard Ubuntu software repositories. If there’s something there you want, you can get it – although if you’re running on the lowest possible specs (claimed to be just 512MB RAM), don’t expect absolutely everything to work. There are other minimal editions of Ubuntu (LXLE, in fact, is a respin of…

1 SETTING UP CHILD ACCOUNTS To take parental control of a child’s account, it first needs to be configured correctly. To do that, go to Start > Settings > Accounts > ‘Family & other users’. Click ‘Add a family member’ and create as many accounts as you need for the members of your family – just follow the on-screen instructions, indicating that you would like to create an account for a child. 2 ENSURE ACCOUNTS ARE LIMITED If you’re setting up a child account from scratch, it will be as a Standard User, so the account can’t be used to make potentially damaging changes to Windows. If you’re using an existing account, check its status. In the ‘Family & other users’ window ensure none of the accounts are set as…

If you’ve always dreamed of being a guitar hero but couldn’t be bothered with the tedium and sore fingers of actually practising, Apple’s own GarageBand is here to help. Apple’s app enables you to play guitar even if you can’t play it for real, and the results can be really impressive: not only does GarageBand create the chords for you, but it can even do the actual playing. “The results can be really impressive: not only does GarageBand create the chords for you, but it can even do the actual playing. “ You can use a classic acoustic guitar, or choose from three electric offerings. Classic Clean emulates the warmth of big-bodied electrics, Roots Rock is bluesy, and Hard Rock adds some fun distortion. Each electric guitar also includes a…

1 TIDY UP THE SIDEBAR You can drag unwanted default items out of the bar to remove them – wait for a cross to appear, then let go – and folders you want into the Favourites section. Recent macOS versions let you drag sections into the order you want. 2 MAKE SHORTCUTS ELSEWHERE Aliases are another way to reach files and folders deep on your Mac that you don’t want in Finder’s sidebar or in the Dock’s right side. Drag one, hold option-command and drop elsewhere – the desktop, say – to create a link to the original. 3 TAG YOUR FILES Tags also help when you need to quickly look up files. control-click a file (or a selection) and choose a tag from the menu (which you can set…

$99.95 | PC, PS4, XB1 | WWW.BETHESDA.NET Arriving eight years after its moderately well-received predecessor, Rage 2 attempts to fully realise the first game’s promise of a chaotic, post-apocalyptic sandbox game with Doom- quality gunplay. It’s no surprise that developer id Software has once again nailed the latter, however, the former has continued to elude the franchise – this despite the involvement of Avalanche Studios, a team which knows a thing or two about open-world mayhem – it created the Just Cause series and developed 2015’s Mad Max game. For the most part, Rage 2’s sandbox approach doesn’t add a lot of value to the game, though we imagine that removing its lengthy driving sections would probably bring the campaign’s completion time down to around four hours instead of twelve.…

ISSUE 469, JULY 2019 Please note that these exclusive downloads will only be available for a limited time, from 17/06/2019 to 04/08/2019. REMOVE STUBBORN BLOATWARE CLEAR ALL UNWANTED FILES WITH ASHAMPOO UNINSTALLER 7. FULL VERSION WORTH $40 Ashampoo Uninstaller 7 makes it easy to install, test and uninstall applications. Unwanted software, browser extensions and toolbars are gone from your hard disk in just a few clicks. Never before has installation monitoring for leftover-free uninstalls been so extensive and easy to use. Even legacy applications installed prior to Uninstaller can be completely removed thanks to in-depth cleaning. Finally, the innovative super-fast snapshot feature helps you track all system modifications with ease and clarity. DOWNLOAD LINK: www.ashampoo.com/lpa/apcmagazine NEVER LOSE A FILE AGAIN DO A THOROUGH LOCAL AND CLOUD SEARCH WITH ABELSSOFT EVERDOC.…

version of the equally new iPad Air. Spoiler alert: Judging by our X-rays, it’s not. It looks exactly like an upgraded iPad Mini 4. We pull a cellular-capable iPad Mini 4 from the lab to confirm our suspicions. Headphone jack: check. Big bezels: check. Home button: check. ■ As much as we wish Apple would come up with a better approach to tablet construction, we reckon we know how opening this will go: Heat. Slash. Repeat. Once the Mini is shucked, we get our first peek at the internals. We remove the bracket covering the display and battery connectors, and it brings along a friend. The battery flex connector is now adhered to that bracket, automatically disconnecting the battery. Nifty! Hopefully, this will help fixers to not accidentally kill the…

