Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2016 i PC Pro

I WAS AT a high-powered education conference in Manchester last week. Called UCISA16, it’s where pretty much all the senior IT decision makers gravitate for three days every year, as a who’s who of education technology meet to share the latest thinking. We heard from a Californian university that had reshaped its course structure to embrace phones and tablets, a head of IT who used a Minecraft world to monitor his systems, and a risk consultant who told us, naturally, we were all doomed. But the best speaker – in terms of fluency, slickness of slide and sheer passion – was a chap called Paul Boag. You may have heard of him, because he’s written books, consulted with the European Commission and taken the stage everywhere, it seems, from Angola…

Samsung sometimes creates the impression that it’s an upstart company that’s battled the odds to compete with Apple’s iPhone. In fact, Samsung is big. Big with a capital BIG. The company might have started with only 40 employees trading groceries and making noodles in 1938, but it’s no small fry now. With some 80 companies within the group, Samsung employs more staff than Google, Microsoft and Apple put together. It’s hugely important to South Korean industry, as the chart to the right shows. Its electronic empire alone claims market leadership across many categories of device (see below). Then there’s the small matter of its engineering, ship-building and military divisions. It’s a powerhouse, and only set to become bigger. Korean power No other technology company dominates a country’s economy quite like…

LAPTOPS Dell XPS 13 From £959 dell.co.uk We already loved the Dell XPS 13, but this update makes it irresistible. Skylake processors, super-fast SSDs and Thunderbolt 3 all help it fly through tasks, and the design is as amazing as ever. It’sthe ultraportable we’ve been waiting for. ALTERNATIVES Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga 260 Blending its esteemed ThinkPad range with the flexibility of the Yoga, Lenovo has created something close to a perfect business hybrid. From £875; lenovo.com/uk REVIEW Issue 259, p62 Asus C201PA Chromebook It has weak points – the screen is okay rather than great – but the C201 is ideal for life on the move thanks to its outstanding 12-hour battery life. £200; currys.co.uk REVIEW pcpro.link/alasusc201 Dell XPS 15 Dell takes the XPS 13’s beautiful design and applies it…

“There are so many metrics being thrown at me that I’m struggling to separate the signal from the cacophony of noise” It’s been staring at me for the past 20 minutes, slowly creeping upwards and then back down again when I smack Delete and start again. It’s gnawing away at my ego, a two-digit signifier of my incompetence, the very thing that I’m paid to do. It takes up less than 1% of my screen space, yet it’s the only thing I can look at: “57 words”. Just another 793 to go. I’m a victim of data oppression: the knowledge that no matter what I’m doing, no matter when, something is monitoring my performance. Journalists’ eyes bore into the bottom-left corner of the screen where the word count is located,…

Starletter Don’t get me wrong: I understand why we need to patch computers. Plugging security holes, fixing broken software, adding new features… they’re all valid reasons to update software. Yet the reliance and frequency of patching is starting to severely impact my ability to actually use my computer. I’m not just talking about the muchpublicised inability to turn off Windows 10 updates, but the combined effect of all software that now updates itself over the web. Like many people, I have a desktop PC, laptop and tablet, and I’m in one of those rural dead spots that BT has no plans to update, ever. This leaves me with a 2Mbits/sec connection that’s not only inadequate for modern streaming services, but also diminished by the ever-increasing frequency of software patches. I…

Facebook effectively lets you write a digital will, allowing you to decide who – if anyone – should wrest control of your account should you fall under the proverbial double-decker bus. Delve into the settings on the Facebook website and, under the Security tab on the left, you’ll find the option to assign a “legacy contact”. They’ll be handed control of your profile once your account has been “memorialized”, which requires any friend or family member to fill out a short form on the site along with proof of your passing (such as a link to an obituary or scan of your death certificate). Once your death has been verified by Facebook’s staff (and what a joyous job that must be for some poor soul in California), your legacy contact…

The biggest, best, most exciting products in tech – tested, evaluated and reviewed PRICE £475 (£570 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk Looking at the Samsung Galaxy S7, you’d be perfectly entitled to ask what all the fuss is about: it’s hardly a huge upgrade over the S6. Sure, as we’ll see, the design is better, the camera more capable than the compact you spent hundreds of pounds on ten years ago, and the features more tuned to a modern user’s needs. So what is it about the sum of the parts that makes this the best smartphone you can buy? I’ll start with a closer look at the major changes, most of which are impossible to spot from a cursory physical inspection. The first is storage expansion. Galaxy fans were in…

