Table of contents for October 2015 in PC & Tech Authority

It’s not all sunshine and roses being an early adopter. Balanced against satiating your tech lust at the earliest opportunity, discovering and sharing things before others, and heck, bragging rights, is a minefield of potential grief. We’re seeing it with Skylake CPUs and Z170 motherboards out of the gate. It’s the usual suspects this time around, being stock shortages, inflated prices in the channel exploiting these shortages, and some nasty DDR4 memory incompatibilities. The stock and pricing issues will resolve very quickly, and should be stabilised by the time you read this. It’s interesting, though, that the actual CPUs were available far cheaper than expected – it was possible to find both the i7 6700K and i5 6600K discounted by around $50 on day one. That in itself is remarkable…

Given that it’s meant to be inspired by sci-ficlassics like Solaris and 2001: A Space Oddysey... we’ll forgive the developers, Mindfield Games, for the odd and vaguely annoying name. The game’s FAQ alludes to bees, somehow, but is short on detail. The game, due out in early 2016, is built from the ground up as a “virtual reality exploration game”, where the players step into the space-boots of a mechanic working for Rama Industries on Saturn’s moon, Titan. There, he and four others must work to uncover an unknown object at research station M, hidden below the moon’s crust. Expect many secrets to be discovered, and many moody moments of bouncing around in a space-suit. “P.O.L.L.E.N is a new breed of exploration and storytelling in games“, said Olli Sinerma, Co-founder…

Skylake rising BEN MANSILL WONDERS IF IT’S TIME TO DITCH Z97? There’s a lot to take in, consider, and hopefully conclude with the new Skylake platform. This is the new mainstream computing platform, should you choose the Intel CPU path, and will remain so for the next tick and tock, probably longer, as we’re not expecting another socket change any time soon (although Intel has surprised us before). X99 will remain as the highest peformance chipset, along with the hexcore CPUs that go with it. But for normal people, and gamers, it’s time to look at Intel’s 6th gen CPUs, aka Skylake. On face value, the two initial CPUs don’t offer a huge leap over recent Intel CPUs. The math is fairly straightforward for that: if your current CPU is…

www.sony.com.au • $129 Sony’s latest smartphone line-up includes this $129 budget number. We trialled one for a month and while there are no performance surprises (good or bad), for the price it’s a real deal. A MediaTek 1.3GHz processor is sufficient for smooth Android operation, and all but the most demanding apps. It’s paired with 1GB of RAM and a scant 8GB of storage to keep the cost down. Included, too, is a microSD slot, something some premium phones are foregoing. The 5in 960 x 540 screen isn’t too bad, and again, for the price it’s very reasonable. The 5MP rear facing camera is its best feature. At this price it really is quite good, with social snaps turning out well. Sony’s been making decent phone cameras for a long…

$199 • www.jabra.com.au I love the Jabra Pulse headphones and still use them everytime I go for a run, so when I heard that Jabra were bringing out some new headphones I was pumped. The Sport Coach are Bluetooth wireless headphones aimed at the cross training/CrossFit crowd that have done away with the Pulse’s heart rate monitor and replaced it with a built-in motion sensor. The sensor is only used when running to provide distance, pace, step, cadence and calorie burn data, which was a bit disapointing as when cross training it doesn’t count your reps which means you need to tell the app when you have finished each exercise. The Jabra Sport Life app is brilliant though, with in-ear coaching helping you workout and letting you know what exercise…

$299 • www.edifier.com.au The stylish, curved design of the Luna Eclipse speakers belies the power and solidity of the unit. Each of the speakers is deceptively heavy, thanks to the number of drivers they house. The front of the unit features a 3” (7.6cm) woofer and a 19mm tweeter. Housed in the back of the unit are two 3” passive bass radiators that deliver bass response far greater than you usually expect from stereo PC speakers The sound quality is excellent overall, with clear high, mid and low range tones, making them great for music, gaming and movies alike. The speakers are Bluetooth compatible, but due to the fact that there is no kind of connection dongle included either third party dongle, built in Bluetooth or a wired connection is…

