Table of contents for August 2015 in PC Pro

Vote in the UK’s biggest technology awards and win a drone. Seep67 SLEEPLESS NIGHTS. Constant worry. The feeling that you’re jumping into the unknown. But also, the knowledge it will all be worth it, because your creation will be something unique – and so full of vibrant new life that you’ll want to show it off on your mobile phone all the time. Fear not, Facebook friends: a new baby isn’t on the way. At least, not something pink and gurgling with an ironic approach to sleeping patterns. This baby is our new website, and its chief similarity to a real baby is that, like every proud father, I love it to bits. The site is called Alphr, and you can check it out right now at alphr.com. It’s a…

1 Ofcomwarns ofWi-Fipain Thetelecomsregulatorwill auctionoffmorespectrumto beefupmobilenetworks,but thechangecouldwreakhavoc withWi-Firouters.Ofcomis consideringsellingoff2.3GHz spectrum,whichsitsnextto the2.4GHzbandusedbymost routers–onereasonyoumay wanttooptforadual-band devicewith5GHzsupport. 2 Lenovo smart phone uses project or for key board Lenovohasrevealedaconceptsmartphonethatcan projectadisplayyoucaninteractwith,givingusersa biggertouchscreensurfaceorkeyboard. TheSmart Castsystemusesa built-inpicoprojector combinedwithlaser sensors,butthe technologyisn’t expectedtoarrive inretaildevicesfor anotheryearortwo. 3 Snoopers’ Charter returns with new bill ThenewConservative governmentintroducedthe InvestigatoryPowersBill, revivingplanstoincrease securityservices’accessto onlinecommunicationsdata. Thelawlookssettoextendthe lastsetofproposals–knownas theCommunicationsDataBill– whichwaspreviouslyblocked bytheLiberalDemocrats. 4 iPhones crashed by malicious messages Applehasrushedtofixaflaw thatallowedcarefullycrafted malicioustextmessagestocrash iPhones. It’sunclearwherethe textoriginated,anditappeared todolittlebeyondfrustrating users.Applequicklyissued instructionsonhowtoregain controloflockediPhones,and wasworkingonapatchatthe timeofpublishing. 5 Windows 10 release date confirmed Microsofthasconfirmedthat Windows10willbereleasedon 29Julyasafreeupgradeto those onWindows7and8.1 (seep44forourfeatureon Windows10).WindowsInsiders –thosewhohavebeentesting thenewOSin beta–willalso receivefree upgrades.…

I’m writing this from my home office – also known as the desk in my lounge, which, this being a tiny London flat, is in my kitchen (like a set of highrent nesting dolls). Looking out of the window, the rain is splattering down, and I’m smug that I no longer need to leave my home to arrive damp at the office following a horrible commute. Back in November, I went freelance and, bar a few days here and there, have been working from my residence ever since. In the past, if ever I worked the odd day from home, I didn’t really enjoy it at all: I missed the chatter and gossip of the office, not to mention the after-work trips to the pub, and it seemed much harder…

PRICE 64GB, £349 (£419 inc VAT); 128GB, £416 (£499 inc VAT); 4G pricing yet to be confirmed from microsoftstore.com (pcpro.link/250mssp3) Let’s take a moment to mark the passing of Windows RT. As the Surface 2 – Windows RT’s swansong – trudges to an early grave, haunted by the spectre of embarrassing sales figures, the Surface 3 is tasked with getting Microsoft’s Surface family back on track. And it looks like it might just have succeeded. With full-fat 64-bit Windows finally taking the place of the departed RT, Microsoft has redeemed itself by creating one of the best Windows tablets yet. The Surface 3 impresses from the off: it’s just as classy and lovingly crafted as we’ve come to expect from Microsoft’s Surface brand. There’s the same VaporMg metal construction –…

PRICE £108 (£129 inc VAT) from turbosat.com (pcpro.link/250sling) The Slingbox M1 is not your everyday TV streamer. Instead of delivering catch-up content from online sources direct to your TV, the Slingbox allows you to take remote control of an existing cable or satellite box and stream its content to your laptop, tablet or smartphone. It sounds exciting at first. A thing you’d want to do, just because. But what are the practical benefits – if you’re not in a position to splash £129 just for the sake of it? Well, there are a few applications. If you’re the type who hoards recordings of movies on your set-top box, for instance, the Slingbox M1 provides a way of accessing these recordings quickly and easily from any device, anywhere on the planet.…