Step 1 Switchboards to the first PBXes Such was the popularity of the phone that, two years after Alexander Graham Bell was awarded the US patent in 1876, we first encountered switchboards. Young women were the employees of choice, politely answering your call, finding out who you were ringing and then plugging the cord into the relevant jack. If that sounds like a manual task then it’s no coincidence: it was. Businesses loved the instant communication of phones; what they hated were the huge bills. These arose because every employee with a phone on their desk had their own individual line, each handled by the public phone company. So even if Jack made an “internal” call to Jill down the hall, they were charged the full amount. Something needed to…

PRICE £913 (£1,095 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk “Carbon fibre stretches across the lid, the base is armoured in silky-feeling metal, and every corner rounds to a perfect curve” Imagine for a moment that the Chromebook Pixel and one of Dell’s high-end Latitude laptops had a secret liaison – the product of that illicit relationship would surely be the Chromebook 13. Carbon fibre stretches across the lid, the base is armoured in silky-feeling charcoalgrey metal, and every corner rounds to a perfect curve. This is every inch the subtly stylish business laptop; it just so happens to run Chrome OS. At 1.62kg, it’s no lightweight compared to most 13.3in laptops. Then again, that’s reflected in the build. There’s barely a hint of give in the base, while the lid is reassuringly…

PRICE £500 (£600 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk Fear not if the Asus ZenBook UX305CA looks familiar, because it should. Asus tweaks the UX300-series design and specs in a similar way to Apple with the MacBook, and it has every reason to use a light touch: this ZenBook is as stylishly sleek as ever, and the all-aluminium design looks fantastic while feeling sturdy. The UX305CA uses one of Intel’s latest Core M processors, the m3-6Y30, which has a headline speed of 900MHz. Note there’s also a UX305UA model based on more powerful Core i3, i5 and i7 processors, so keep an eye on which you’re ordering to avoid confusion. As ever, the Core M family’s lower clock speeds don’t mean you’re buying a slow laptop: there’s always a Turbo Boost when…

“When creating the latest cinema blockbuster or editing an award-winning photograph, good simply isn’t enough” Have you ever tweaked a photograph to near-perfection on your PC only to find it looks terrible on your laptop or tablet, or makes for lacklustre prints? That’s because your monitor isn’t telling you the truth. Modern monitors might be capable of producing more than a billion colours, but if they display the wrong ones then all that judicious tweaking and painstaking editing is no better than guesswork. It’s something that photographers and design professionals have known for decades: if you haven’t got a colour-accurate monitor on your desk, then you simply can’t do your job properly. You need a screen that can display colours accurately across every one of its million or so pixels,…

PRICE £1,277 (£1,532 inc VAT) from wexphotographic.com Many people would baulk at spending a four-figure sum on a monitor, but the ColorEdge CG277 is a shining example of a professional display done right. At this price, it isn’t just about image quality and features: you want to feel you’re getting your money’s worth, and Eizo nails that sensation from the moment you lift it from the box. Mounted atop a thick, solid stand, the CG277’s thick bezels and sturdy plastic casing feel both solid and reassuring. You have to take a little care to cradle it around into portrait mode, to stop it fouling the base, but the stand holds it firm throughout the 152mm of height adjustment. Want to quickly swivel it left or right? No problem: all part…

PRICE £573 (£688 inc VAT) from store.hp.com/ukstore “It costs a surprisingly sensible £688 – you could buy two HP Z27x displays for the price of one NEC SpectraView 272” The HP Z27x Display is something of an enigma. To all intents and purposes, it looks like the ideal professional monitor: its big 27in IPS panel covers almost every corner of the Adobe RGB colour gamut; there’s a respectable 2,560 x 1,440 resolution; and it sports the kind of features and build quality that you’d expect from a high-end monitor. The real clincher, however, is that it costs a surprisingly sensible £688 – you could buy two HP Z27x displays for the price of one NEC SpectraView Reference 272. You’d be hard-pressed to tell it apart from its pricier rivals right…