At a touch under $400, ASRock is targeting serious performance users with the Extreme7+. The company has a healthy reputation of delivering over and above the competition at the same price point, so let’s see just what $400 gets us. ASRock has made use of all those extra PCIe lanes, with four full-length PCIe 3.1 x16 slots. This gives it the necessary space to run quad graphics cards, and ASRock states that this is quad-SLI/CrossFire compatible. Three M.2 SATA connections reside amongst the PCIe slots, and they’re all of the speedy PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 standard, offering up to 32Gb/s of throughput. Twin LAN ports are included, and it’s nice to see ASRock sticking with topquality Intel controllers rather than the cheaper Killer or Realtek offerings found elsewhere. A whopping…

Welcome to the first, and only, board in our roundup to blast through the $500 figure. At half a grand we expect this thing to not only play host to our new Skylake processor, but it should also cook our meals while it’s at it. What has Asus crammed into this board to justify such a high price? Once again we see Asus’ beautiful BIOS in action, which is one of our favourites thanks to its clever depiction of the key pieces of info that system builders need. The external look of the board is just as pretty, with a sleek white design that’ll look sexy in a modded case. As far as extras, this thing is absolutely brimming with them. How about HDMI 2.0, one of the only boards…

If you’re old enough to remember the Turbo buttons that used to adorn the front of PCs, which would automatically increase the CPU frequency when pressed, you might appreciate the new Game Boost dial on this MSI motherboard. It’s basically a rotating dial on the corner of the board, and as you rotate it, the board automatically overclocks the CPU to a faster frequency. As expected, it’s not smart enough to beat a manual overclock, with our sample failing to boot up when set to the 4.6GHz position, which we know our chip is capable of doing. Other than this unique feature, this is a rather stock-standard gaming board. The eye-catching design is suitably impressive, but there’s nothing under the hood that makes us take note. Three full-length PCIe slots…

Not every business needs a fully fledged server, and it would certainly be unusual if you had one at home. Often, it’s the ability to share files across a network that drives people to purchase a server, particularly small businesses. But if this is all you need, you’re better offwith a networkattached storage (NAS) drive. A NAS drive is essentially a mini-server with the advanced capabilities stripped out – although many models allow you to add them back again via apps. This month we test ten NAS drives from some of the leading manufacturers in the field. The most advanced NAS drives come in a rack-mountable chassis, intended to be installed in multiples or to supplement full servers in a dedicated rack. In this test, however, we’re focusing on a…

Asustor is a relatively new player in the UK market, but from the look of what it has to offer this month, the company has considerable potential. The AS5002T is a two-drive NAS device with a sober grey-and-black chassis. The front bays are hotswappable, although you can’t lock them shut to prevent tampering. You also have to screw the hard disks in place, instead of using a faster tool-free design. When it comes to connectivity, the AS5002T is hard to beat. There’s a USB 3 port on the front and another two on the rear, plus a pair of USB 2 connectors and a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports. There are also two eSATA ports, plus HDMI and optical S/PDIF. The affords extra expansion for home-office users, alongside facilities geared…

Qnap is one of the many Taiwanese vendors producing NAS devices. The TS-251 is a mid-range, twodrive option aimed at home and smalloffice usage. Two hot-swap bays are located on the front, although the caddies are entirely made of plastic, and don’t have a lock to prevent removal. Although the TS-251 does have business pretensions, it’s clear from the attractive white finish and hardware features that this is primarily a consumer device. Confirming this is the HDMI port, which, in tandem with the appropriate software, will allow you to use the TS-251 to watch downloaded video, or even live and recorded TV with the appropriate hardware adapter. There’s a USB 3 port on the front, making it easy to plug in a flash drive or external hard disk. There’s a…