“Bitcoin itself, along with most reputable altcoins have proven to be exceptionally secure, despite BTC having a US$100 Billion+ target painted on its back” As an avid follower of crypto currencies for many years, I’ve seen Bitcoin move from an underground experiment to a genuine new asset class. Bitcoin was a hot topic around Christmas dinner tables in December 2017. $25,000 for one Bitcoin! Even Grandma and Grandpa heard about it on the news. That bubble was always going to burst. Price aside, all too often cryptocurrencies gain attention for the wrong reasons. Instead of the focus being on their strengths as generally decentralised, cryptographically secure, efficient and trustless instruments, we see headlines such as the one we saw in early May: Binance hacked and 7000 BTC stolen! Oh no,…

Last issue, we asked: Do you need a soundcard? This issue, we ask simply: Do you need this one? Stylistically and on the spec sheet, EVGA’s high-end Nu Audio discrete soundcard is aimed squarely at gamers, but in truth, this is as much about enjoying better music. Let’s start with the headline numbers: Playback and recording formats go up to 384kHz, 32-bit audio, signal-to-noise ratio is nice and high at 123dB, and there’s a generous array of ins and outs comprising stereo and headphone-outs, 3.5mm line and mic-ins, an optical-out, and front panel header. There’s also, rather inexplicably, an RGB lighting panel on the card itself, which is customizable via EVGA’s Nu Audio software. We can get on board with RGB on keyboards and even graphics cards these days, just…

These days it’s unfair to pigeon hole Asrock as a value oriented brand, though there’s no doubting that it’s still one of its particular strengths. For just $85 the H310CM-HDV/ M.2 includes hardware we’d expect only on the higher-end H310 models. The H310CM is a little unusual in its design, with the chipset located above the PCIe slot and the M.2 connector underneath it. This could lead to additional heat being blown straight onto an already heat sensitive M.2 drive. These days the main M.2 slot is often placed above the primary PCIe slot. Spec-wise, the Asrock H310CM is quite amazing for its price. You get all the features on offer from a H310 chipset board, including the full four SATA ports and dual memory slots. ASRock has also managed…

MSI is probably the most ‘gamerfied’ of the motherboard brands, so it’s no surprise to see the company produce a gaming-themed Intel motherboard for the budget DIY market. (Sadly, MSI opted not to provide an A320 board for our roundup.) The MSI H310M Gaming Plus is a premium tier H310 board, though like all the other H310 boards, it is quite handicapped compared to A320 or Intel B360 boards. Key features include M.2 support, Intel LAN and support for MSI’s Mystic Light Sync RGB ecosystem. Budget system builders won’t find anything to complain about here. The Asus and MSI H310M challengers are very similar in spec and price, so it comes down to performance to separate them. As a gaming product we’d hope that MSI would be at least very…

Gigabyte’s A320M-S2H is another very affordable and feature-rich A320 option. It’s an mATX board like all the others in the roundup. The rear I/O contains all the ports we expect, including four USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports and two USB 2.0 ports. Display connectivity is handled by one HDMI 1.4b, one VGA and one DVI-D port and a Realtek RTL8111H controller takes care of LAN duties. Audio comes courtesy of a Realtek ALC-887 controller. Thankfully the Gigabyte A320M includes a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot that’s missing from the company’s H310 model in this roundup. There’s only four SATA ports and two memory slots, which are the only two significant features that are missing from this budget A320 board. Gigabyte’s H310 board performed well in the benchmark tests and so…

Problems connecting to the Internet – or even just your local network? Start by determining what the issue is: if other devices can connect without any issues, then focus your efforts on your PC. Here, you need to first check the network icon in your Taskbar’s notification area – if it’s displaying a yellow exclamation mark or red cross then click for further guidance. Wireless connections may also be greyed out with an asterisk indicating other connections are ‘available’ – click to see if your network is listed, then try reconnecting if it is. If you’re at the edge of your internal Wi-Fi network, you may find the signal’s being drowned out by interference from other networks – check the step-by-step guide on the page opposite to confirm this and…

