Table of contents for 704 in Computeractive

A new map shows whether your home will get fast broadband under the Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit scheme. The map, from the website Thinkbroadband, uses 30 million Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRN) covering England and Wales. Updates for Scotland and Wales are planned. It lets you zoom into street level, and uses coloured dots to indicate how soon you could be upgraded to gigabit (1Gbps) broadband. Grey or black dots mean providers already offer gigabit or plan to do so within three years. Yellow dots mean no gigabit network will be built in the next three years. Blue dots are for premises that are ‘under review’, meaning no work has been confirmed, or there are risks to it being completed. Thinkbroadband got the data from research conducted by the Government’s…

Acomputer engineer who lost £620m worth of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin wants to buy the rubbish tip where he believes it’s buried. James Howells (pictured), from Newport, says his ex-girlfriend accidentally threw out a hard drive containing 8,000 Bitcoins in 2013. He bought the cryptocurrency for almost nothing in 2009, but forgot about it when he stored the drive in a drawer after spilling a drink on it. When the price of Bitcoin began to soar after 2013 he hired a team of experts to track down the drive on a local tip. He believes he’s identified an area of 100,000 tonnes where it’s located. He has offered to pay to find it, but Newport City Council has repeatedly refused his requests. In January, a judge dismissed his attempt to sue…

Netflix has raised prices for all UK subscribers, including for the first time those on the ‘Standard with ads’ package. The Standard plan is seeing the biggest jump, from £10.99 to £12.99. The ‘Standard with ads’ and Premium tiers both increase by £1 to £5.99 (see screenshot) and £18.99 respectively. The prices apply to new subscribers straight away, while existing viewers will start paying more on their next billing date. It comes soon after Netflix raised prices in several other countries, including the US, Canada and Portugal. The last major rise was in October 2023 when Netflix increased the Premium tier by £2 to £17.99, and the Basic tier by £1 to £7.99. Netflix scrapped the Basic offer last year, replacing it with ‘Standard with ads’. It has also changed…

Charging Netflix viewers to fund the BBC makes sense… I accept that at first glance plans to force Netflix viewers to pay the licence fee might seem extreme (‘Question of the Fortnight, Issue 703, pictured right), but many other countries impose charges or taxes on streaming services in order to fund well-established cultural institutions like the BBC. France, for example, now charges music-streaming services a 1.2 per cent levy to help support the French music industry. This is on top of the two-percent ‘YouTube tax’ that TV-streaming companies have to pay – not just YouTube, but the likes of Netflix, Amazon and Disney+. Again, the money is channelled into French film and TV production. Denmark also charges two per cent, while Spain goes even further, charging streaming services five per…

Is there a printer that scans and copies on both sides? Q I need an all-in-one printer that can automatically scan and copy multi-page documents and print on both sides. I’d also like to save the documents to my computer or a USB storage device. A While only some home printers can automatically print on both sides of a sheet, fewer still can automatically scan both sides of a document. However, we have reviewed one printer recently that was capable of both – the HP OfficeJet Pro 9135e (£185 from Amazon at www.snipca.com/53101, reviewed Issue 700, pictured). The main difference between this and a standard all-in-one printer is that it comes with a duplex automatic sheet feeder, so can make copies of double-sided documents. It can also save these copies…

DIGITAL RADIO | £179 from Amazon www.snipca.com/53795 Roberts radios often blend a retro aesthetic with modern functionality, and the Rambler Classic doesn’t stray from that blueprint. At its core is a DAB+ technology that lets you listen to the full range of UK digital radio stations. It also has a Bluetooth receiver, so if you can’t find anything to listen to over the airwaves, you can stream music, podcasts or other audio to it from your smartphone. “A classy retro design with decent features, but it’s pricey” The design wouldn’t look out of place in the 1970s, with a leather and bamboo exterior, a leather carrying handle and several buttons and dials across the top (pictured below). The buttons are used to configure preset stations and access them, while the…