FUNCTION • It’s available in a choice of Cherry Blue (loud and clicky) or Cherry Brown (soft, sweet, luxurious) switches. • Fully programmable macro keys (shared, not dedicated) plus an on-the-fly macro recording button. • A set of five pre-programmed (by you) profile buttons are shared in the page up/down area. • There is no USB header. DESIGN • The case is built from very rigid plastic which almost passes as metal at first glance. There are no stylistic adornments; instead it’s clean attractive and elegant. There is minimal flex. • All of the 16.8 million colours are included for backlighting, and can be mapped in virtually unlimited custom combinations. • The serious look won’t make you look or feel out of place doing serious work on your PC. VALUE…

Dark Souls II was a great game, one of the best of 2014 without a doubt, but it was missing something. That something was Game Director and president of FromSoftware Hidetaka Miyazaki. Miyazaki is the mind behind the Souls franchise, being responsible for both Demon’s Souls and the original Dark Souls. Miyazaki only served as a supervisor on Dark Souls 2, as his time was being monopolised by Bloodborne, a fast paced PS4 exclusive Souls style game. His absence was telling. Rather than the sprawling levels of Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls that required players to learn their way around, discover how different areas connected with each other and how to open secret passages and shortcuts to cut down or travel time, Dark Souls II instead featured a far more…

Robots are inching their way into our lives, but who’s responsible when smart machinery ends a human life? That question was raised following the death of a worker at a Volkswagen plant in Baunatal, Germany. The 22-yearold was killed after a robot he was fixing slammed him into a metal plate. The robot was a stationary piece of machinery that was normally kept inside a cage to do its work of picking up car parts and moving them. Initial reports suggest that human error was the cause of the accident, rather than a flaw with the robot, but German news agencies said prosecutors were considering whether to press charges – but against who? Bryant Walker Smith, an assistant law professor at the University of South Carolina, specialises in the legal…

What is it? Unlike GPS, where you either listen to directions or look at them on a screen, Sirius puts directions on the windscreen, directly in front of the driver. How does it do this? The Sirius TC+ is a display that adheres to your windscreen, providing a clear view of the road while also presenting directions. You can view incoming calls, manage music and receive contextual information, such as the location of the nearest petrol station, local speed limits and road conditions. How big is it? The first edition is a 12.1in display, but larger versions are in the works. It’s essentially a film that attaches to your windscreen. With a resolution of 2,560 x 1,440, it connects over Bluetooth, Wi-Fiand 4G, and is powered by a 2.2GHz Snapdragon…

This month, I’ll be running through some of the more unusual, esoteric and useful USB gadgets on the market – and I’m talking about “proper” USB here, not the silly USB Type-C variant that isn’t backwardscompatible with anything. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t mind the introduction of new connectors, but please give them new names such as Lightning or Thunderbolt. Calling the latest flavour-of-the-month connector USB Type-C is bound to cause confusion among the non-techie peripheralbuying public, many of whom can barely cope with the size differences between standard, mini and micro. Throw in something completely new that handles video as well as power and data and you’ll have them really scratching their heads. A new connector most definately needs a new moniker Anyway, in no particular order,…

No sooner did I hear about Mr Honeyball’s experiences with Cisco’s Meraki operating system for Wi-Fiaccess (see more about this in Jon’s column on p100) than a press release arrived from Daniel Druker, head of marketing at Zscaler (zscaler.com). In it, he makes a connection between Cisco’s recent US$635 million acquisition of OpenDNS, and the death of the internal company firewall. I realise that this will read like one of those web newsflashes you find yourself desperate to skip over, but I can’t avoid making some comparison between Jon’s reported experience and the conclusions of this producer. You might expect Druker to point to the cloud as the only safe place to put all of your security services, given that’s what his company’s trying to sell. But let me say…

The trials are part of a program initiated by road research agency ARRB Group, and will be conducted with partners including Telstra, Bosch, Volvo, Flinders University, Carnegie Mellon University, the RAA and Cohda Wireless. The first trial is scheduled to take place on the Southern Expressway on November 7 and 8. It will involve “multiple vehicles conducting manoeuvres such as overtaking, lane changing, emergency braking and the use of on and offramps”, according to an SA government statement. The cars to be used in this first trial are the same as those used in Volvo’s Drive Me project. Drive Me aims to put 100 selfdriving cars into the hands of customers in Sweden’s second-largest city Gothenburg by 2017. RRB’s group managing director believed there was some urgency for Australia to…