PRICE £405 (£486 inc VAT) from cclonline.com “The Philips Brilliance 272P4 proves the eternal maxim that you should never choose a product from specifications alone” The Philips Brilliance 272P4 is a monitor that looks like it means business. Not content with providing a 27in, 2,560 x 1,440 resolution and a smorgasbord of features – uniquely among the contenders this month, you even benefit from a webcam and speakers – it also promises top-notch colour reproduction across the sRGB and Adobe RGB colour spaces. In terms of immediate impressions, it gets off to a flying start. Plonk the Philips on a desk and you’re faced with a slim, attractive monitor that doesn’t look dramatically cheaper than rivals. There’s a fully adjustable stand at the rear that provides 150mm of height adjustment,…

PRICE £1,246 exc VAT from boston.co.uk “The motherboard is very versatile, with a row of eight SATA connectors down one side that team up withtheIntelC236chipset” Boston’s Fenway 2104-0T and its mighty hardware package are a pairing well-suited to a small business with big demands. It may be only 1U high, but the Fenway supports eight SATA or 12Gbits/sec SAS3 small-form-factor hotplug drives, and comes with dual 10GbE ports. This all-Supermicro setup comprises a 53cm deep SuperChassis 113M and X11SSH-CTF microATX motherboard. The latter is a member of Supermicro’s new data centreoptimised range and offers a heap of extra storage goodness. Its embedded LSI 3008 SAS3 controller is cabled directly to the chassis’ hybrid backplane via the dual onboard four-port connectors, which delivers 12Gbits/sec SAS speeds to all drive bays. However,…

PRICE £1,273 exc VAT from uk.insight.com “Software deployment is a cinch: HPE’s intelligent Provisioning had Windows Server 2012 R2 loaded and running in just 15 minutes ” As HPE’s smallest rack server to date, the ProLiant DL20 Gen9 should prove a huge hit for space-constrained SMBs. This ultra-dense server is only 41cm deep, and will therefore sit happily on a desktop, in a wall-mount cabinet or under a counter. It isn’t only visually discreet: its three internal cooling fans are extremely quiet. With our iPad 1m in front of the server, we measured a zephyr-like 41dB. It’s also a bargain, with prices starting at less than £500 for the entry-point models. This buys you a 3.3GHz dual-core Pentium G4400, but HPE also offers a 3.5GHz G4500, two Core i3-6000 choices,…

Normally readers contact me via Twitter, but the question behind this month’s column comes from my local barber shop. A fellow customer, who was having their hair cut at the same time, somehow recognised me from the microscopic picture above and struck up a conversation about various techie things. It made a nice change from the usual “Going away this year?” (no, but I wouldn’t tell you if I was), and “What team do you support?” (I can’t stand football) banter from the barber. My fellow customer explained that he currently uses a traditional desktop at work, a laptop at home (which is occasionally pressed into service when he travels to clients), and an iPad that’s mainly used for sofa surfing and watching Netflix in bed. All three devices are…

“Enter the Arduino, which sparked off the whole arena of maker microcomputers” Last month I explained how to use Visual Studio to write Windows 10 Core apps to run on microcomputers such as the Raspberry Pi. Quite capable of running advanced operating systems, including Linux and Windows, these boards are overkill for many projects – particularly for wearables, where size, weight and power consumption are significant issues. Enter Arduino, which sparked off the whole arena of maker microcomputers. This comes in a variety of formats from the original Arduino Uno to the Micro and right down to the wearable clone, Gemma. These boards don’t have such luxuries as HDMI monitor outputs; in fact, they have no way of plugging a monitor into them at all, which is why a decent…

5issues for£5 On sale 13 May LABS NASdrives Take control of your photos, files and backups with a modern NAS drive. We test ten of the best to find out which to buy. Subscribe today Start your subscription to PC Pro and we'll send you a FREE 26-piece tookit as a thank you. You can read PC Pro in print, on your iPad, iPhone or Kindle Fire. See p108 for details. FEATURES Thedarkweb: what’soutthere? Charles Arthur investigates if the increasingly popular dark web has more to it than sex, guns and drugs. killemail New tools such as Slack are helping teams work better. How can they help you cut reliance on outdated email? Boostyour website'sspeed If your site uses WordPress (whether a business site or your own), we have a clever way to…