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PRICE £54 (£65 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk (pcpro.link/250linksys) There are two things that might put you off the Linksys RE6500. The first is that it’s a little more expensive than most 802.11ac extenders, coming in at just under £75, while rivals are available for £45 to £60. Second, it isn’t a neat all-in-one unit that plugs into a mains socket, but a device that looks a little like a scaled-down router, complete with its own power supply. On the first point, we’d argue that the RE6500’s features and performance make the extra expense worthwhile. On the second, it’s still very compact and discreet, while the separate power supply gives you valuable flexibility on positioning. Place it on a bookshelf or windowsill or, better still, mount it on a wall, and…

PRICE £33 (£40 inc VAT) from shop.bt.com (pcpro.link/250btwifi) If the BT Dual-Band Wi-Fi Extender 600 gets anything right, it’s the fact that it’s easy to position. Plug the extender into a power outlet and, once it connects to your network, five LEDs coloured red, amber and green indicate whether you’re in a good spot, too close or too far from your router. It doesn’t get any easier than this. Setting up the device is just as simple. The bundled quick-start guide pushes you towards a WPS-based routine, and when we tried it both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands connected on the first attempt. There’s also a browser-based wizard for those whose routers don’t support WPS, or if you prefer to disable the feature for security reasons. The downside of all…

PRICE £25 (£30 inc VAT) from pcworld.co.uk (pcpro.link/250netgear2) It’s one of the cheapest extenders around, and it hails from one of the most established networking brands – but unfortunately, the price of Netgear’s WN3000RP is reflected in its specs. This is a simple, single-band 802.11n extender with a single 10/100 Ethernet port, two external antennas and not much else. On the plus side, it comes wrapped up in a very small and unobtrusive wall-plug design – it’s quite likeable if you’re not upset by the sight of aerials. In theory, setup should be simple, but we were unable to persuade the WN3000RP to connect to our router through the magic of WPS, and had to resort to a clunky browser-based wizard. While not as user-friendly as Linksys’ setup process, this…

PRICE £37 (£44 inc VAT) from shop.bt.com (pcpro.link/250trendnet2) The most appealing thing about the Trendnet TPL-410APK is, unquestionably, its price. For £44, you get a two-part 500Mbits/sec HomePlug AV powerline kit with a 300Mbits/sec 802.11n Wi-Fi extender built into the second unit. Since the latter also packs in a pair of 10/100 Ethernet ports, the Trendnet has potential as a basic plug-and-play option for streaming media to a remote bedroom or hooking up a small outside office. The appeal starts to wane when it comes to setup, however. The powerline part is simple enough: simply plug in one unit near your router and connect the Ethernet port, and the Wi-Fi unit where you’re in need of coverage. Unfortunately, you then need to connect to the Wi-Fi network using a WPA2…

PRICE £7,832 exc VAT from dell.co.uk Everything about Dell’s mighty PowerEdge T630 exudes quality. The industrial-strength chassis, huge expansion potential and massive capacity mark this out as a server that can go where others fear to tread. One particular strength is storage capacity. We were supplied with the 32 SFF version, but you can opt for the 18 LFF model instead; Dell also offers a single 16 SFF model, and the T630 can handle up to four PCI Express SSDs that can be mixed with eight LFF or 16 SFF drive bays. RAID choices begin with the embedded PERC S130, which can handle up to eight hot-swap SATA drives with software-managed RAID0, 1 and 5 arrays. We tested the top PERC H730P RAID card, which ups support to 12Gbits/sec SAS…

PRICE £5,642 exc VAT from serversplus.com Lenovo acquired IBM’s System X server portfolio last year, but this hasn’t stopped it developing its own ThinkServer range. In fact, the new fifth-generation ThinkServer TD350 represents a complete refresh in all the important areas. It starts with systems management, where the new ThinkServer Systems Management (TSM) subsystem at last remedies the deficiencies of Lenovo’s previous attempts. Its web console is more informative, and opens with a firmware and event-log summary, temperature and power speedo dials, plus links for power controls. A second page lets you secure TSM access, browse audit logs and activate remote-access firewall rules. You can monitor sensor data for temperatures, voltages and fans, and link platformevent filters with email-alert policies. The remote firmware upgrade feature is particularly useful, allowing you…