Zoom and annotate your screen while presenting Microsoft has added a superb new tool to version 0.88 of PowerToys that lets you zoom in and annotate your screen while you’re presenting. Called ZoomIt, the feature makes it easier for you to highlight certain parts of your presentation, helping to keep your audience engaged. Note that ZoomIt was already available as part of Microsoft’s Sysinternals suite of tools. If you use this, you’ll need to uninstall it in order to use ZoomIt in PowerToys. Set your zoom settings First, you need to make sure you’re using the latest version of PowerToys. If you’ve already installed the program, open it then click General at the top right then ‘Check for updates’ on the right. If it shows ‘v0.88.0’ (or later), you’ll be…

When I was at school, there was a brief but frenzied craze for clackers. As you may recall, this toy consisted of two heavy plastic balls connected by a string, which made a ‘clacking’ sound when swung around and banged together. The teachers regarded clackers as a dangerous menace, and banned them before they took someone’s eye out. “Thankfully I’d only offended DeepSeek in a private, local version ” For some reason, I thought of clackers when I read about the fuss surrounding DeepSeek. As we explained in Issue 703 (page 49), this new Chinese AI tool has raised widespread privacy concerns, been described as a ‘severe’ safety risk (www.snipca.com/53712) and is already banned in Italy and by US government agencies. When something apparently innocuous is flagged as hazardous, it…

The developer of a tool that lets your computer beat Windows 11’s restrictions to install the operating system has released a new version after Microsoft’s security software blocked the program. Flyby11 uses the installation setup designed for Windows Server, which businesses use to run Windows across a network of computers. Windows Server doesn’t check whether a computer has the correct technical specifications for running Windows 11. Flyby11 exploits this loophole to install the system on machines even if they lack Secure Boot or the TPM 2.0 processor. On 1 February, Flyby’s developer Belim said that Windows Defender was flagging version 1.1 of the program as a PUA (Potentially Unwanted Application). PUAs aren’t necessarily malware but can harm your computer by making it run slower, showing intrusive adverts or installing extra…

BT landline customers won’t receive compensation after the Competition Appeal Tribunal rejected a claim that accused the company of overcharging them. The case, led by the Collective Action on Land Lines (CALL, www.callclaim.co.uk, pictured), alleged that 2.3 million landline-only BT customers paid more than they should have between 2015 and 2018. Law firm Mishcon de Reya, acting on behalf of former Ofcom consultant Justin Le Patourel, based the case on an Ofcom investigation in 2016 which found that – although the wholesale costs of providing landlines to customers had fallen by at least 25 per cent – BT had actually increased its fees by between 28 and 41 per cent. It estimated that BT owed customers nearly £1.3 billion. But in December the Competition Appeal Tribunal dismissed Le Patourel’s case,…

Alegal case brought by one of France’s biggest broadcasters and the French football league could ultimately prevent you from watching your favourite US show through your VPN. Canal+ has teamed up with Ligue de Football Professionnel in an attempt to force the likes of NordVPN, ExpressVPN, ProtonVPN, CyberGhost and Surfshark to block ‘pirate’ sites that illegally let viewers watch paid-for football matches for free. It follows the broadcaster’s successful case last year against DNS resolvers, including Cloudflare, Google and OpenDNS. These are services that turn URLs into IP addresses, and can be used to access content illegally. Canal+ argued that viewers were using them to watch football on their channels without paying for it. A Paris court ordered the services to block access to over 100 pirate sites. “Amazon, the…

I recall last year an intriguing feature on products you should never buy on Amazon. When was that? Richard Ball CA SAYS In Issue 692, page 62. I’ve just switched to BT Digital Voice but can’t find your feature that highlighted the expert ways to use it. Can you help? Linda Blunt CA SAYS Yes, that was in Issue 682, page 62. In which issue was your Cover Feature on removing duplicate files? David Turner CA SAYS That was Issue 677 – read it and the features above on our 2024 Back Issue CD: www.snipca.com/53179.…

LAPTOP | £799 from Currys www.snipca.com/53704 Acer is clearly fully committed to the green credentials of its Vero line – this is the fifth laptop in the range we’ve reviewed and the first to come with a 16in screen. As with its predecessors, the Vero 16 is made from a chunky plastic formed from 60-percent recycled materials and has a speckled appearance. We noticed some slightly rough edges, but overall it looks stylish and well-built. The 16in screen means it takes up a lot of desktop space – 360x247mm – and at 1.8kg it’s not light. But if you can take it with you, it’s robust enough to survive most environments, meeting MIL-STD-810H standards for durability, temperature, sand and humidity resistance, vibration, and drops of up to 1.22m, even if…