I don’t want to know about files, or versions, or any of that ancient nonsense. I just want to work on my stuff It was one of those editorial email threads, where ideas were being kicked around. The boss asked what would one do to an iPad Pro to make it a better laptop replacement? One person decided that adding access to the file system would be a good idea. My response was, shall we say, somewhat sharp, harsh and less then complimentary. I know why he wants access to the file system. That’s the way we’ve been using computers since the days of the floppy disk. Even the cassette drive before that, if you want to be completely prehistoric. But my response was based on a view that this…

Steve Cassidy Touring the UK’s biggest education technology show, Steve was stunned at the profile of antiradicalisation. He explains why on p118 Sasha Muller Your monitor is lying to you: Sasha reveals which colour-accurate screen you should spend your money on in this month’s Labs on p80 Nicole Kobie You may not like it, but your employer is within its rights to spy on you. Nicole explains the legal limits and what you can do about it on p40 Peter Kazansky The University of Southampton has created “5D storage” that could store data until the end of time. We interview the research leader on p128…

It’s possible to make Cyndi Lauper’s 1986 ballad “True Colors” worse – a discovery for which I have a “smart algorithm” to blame. Algorithms are designed to make our lives easier, to collate data we couldn’t process in our lifetimes, interpret it and return a sensible result. We wouldn’t be able to read the entire internet to find the page we were looking for – for that we need Google. But, to give us the results we desire, algorithms must categorise data and make assumptions. Those assumptions are now making an ass of my Spotify Discover Weekly playlist. For non-devotees of the streaming service, Spotify provides access to a huge library of music, from which you can make playlists and pick favourite songs. Discover Weekly analyses your listening habits and…

INTERGUARD SONAR As well as logging employee activity online, InterGuard Sonar actively looks for keywords; its own marketing bumf says it’s like having surveillance cameras installed in your PCs. The software records webmail, IM, social media and online search activity, and tracks application use. It features a keystroke logger and alert word notifications, too, making supervisors aware if certain terms are typed. It can block specific websites – farewell, Facebook – and keep sensitive data from being copied. Alongside charts showing time spent on specific types of sites, the software can take continuous screenshots, so bosses can view exactly what was on a worker’s monitor at any time, playing it back like a video. InterGuard says such features are designed to boost staff productivity by discouraging personal use, but also…

PRICE £7,997 (£9,596 inc VAT) from armari.co.uk If you thought the workstations in last month’s group test were fast, prepare to have your expectations reset. This machine ripped through our benchmarks as if they were a set of Word macros, and it’s all due to Intel’s latest Xeon E5 processors. To be precise, Armari unleashes a pair of Intel Xeon E5-2697Av4 processors based on the Broadwell design (previous high-end Xeons used the ageing Haswell architecture). The nominal 2.6GHz frequency may not seem phenomenal when Skylake Core i7 processors hit 4GHz, but these offer only four cores: the E5-2697Av4 has 16. So this Armari workstation has a whopping 32 physical cores, which Hyper-Threading turns into 64 virtual ones; perfect for multi-threaded tasks such as rendering. Turbo mode means all 16 cores…

PRICE £26 (£32 inc VAT) from element14.com “Hobbyists and project builders will no longer need tobudgetforacumbersome USB dongle or factor in extra space in their cases” The original Raspberry Pi was a work of wonder: a tiny board capable of running a full desktop operating system for around £30. No wonder people were desperate to get their hands on one. Now in its third major iteration, the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B is faster, more flexible and set to be more popular than ever. First, let’s be clear about how the Pi 3 differs from the £4 Pi Zero or BBC micro:bit (see p60). Those are microcontrollers, unable to run a “proper” OS. The Raspberry Pi 3 is a true micro-computer. The big news for the Raspberry Pi 3 Model…