It’s clear that moving services into the cloud can work wonders for a business. If you fit into the expectations of the marketplace then migrating is a slick, smooth process providing plenty of benefits. It helps to be a history-free start-up, though. If you have lots of baggage, or lots of internal procedures built on structures that are out of favour, then moving can be a bigger deal. That’s why the big brands are no longer pushing an all-cloud mindset. Both Microsoft and VMware have recently stopped talking about pure off-premise cloud resources, and are talking about “hybrid” cloud instead. If you haven’t encountered it, this is a rather loose term for a system that ties together your old on-site kit with your new off-site cloud portfolio. If you’re not…

I’ve been castigated by a few readers because of my failure to revisit the OnePlus One handset following a promise to do so in my “China phone” column three months ago. There’s a reason for my tardiness, however: as I hinted back in issue 247, big things were afoot at OnePlus, and so I should probably rewind the clock to look at a few factors that have got us to where we are today. The OnePlus One was launched in April last year. Sales were slow, not through a lack of interest but because the manufacturer deliberately held back inventory, selling on an “inviteonly” basis. I’ll get to the specs in a minute, but crucial to this project was a tie-up with Cyanogen Inc, which provided the CyanogenMod version of…

Say hello to Donny and Marie, two of my friends whose real names I shall be keeping to myself. I know you all love other people’s disaster stories – and these ones are rather outside my normal brief – but both their dilemmas posed a serious question about networks, so I’m going to tell them anyway. Donny and Marie were both laptop users of the typical modern kind, lone entrepreneurs linked in to a web of friends and business affiliations mainly by email and partly via social-networking apps. One of them is remarkably well off, while the other is just about making it; one has an ancient Sony VAIO, while the other has a shiny, recent-ish MacBook Pro. However, the possession is the opposite of what you might expect: it’s…

THERE ARE MANY examples of 3D-printed construction around the world: China is home to the first 3D-printed apartment building, and a 3D-printed estate, complete with swimming pool, can be found in New York. Now, Facit Homes is building a 3D-printed home in London’s Highgate. We spoke to managing director Bruce Bell for an insider’s guide to the technology. How does the technology work? Is it really “3D-printed”? “People like to use the term [3D printing],” Bell said, but revealed that he tries to avoid it. “But it makes sense in a way, because you’re using a computer... and you’re getting components that are an exact replica of what you see on the screen. Conceptually, it’s the same thing.” However, the actual production techniques employed to build homes aren’t the same…

Jack Schofield As former computer editor of The Guardian, Jack has seen it all before. So why does he think that virtual reality could be a success this time around? See p58. Ian Betteridge Head to p68 to discover why the editorial director of Alphr has become so attached to his Apple Watch in such a short space of time. But it’s not for everyone... Eileen Brown Imagine this: you’re in the middle of a presentation about social media, and direct people to your own site only to find that it’s been hacked. See p116. Bruce Bell Fancy living in a 3D-printed house? It’s no futuristic fantasy: it’s already happening in the UK. Read our fascinating interview with the Facit Homes MD on p126.…

Google Photos Photography fans will be keen to look at Google Photos, an extension to the firm’s existing photo-storage system. It aims to converge all of your pictures into one place, rather than leave them scattered across multiple devices and cloud storage. Google Photos will organise images automatically, by dates, places and even people (without the need for tagging). The flipside is that this involves reading metadata and using facial recognition, so those concerned about privacy may prefer to avoid the free service. While the search giant is offering unlimited storage, it’s setting a resolution limit of 16 megapixels for photos and 1080p for videos – sure to disappoint anyone with a decent DSLR. Google Photos is available immediately for desktop, Android and iOS. From smart jeans to encryption The…

BMW (2006) The Bavarian carmaker found its website completely removed from Google’s search results for a few days in 2006. Why? It had been “cloaking” content on its web pages, hiding invisible words in areas that were designed to be seen by search engines, not users. The Washington Post (2007) The Washington Post (2007) In 2007, Google decided to crack down on the growing practice of selling spammy links, which allowed smaller sites to effectively buy a share in the host site’s popularity. The Washington Post was one culprit, and it paid the price: the newspaper wasn’t removed entirely from rankings, but was bumped down a few spots in search results. Google (2012) Hilariously, Google punished itself in 2012, following an ill-conceived marketing campaign in which hundreds of sponsored blog…