“The NBN has spent five years and millions of dollars trying to convince us it can attract the thousands of skilled workers it needs to complete the rollout by 2020. Back in 2010, Innovation and Business Skills Australia (IBSA) warned the project faced “a major shortfall of skilled workers”, which it quantified as around 8000 cablers. Months later, the formerly-named NBN Co itself forecast a need for 15,000 to 20,000 full-time workers to cope with peak construction demands, later revising the number to 16,000 to 18,000. Five years on – and with a new strategy to roll out multiple connection technologies rather than mostly fibre – the NBN is still facing a large shortfall of workers. NBN now hopes a new $40 million training scheme will be enough to attract…

LETTER OF THE MONTH I am an 81 year old retired senior officer of the RAAF, where my interest in computers began. The Air Force was the first of the three Australian armed services to be equipped with a mainframe computer. It was very primitive compared to modern technology, but led me to a lasting use of personal computers. My first computer was expensive, but constant upgrading was as irresistible as it was costly. Eventually it was PC gaming that gave me the greatest enjoyment. One of my first games was a WWI flight simulator by Microsoft. I thought it was so wonderful to be able to take off , battle and land – albeit with a ‘world’ not much bigger than a football oval. The graphics required some imagination.…

Blizzard normally reveals its big expansions at Blizzcon, but this year the WoW-meister has lifted the lid on the next part of the World of Warcraft journey at Gamescom, in Cologne, Germany. There’s no release date set, but we can tell you that the new expansion is simply named... Legion. Yes, it’s all demons, all the time, and this expansion will not only boost the level cap up to a crazy 110, but it also brings in a whole new class, the Demon Hunter. This demonic powered PC is perfect for taking on the Burning Legion, and can use abilities to dodge, close with their enemies, and even use Spectral Sight to let them detect hidden targets. They can focus on either Havoc, and be damage dealers, or can just…

CPU AMD’S ZEPPELIN A recent leak detailed a future AMD server grade APU designed as an “Exascale Heterogeneous Processor”, codenamed Zeppelin. The leak shows that the Multi Chip Module will have Zen based CPU cores and be paired with a HBM touting Greenland GPU rated at over 4 TFLOPS all sitting on top of a “Coherent Data Fabric” linking the CPU and GPU together, avoiding PCI-E latency and bandwidth contention. Also shown in the leak was the fact that the Zeppelin cores will support a quad channel DDR4 sub-system rated at 100GB/s, which is also the speed rating of the Coherent Data Fabric link between the CPU and GPU on the module. MEMORY SINKHOLE IN X86 At the recent Black Hat convention at Las Vegas in the USA (where hackers…

High-quality streams: What difference do they make? Digital audio quality was a contentious issue long before MP3 came along, and the debate will probably rumble on forever. On the one hand, there are people who describe MP3 as unbearable and insist it is destroying music as we know it. Then there are a far greater number of people who quite happily listen to compressed music on their PCs, portable players, YouTube, DAB radios and Bluetooth car systems. It’s hard to navigate this issue without sounding like a sanctimonious snob or a cloth-eared philistine, so we’ll have a go at upsetting everyone equally. INSIDE THE SPECS Digital audio has three key specifications: sample rate, bit depth and bit rate. The sample rate sets the maximum frequency that can be represented. Two…

$95 (120GB); $135 (250GB); $230 (500GB) • www.crucial.com Crucial’s MX100 SSD was a star performer in the budget SSD stakes last year, and it’s now been superseded by the BX100. Now, the MX range denotes high performance (also superseding the M550 SSD), while the new BX moniker is for budget drives. But you’d be hard pressed to find anything budget about the BX100, which we benched at a very premium 523MB/s read and 432MB/s write (the 500GB model, using AS SSD). That’s properly high-end speed, and only premium drives like Corsair’s Neutron XT range will do much better, and only by an impossible to notice 20MB/s, max, at nearly twice the price. The 500GB model we tested yielded 465GB of formatted space, which is a little disappointing. Online pricing for…