PRICE £666 (£799 inc VAT) from store.hp.com/uk “Provided you’re on a flat surface such as a desk, it’s every bit as comfy to type on as the Surface Type Cover – perhaps better” Fresh ideas are in short supply in the tech industry, so you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’ve seen the HP Spectre x2 somewhere before – perhaps with a Microsoft logo on the back. However, the big difference between HP’s latest hybrid and the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 is the price. The cheapest Surface Pro costs £750 inc VAT, includes only an 128GB SSD and doesn’t come with a keyboard cover: you have to pay an extra £110 for that. The Spectre x2 review here (identifiable by its 12-a001na code) includes the same Core m3 processor, a…

PRICE £583 (£700 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk The Ideacentre AIO 700 is one of the best-looking all-in-ones around, with sharp corners, angular speaker grilles and a stylish, compact v-shaped stand. You’ll have to attach this yourself – a two-minute, tool-less procedure – but it’s worth the effort, with plenty of tilt making it easy to find your ideal viewing angle. It’s loaded with ports, too, including two easily accessible USB 3 connectors on the left-hand side, along with an SD card reader and a 3.5mm headset jack. Lenovo expects you to connect more permanent peripherals via the generous selection of ports at the rear. There are four USB ports, two of which are USB 3, alongside two HDMI connectors: one an output for another monitor, one an input so you…

PRICE £528 (£634 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk Dell is no stranger to producing professional-quality monitors for sensible money – it has a cabinet full of PC Pro awards to show for it – but the UltraSharp UP2716D is its best yet. With a 27in, 2,560 x 1,440 IPS panel packed into an unusually slim, handsome chassis, plus hardware calibration thrown in for good measure, the UltraSharp UP2716D hits all the right notes before you’ve even turned it on. Where most of the professional monitors here look like they’ve been hit with the ugly monitor stick, the UltraSharp UP2716D bucks the trend. Finished in understated matte silver with black accents, it would look the part in even the most style-obsessed office. Where its rivals use thick picture-frame bezels, Dell’s design allows…

PRICE £3,148 (£3,777 inc VAT) from wexphotographic.com “Every time you turn on the CG318-4K you can forget about colour management and get on with your work – highly reassuring” It almost feels unfair to compare the ColorEdge CG318-4K to any of the other monitors here. It’s the perfect example of what happens when a manufacturer throws caution to the wind, and goes out to build the best display regardless of price. As far as we’re concerned, that monitor most certainly is the ColorEdge CG318-4K. There’s a limit to how compact you can make a 31.1in monitor, but Eizo has done its best to pare the ColorEdge CG318-4K right down. It’s remarkably slim and svelte – at least compared to the beefcake styling of the other professional-class monitors from Eizo and…

PRICE £433 (£519 inc VAT) from wexphotographic.com Spending more than £500 on a 23in monitor may seem extravagant, but then the NEC SpectraView 232 isn’t your average display. Just like every monitor in NEC’s top-end marque, the 232 earns its SpectraView sticker only after undergoing a barrage of demanding accuracy tests – and that’s what makes this one of the finest 23in monitors that money can buy. You’re unlikely to be bowled over by the SpectraView 232’s specifications. The 23in panel offers a deeply unexciting 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, and the IPS panel and W-LED backlight only reproduce a claimed 75% of the Adobe RGB colour space, so you’re stuck with working in the sRGB and Rec.709 colour spaces. The build quality speaks volumes, though, with the weighty body and…

“Display a high-quality image on the 23in NEC SpectraView 232 and you’ll wonder why all monitors can’t look this good” Things seem to move pretty slow in the world of desktop monitors. While TVs grow ever larger and cheaper – adopting the latest features and technologies such as 4K, OLED and curved screens – the monitors here might look like they’re stuck in the past. The irony, however, is that although the cutting-edge display tech in the latest TVs and smartphones is theoretically capable of serving up perfect skin tones and natural, lifelike images, most manufacturers crank everything right up to 11 by default – because it’s what customers instinctively like. Given the choice between a screen that’s dripping with lurid, oversaturated colour and exaggerated bright and dark contrasts, or…