Neither System Restore nor Rollback RX are a substitute for taking drive images using tools such as Macrium Reflect Free (www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx) or Paragon Backup & Recovery (www.paragon-software.com/free/br-free). Both of these free tools enable you to take periodic fail-safe backups of your entire Windows setup – everything is included, and because your backup is stored on a separate physical drive, you’re also protected against drive failure. Set up a weekly differential (Macrium) or a daily incremental (Paragon) schedule to minimise disruption and data loss just in case you ever need to restore from either app.…

Ransomware is a nasty piece of malware where hackers encrypt all or part of your PC’s main drive and demand a ransom for the key required to unlock it. Hopefully you have a recent backup to fall back on if all else fails, but all may not be lost even if this isn’t the case. There are two types of ransomware: some simply target your data, while others lock you out of your PC. Dealing with the former type involves removing the underlying infection first using your anti-malware tool. Once done, visit www. nomoreransom.org/en/decryption-tools.html for a comprehensive list of ransomware types and tools to deal with them. Here you’ll find links to tools from reputable companies such as AVG, Bitdefender or Kaspersky. If you find yourself locked out of your…

We’re big fans of virtual private networks (VPNs), and for good reason. They mask your identity and encrypt all data sent and received over the internet, making them an essential tool if you regularly browse on unencrypted wireless networks, such as public hotspots. VPN providers are ten-a-penny, and there are three we recommend. All work on mobile as well as desktop, letting you cover all your devices, and they all use the tightest forms of encryption. The crème de la crème is ExpressVPN (www.expressvpn.com), which checks all the boxes for security, ensuring no personally identifiable traces of your browsing activity are recorded. ExpressVPN has over 2,000 servers spread across over 140 cities in over 90 countries, making it useful for accessing geo-restricted content, too. The process of encrypting and decrypting…

Frustrated by your PC’s lethargic performance? Worried by persistent niggles, from minor glitches to major crashes? Unless your PC’s problem is hardware-related, the obvious solution is to blow things up and start from scratch with a brand new reinstall. But reinstalling Windows in this way isn’t always the logical solution. Sure, it wipes things clean and gives you a completely fresh slate, but there’s a lot of effort involved, and – despite our tips and techniques – it isn’t always possible to recreate things exactly the way you want. Rather than reach for the nuclear button every time you sense something is wrong, why not see if you can regenerate your existing Windows installation instead? We’re going to help you do exactly that. We’ll kick things off by giving your…

Why take a feather duster to clean out your PC when our supercharged vacuum cleaning toolkit can do a much better job? Let’s start by making sure your PC is malware-free. Open your existing security tool and make sure it’s updated, then run a full system scan. If malware is found, let the tool clean it, then reboot and scan again. If the malware’s proving tricky to budge, try rebooting your PC in Safe mode and then running your anti-malware tool from there. Never rely on a single security tool – we recommend that you install Malwarebytes (www.malwarebytes. com) alongside your existing security package. It’ll often find threats ignored by traditional tools. REMOVE JUNK You can remove potentially unwanted programs (PUPs) from your PC. Malwarebytes can remove some, but also…

Looking for ways to tweak your PC hardware? Start by making sure you have the latest drivers for key components, such as your graphics card. If you’ve been relying on Windows Update to deliver these, try visiting the manufacturer’s site directly to see if a newer driver is available. Alternatively, try a driver-sourcing tool such as IObit’s Driver Booster (www.iobit.com – look under Performance), which can do all the grunt work for you. One of the biggest bottlenecks in your PC is its hard drive. Type defrag into the Search box and open the ‘Defragment and Optimise Drives’ tool. This will enable you to see if your SSD drives are optimised and your non-SSD drives defragged. Ultimately, if you have an SSD drive, there’s little you can do to improve…

Psst, over here – we hear you’re looking for a sweet deal. Take a look inside the stained trench coat of a third-party key reseller, and you might be surprised; a Windows 10 key, generally overstock sold on from a wholesale bulk buy, or sometimes a key bought with a cheaper foreign currency and passed down the line, could cost you as little as US$20. While we’re not trying to discourage you from heading to a site like www.kinguin.net, www.pcdestination. com, or even a big retailer like Amazon or Newegg in search of a cheap key, there are a few things that you need to beware of. This is risky. We’re not vouching for any of these sites because there’s a small chance the key you buy could be illegitimate…