PC Pro readers and experts give their views on the world of technology Search Google Images for the word “multitasking” and you’ll find that, of the top ten hits, no fewer than eight are illustrations of individuals with six or more arms. These exceptional beings can be seen holding phones, pens, laptops and documents all at once, and the message is clear: multitasking is a superhuman capability. Even more telling is the image of a regular two-armed individual surrounded by a similar spread of devices and documents, who sits with his hands thrown aloft in an expression of total despair. On p54 this month, Barry Collins asks whether multitasking could actually be harmful to your health, and you can see his point. I find it interesting that the word “multitasking”…

After photography, my main antidote to computer-induced trauma is playing the guitar. Recently I saw Stefan Grossman play live at London’s Kings Place. He played his acoustic Martin HJ-38 through a simple PA mike, and played it beautifully. Another idol of mine is Bill Frisell, who couldn’t be more different in that he employs the gamut of electronic effects, on material ranging from free jazz through bluegrass to surf-rock. Dazzled by his sound, I purchased a Zoom G1on effects pedal from Amazon, and am currently immersed in learning how to deploy its 100 amazing effects. The theme I’m driving at here is the relationship between skill, discipline and computer assistance. There will always be neo-Luddites who see the PC as the devil’s work that destroys all skills, alongside pseudo-modernists who…

Kickstarter is the perfect platform for getting your app, service or other technology project off the ground. Recently, products such as the Pebble Time smartwatch have attracted $20.3 million from more than 78,000 backers keen to get the device off the starting blocks, while the Exploding Kittens card game met its $10,000 funding goal in only eight minutes. More than $1.6 billion have been pledged through the site since launch, with a current funding success rate for new projects of around 40%. So how can you ensure that your project ends up in that 40% category with a full funding thermometer? The first thing to understand is Kickstarter’s “all or nothing” funding model. Put simply, this means that if you raise your target sum, you receive the money – but…

It’s been almost 30 years since Dr Jonathan D Waldern founded a tiny company called W Industries to develop a “virtual-reality” system – which included a head-mounted display (HMD), data gloves, a tracking system, and associated software. I still have vivid memories of making a trip to Bristol to try a prototype. How could I refuse an invitation to experience the future? Later, in 1993, the company – now called Virtuality – was floated on the London Stock Exchange. Its shares shot up from 170p to 315p on the first day, making Waldern a multimillionaire. By this time, the firm had marketable games such as Dactyl Nightmare, in which you battled a green dinosaur, and Grid Busters, a robot shoot-em-up. If you’re of a certain age, you may have played…

PRICE 38mm Apple Watch Sport, £249 (£299 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk (pcpro.link/250watch) Appraising a first-generation Apple product is one of the hardest things a reviewer can do, and the Apple Watch is a perfect illustration of why. You look at the specs; you look the price; you look at what it does; and you end up giving it a mediocre review because, on the face of it, competing products seem to offer so much more. Then Apple goes ahead and sells millions of them, and suddenly it’s setting the agenda for the whole industry. You end up looking like an idiot for missing what – with hindsight – ought to have been obvious. Just as the iPad wasn’t the first tablet, the Apple Watch isn’t the first smartwatch. But just…

PRICE SIM-free, £415 (£498 inc VAT) from handtec.co.uk (pcpro.link/250lgg4) Different people want different things from a smartphone. Some value appearance and design above all else. Others want the fastest performance. A fair number, however, value the practical things in life, and it’s these folk who will be looking closely at the LG G4: of the current generation, it’s the only major smartphone with both a microSD slot and a removable battery. The question is, does the rest of it pass muster? In its basic shape and controls, the G4 breaks no new ground. The rear is still gently curved and fits in your hand nicely. The volume and power buttons still reside in the centre of the rear panel, just below the camera lens. The overall dimensions haven’t changed much…

