Table of contents for November 2016 in PC Pro

BLETCHLEY PARK HAS BECOME a tourist destination these days, complete with a neat integration when you search for it on Google (I won’t spoil the surprise). They cleverly lure you back by turning your day ticket into a season ticket when you leave, and with so many curios to discover, it took two visits before I headed to the Museum of Computing. This rents out “Block H” and costs an extra £20 for a family ticket, but in return you get to see a working model of Colossus – the computer that helped solve the daily Enigma puzzle. Oh, and the museum also houses the world’s oldest working computer, a valve-based system that was originally built in 1951. Not only does it look amazing, it sounds stunning in action too.…

I’m not much of a gaming enthusiast, but I’ve always had a soft spot for an old-school adventure game. Unfortunately, it’s a genre for which I have very little aptitude. I’ve started dozens of quests over the years, but I can count on one hand the number I’ve seen through to the end without having to resort to Google, or whatever the equivalent might have been. My problem can be explained simply: I’m always looking for logical solutions. And I have to say, I don’t consider this a terrible character flaw. However, it means that if something is hidden in an unexpected place, I tend not to find it. Indeed, I often feel cheated when I do discover where it is, because that’s not my idea of a puzzle. It…

I’m just back from a holiday in France, where I spent much of my time in a cheap, aluminium-framed lounger under an olive tree, reading an excellent book. One day I found a bizarre creature sitting on the back of my lounger: not a member of the Pokémon family, but a humble cicada. The contrast between a grid of white polythene strips woven onto an aluminium frame and the fantastic detail of the creature’s eyes and wings could have been an illustration from the book I was reading: Endless Forms Most Beautiful by Sean B Carroll. This is about Evo Devo (evolutionary developmental biology), written by one of its pioneers. This makes it the most important popular science book since Dawkins’ The Blind Watchmaker, and in effect a sequel. Dawkins…

Thanks to superfast SSDs, abundant RAM and progressive optimisations to the operating system itself, Windows starts up far more quickly than it used to. The startup process that used to entail a minute and a half of disk grinding now whizzes by in less than ten seconds. That doesn’t mean the process is simple. It’s a multi-step chain of technical procedures, and if any one of them goes wrong, you’ll be left staring at an error message or a blank screen – or possibly a blue one. If you’re to have any hope of recovering from a situation such as this, it’s a good idea to understand what’s going on in those frantic seconds after you press the power button and before the familiar Windows desktop appears. And even if…

SCORE ✪✪✪✪✪ PRICE £1,083 (£1,299 inc VAT) from store. hp.com/uk Perfection is an unattainable goal, but no-one mentioned this to HP. Not content with merely creating the world’s thinnest laptop, it has also made one of the loveliest Windows ultraportables to roll off a production line. That laptop is the Spectre 13. My first encounter with the Spectre conjured memories from 2008: that iconic moment in Apple’s keynote where Steve Jobs picked up a manila envelope and pulled a MacBook Air from within. Audible gasps. Applause. This time around, however, Steve Jobs’ role was assumed by reviews editor Jonathan Bray; the keynote took place in the local Wetherspoons; and the paper envelope was replaced with a stylish leather sleeve. Cue one quiet gasp. It really is a laptop I was…

Paul looks at smartphone-based thermal imaging, and goes beyond responsive design for mobile-friendly websites Let’s start this month by looking at smartphone-based thermal imaging, as things have moved on considerably in the year since I last covered the subject in this column. Back then, you had two choices: a FLIR One, which was built into a special case that worked only with the iPhone 5 or 5s; or the Seek Thermal, a little plug-in dongle that worked with any Android or iOS phone (or indeed tablet). The Seek Thermal had a higher-resolution camera, so given the two systems cost pretty much the same, it was an easy win – a year ago, the Seek Thermal was the thermalimaging camera to buy. So what’s happened in the intervening months? Well, FLIR…

Backup vs archiving: what’s in a name? As you might imagine, there’s a world of difference Two big themes this month, which is unusual. One is NAS devices, and squaring a circle of opinion and features versus hard real-world experience. The other is ransomware, and what to do about it. Bizarrely enough, the two subjects are related – and in more than one way, which is exactly the kind of intellectual mousetrap that finds in me an easy victim. I’ll try to keep my delight in this bit of synchronicity for the end, because all of these subjects matter, so let’s get the hard-core observations and advice out of the way first: NAS confusion, or protecting against the wrong fault. I managed to get the cat well and truly among…