Love it or hate it, RGB lighting to bling up your PC is here to stay. If, like me, you’ve been blissfully ignoring the RGB revolution going on when it comes to turning the innards of your PC build into a Nyan Cat dance party, you might be surprised at how difficult setting up a fully coherent lighting setup can be. RGB LEDs have been in production for quite some time and even cooling fans sporting different colours aren’t new; however the craze that is addressable RGB (aka ARGB), which is programmable by software, has really taken off in the past couple of years, to the extent that everything inside your case can be RGB-ified. Motherboards, graphics cards, LED strips, AIO water blocks and of course fans are the typical…

There wasn’t too much work to be done on the budget build this month. We managed to find our Asrock B450M motherboard discounted at several shops, with Umart pricing it competitively at just $95 – down from $119 a month ago. Elsewhere we were able to trim the fat a little – swapping out our Adata Ultimate SSD for a Crucial BX500 of the same size saved us a few dollars. Most other components held steady this time around, with our final tally showing an overall price reduction of thirty dollars compared to last month’s build. A sudden, unwelcome hike in the price of Corsair’s H100i Pro 240mm RGB all-in-one cooler (from $159 last month to $226 now!) had us re-evaluating our mid-range build this month, eventually opting for a…

STORAGE EXFAT FILE CONVERSION QUERY I have an external 3TB hard drive with 500GB of data on it, formatted as NTFS. Can I convert this to exFAT without losing any data? Wayne Scowen Sadly no – the recommended, and safest, option is to copy the files to another drive before reformatting the drive to exFAT, then copying or moving them back. If the drive is less than half full, however, another option would be to use a tool like AOMEI Partition Standard (free from www. disk-partition.com). Once installed, launch the program. Right-click the current NTFS partition and choose Resize Partition. Shrink the partition to free up enough space to fit your data on, then click OK. You’ll see unallocated space appear next to the shrunk partition – right-click this and…

Shotwell’s capabilities can be increased through the use of plug-ins, some of which are provided with the program. These are managed via the Edit > Preferences > Plugins tab, and you’ll see there are three categories: Data Imports, Publishing and Slideshow Transitions. These are the only plug-ins currently published and available for Shotwell, and they do change over time – for example, an option to publish to Facebook was recently removed as it no longer works. You can see the current status of Shotwell’s plugins by taking a trip to https:// github.com/GNOME/shotwell/tree/master/plugins, where you’ll discover that the obsolete Picasa Web Albums plug-in is in the process of being updated to support publishing to Google Photos instead. If you fancy writing your own plugin, visit wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Shotwell/Architecture/WritingPlugins for a complete guide to…

The chances are that when you flash a new image to your Raspberry Pi’s microSD card, you’re doing it wrong. While the Pi’s default desktop experience in Raspbian has improved, the configuration side of things hasn’t really matured as much as it could have. The result is you booting up with a keyboard, mouse and monitor attached, and setting up wireless networking, SSH and various other options. But while the pre-boot configuration could be better, it isn’t completely absent. A Raspberry Pi running Raspbian Stretch – and some other operating systems, but we’re concentrating on Raspbian – can be configured while the microSD card is still inserted in your PC. Wireless networking and SSH can be preconfigured, as can settings for the display, memory and even overclocking. This is thanks…

Valve has announced it will create a standalone version of Dota Auto Chess, an astoundingly popular custom game mode for Dota 2 developed by Chinese studio Drodo Studio. With the help of Valve, Drodo will develop and support a non-Dota Chinese version simply called Auto Chess, while Valve will work on the standalone Steam / Dota version. “In February we flew the Drodo team over from China to chat about the future of Dota Auto Chess, and to see if they’d want to collaborate directly with us,” the announcement reads. “We had great conversations, but we both came to the conclusion that Valve and Drodo could not work directly with each other for a variety of reasons. We ended up agreeing that we’ll each build our own stand-alone version of…

According to a briefing by the Home Affairs Department, users who access the internet at McDonald’s and Westfield in Australia could be targets for surveillance by police. This news was obtained through a freedom of information request, which also reveals that police can compel businesses that offer free Wi-Fi access to patrons to hand over customer information. Under Australia’s new Telecommunications Access and Assistance Act – which raised plenty of eyebrows when it passed through Parliament last year – authorities will have the power to compel cooperation from “designated communications providers” but, in reality, “any Australian retailer who offers a mobile phone application for online shopping or offers an application for mobile viewing” could be required to assist in police spying. The briefing also provided several examples of the type…