PRICE £108 (£130 inc VAT) from broadbandbuyer.co.uk (pcpro. link/250netgear) Even the most cursory glance will tell you that the Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 is no ordinary wireless extender. For a start, it looks more like a router, with a 252 x 174mm footprint and three sizeable antennas sticking out at the back. You can use it in its horizontal orientation or place it vertically on the supplied stand, but either way it’s a formidable piece of networking kit, with a distinctive, angular design. What’s more, that design has been thought through. The single USB 3 port is accessible at the front, with five Gigabit Ethernet ports around the back. Admittedly, it’s a little odd that the WPS button is smaller than the power button and located on the rear, but you’ll…

Cheap for an 802.11ac wireless extender, but performance simply isn’t strong enough PRICE £21 (£25 inc VAT) from ebuyer.com (pcpro.link/250dlink) D-Link’s DAP-1520 seems miraculously good value, sporting dual-band 802.11ac support at a price you’d expect to pay for a single-band 802.11n product. There are signs it’s been stripped back to hit this price point, though: it’s the only extender on test without an Ethernet port, and the exterior design is very basic. However, if all you want is a wireless signal in an upstairs room, this might not bother you. Intriguingly, the DAP-1520 can be set up through either a browser-based control panel or through D-Link’s mobile app. The former approach involves logging on to a temporary network and entering a WPA password before you can do anything, so it’s…

PRICE £37 (£44 inc VAT) from dabs.com (pcpro.link/250tplink) The TP-Link RE210 has one advantage over rival wall-plug 802.11ac extenders: it offers a Gigabit Ethernet port, where most stick to a basic 10/100 connection. Don’t get too excited: the connection between the extender and your 802.11ac router will still be a bottleneck, but at fairly close range this could double as a wireless bridge. The quick-start guide recommends a WPS setup, which works perfectly well. Using the browser-based wizard gives you more options, however, including the choice of separate SSIDs for the extended 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks. Otherwise, the control panel is functional but spartan, with basic LAN and WLAN configuration pages, update tools and a status page. As far as finding the optimal location goes, TP-Link could make it a…

PRICE £40 (£47 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk () ZyXEL’s 802.11 AC750 extender is one of the smallest and lightest on test; it isn’t going to win any design awards, but you’ll hardly notice that it’s there. On the downside, it’s also a bit short on exciting features. The presence of a single 10/100 Ethernet port puts it ahead of the D-Link DAP-1520, as does an access point mode, but you won’t find more than simple connectivity here. The easiest way to get set up is to use WPS to configure the extender, in which case it’s automatic, with new SSIDs created for the extended 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks by default. The browser-based configuration feels like a fallback option, although it exposes more configuration and status tools for advanced users. Positioning…

PRICE £1,949 exc VAT from fujitsu.co.uk If you’re looking for a good value, general-purpose tower, Fujitsu’s Primergy TX2540 M1 hits the mark. Support for Intel’s lower-cost E5-2400 v2 Xeons keeps the price down, while still providing enough horsepower to cope with a wide range of IT services. Our review system was fitted with a single 2.2GHz E5-2420 v2 CPU, offering six physical cores and a 2.7GHz turbo mode. Its low 80W TDP makes for a power-efficient system: we measured a draw of 67W in idle, and only 107W under extreme load. As your demands grow you can add a second CPU and, while there isn’t as much headroom for memory as offered by the latest E5-2600 v3 servers, RAM can be pushed to 192GB. Fujitsu offers plenty of power choices:…

PRICE Unit only, £695 exc VAT from ashburysatcom.co.uk Inmarsat’s IsatHub can keep you online from almost anywhere on the planet. Combining 802.11n Wi-Fi with satellite internet access, it will work with any wireless-enabled device, and supports standard voice and SMS services as well. Strictly speaking, IsatHub itself is the communications service, which uses the Inmarsat-4 and Alphasat satellites to cover the US, Asia and Europe (only the poles are beyond its reach). The actual hardware is the Wideye iSavi hotspot, which is manufactured by AddValue. Weighing 900g, it’s solidly built, with an IP65 rating that indicates it’s dust-proof and can handle low-pressure water jets from any direction. Setup proved simple. After turning on the iSavi, we found it took around three minutes to acquire a GPS fix. Once the receiver…