Imagine receiving navigation directions through your sunglasses, or assembly instructions via safety goggles - according to WaveOptics, this is how augmented reality w i ll eventually hit the mainstream; not via bulky VR-style headsets. With this in mind, the startup’s technology could prove important: WaveOptics’ display system is tiny enough to be embedded into an average pair of glasses by simply connecting to your phone. WaveOptics’ co-founders Sumanta Talukdar and David Grey share a background in heads-up displays, working for defence firm BAE Systems. Now, they’re extending what they’ve learned making head-mounted AR for soldiers to other industries, including gaming. Here’s how this Oxfordshire startup is making AR happen. What’s your goal with WaveOptics When we started, we said that any solution we came up w i th would have…

Google takes another swing at the video-calling market, but will Duo prove any more successful than previous efforts? GOOGLE ISN’T A company that’s easily deterred by failure. Unable to crack the video-calling market with its Hangouts service, the firm is trying once again with Duo. But is there any reason to believe Duo will be more successful than its predecessor? And is it bad news for the consumer, making the prospect of cross-platform video calls even less likely? Duo will work on both iOS and Android, and goes up against Apple’s FaceTime, WhatsApp (with its billion active users) and Facebook Messenger and WeChat (which are both approaching that number). Not to mention Skype. However, analysts say Google faces an uphill battle to garner anything close to its rivals’ huge user…

Windows 10’s first birthday has arrived, but I’m in no mood for celebrating. I have a three-year-old laptop with a 128GB SSD inside, and it doesn’t have enough space to install the Anniversary Update. “Windows needs 5.8GB of free space to install the update,” Microsoft’s warning message cheerfully informs me, having already swallowed what little free space I had by downloading the patch in the first place. Happy Anniversary! My life is a constant battle to clear storage, not only on my work PC, but on my tablet and phone too. A problem that we thought had been eradicated by huge hard disks has been brought thumpingly back to life by SSDs and flash storage. Not to mention manufacturers’ greed, charging punitive prices for storage capacity required to live a…

Shocking advice? Paul Ockenden’s advice on how to fit a home automation controller to a light switch (see issue 264, p113) has left me somewhat concerned. Since fitting these requires modification to mains wiring, this work should always be undertaken by someone experienced in mains wiring. There are several possible ways to wire up a light circuit, and no assumptions at all should be made regarding the meaning of cables going to switches or light fittings. If using standard twin and earth for the switch, blue (or black for older installations) probably isn’t neutral and may even be permanent live. The switch is usually in the live circuit to the light, but may be incorrectly wired into the neutral circuit. Therefore, before any modifications commence, testing should be undertaken to…

Booking your trip Here’s an increasingly common scenario: an email flies in from lastminute.com offering a flash sale on a week-long holiday. You click through, read the details, message your partner, confirm the dates and pay for it – all from your phone. What would seem like an outlandish scenario just a decade ago is now close to the norm. Waiting in line Airports used to be associated with endless queues, but thanks to online check-in and electronic boarding passes, the only time most people now need to wait is to drop off their bags. Phones haven’t yet helped when it comes to speeding through security, likewise passport control, but surely it’s just a matter of time. At the airport Navigating around huge airports used to involve a mixture of…

“Our website needed are build, to make it more SEO-friendly. It was always going to beat ough task” Moving a database from one CMS to another isn’t easy, but Mark lived to tell the tale of migrating from a database-driven ASP.NET site to Drupal There comes a time in every website’s life when it needs a rebuild. There are many reasons for this, but in our case the need was urgent: to migrate a custom-built, database-driven ASP.NET site into Drupal. The main motivation was to make the site more SEO-friendly, with the added benefit of Drupal’s management facilities. It was always going to be a tough task: the data in this ASP.NET site covered 2,000 articles containing HTML links and images. So, with the decision made, some investigation was needed.…

