Table of contents for November 2017 in PC Pro

“DOES ANYONE CARE THESE DAYS?” asked listener Martin Hazell on mixlr.com/pcpro during our fortnightly live podcast. “For the majority of people, aren’t processors fast enough?” This wasn’t Martin throwing out random thoughts. Associate editor Darien had been explaining what Intel’s eighth-generation Core processors (see p12) had to offer the world, and I suspect Martin was echoing what many listeners were thinking. In answer, I can only resort to my GCSE Biology class, where the teacher was gamely attempting to explain what mitosis means. This, as I’m sure every PC Pro reader remembers, is when single-celled amoeba split into two new, single-celled amoebae. The nucleus divides and then the cytoplasm splits in half, with two new cells created. That’s me, as I struggle to cope with my feelings about processors. On…

1 RBS to shed 40% of London IT staff The Unite union claimed that taxpayer-owned bank RBS was to cut 40% of its UK IT staff, with the loss of 900 jobs due to cost-cutting, restructuring and offshoring. The bank said any changes were down to it being a “simpler, smaller” bank, but Unite said the cuts coming into effect by 2020 would leave it “operating a skeleton service”. 2 Google searching for sexism answers Googlecameunderfireforitslackof diversityafteranengineer’sinternal manifestowentviralafterclaiming that“thedistributionofpreferences andabilitiesofmenandwomendiffer inpartduetobiologicalcauses”.The engineerwasswiftlyfired,butthe fallouthighlighteddivisionsoverhow womenandminoritiesaretreatedand paidatthecompany. 3 Tech leaders quit Trump board TechleadersontheUS’sdigitaleconomy advisoryboardquitinprotestoverPresident Trump’srefusaltocondemnright-wingand whitesupremacistviolenceinCharlottesville. ConfirmedresignationsincludeMicrosoft presidentBradSmith,MozillachairMitchell BakerandIEEEpresidentKarenBartleson. 4 Talk Talk hit with ICO fine over data care TalkTalk was hit with a £100,000 fine by the Information Commissioner’s Office for leaking 21,000 customer accounts to hackers in an Indian…

HANDSET UPDATES CAN be frustrating at the best of times – especially when the download requires the user to delete data to make space. Google says its new “seamless updates” mean owners of Android 8 devices (and some Android 7.1 handsets with relevant upgrades) will no longer face out-of-storage warnings where an update doesn’t have enough space to install itself. According to Google, the changes mean users can install system updates even when there’s only 100KB of available storage – while current updates can require 1GB of free space. Under the existing process, an oversized update will stall and prompt an “out of space” error message even though you’re only “out of space” on the user partition, which is used as a temporary dump before the update is installed on…

KEY FACTS Future Visual is a VR design studio that has created content for some of the world’s biggest brands, including Ferrari and John Lewis LOCATION Brighton STAFF 5 FORMED 2014 WEBSITE futurevisual.com You might think VR headsets are stupidly expensive, but the opposite is true when it comes to the clients Future Visual works with. Aircraft simulators cost around $10 million each – VR headsets cost less than a seat in business class, and they’re transforming the way aviation staff are trained. Now you don’t need to spend six weeks getting security clearance for a pack of trainee ground crew to operate at the airport – they can slip on a VR helmet and be trained to work on “live” worst-case scenarios, rather than pretending something’s gone wrong. Aviation…

Nicole Kobie is PC Pro’s Futures editor. And yes Google, she did indeed buy the shoes: they were £20 and fit nicely, thanks. @njkobie Google’s online stalking has moved offline, invading our privacy simply to prove that the ads it splatters all over the web really do work. We expect to be followed by ads online. Search for an item — let’s say shoes, as I went on a foot-focused shopping spree this month — and click through to a retailer’s site, and those ballet flats will stalk you for weeks afterward, regardless of whether you bought them or not. John Lewis and other brick-and-mortar stores used to worry we’d browse in person but buy on Amazon, Google is worried about the reverse: that we’ll use the web to find…

Is Microsoft going out of its way to upset home and SMB users? It sends out enormous files for us to download over dodgy telephone lines, has Security and Privacy notices (AKA “let’s spy on you”) that demand an immediate response and has ditched the “Skype Toolbar for Outlook” add-in. The Windows 10 S debacle and use of Microsoftapproved apps is a joke. Internet Explorer was unsafe (according to Microsoft) and replaced by the half-finished Edge, which sums up the state of my teeth. So what happens? The world installs Chrome or Firefox instead, and now Microsoft has stopped users of Windows 10 S installing Opera, Chrome or Firefox. We were exhorted to set up local home SoHo networks using HomeGroup but that no longer works as settings disappear with new…