I discovered that my site had an issue. Running a workshop for a group of small businesses and entrepreneurs, I was showing attendees how to get images to the top of Google and Bing. Correctly formatting the image, using descriptive titles, and adding well-formed Alt tags will help pages climb in search results – something that many web designers forget to do when adding images to a client’s site. Part of my demonstration includes carrying out a search for an image with the term “Amastra kitten”, “Clyde kitten” or “Eileen Brown kitten”. This usually brings up an image of my ginger kitten Clyde to the top of Bing and Google. Then the shock: in the search results, Google had marked that my site, Amastra.com, “may be hacked”. This isn’t what…

Elon Musk wants us to drive electric cars, travel through supersonic Hyperloop tubes, and spend our holidays in space – and now he’s turned his attention to home energy. His company Tesla has unveiled a home battery system called Powerwall that lets you store solar energy to power your home. Is Powerwall the future of energy? Musk thinks so – and so do tens of thousands of others who have pre-ordered the battery. A battery? People are excited by a battery? They are – Musk claims that 38,000 people have already signed up for what is, essentially, a giant rechargeable lithium-ion battery. They’re hoping it lives up to Musk’s promises of being less battery and more home-energymanagement system. And what makes it so smart? The Powerwall is charged via solar…

There’s a new acronym lighting up the eyes of tech enthusiasts and researchers everywhere: TMD. Transition-metal dichalcogenide – hence the need for an acronym – is a super-thin but incredibly conductive film. How thin, I hear you ask? It’s only three atoms thick. The material isn’t new, but previous attempts to make it have suffered from relatively low yields. In a paper published in Nature, a group of researchers led by Cornell University’s Saien Xie outlined a new process for making the material; this cuts defects down to 1%, meaning it could become commercially viable. The combination of thinness and high conductivity means TMD makes an excellent material for semi-conductors. Manufacturers could greatly increase transistor density compared to what’s possible with current technologies, the researchers said, adding that it “would…

LAPTOPS Apple MacBook Pro 13in with Retina display 2015 model, from £999 apple.com/uk With its innovative Force Touch trackpad, new Broadwell processors and the same excellent Retina screen, the MacBook Pro is better than ever. It’s fast, with superior battery life to the previous generation, and that trackpad adds to all-round usability. REVIEW: pcpro.link/almb13rd ALTERNATIVES Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 2 A versatile hybrid laptop with the best IPS screen in its class – now available at an irresistible price. £350; johnlewis.com REVIEW: pcpro.link/alyoga2 Asus Zenbook UX303LA The latest Broadwell Core i7 and a quality screen make this Ultrabook both desirable and great value. £680; laptopsdirect.co.uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/alzb303 HP Stream 11 Good-looking, well built and equipped with a decent display, the petite Stream 11 is as good as it gets for the…

A pair of huge disembodied arms reach out above the kitchen top. Initially, they look menacing, more RoboCop than MasterChef. Then they begin to move. Graceful, with the gentle, considered motions of a professional chef. Soon one robotic hand holds a pan while another stirs. It’s hypnotic to watch; the lifelike movements make for an eerie spectacle. But the spell is broken every time the arms reach a point in the recipe where all there is to do is wait. There’s no pacing up and down the counter. No Keith Floyd-esque swigging of wine. The hands return to their starting position, stop, and hover mid-air – dumb, lifeless, awaiting the next instruction from the computer hidden behind the stage. This is Moley Robotics’ concept of the robotic kitchen, on show…

Kickstarter for iOS/Android (free) Monitor donations and send campaign updates from wherever you are with Kickstarter’s official mobile app. At present you still need a desktop computer to launch or edit your campaign. Boomerang for Gmail (unlimited, from $5(£3)/mth) Craft personal emails and send them to potential backers at the ideal time of day with this emailscheduling tool. Kicktotal (pcpro.link/250kicktotal) Hosted by crowdfunding veterans, this handy web service lets you tot up your project’s costs, along with fees, the cost of any rewards and expected sales revenue, to ensure your fundraising finances stay on track. BackerKit ($99(£65)/mth) If your project attracts very large numbers of backers, BackerKit can help you track backer contacts and manage rewards – including those that aren’t offered through Kickstarter.…