The government’s plans for faster broadband have been dragged back on track, but there remains frustration that few homes in rural areas benefit from fibre connections. In 2010, the government outlined plans to push “superfast” broadband – set as 24Mbits/sec or faster – to 90% of the population by 2015. The initial target was missed while Broadband Delivery UK worked out how to allocate £530m in funding to BT, but that 90% benchmark has now been reached. In fact, the latest figures show that 90.7% of homes can get speeds of 24Mbits/sec. The map below – based on figures from speed-test results and other data collated by thinkbroadband.com – shows that many areas remain well shy of the targets, however. URBAN/RURAL DIVIDE Percentage of rural and urban homes in Great…

Missing a delivery is a pain, but Amazon believes it has a solution: unmanned drones that drop packages from the sky direct into gardens or onto the front steps of our homes. The company has already been granted government permission to trial the robotic aircraft, but not all of the local folk in the Cambridgeshire countryside where tests are taking place are enamoured by the buzzing devices disrupting the peace and quiet – and next to an ancient Roman road, no less. “The idea of bringing drones to the middle of the countryside is deeply shocking,” the local secretary of the Friends of the Roman Road and Fleam Dyke told the BBC. As easy as it is to laugh at such Luddites, they have a point. But they should also…

SCORE ✪✪✪✪✪ PRICE £667 (£800 inc VAT) from yoyotech.co.uk If you ever wanted a physical embodiment of where desktop PCs still outscore laptops, the Yoyotech Warbird RS10-V2 is it. This well-built machine oozes quality in precisely the right areas, and backs it up with all the power most people will need for years to come. Much of that is due to Yoyotech’s choice of a GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card, the nominal successor to the GTX 960 – but one that comes exceptionally close to matching the GTX 980 in terms of performance. That’s great news for anyone who’s thinking about investing in the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift, since this machine exceeds their recommended spec. For now, it’s likely to be employed for more everyday games. If you’re set…

Why Microsoft shouldn’t be happy with Windows 10’s market share, and the joy of Wi-Fi-enabled smart thermometers So all good things come to an end. The grand experiment of giving away Windows 10 to existing owners has ceased after one year. Some of us were hoping that the free upgrade would continue into the future, but we secretly knew this was too much to expect from Microsoft – a company that relies on its cash cows to survive. Having a one-year moratorium could be spun by the PR bunnies and the Microsoft cheerleaders on Twitter and Facebook as being something that could be justified to consolidate the user base onto Windows 10. In other words, Microsoft would reduce its costs by having customers move to Windows 10, and this cost…

Do you take security seriously when working abroad? Davey provides tips to harden your defences. Plus, why the NCA is, apparently, bypassing RIPA outside of the sales world, the two occupations that involve the most international travel appear to be journalists and consultants – most of the RWC team here at PC Pro will confirm that they’re away more than they’re at home. Hotel rooms and air fares aside, business travel comes at a cost: being a target for cybercrime. According to the Kaspersky Lab International Travel Report (pcpro.link/265travel), 20% of folk are targets of cybercrime abroad, but that jumps to 30% for those who are on business overseas. Interestingly, it’s data rather than cash that’s most likely to be stolen. Which makes it even more bizarre that more than…

It may not have caught the public imagination in the same way it has in Pokémon Go, but AR is already being used within a host of businesses. As the technology shrinks and is embedded in safety goggles, helmets and other pre-existing workplace equipment, its popularity can only grow. Here’s how industries are already using AR to improve productivity, enhance safety and boost sales figures too. Retail Online shopping is convenient, but with clothes in particular, people prefer to try them on first. AR offers the promise of virtual changing rooms: Webcam Social Shopper enables potential buyers to see how a shirt or dress fits. Modiface Mirror even means that you can virtually try on eyeshadow colours to see what suits you best. (Try it yourself at modiface.com/mirror.php.) It’s already…

What rights do you have to the data held about you by others? It’s a tough call, because different situations require different solutions. For example, the government has a right to information about you for the purposes of accurate taxation – as a society we’ve agreed to this on the basis that roads need to be built, hospitals staffed and children educated. The government can go hunt through my bank records if needed, which is acceptable, but allowing a competing bank to do so clearly isn’t acceptable. What about your health record at the NHS? One big advantage of the NHS is that it can collect enormous amounts of data, and it does so to look at population trends, medically relevant issues, and so forth. This is the “macro” use…