We’re going to assume you’ve already attempted all the usual speed-up techniques such as uninstalling programs you don’t need, disabling start-up items and switching off Windows’ flashy visual effects. Instead, we’re going to point you in the direction of new, lesserknown or easy-to-overlook methods of improving your PC’s performance. Try these light-touch options before you move on to anything more drastic or expensive. They may well provide just enough of a boost to bring back the speed you crave. TELL WINDOWS 10 TO CLEAR OUT JUNK AUTOMATICALLY Disk Clean-up has been quietly loitering in the background for years. Using it to clear out temporary files and other rubbish can free up space and help your PC run smoothly, but unless you’re a Task Scheduler boffin, there has never been an…

What price loyalty? Offering the best deals to new customers has long been a practice in many sectors – not only broadband – but the degree to which loyal customers are being exploited by their ISPs has reached record levels. Sign up for a broadband contract today and you could end up paying half as much again by the time that deal expires in two years’ time. And don’t expect your broadband provider to warn you of the hike, either. According to Citizens Advice figures, customers who don’t change providers or negotiate a new deal once their contract has expired can expect to pay an average of almost £10 a month more for the same service. “People on the cheapest basic broadband deals are hit with an average price rise…

“The broadband market is highly competitive and both new and existing customers benefit from many generous discounts off the regular prices. We sell customers bundles of broadband, calls and TV that need to suit their individual requirements and this means we are always keen to engage with our existing customers to discuss a new deal. We make it clear to customers when they originally sign up that they can contact us and agree another discounted deal before the end of their contract. For instance, the price at the end of the contract term is on the same page on bt.com and not hidden in legal terms or on another page.” “At Sky we aim to give all our customers great value, whether they are new or have been with us…

PRICE £3,541 (£4,249 inc VAT) from microsoft.com Originally launched in the US last Christmas, Microsoft’s own-brand all-in-one PC is finally on sale in the UK. It’s been a frustrating wait, but once you lay eyes on the Surface Studio that delay is understandable. This is the very definition of a boutique system, and that’s not merely down to the exclusive price tag. The first thing that strikes you is the display – an enormous 28in touchscreen that’s even larger than it sounds, thanks to Microsoft’s signature 3:2 aspect ratio. I’m a fan of this near-A4 shape versus the widescreen format found on most laptops and all-in-ones these days. However, the sheer size of it may feel overwhelming: the screen itself measures 594mm wide by 396mm high, and once you factor…

PRICE £824 (£989 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk AMD made quite a splash with the release of the Ryzen 7. It may not have quite trounced the Intel competition outright for performance, but in terms of value it has proven formidable. The AMD Threadripper takes the fight further up Intel’s range. If the Ryzen 7 was priced to compete with quad-core Intel processors, the AMD Ryzen Threadripper is aimed at the recently released Core i9 (see issue 276, p50). At launch, there are two versions of the AMD Threadripper available: the 1950X we received in our Armari system (see p56), and the lesser 1920X. The former has 16 cores and the latter 12; there’s an eight-core 1900X in the pipeline, too. To put this in perspective, Intel has only just released…

SEH The past decade has seen a significant shift to the cloud and using software-as-aservice. However, dongles are still a popular method for software companies to protect intellectual property and high-value software. But can you use USB dongles with cloud software to protect your data, and if so, what’s the best way to go about it? One solution is to deploy a USB dongle server. These have been used in the past to provide a USB port for a network, allowing a computer to span beyond the local network to the internet. Protecting high-value software-as-a-service British Columbia startup ESP Estimating offers its clients, electrical contractors, a cloud-based custom estimating database for a monthly subscription. This solution also uses a third-party software platform called Accubid. This is specialised installed software, costing…

PRICE £941 (£1,129 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk If you want slick Full HD gaming in a laptop, you normally have to pay a considerable price. For example, the £1,899 15in Gigabyte Aero 15 comes with an Intel Core i7-7700HQ and a 6GB GTX 1060. Or there’s Dell’s gorgeous £1,649 XPS 15, which features an Intel Core i7-7700HQ and GTX 1050 graphics. The Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming is here to spoil the party, with prices starting at £899 – and that still includes a Core i5 and GTX 1050. I tested the £1,129 configuration that ships with a 2.8GHz Core i7-7700HQ, 4GB GTX 1050 Ti graphics, 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, coupled with a 1TB 5,400rpm hard disk. That’s meaty power, as reflected in a score of 113 in…

PRICE £667 (£800 inc VAT) from uk.store.asus.com The Asus ZenFone AR is, on the surface, an impossible product to sell. At £800, it’s the most expensive phone to grace these pages, with only the Google Pixel XL (£719) and Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus (launched at £779) coming close. Yes, if you pre-order the Asus ZenFone AR from the Asus website then you’ll receive it in a huge presentation box with a £69 Google Daydream View headset included – but even this barely softens the blow. Yet it’s intriguing at the same time. This is the first phone to be certified for both the Google Tango augmented reality and Google Daydream virtual reality platforms, so represents an important step forward for these fledgling technologies. Time to Tango So, how will Tango…