$439 • www.shotbox.net.au When this GoPro-esque camera arrived on my desk I thought here’s another want-to-be action camera. My initial opinion changed quickly as I unboxed the tiny camera and its plethora of accessories such as a removable 2inch TFT touchscreen, waterproof case (100M), humonitor kit and pouch and several mounts and joints, it has all you need to get started. When comparing the S71 to the GoPro Hero4 Silver ($579) the differences are few; both have Wi-Fiand smartphone apps, both have touchscreen backs and both shoot video at 4K/15fps, 1080p/60FPS and 720p/120fps. The S71 shoots 16MP stills, has 10x digital zoom and a 1500mAh battery for up to 3 hours recording (compared to GoPros 12MP, no zoom and 1160mAh battery). Using the S71 is easy, especially with the aid…

Other than the fact that it’s associated with a Quake player who won a bunch of money over a decade ago, what makes this board from ASRock worthy of the gamer tag in its title? As far we can tell, very little, and overall it makes several sacrifices compared to the Extreme 7+. Looking at the main specs, ASRock has endowed this board with three full-length PCIe x16 slots, along with another three PCIe x1 slots. ASRock claims this board supports quad-SLI, but we’re not sure how it could do so with only three x16 slots, unless it was packing twin graphics cards, both equipped with twin GPUs. The first so-called gaming feature is the inclusion of Killer’s E2400 series LAN. This is actually cheaper than Intel’s solution, and we’ve…

Don’t let the name fool you into thinking this is yet another middleof-the-road gaming board that ticks all the same boxes as the dozens of other gaming boards out there. Gigabyte has managed to incorporate a couple of exclusive features on this board that help it stand out from the pack, and go a long way to justifying its slightly higher price point The first feature is the exclusive use of Intel’s new Alpine Ridge controller, which is the only Intel-solution to support USB 3.1. This has been used to power a single Type A and single Type C USB 3.1 port on the rear of the board, in addition to the five USB 3.0 ports found at the rear. The other feature is the world’s first 120dB SNR onboard…

As one of the leading hard-drive manufacturers, Seagate is hardly a surprise entry this month. Its business NAS range includes two- and four-drive options; our sample was the two-drive version. This is a seriouslooking black box with twin hot-swap bays on the front. Only a single Gigabit Ethernet port is available, but there are USB 3 ports front and back. The 2-Bay is available with 4TB, 8TB or 10TB of storage. Ours was the medium option, sporting a pair of 4TB Seagate ST4000VN000 drives; these are NASspecific units rated for 8,670 poweron hours (around one year) and one million hours of MTBF, with a three-year warranty. The drives can be configured as RAID0, 1 and JBOD. The-web configuration interface is user-friendly, with decent features. Network-protocol support is comprehensive, with SMB,…

The NAS drive may seem like an anachronism, now that everyone is talking about the cloud. Why bother when you can simply put all your files online, access them from anywhere, and not have to worry about managing another piece of power-hungry hardware? Indeed, NAS manufacturers have been feeling this pressure, and some have combated it by marketing their devices as a form of cloud storage. A NAS drive does lack some of the important features of true cloud storage. Sure, you can make your data accessible from anywhere, but this isn’t virtualised storage – it won’t be backed up in a redundant way that means there’s only a very small chance of data being lost. Cloud storage is about outsourcing responsibility, not just making data available over the internet.…