COOLING PAD | £30 from Amazon www.snipca.com/53736 Laptops can often struggle to keep themselves cool, especially when you use them for resource-hungry creative tasks or gaming. If that sounds like yours, a cooling pad like the TopMate C12 is a handy solution. It has three 110mm fans and three 70mm fans that can operate at six different speeds, with the smaller fans capable of 2400rpm. These speeds are set via a panel near the bottom edge of the unit. We put it to the test by first pushing our laptop’s processor to its limits. Without the cooling pad, our laptop went from 20.2oC to 52.1oC. Using the C12 kept the temperature down to 44oC. Even better, the device remained fairly quiet throughout. On its highest setting, we measured the noise…

What is it? Asus’s ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Dhahab Edition (pictured) is an exclusive golden version of the company’s top-of-the-range graphics card. It’s shiny, but it’s not actually made of real gold (www.snipca.com/53806). What does it do? Graphics cards do the complicated maths that resource-intensive software needs to perform, taking the load off a PC’s central processor. Nvidia’s new GeForce RTX 5090 graphics hardware, which is built into this card, is the fastest we’ve seen. What’s the catch? It’ll be expensive. Asus hasn’t revealed prices, but with the non-gold version costing £2,670, don’t expect a bargain. Also, it’s only available in the Middle East, so if you really want one you’re going to have to import it. So can I do without it? Yes. Most people will find all…

I’m a recent convert to ShareX (www.snipca.com/53506), after you recommended it in Issue 702 (page 18). I love how easy it is to take scheduled screenshots every few minutes to check the performance of my PC when I’m in the middle of a task that uses lots of resources, such as editing videos. To take screenshots at intervals, open ShareX then click Capture at the top left, followed by ‘Auto capture’. Now change the settings to suit your needs. The most important one is the ‘Repeat time’ (1 in our screenshot), which is the interval between your screenshots. I’ve been using it to see how the graphs in Resource Monitor 2 change over, say, 10 minutes. This helps to identify moments when my PC is sluggish. To open Resource Monitor (which…

1 To activate the new feature, click Chrome’s three-line menu and choose Settings then Experimental AI. Switch on the option ‘History search, powered by AI’ 1. Only sites you visit after turning on the option will appear in your AI-powered results. 2 Access your History by going tochrome://history, or by pressing Ctrl+H, then type your query into the search box at the top of the page 1. The most relevant results detected by the AI tool will be listed under ‘Best matches for [search query]’ 2. 3 Alternatively, type @history in Chrome’s address bar1, and press Space, to search your browsing history from there 2. Be aware that your searches, best matches and their page contents are sent to Google and “may be seen by human reviewers”.…

What is it? Also known as Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), it’s AI that can think, learn and solve problems across multiple areas – much like a human. This makes it more powerful than current AI, which is designed to excel in single tasks, such as recognising images or translating languages. So it’s a multi-tasking AI? Exactly. It could write code, diagnose health problems, suggest recipes, create designs, solve tech issues around your house and much more – without needing to be retrained. It would learn as it goes and solve problems as they come up, just like humans do (or try to!) in different situations. Does it exist yet? No, but it’s closer than many think. Sam Altman (pictured), head of OpenAI – which makes ChatGPT – says AGI is…

Is it illegal to warn about speed cameras? Q I was intrigued to read in Issue 701 (page 45) that Google Maps lets drivers warn other motorists about police presence. Most of the options seem fine, but I believe the ‘Mobile speed camera’ option may be illegal. Traditionally, this has involved drivers using their horn or flashing their lights to warn about police activity. This is illegal under section 89 of the Police Act 1997, and can lead to a fine of up to £1,000. Can you clarify please? Graham Rice A You’re correct about section 89 of the Police Act 1997, which cites “giving a warning to other motorists of a police speed trap ahead” as an example of the criminal offence caused when an individual “wilfully obstructs a constable in…