Use low-tech brain extenders While researching his book, Daniel J Levitin was surprised to find how many high-flyers carried around notepads or index cards. “Many busy and effective people say that there is something [...] visceral in using physical objects, rather than virtual ones, to keep track of important things,” he wrote. Make a to-do list “When we have something on our minds that is important – especially a to-do item – we’re afraid we’ll forget it,” said Levitin. “Writing things down conserves the mental energy expended worrying that you might forget something.” Weed out distractions Levitin discovered that successful people divided up “useful versus distracting knowledge”. Sort email and documents into batches that need to be dealt with right away, things that are important but can wait, things that…

PRICE £142 (£170 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk (pcpro.link/250basis) Every small tech company dreams of piquing the interest of a giant such as Intel – and Basis has made that dream a reality. Intel was so enthralled by Basis’ original vision of the activity tracker, the Basis B1, that it snapped up the company for its new Devices Group. Now Basis has unleashed the Basis Peak – a device it describes as “the ultimate fitness and sleep tracker”. That’s quite a claim, but the Basis Peak is different to its rivals: this is a fitness tracker in the purest, most hands-off sense. A clutch of sensors monitor your vitals continually, and this stream of data allows the Peak to recognise sleep patterns, bike rides and runs – all without any intervention.…

PRICE £189 (£227 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk (pcpro.link/250dell) There are times when good looks and sleek design must take second place to practicality – situations when tough is more important than pretty. So it is with the 2015 edition of the Dell Chromebook 11. It may not be stylish, but it’s unfussy and practical, and for the target market – the education sector – that’s exactly what’s needed. That’s not to say that Dell has skimped on design. The manufacturer says the laptop has passed US Military Standard testing, and while you’re unlikely to need to use it under enemy fire, that sturdiness means it’s more than equal to the knocks of student life. It’s covered in solid-feeling matte-black plastic that hides any smudges or scratches, and encircled by rubber…

PRICE £47 (£57 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk (pcpro.link/250asus) While some extenders are happy to compete on price and performance, Asus is focusing on product design and innovative features. On paper, the RP-AC52 is just another wall-plug AC750 extender with built-in Ethernet, but it has a compact, angular design and interesting, pseudo-quilted finish to distinguish it. You also get audio-streaming features and a built-in nightlight, activated by a configurable touch panel at the front. Plus, if a soft glow doesn’t do it for you, you can also connect the RP-AC52 via Ethernet to a wired network and use it as a wireless access point. Not all of these features work brilliantly, however. The Ethernet is 10/100 rather than Gigabit, while audio streaming requires Asus’ own AiPlayer Android app for streaming tracks…

PRICE £37 (£45 inc VAT) from dabs.com (pcpro.link/250linksys2) Linksys’ compact dual-band 802.11n extender is notable for its ability to double as a wireless audio streamer. But where the similarly featured Asus RP-AC52 targets Android devices running specific Asus and third-party apps, the Linksys works as a DLNA-compliant media extender, and even works with the “Play To” button in Windows Media Player. Hook up a pair of speakers and you have a simple wireless music system as well as an extended Wi-Fi signal. This aside, the RE4100W is short on exciting features. It’s a compact and unobtrusive device, but its one and only Ethernet port is a basic 10/100 effort, and its single LED gives precious little help when you’re trying to find the optimum position for your new extender. The…

PRICE £65 (£78 inc VAT) from dabs.com (pcpro.link/250tplink2) If you’re looking for an unobtrusive way to bring wireless to your home or office, the TL-WPA4230P isn’t it. As with all powerline kits, one unit plugs in near your router and the other sits where you need the connection. The second unit is a bit of a monster, though: 6cm wide, 12cm tall and almost 5cm deep, with a thick black rim that accentuates its size. Still, at least that real-estate is put to good use, with a passthrough power socket and three 10/100 Ethernet ports provided. Supplying 10/100 rather than Gigabit Ethernet ports might seem a false economy on a device that claims 500Mbits/sec speeds over your mains cables, but real-world performance means it’s unlikely to be an issue at…