The ongoing quest for betterment, here, is driven purely by a meritocratic thrust forward. We won’t ever plop something in A-List just because it’s the latest model. That said! In enormous news for the A-List, we are updating the Amazon Kindle ebook reader. This seemingly forgotten corner of the page has held steady for an awfully long time. But before you completely lose control of your excitement centre, take note of reviewer Jonathan Bray’s concluding comment, below, in which it seems the last one is still good, but the new one is nicer. WHAT WE SAID: The big limitation of the Kindle platform is the fact you can’t read titles purchased from other ebook stores on Amazon ebook readers (it’s possible, but not legal). The Kobo readers are a better…

IN-FLIGHT WI-FI HITS HOME BROADBAND SPEEDS Streaming HD video may be a pipe dream for many people living in rural Australia, but travellers will be able to do just that on Virgin America planes from next year. The airline is accessing the ViaSat-1 satellite via a Ku/Ka hybrid antenna, meaning it can offer in-flight internet access “at equivalent speeds to home broadband”. tinyurl.com/p2povas ASTRONAUTS TO FOLLOW THE BEARS Researchers are studying how black bears hibernate to help astronauts master long space missions. The impact from extended low gravity can damage bones. Black bears manage to avoid similar bone degradation during hibernation by suppressing the release of calcium from bones into the bloodstream – which researchers say could help inform treatments for astronauts in the future. tinyurl.com/q2ur9jw NEW YORK TO LONDON…

FEATURES + ASHAMPOO PRIVACY PROTECTOR + AUSLOGICS BOOSTSPEED 7 + AUSLOGICS BOOSTSPEED 8 + CYBERLINK PHOTODIRECTOR 5 + MOVIECUT 2015 DRIVERS + ATI CATALYST + NVIDIA FORCEWARE HELP + DISCLAIMER + DAMAGED OR FAULTY DVDS + USING THIS DVD + INSTALLING SOFTWARE EDITORIAL + BURNING AN ISO IMAGE + PC&TA EDITORIALS TROUBLESHOOTING + SERIAL CODES + BLANK REGISTRATION WEBSITE + CAN’T FIND A FILE? + INSTALLATION ERROR WINDOWS CCLEANER + CLASSIC SHELL + CUTEPDF + DEFRAGGLER + FOXIT READER + GREENSHOT + APPLE ITUNES + LIBRE OFFICE + OPEN OFFICE + MALWAREBYTES’ A/M + SANDBOXIE + VLC MEDIA PLAYER + FLUX + 7ZIP MAC + ALFRED + BETTERTOUCHTOOLS + APPLE ITUNES + DROPBOX + FLUX + GOOGLE CHROME + MOZILLA FIREFOX + PLEX + SKYPE + TEAMVIEWER + VLC INTERNET…

Professionals in few industries have escaped the impact of the internet and 21st-century tech, so why should my little business escape? The music industry, where my company operates, has been knocked sideways by electronic delivery displacing packaged media such as CD, as though no-one had seen it coming. Our industry’s marketing strategies are being reworked – the function once performed by packaging is now done by web pages and social media strategy, with high-quality video and photo promotional content gaining importance. The biggest shift overall is surprisingly not about accessibility, tech or marketing: it is the over-a-cliff-like drop in profitability for musicians and labels from new recordings. In the absence of a clear strategy for the future from record companies, the new tech companies have taken the initiative – which…

While the original Baldur’s Gate game was released over a decade ago and the term expansion pack nowadays seems moreor-less reserved for the latest add-ons to The Sims, Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition developers Beamdog have decided to simultaneously breathe new life into the now iconic role-playing game and reclaim the term ‘expansion pack’ by releasing a massive package of brand new content for the game. The expansion pack, which will only work with the Enhanced Edition re-release from 2012, is titled the Siege of Dragonspear and is set add around 25 hours’ worth of story and gameplay, filling the gap between the first two entries in the series, as well as a brand new class called the shaman, four additional companions, and a revampled user-interface. Though there was no listed…