Nowadays it’s mostly taken for granted that the biggest tech companies – Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook – are surveilling our internet usage, amassing our metadata, and using it to make a lot of money. But one of the most alarming advancements in surveillance technology is Amazon’s Rekognition, a facial recognition tool with a variety of uses, particularly in marketing and advertising and especially in social media. It’s cause for discomfort when applied to those fields, but when news emerged last year that Amazon had pitched the technology to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, many feathers were ruffled, particularly those of the American Civil Liberties Union. While it’s easy to object to the technology in principle, if we’re to accept that it will inevitably be used in law…

Dell has maintained a strong command in the business ultrabook space over the last few years with its XPS range, and despite the fact that you can get both the 13 and 15 inch XPS models in a 2-in-1 configuration – or choose from an entire range of Inspiron 2-in-1 laptops – Dell also has a New Latitude 7400 2-in-1 for you to take home. Technically the Latitude family is pitched at commercial customers since they come with a Windows 10 Pro OS and additional security features like a fingerprint scanner and an infra-red camera, but there’s no reason you couldn’t pick one up as a consumer. The main benefit of the Latitude range is a more generous battery that’ll keep you working longer. The base model (the one tested…

Intel’s Optane solutions have been on the market for some time, though they’ve been relegated to the ultra-high end and enterprise markets or alternatively as low capacity cache drives. As has been the case for most of Optane’s life, the cache drives are typically too small and the enthusiast drives are typically too expensive. For Optane to really succeed, Intel needs something in the middle. The H10 we’re reviewing here might just be the device that brings a wide deployment of Optane to the masses. Intel’s Optane Memory has some significant advantages versus NAND flash, notably its excellent random access performance and low latency. The H10 model we have on hand pairs 32GB of Optane memory with 512GB of QLC NAND, combining both into one M.2 drive. This allows access…

Like MSI (opposite), Asus has managed to produce a gaming-themed board at a price that allows you to divert a few dollars more over to a graphics card, which as we all know, is what really affects gaming performance the most. Being a member of Asus’ TUF Family, The H310M Plus Gaming is designed with electrical stability and reliability in mind. There’s plenty of electro static discharge protection across the board. The VRM is decent at this price. If it had a heatsink we might even consider running 95W high core count CPUs on it. And can you believe it – there’s even a splash of RGB on board! It’s certainly the most attractive looking board in the roundup. There’s even a RGB header on board if you fancy adding…

Asrock’s name is synonymous with value motherboards and its A320M-HDV R4.0 (that rolls off the tongue...) is a good example of what Asrock can manage to include on a board that’s just $79. There aren’t too many motherboards on the market cheaper than that. The silkscreened patterning on the board might not look the greatest, but then who expects RBG or a beautiful design at this end of the market? This board is all about value and it’s got it where it counts. A PCIe 3.0 x4 slot for a full speed M.2 drive is welcome at this price, though you don’t get the full spec capabilities of the platform with just four SATA ports and two memory slots. That’s fairly understandable at this sub-$80 price, although you do still…

If your computer isn’t the source of the problem, then there are two other avenues you can explore. Start with your router. Switch it off, wait 30 seconds for it to clear itself, then switch it back on. It’s amazing how often this resolves network-wide issues. If you’re struggling to connect anything wirelessly to the router, plug something into it using an Ethernet cable to check that still works; if it does, focus your troubleshooting on the router’s Wi-Fi settings. To log into your router through your browser you’ll need to know its IP address – go to Status under Settings > Network & Internet, then click ‘View your network properties’ – your router’s IP address is under ‘Default gateway’; or check your router’s manual for connection instructions. If all…