Microsoft is testing a feature that shows all your pinned apps on the first page of the Start menu, potentially cutting the amount of scrolling and clicking you’d have to do to see all your favourite apps. Windows Insiders spotted a ‘Show all pins by default’ option in a preview build of Windows 11. Currently, you have to click ‘More pins’ in Windows Settings to show more apps on the Start menu, but they spill on to the next page if you have too many. Turning on the new option doesn’t make any changes yet, so it’s not known how Microsoft will find room to fit more pinned apps. Shrinking the app icons or making the Start menu taller are two possibilities. To turn on ‘More pins’ press Windows key+I,…

PLAY BLOCK BREAKER GAME IN GOOGLE Google has added a modern equivalent of the classic Atari game Breakout (pictured) to its search results. Type Block Breaker, press Play, then click your mouse or trackpad to start. Move your mouse or press the arrow keys to move the paddle left and right. You can share your score at the end. It works on PCs and phones. MICROSOFT UPDATES MIDI AFTER 30 YEARS Microsoft is working on the first major update to the digital music standard MIDI since 1983. It has released MIDI 2.0 to the Canary build of Windows 11, which is the earliest version for Windows Insiders to use. Canary features can take up to a year to reach the full version. Read more on Microsoft’s blog: www.snipca.com/53805. AMAZON BRINGS…

You can now search the web using ChatGPT without signing up for an account, making it a more plausible alternative to Google and Bing. Previously, you had to create an account through OpenAI, the company that runs the hugely popular AI chatbot. You can do this by visiting https://chatgpt.com and clicking ‘Sign up’ at the top right. You’ll still need an account to save and share searches. You’ll also need to log in to search by voice and to use ‘customised’ searches that reply in a particular style or tone. It remains completely free to use – type into the box at the bottom and click Search (1 in our screenshot), then press Enter or click the arrow at the right. ChatGPT’s search results are summaries taken from websites – shown…

SOFTWARE UNINSTALLER Uninstalr 2.6 www.snipca.com/53830 What you need: Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 When we last reviewed Uninstalr, back in Issue 682 (page 18), we were sceptical of its developer’s boast that it’s the “best uninstaller for Windows”. Following a new blog post reiterating that claim (www.snipca.com/53831), he has now released a new version that better justifies his assertion. Rather than just present a list of your installed programs, Uninstalr thoroughly scours the Windows registry and system folders for software data. This means its scans take a few minutes, but also yield more comprehensive results than rival uninstallers. They include standard desktop programs, Microsoft Store apps, built-in Windows tools and leftovers from software that hasn’t been properly uninstalled. Uninstalr 2.6 speeds up these scans and expands them to find…

PRINTER | £100 from John Lewis www.snipca.com/53723 HP’s Envy 6530e is a compact all-in-one inkjet aimed at home users. It looks slightly different to most printers we’ve reviewed lately. There’s the typical A4-sized scanning unit on the top, but a protruding 100-sheet paper tray that pulls out at the front. That means it takes up a little more desk space than you might like, but it’s flatter overall than printers with sheet-feeders on their scanners. “A budget printer with most of the features you’ll need, but it’s costly to run” Above the paper tray there’s a lip where printed documents land, negating the need for a flimsy retractable paper catcher, and an upward-facing 2.4in colour touchscreen. It’s an interesting design but we’d still prefer the extra desk space. The included…

USB DRIVE | £85 from Amazon www.snipca.com/53762 Portable storage devices come in all shapes and sizes, but the smallest and most convenient are USB sticks. And while the external SSD is starting to dominate this market due to their high performance, the PNY PRO Elite V3 demonstrates that the humble flash drive isn’t entirely dead and buried. “Robust and lightweight USB drive with a handy sliding mechanism, but lacks connector options” It weighs just 20g and is only 57mm long, whether the connector is exposed or not. By default, the plug is hidden inside the metal enclosure for safe keeping, but slides out of the unit when you push in the opposite end. When you first try the drive the movement seems excessively stiff, but after some use the connector…