PRICE £1,195 exc VAT from broadberry.co.uk “The price includes dual hotplug 450W PSUs and our tests showed that their power consumption was commendably low” Asus may not enjoy the same reputation as Dell or HP in the rack server market, but it’s fast becoming a force to be reckoned with. This machine is a case in point. As a showcase of the company’s latest RS300-E9-RS4 platform, Broadberry claims its CyberServe XE3-RS300 has more expansion features than any other Xeon E3 system on the market. Broadberry has put the XE3-RS300’s attributes to good use. Although it has room for only four LFF hot-swap drives across the front panel, it’s what lies beneath that’s of most interest. The Asus P10S-C motherboard has two M.2 SATA slots, both of which are populated by…

PRICE £324 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.co.uk “To extend your wireless network, add a new AP to the ensemble and it will pick up all the central settings when it joins” SMBs need secure, managed wireless networks just as much as enterprises but most don’t have the time, money or expertise to deploy them. Netgear’s new ProSafe WAC730 could be the answer for businesses that find themselves in this position, with this affordable access point (AP) offering a choice of four management methods. Naturally, the WAC730 can be used in standalone mode, but Netgear’s Ensemble mode means you can add it to a cluster of up to ten APs managed through a central web console. For even larger wireless networks, you should turn to Netgear’s ProSafe WC7600 and WC9500 central wireless…

Instead of the “Dislike” button we all wanted, Facebook introduced a range of what it calls “reaction buttons” (but almost everyone else calls emojis). The idea is that rather than just Liking a post, you can now demonstrate sadness, anger, love or amusement – even gobsmackedness (also known as the “wow” button). I’d rather have just had “like” and “dislike”; these extra buttons don’t really extend beyond the cosmetic. This is important because when you hit “Like”, it does more than just show your appreciation of a post: it kicks off the Facebook algorithm behind the scenes that determines “engagement”. Engagement is what helps Facebook decide which posts (and ads for that matter) will appear in newsfeeds – whenever you like a post, it’s more likely to be shown in…

“The early generations of digital natives are now householders, and online services are replacing the old-fashioned voice call” Why call out an electrician when you can send an email? Emails are ubiquitous, so small businesses need to give them the same priority as phone calls It’s no secret, among those who know me, that I don’t like to pick up the phone. For one thing, I feel it’s the most intrusive way to get someone’s attention, short of turning up on their doorstep unannounced. It doesn’t matter what your ringtone is: when the phone goes off, what I hear is “drop what you’re doing and speak to me right now”. That’s not how I like to deal with people; so instead, I’m the guy who drops you an email to…

“Everyone knows Einstein’s formula E=MC2, but that’s only partly relevant to everyday life as we don’t ride nuclear buses” I imagine many readers are old enough to remember BT’s 1988 TV advert starring Maureen Lipman, where she comforted her grandson for his poor exam results by pointing out that he’d passed an “ology” (even if it was just sociology). I’ve never obtained an ology myself, only an “istry” or two, but in any case I’m actually rather more interested in “acies”: literacy, numeracy and a couple of others. I’m very thankful for receiving an excellent scientific education. A couple of decades ago, I’d have thought twice before admitting that, but no longer. Pop science has become an important part of culture, from TED talks to science-fiction films and explanatory books…

1 OFFICE FOR IPAD Free with Office 365 subscription (from £80/year) Technically several apps, but Microsoft’s suite – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote – is a must-have if you want to work with Office documents on any platform. The apps run on all iOS devices with iOS 8 or higher, and are optimised for the iPad Pro. Install the OneDrive app to manage your free Office cloud storage. Microsoft Outlook isn't essential, since Apple’s default Mail app can handle all your accounts, but some users prefer it. 2 ENLIGHT £2.99 It has all the usual retro filters, decals and one-click image fixes, but this photo editor is winning plaudits for its maskable tone adjustments, warping and healing tools, creative blending modes and painted effects. You can recompose photos and add…

We’ll be exposed to death on a different scale to our parents and grandparents. Not due to plague or war, but because of the internet. You log in to Facebook and watch the lives of people you barely know – their dates, weddings, pregnancies, babies. You scroll through Twitter and are exposed to more aspects of more lives than any other generation in the entirety of human history. So, consider this: you continue to use Facebook until you are 90. Let’s assume the growing mass of acquaintances orbiting your newsfeed do likewise. They start to die, and instead of their passing happening off-stage, away from the knowledge of decades-old co-workers, flatmates and secondary-school friends, their deaths are announced on your screen, one by one. Let’s go even further into the…