1 CREATE RECOVERY MEDIA Download and install the free version of Lazesoft Recovery Suite Home Edition from www.lazesoft.com on to a working PC. Once done, launch the program and choose ‘Burn CD/USB Disk’. Work through the wizard, choosing your afflicted PC’s version of Windows when prompted. 2 BOOT FROM LAZESOFT CD/USB DRIVE Insert the USB flash drive or CD into your non-booting PC and power up. If the Windows Boot Manager screen appears, choose ‘Lazesoft Live CD’ to continue; if not, press the reset button and look for an option to access a boot menu – choose this and select your recovery media to boot from. 3 SCAN FOR DATA FILES If your data files are on the same drive as your Windows installation, and they’ve not been backed up…

1 INITIAL SETUP Download Rollback Rx Home from tinyurl.com/APC69PC2 – fill in the form to receive a link by email. Once downloaded, double-click the installer and follow the prompts. Once complete, reboot when prompted. You’ll see RollBack Rx set up its emergency tool, then Windows will reload. 2 ACCESS CONFIGURATION RollBack Rx will automatically start with Windows – look for its Taskbar Notification area icon. Roll your mouse over it and you’ll see it’s already taken its first snapshot. To review this, right-click the icon and choose ‘Open RollBack Rx Home’ to access the main summary screen. 3 CREATE SNAPSHOT ON DEMAND You can easily create new snapshots on demand – right-click the RollBack icon in the Taskbar and choose New Snapshot just before installing a program, for example. Give…

You’ve removed all the infections from your PC, but they’ve left behind damage. Safe mode remains crippled, you’ve been locked out of folders due to permissions issues and you may find that your network and Internet connections are no longer working in the way they should. Thankfully, there are several tools that can help you repair some, if not all, of the damage. Start with the Windows Repair Tool (www.tweaking.com) – If you can, reboot into Safe mode and skip to the following paragraph; if not, switch to the ‘Repairs – Main’ tab, click Open Repairs and choose ‘I understand the risks’. Untick ‘All Repairs’, then tick ’23 – Repair Windows Safe Mode’ and click Start Repairs. After doing so, Safe mode should be enabled, allowing you to reboot into…

The days of securing your online accounts with short, easily guessable passwords are long gone, but what constitutes the perfect password? Is it using random characters, the password length, or a combination of both? Let’s start with characters. Typing nick as your password is clearly weaker than *l3G because nick is easily guessable, particularly if it’s your first name. But guess what? A longer – but memorable – passphrase such as ILoveTheFourthOfJuly is potentially stronger than *l3G because while the passphrase might be guessable, it’s more resistant to brute-force attacks, which just run through every possible combination of characters to try to arrive at the correct password. Shorter passwords are therefore easier (and quicker) to crack, as there are far fewer possible combinations. That said, passphrases are vulnerable as they…

You’ll notice we recommend de-selecting PrivaZer’s Registry cleaning component – and for good reason. Cleaning Registry entries has zero effect on your computer’s performance, but one false misstep and you can cause major problems that could ultimately bring your PC’s installation crashing down. Don’t believe us? Support Squad is littered with emails from people who’ve relied on Registry cleaning tools only to find that their systems have been crippled as a result. The only exception to this rule is when you use IOBit Uninstaller to remove programs from your PC. It’s specifically looking for entries related to the program you’re uninstalling, which means you can make a measured judgement about whether they’re safe to remove or not. If you’re not convinced, then at least take a System Restore point before…

1 CHOOSE YOUR CRITERIA Download Duplicate Cleaner Free (tinyurl.com/APC469PC3), then install and launch the program. By default, the most accurate type of search – a file’s content – is selected, but you can choose to search by different criteria – file name, size and so on – if you prefer. 2 CHOOSE A FILE FILTER Click ‘Select’ to quickly set a search filter for specific files by type. These limits aren’t comprehensive, so add your own file types to the end of the Included list (*.docx and *.rtf for text files, for example), separating each with a semi-colon. You can set file size and date limits, too, if you wish. 3 SELECT SCAN FOLDERS Switch to the Scan Location tab to select one or more drives or folders to search.…

Most of your computing life is spent using applications rather than Windows itself. If your PC is struggling under the weight of all the programs you use on it, consider trying to source more lightweight alternatives. First, see if you can source a portable version of your favourite program using www.portableapps.com as a starting point as well as the app’s own website. Portable versions are self-contained, so only consume resources when they run and don’t clog up the Registry or other system folders. An added benefit is they can be stored on another drive to Windows, ensuring that they – and your precious settings – survive your next reinstall or major system crash. Second, see if a faster, less bloated alternative is available for those programs you can easily swap…

