PC Pro March 2017

@PCPRO FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO WE SCREECHED TO A HALT. “Excuse me?” The man looked up, surprised to hear the beseeching voice of a 12-year-old boy disturb his early evening walk. “We’re trying to find the Hollywood Bowl. We’re lost.” Our potential saviour sucked his teeth, making me wonder if he was a plumber on his way home from work. “You’re going the wrong way. Got to turn round, then left at the big lights.” One minute later, having annoyed a bus driver by hovering in the wrong lane for too long, we were facing the right direction and zooming towards the Bowl. We got there a mere 20 minutes late, my Dad Taxi reputation in tatters. It had been an odd collection of events to bring us to such a terrible situation.…

Still making software the old-fashioned way? Carl explains why he’s so confident in Agile he founded a new company. See p116 Politicians have been lying since the Trojan War, says Dick on p26, but recent events show the power of social media is spiralling out of control Fed up of pop-up windows and unwanted software downloads? Stuart provides practical advice on fighting the PC invaders from p32 While the “make your own computer” kit from Kano that Gareth reviews on p65 isn’t quite as DIY as he’d like, it still has much to offer curious children…

Background and analysis on all the important news stories MICROSOFT WILL REKINDLE its attempts to use ARM-based chips for Windows devices following a deal with Qualcomm that it says will enable “cellular PCs” to run a full range of Windows software. Microsoft’s previous attempts to engage with ARM have proved little more than disastrous. Windows RT was widely shunned by manufacturers, after consumers were left bewildered by early devices’ inability to run x86 software. ARM-based phones also power Windows Mobile, but its market share has dwindled to the brink of non-existence. Seemingly learning from past failures, Microsoft is pushing the fact that its latest ARM venture will embrace legacy Windows software. “For the first time, customers will be able to experience the Windows they know with the apps, peripherals and…

1 Miraimalware downs ISP customers Avariant of Io T malware,Mirai,has been blamed for attacks on serversat UKISP Talk Talk and the PostOffice,knocking a combined 500,000users offline.Following a similar attack that left near-1million German users without web access,the UKISPs said no personal data was atrisk,but the botnet had targeted users’ routers. 2 Fitbit picksup beached Pebble Parts of smartwatch firm Pebble have been sold to Fitbit for around $40m. The company has stopped shipping hardware, cancelled warranties and may end support for existing hardware, angering its Kickstarter backers. 3 Google takes wraps off Io TOS GooglehasannouncedAndroidThings, aversionoftheOSdesignedforlowendhardware– upgradingaproject previouslycalledBrillo.Itshouldenable developerstobuildsmartdevicesusing AndroidAPIsandGoogleServices,with supportforIntel’sEdison,theRaspberry Pi3andNXPPico.Italso aimstoresolvesome oftheglaringIoT securityissues. 4 Facebook eyes China with censoring software Facebook has developed a tool that could be used to pre-filter content in China. Facebook, which said it…

When Windows RT was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2011, then-CEO Steve Ballmer promised that the operating system would “be everywhere, on every kind of device, without compromise”. Alas, it turned out to be on virtually no devices and with plenty of compromises. Soon after RT devices went on sale in late 2012, reports emerged of high return rates at retailers, as customers not only struggled to get to grips with the new Modern interface, but failed to realise that their new “Windows” tablet couldn’t run traditional Windows software. Microsoft promised its own training prior to the launch of Windows 8 and RT to ensure that they could help customers understand the difference between the two. If it took that long to explain it to staff, little store…

Time is money, never more so than in high-frequency trading, where automated trades take place in milliseconds. According to a Colombia University research paper, The Cost of Latency in High-Frequency Trading, a one-millisecond advantage in latency can be worth upwards of $100 million per year to a trader. Figures for latency across networks are often carefully guarded, as traders running fast networks try to protect their advantages. This leads to rumours and theories that trading firms are investing in secret, ultra-low latency microwave networks. For example, financial data watchers in the US were shocked to see a sudden latency drop of 2.5ms between Chicago and New York in 2012 – a huge reduction given that the previous fastest latency among traders was 7.5ms. It was credited to a new microwave…