Worth£378 About the Plustek eScanA150 Want to capture and archive paperwork without tying up a PC? Then you need a dedicated, standalone network scanner designed for office life – and that’s where the award-winning Plustek eScan A150 steps in. Capable of processing up to 15 documents per minute, with a suggested daily volume of 1,500 pages, it’s designed to be as easy to use as a fax machine. Its 50-page automatic document feeder can cope with an enormous range of document types and thicknesses, from 40 to 157gsm. The eScan A150 can connect via Wi-Fi or Ethernet, with a large 7in colour touchscreen that means users can complete scanning tasks in only three simple steps. Indeed, Computer Shopper described it as a “brilliant interface”. Insert your documents, tweak the settings…

PRICE £958 (£1,149 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk “If someone knocks the tablet from behind, the magnets give way and the tablet flops loose onto the keyboard with a thwack” With its flipping screen – not an insult, it genuinely flipped 180 degrees within its frame – the original XPS 12 stood apart in a crowd of identical Ultrabooks. Fast-forward four years and Dell is once again breaking new design ground, with the XPS 12 reincarnated as a dinky tablet paired with a keyboard dock, both covered in a stylish, matte-black, soft-touch metal. It’s remarkably slim and compact for a 12.5in tablet. The bezels beneath the protective layer of Gorilla Glass are obvious, but Dell has somehow made it a touch smaller than the Surface Pro 4 and pipped it for…

PRICE Part of Sky Q TV bundle (£50 installation charge) “Since the boxes synchronise their settings, your laptops, phones and tablets should hop from one to another seamlessly” Sky’s broadband service has long been hampered by its atrocious Sky Hub router – and the reluctance of Sky to allow users to replace it with a better third-party model. However, the arrival of its new and heavily advertised Sky Q TV system brings with it a brand-new router: the Sky Q Hub. It’s been designed to address all the major failings of its predecessor. It isn’t on the same level as, say, the Netgear Nighthawk X4S (see A List, p17). As ISP-supplied routers go, however, it’s well specified, with dual-band 802.11ac, support for 3x3 stream MIMO on its 5GHz network and…

PRICE £925 (£1,110 inc VAT) from wexphotographic.com “It’s difficult to remember a time when an Eizo monitor didn’t sit in the PC Pro A-List – anything else would feel unnatural” It’s difficult to remember a time when an Eizo monitor didn’t sit in the A-List, and for good reason: the company churns out top-quality monitors with the regularity of the Earth circling the sun. Anything else would feel unnatural. Previous A-List entrants include the larger 27in ColorEdge CG277 (see p88), while you might want to keep your credit card out of reach when reading about the range-topping 31.1in ColorEdge CG318-4K over on p89. The CG247 nudges the price and screen size downwards, costing a moderately more affordable £1,110 inc VAT. Pocket money, really. The Eizo ColorEdge CG family of monitors have…

PRICE £333 (£400 inc VAT) from store.hp.com/ukstore “The Z24x puts in a cracking performance: good contrast and refined colour accuracy conspire to serve up glorious, rich images” Just a couple of years ago, buying a professional 24in monitor would have cost you the best part of £800 – now, you can pick up the HP Z24x Display for half that. For that meagre investment, you receive a 24in, 1,920 x 1,200 monitor that’s factory calibrated and capable of displaying 95% of the Adobe RGB colour space. There’s got to be a catch, surely? HP certainly hasn’t spared a penny when it comes to the Z24x’s build quality. It may not rival the Dell UltraSharp UP2716D for modern good looks, but it’s built to last. The matte-black plastic body feels suitably…

PRICE £1,123 (£1,347 inc VAT) from wexphotographic.com “Brightness deviates by no more than 3.4% across the panel, and any flutters in colour temperature are entirely imperceptible” The NEC SpectraView Reference 272 is a heavyweight monitor – in every sense. In addition to costing twice as much as most other 27in monitors here, its huge, over-built chassis is almost comically chunky compared to the pared-down modernity of Dell’s UltraSharp UP2716D. But that uncompromising exterior conceals a monitor with equally uncompromising performance. In these days of 5K displays and OLED panels, the mention of a 27in, 2,560 x 1,440 IPS panel isn’t likely to get the pulse racing. In this instance, it really should. This panel is handpicked for the quality of its image reproduction, and that’s what grabs your attention from…