Until recently, music-subscription services felt like an experiment. Would audiences take to the concept? Would labels and artists allow it? Napster and Spotify blazed the trail, but we suspect it will be Apple Music that takes it mainstream – as long as Apple can fix the uncharacteristically sluggish and disjointed iOS app. Conceptually, it’s all there, with a comprehensive suite of services at competitive prices. It’s just missing the effortlessly simple interface that Apple is (or, at least, was) renowned for. There’s a generous three-month trial, but we’d be tempted to wait a little longer for Android support before using it if you’re not an iPhone owner. In the meantime, Spotify is still a credible option thanks to its comprehensive hardware support. It wouldn’t be our first choice for new…

The original Kindle Paperwhite, launched in 2013, impressed us with its clean appearance and integrated lamp. By now, however, most people who want a Kindle will already have one. Is there any reason to upgrade to this year’s Paperwhite? Or, if you’re shopping for your first ebook reader, is the flagship Kindle Voyage a better bet? There’s little outward difference between the new Paperwhite and the previous generation. It’s still plain, dull and black all-round, and it still feels exceedingly well made – bend it and it barely emits a creak. The soft rubberised back sits comfortably in either hand, and there are no sharp corners that dig in. It’s understated, so you’re not distracted from what you’re reading. The screen, however, has had a big upgrade: although it’s the…

$139 (RRP) • www.atop.net If there was a Swiss Army Knife for computing, the Apotop Wi-Copy would have a strong argument to claim that title. This diminutive black box is a powerbank charger, wireless storage provider and Wi-Firouter/repeater rolled into one. Oh, and this is all accessible from your iOS or Android device, via a free downloadable app. Simply plug a USB drive or SD/SDHC/SDXC card in and switch it to Wi-Fimode, then connect to its own wireless-N network. You can then access the contents of the storage through the app, but only certain file formats will work. You can also upload/download files, or transfer files between a USB drive and an SD card. It also supports SAMBA, FTP, HTTP, and DLNA protocols for non-mobile devices. You can also plug…

$159 • www.seagate.com.au Last year’s Seagate Wireless Plus packed storage into a Wi-Fihotspot, and while it was far from the only product of that type, being a Seagate it became quite popular when stacked up against the proliferation of budget brand models. The product we’re looking at here is a less wellequipped version. It loses USB 3, and unlike the Plus, is only available in 500GB capacity. But it’s a (we think) reasonable $160 or so, which is pretty decent for a mobile Wi-Fihotspot with storage. The Wi-Fioperation is only 802.11b/g/n, but that’s still plenty of bandwidth to stream movies or music. The battery is good for about six hours of media streaming, and of course much much longer acting purely as a data hotspot. This is also very handy…

According to Intel’s Tick/Tock manufacturing cycle, PC builders can look forward to an improved CPU architecture roughly every two to three years. A Tick represents an existing CPU design being built on a smaller process, such as the shrink from the 22nm process used to build Intel’s Haswell chips, down to the 14nm process used in Broadwell. Ticks usually represent lower energy usage and cooler operating temps while performance remains the same, so they’re not really noteworthy from an upgrading perspective. A Tock is the more exciting part of the cycle, as it represents the introduction of architectural improvements, and these bring the performance increases that should make upgrading worthwhile Intel’s Skylake, now known to the public as the 6th Generation Core processor, is an interesting product in regards to…

As the second cheapest board in the roundup, we were expecting Asus to have cut a lot of corners from this product. After all, Asus tends to be better known for its high-end offerings when it comes to gaming products. So we were pleasantly surprised when this budget-board ticked all the basics for a simple but powerful gaming platform. Triple PCIe x16 slots provide ample room for multiple GPUs, while three more PCIe x1 slots deliver extra space for plenty of peripherals. A single M.2 socket is included, and it’s placed well out of the way of the graphics cards, unlike other boards which cram them between PCIe lanes. Another SATAe connection is included, and it doubles as twin SATA 6 ports, along with the other four, for a total…