It doesn’t matter how many times you do it, or just how reliable the process is, upgrading an existing install to a new operating system version is scary and a little risky. If it goes bad, you’re screwed – particularly if you’ve not taken the proper steps to keep your precious data safe. We could go on and on about the backup tips you’ve already heard – three copies in at least two places, one of which is off-site – but we’ll presume you’re doing that already. The critical backup here is a fail-safe – a cache of your files that’s ready to go on the off-chance that something goes wrong. It’s essential whether you’re upgrading, switching, or doggedly sticking to your now-vulnerable Windows 7. You could create a full…

Being a parent is stressful and time-consuming enough without having to worry about either what your child is using their (or your) PC for, or for how long. To save you from having to constantly monitor their use in person, Windows 10 includes a powerful collection of parental control options, which can act as your eyes and ears when you are busy with other things. Using built-in parental controls, it is possible to place restrictions on the websites that can be visited, the apps that can be run, and when the PC can be used. While you might expect the options to be configured in Settings, you’ll need to visit your Microsoft account online, and from there manage all the user accounts you have set up on your PC and…

The good news is that streaming Steam titles to your Xbox is easy. The bad news is that you need an unbelievably high-quality connection for a playable experience – but if you’ve ever used Miracast before, that should not come as a big surprise. THE SETUP First things first: In order to stream Steam games to an Xbox One, you’ll need a gaming PC with Steam installed, an Xbox One, and a router (try to contain your shock). Both the Xbox One and the PC will need to be connected to the same network. You can do it either wired or wirelessly, but in our testing, a wireless connection will not be nearly strong enough for a smooth gaming experience. The gaming PC will also have to have Windows 10…

Does it feel disproportionately onerous to get things done in Finder? Features like Spotlight can help to a degree, but what can you do in scenarios where it’s unavailable or irrelevant? That’s why you can tailor Finder and make use of some of its less obvious features to speed up working with your files. “If you don’t need a shortcut to the Applications folder there – Spotlight and Launchpad may be good enough for you – why keep it around? ” The items in Finder’s sidebar, for example, aren’t set in stone. If you don’t need a shortcut to the Applications folder there – Spotlight and Launchpad may be good enough for you – why keep it around? You can pick Go > Applications to see that folder’s full contents…

1 FILTER PHOTOS Use the options in the left-hand pane to filter the list of photos in various ways, including by event, tag or flag. 2 BASIC INFORMATION When you select a photo to view, its basic file information is displayed here. 3 CROP TOOL The crop tool enables you to cut out superfluous detail: click and drag on the crop square to resize or move it. 4 CROP OPTIONS Click to select the aspect ratio of your selection, or switch between portrait and landscape orientation using these tools. 5 TOOLBAR Context-sensitive options appear here – when you’re viewing a file, various editing tools plus the zoom slider are displayed. 6 EXTENDED INFORMATION Press Ctrl-Shift-X to display additional information not shown by the Basic information tool.…

Red Dead Redemption 2 is quite a popular game (heavy sarcasm), but a big chunk of players, namely those playing it on PC, didn’t get to play the game as it released purely on PS4 or Xbox One last October. But now, thanks to some eagle-eyed Redditors, there’s the distinct possibility the game might be released on PC soon, as mention of working on Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC has been found on a physics programmer’s LinkedIn. Oops. Specifically, under a list of their work as a programmer at Rockstar, this person lists “Red Dead Redemption 2 – PS4/XBox1 [sic] /PC”. Looks like that could be a hint that we’re going to get Red Dead Redemption 2 on PC sometime soon, meaning that everyone who didn’t get a chance…

$28.95 | PC, SWITCH | HOPFROG.ITCH.IO This is a world where flora, fauna and mining outcrops spring anew at lightning pace; it’s also a world you make bigger as you progress, making the constant clean-up job more onerous. You’ll potter over to some neglected area and strip it clean – chopping down trees, harvesting ore, smashing up baddies. You’ll notice the next islet over is in similar straits, and tidy that up too. Forager presents itself, and indeed frequently feels, like the blissed-out likes of Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing. But the pace of the game, defined as it is by the speed at which things regenerate, means that you can never truly relax. The ever-expanding crafting menu helps you mitigate the lightning-paced circle of life, but only…