PRICE £1,681 exc VAT from dell.co.uk “Even entry-level specs feature Dell’s iDRAC8 Basic controller, which presents awebinterfacewithdetails of critical hardware” With prices starting at under £700, Dell’s PowerEdge R230 is a tempting buy for SMBs hankering after their first rack server or a timely upgrade. As the successor to the venerable R220, it supports a choice selection of powerful Xeon E3 v5 CPUs, teamed with fast DDR4 memory. It be faulted for its remote management features, either: even entry-level specs feature Dell’s iDRAC8 Basic controller. This presents a tidy web interface with details of critical hardware and handy power controls. An iDRAC8 Express licence adds crash-screen capture, but to enable full server and OS remote control you’ll need to cough up £241 for an Enterprise licence. Dell’s Lifecycle Controller, loaded…

PRICE £229 exc VAT from printerland.co.uk “Even the smallest of fonts were razor sharp, while mono photos exhibited very high levels of detail with minimal banding” Small businesses with a printhungry mobile workforce will find that the Xerox WorkCentre 6027 makes their life much easier. This compact colour LED multifunction printer (MFP) delivers print, scan, copy and fax functions; has USB and 10/100 wired connections; while wireless support includes Wi-Fi Direct, AirPrint and Google Cloud Print. Bluetooth and NFC are obvious absentees. Xerox goes the extra mobile mile with its free PrintBack solution. Its iOS and Android apps link up with a PrintBack agent on your PC or Mac so you can print directly from a mobile device to the PC’s default printer. With the agent loaded on our iPad,…

EXPERT ADVICE FROM OUR PANEL OF PROFESSIONALS “Microsoft took away a key feature from full-fat Office, and gave us this miserable excuse of a response” My eyes lit up when I read the bug-fix report. Finally, customisable buttons had come to Office for Mac. I could barely contain my excitement at downloading and installing the new 15.19.1 build. With sweaty palms, I slid my fingers across the trackpad and went searching for the new capability. Without wishing to descend into a “50 shades of UI design” theme, I started looking. And kept looking. And found almost nothing there. Here’s the problem. The full-fat Microsoft Office packages are supposed to be the best of the best. You pay a lot for these upper-tier versions, the ones designed for Mac and Windows,…

Of all the terms I was expecting to hear while walking around the enormous, crowded halls of Bett, the IT in education show, “anti-radicalisation” was way off my radar. This is in effect a new field in educational computing, and one that is unprecedented in terms of charging our industry to come up with results. How can manufacturers be expected to deliver products to meet this new type of need? Right now it’s hard enough to sketch out what the response should be, much less turn it into a box with an LED on the front and a load of code on the inside. For a moment, just try to grapple with the range of subjects that fall into this broad and overly long category of “things you would rather…

“MasterCard is currently working with Samsung to build payments into smart appliances, letting your fridge restock groceries” KEEP YOUR WALLET in your pocket: you can now not only pay with your phone, but with a swipe of your shirt, your handbag, or even with your car. That’s how Visa and MasterCard believe we want to shop in the future, unveiling plans to embed payment systems into the most unlikely objects. The Visa Ready program lets partners embed retail abilities into any device with an internet connection. MasterCard launched a developer program for wearables with mobile payments firm Coin, and is working with WISeKey to embed payments into luxury watches. In partnership with Samsung, it’s also planning to build payments into devices such as smart appliances, letting your fridge restock groceries.…

THE DVDS HOLDING your precious family photos may survive between 20 to 200 years, but researchers at the University of Southampton believe they can do better – raising that to 13.8 billion years. That’s roughly how long data stored in 5D nanostructures in fused quartz can last – essentially until the end of human time, according to scientists at the university’s Optoelectronics Research Centre. The storage discs themselves are small circles of glass with a capacity of 360TB each. They can withstand temperatures of up to 1,000°C and still be readable, and will last an estimated 13.8 billion years at temperatures below 190°C. Files are written in three layers of nanostructured dots that are five micrometres apart; data is read by how they change the way light travels through glass.…