Youch. That’s the thought that crossed our minds when we realised the most affordable board in our roundup still clocked the $250 mark. It’s worth noting though that the truly entry-level solution hasn’t arrived yet, in the form of H170 boards, which should be substantially cheaper. At $259 this board is the cheapest Z170 we’ve seen, so let’s see if any of the basics have been missed in a bid to slash the price. The arrangement of PCIe slots is pretty standard, with three full length PCIe slots and twin PCIe x1 slots. As the name suggests this board is capable of two-way SLI support, along with triple-CrossFire. However, the inclusion of another two PCI slots is very out of the ordinary, pointing to the legacy users this board is…

There’s not much more to the DNS-327L than a plastic box with a metal hard drive cage inside and a PCB at the bottom; this is a consumerorientated unit. The drives aren’t hotswappable, but installing them is still relatively easy. Unhook a plastic lid from the top and install loops onto the drives. They’ll then slide in with SATA and power connections at the bottom. Alongside power, there’s one USB 3 port and a Gigabit Ethernet port on the rear. Despite the minimal hardware, the D-Link has a decent selection of features once you delve into the web-based management interface. The twin discs can be configured as RAID0, 1 or JBOD. You can also migrate a single drive to a RAID1 configuration. The USB port can provide print-server capabilities or…

It’s an exciting time to be a PC owner. Not only do we have a brand new Operating System in the form of Windows 10 to play with – and it’s free, no less! – Intel has released the latest in its line of popular Core processors. The 6th Generation Core Processor, once known by its codename of Skylake, offers better performance, longer battery life and a range of features tailored to deliver a more instant, accessible experience for desktop and mobile users alike. With such a major new CPU release comes a new range of motherboard chipsets to complete the platform. At the upper end of the performance spectrum is Intel’s Z170 chipset, and it’s aimed at those who want the very best in performance. Whether it’s powering the…

FUNCTION • The custom (ie. non-Cherry) Romer-G switches have a weak spongy feel not unlike that found on a membrane keyboard. The closest Cherry equivalent would be Brown. • There’s a lot of lateral wobble. • There are no gaming macro keys on this gaming keyboard, or software support for gaming macros. • There is no USB header. DESIGN • The thin and light plastic feels budget-grade and sets a low expectation. Pick it up with both hands and you can easily flex the entire unit. • The edges of the concave bits on each key are sharply angled instead of curved like on other keyboards, giving the G310 a Klingonish vibe. They light up in blue. • What appears to be a carry handle is on the left, but…

I was inspired to learn to program by a bug. I was playing The Hobbit on my ZX Spectrum when the game crashed and the underlying BASIC code started streaming down the TV screen. Although I knew nothing about programming at the time, I recognised some words among the gobbledegook – and I realised that creating games wasn’t an arcane art but an accessible, achievable, creative pursuit. Similar inspiration can be provided by the Raspberry Pi today. The Raspberry Pi 2 is a surprisingly capable device, considering its sub-$60 price. It comes with a version of Minecraft preinstalled, along with an API that lets you write code to be run in the virtual world. You do this in Python, which is simple to learn. The combination of the Pi, Python…

The tension is mounting and the band is about to start playing – as I write, we’re days away from the final release of Windows 10 – although by the time this issue of PC & Tech Authority is in your hands the final Windows 10 will be out, and perhaps already on your drive. The latest build, numbered 10158, has just been released to those on the fast-track beta-testing cycle, and I had no problems downloading it onto my virtual machine running on VMware Fusion on my Mac Pro. I also keep a sacrificial Ultrabook – a ratty Toshiba device – that has the same build installed on it, but my focus is mostly trained on the VM. Why? Because it’s easier to fix things in the event that…

It all started when two owners of rather different small businesses asked me the same two questions: “Should I be using social media for my business?” and: “Which social network is best for business?” To question number one, my knee-jerk reaction – as someone who’s been using social networks for business for more years than I can remember – was a resounding “yes”. For the second question, I was tempted to spurt forth the most obvious “all of them” response – but on reflection, I had to admit that it depends on far too many different factors to sum up so simply. One of these businesses was a good old-fashioned “products” startup, and was really looking for somewhere to not only spread the word about the stuffit makes but also…