MOUSE | £69 from John Lewis www.snipca.com/53735 The G309 Lightspeed sits firmly in the centre of Logitech’s range of wireless mice and is aimed at the more casual gamer who doesn’t need the elite features or performance of more premium products. It connects to your PC via Bluetooth or Logitech’s included USB dongle. You can switch between the two, so it’s easy to use across two computers at the same time. It uses a standard (non-rechargeable) AA battery – one of which is included. Logitech claims this will last between 300 and 600 hours, depending on which wireless technology you use. We couldn’t test it for that long, but used it for a week across both dongle and Bluetooth. During that time, the battery drained by around five per cent,…

LAPTOP Dell Inspiron 14 Plus £799 from www.snipca.com/51831 Tested Issue 683 This laptop has the same processor (Intel Core Ultra 7 155H) as our previous favourite (Acer Swift Go 4), but manages to squeeze more speed out of it. It also comes with 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and a 14in 2240x1400-pixel screen. Excellent value overall. ALTERNATIVE Acer Swift Go 14 Still a fast and powerful laptop, with a great 14in screen. £749 from www.snipca.com/49733 ANDROID TABLET Honor MagicPad2  £500 from www.snipca.com/53150 Tested Issue 700 With a larger screen (12.3in) than the Galaxy Tab S9 (below) and a similar performance for less money, Honor’s MagicPad2 is a superb new tablet. The OLED screen has a strikingly sharp resolution, and yet battery life is a mighty 18 hours. ALTERNATIVE Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Has…

What you need: Windows 11 Time required: 30 minutes One thing we weren’t expecting in Windows 11 was for widgets to become so useful, rather than annoying desktop clutter as in Windows 10 and earlier. They’ll be even better once Microsoft brings back the Outlook and Calendar widgets it removed recently. There are several ways to locate widgets–click the icon at the far left of your taskbar, swipe in from the edge of your screen, or press Windows key+W. If the taskbar widget button isn’t visible, enable it by opening Settings (press Windows key+I) then clicking Personalisation followed by Taskbar. Here, switch on the slider next to Widgets. STEP 1 Many widgets, such as news and weather, will need to know your location and language to work effectively. Windows can…

Url Shortener Chromium www.snipca.com/53683 Firefox www.snipca.com/53684 Lengthy web addresses look messy and are tedious to type. We use our own tool Snipca to shorten URLs, but you can shrink links yourself using Url Shortener. Click its toolbar button and it will automatically detect and shorten the address of the current page – or you can paste a link from elsewhere. Click ‘Shorten URL and Copy to Clipboard’ (see screenshot) to save the result. The extension also generates a QR code for links, which can be scanned with your phone’s camera. Right-click the code to save it to your PC. Url Shortener uses TinyURL by default, but also supports Bitly, Is.gd and other URL-shortening services if you enter their API keys. Go into its Settings and click ‘How to get API…

Our television-viewing habits have evolved considerably over the past 20 years. Gone are the days when the whole family tuned in every night to watch the same BBC and ITV programmes as 10 million other viewers. An Ofcom survey last year found that most young people (aged 16 to 24) don’t watch live TV at all (www.snipca.com/53780), but prefer videosharing services such as YouTube. These changes in how, when and what we watch have led to speculation that the Government will scrap the TV licence fee, or – as we explained in Issue 703 (page 10) – extend it to cover streaming services including Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Whatever happens, you shouldn’t feel overwhelmed by the huge choice of viewing that’s now available, but adapt your personal TV habits…

For many years, DIY meant fixing things like leaky taps, wonky shelves and creaky floors. Now it’s expanded to include theelectronic devices we use every day. Under pressure from ‘right-to-repair’ campaigners, Apple, Samsung and other major manufacturers now offer kits to fix faulty phones, laptops, tablets and other gadgets. These started in the US and have now come to the UK. What’s significant is these kits contain official repair equipment, so you don’t risk using any parts that might not be up to the job. And when manufacturers don’t offer repair kits, third-party sites like iFixit fill the gap. Just be aware that attempting a repair can affect your warranty (see box opposite). What kind of parts can you buy? For phones and tablets, iFixit and similar stores offer common…