Are there any specifications as confusing as the numbers printed on the outside of wireless networking products? Promotional messages on boxes and in adverts talk of speeds of 300Mbits/sec, 600Mbits/sec or 1,300Mbits/sec, but try connecting to a router in anything other than optimal laboratory conditions and you’ll find real-world bandwidth falls a long way short of the mark. Throw distance into the mix and those real-world speeds fall further, while with Wi-Fi extenders, the headline speeds grow even sillier. The box still says 300Mbits/sec, 600Mbits/sec or more, while actual throughput inside your home may be as low as 70Mbits/sec. That’s why it’s smart to be realistic about your expectations. Buying an extender won’t see you backing up files to a NAS drive at 300Mbits/sec if you’re working from a back…

PRICE £2,738 exc VAT from broadberry.co.uk Broadberry Data Systems has built its business on offering affordable alternatives to the blue chips, and the CyberServe XE5-408S v3 packs in dual E5-2600 v3 CPUs and a heap of memory at a price SMBs will love. The quest for value sees a few compromises, but everything you need to run a wide range of IT services is right here. On turning on this tower server, the first thing you’ll notice is how near-silent it is, thanks to Supermicro’s new 865W super-quiet PSU. It’s impressive when you note the four hot-swappable internal fans sitting behind the drive bays, and another fixed 9cm fan at the rear. In the storage department, the CyberServe offers eight hot-swap SAS/SATA LFF bays at the front. That’s comparatively few…

PRICE Model 776274-031, £853 exc VAT from hp.co.uk It may be small, but HP’s ProLiant ML150 Gen9 packs in a remarkable range of features for the price. It supports dual Xeon E5-2600 v3 CPUs, and can take up to 512GB of fast DDR4 memory, with 60TB of storage. Of course, all that doesn’t come as standard. HP’s Gen9 mantra is buy now, upgrade later, and for review it supplied us with the most basic preconfigured model: a single 1.6GHz E5-2603 v3 Xeon, 4GB of memory and one (unpopulated) quad LFF, cold-swap drive bay. We tested with four 500GB SATA drives, but you can choose from a selection of storage configurations. An extra four-drive cold-swap bay can be added too, and the server’s embedded Dynamic Smart Array B140i RAID controller comes…

Microsoft unveiled more details about its Windows 10 plans at its recent Build conference (see our feature on p44 for a full rundown). Many were reportedly enough to make the audience gasp, and to fill the blogosphere with an outpouring of extreme geek love. Let’s look at the upside first. Microsoft clearly knows how deep a black hole it created with Windows 8 and is determined to crawl out of it using Windows 10 as a ladder. As I’ve said before, many – even most – of the stupid mistakes that happened in Windows 8/8.1 are being addressed in 10, which can only be a good thing. It’s too late to discuss how and why Windows 8 happened the way it did: that’s for lecturers at business schools to pontificate…

There’s no shortage of encryption technology out there, and this has been true since Phil Zimmermann first created Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and released its source code into the public domain in 1991. PGP was the first public-key crypto program to gain worldwide popularity, but by 2004 TrueCrypt had taken over as the encryption solution for many individuals and business users. The open-source nature of its code; the full-disk encryption on offer for free; the huge community of users; its “volume within a volume” plausible-deniability option; the fact that it’s tried, tested and, above all, reliable and secure mean that for ten years it’s ruled the roost. Despite the last release being version 7.1a in 2012, it looked as though TrueCrypt might remain as popular for the next ten years.…

A car that can change all red traffic lights to green? Now that is smart –and developers at Newcastle University are currently trialling such a technology in Newcastle city centre. The device, which attaches to the windscreen of a vehicle, communicates with traffic lights to ensure a smooth, continuous journey. Some vehicles – such as those used by the NHS to transport patients – receive priority, while the rest of us are told to adjust our speed to ensure we see only green signals. “For example, the system might advise a driver that if they travel at 24mph, they’ll hit the next four sets of traffic lights on green,” said Phil Blythe, professor of intelligent transport systems at Newcastle University. “In more congested areas, or at particularly busy times of…

There is a common meme out there that the net was designed to be impervious to a nuclear attack. After all, it stemmed from the American military and university worlds, and keeping the key players connected was necessary as part of the Arpanet design. So it isn’t surprising that many believe it has the ability to cope with anything that’s thrown at it. And this is true, up to a point. For example, the protocols that control routing can cope with outages in the links, rerouting around a problem, providing that particular part of the net is set up to do this. This happens at the big hubs, because outages can’t be allowed to disconnect whole wedges of the internet in one swoop. It’s also true that you could set…