PRICE £1,167 (£1,400 inc VAT) from estore.sonymobile.com Is this the future? Where the walls in your house can be thumbed, fingered and stroked? Where digital wallpaper decks your living room in scenes of pastoral bliss, your kitchen is wall-to-wall recipes, your bedroom a constellation of Facebook notifications? That’s Sony’s vision, and while the Xperia Touch falls short of perfection it does provide a fascinating glimpse into what the next decade might hold. But let’s not race away. The Xperia Touch is essentially an ultra short throw projector that runs Android 7 and, on specification alone, sounds more like a phone: there’s a 13-megapixel camera, built-in speakers, a microSD slot, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2, plus a USB-C and micro-HDMI port. There’s no SIM slot, but video calling is a possibility if…

PRICE £40 (£48 inc VAT) from shop.pimoroni.com “The kit as a whole can be assembled almost without touching a soldering iron, using only the bundled tools” While the Creoqode 2048 would stretch the baggiest of parachute-pant pockets, the Arduboy is by far the most portable device on test. No bigger than a stack of credit cards, the Arduboy can slide straight into your wallet. Inspired in its appearance by Nintendo’s classic Game Boy, the Arduboy arrives entirely pre-assembled and ready to go. A four-way direction pad and two buttons occupy the bottom two-thirds of the device, while the bright single-colour OLED display panel takes up the top third. With a 128 x 64 resolution, the Arduboy’s single-colour screen is the most detailed of all the devices on test and second…

PRICE €39 (€47 inc VAT) from makerbuino.com The Makerbuino is, as a glance at its picture will reveal, effectively a Gamebuino, taking the open-source design of the original and converting it into a kit that you can solder yourself using easy-to-handle through-hole components (a pre-assembled version is available for an extra charge). In doing so, however, it has improved on the original in several areas. A key enhancement is in the handling of sound: while the Gamebuino has a preset volume and can only output to its built-in speaker, the Makerbuino has a physical volume control and a 3.5mm headphone jack with a physical mute switch to disable the rearfacing speaker when the jack is in use. Another improvement comes in the battery, which has had its capacity doubled from…

PRICE £1,149 (£1,379 inc VAT) from store.hp.com “It’s a seriously beautiful device, slim and light enough to take with you anywhere but built like the proverbial brick outhouse” It might seem presumptuous to call your premium laptop line EliteBooks, but HP’s EliteBook x360 lives up to the name. All straight edges and bevelled corners, milled from CNC aluminium, it’s a seriously beautiful device: slim and light enough to take with you anywhere and everywhere, but built like the proverbial brick outhouse. It’s exactly the kind of laptop you’d want if you spend time travelling or working between sites – but the price means only executives will get the chance. This is also very much a business laptop, in which case having a 2-in-1 convertible might seem a frippery. In fact…

PRICE £1,790 (£2,149 inc VAT) from microsoft.com/en-gb/store “As for battery life, the Surface Pro once again triumphs, holding out for over 11 hours of looping video playback” The Surface Pro was always a great concept for a hybrid tablet/laptop, but one that needed the 12in, 3:2 aspect ratio form factor of the Surface Pro 3 to really make sense. Since then, it’s gone from strength to strength, working as a tablet with the Type Cover removed and excelling as a thin-and-light laptop with it clipped into place. The Surface Pro 2017 only enhances the winning formula. As a tablet it’s a little on the big and heavy side – even the 12.9in iPad Pro is slimmer and lighter – but it’s great for small-scale presentations, making notes and watching video.…

PRICE £750 (£900 inc VAT) from uk-store.acer.com While it clearly owes a lot to the Surface Pro, Acer has tried to make the Switch 5 distinctive through a different hinge mechanism: here, a picture-frame stand pops out from the rear of the tablet. It can’t lie near-flat like the Surface Pro and the support isn’t quite so sturdy, but for the purposes of holding the screen in a range of viewable positions, it works well. The keyboard doesn’t veer far from the Microsoft original, connecting quickly and intuitively to the tablet, either lying flat or clipping magnetically to the front for a raised typing angle. While its rubberised feel isn’t quite as luxurious as the Surface, the actual feel is fine, with just enough travel and a little less bounce…

PRICE £1,191 (£1,429 inc VAT) from dell.com/uk It might not be the flashiest 2-in-1 hybrid in town, but there’s still something quietly miraculous about the way the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 crams a 13in screen into an 11.6in body. It’s a practical design, too, with the machined aluminium lid and base protecting the carbon-fibre body, and the soft-touch palm rests making this one of the most comfortable small laptops around for long-term use. What’s more, the lightweight design makes this a hinged 2-in-1 that actually convinces as a tablet, helped no end by the 1.24kg weight. The screen on our test model had a modest 1080p resolution – not the QHD+ InfinityEdge display of the most expensive models – but it’s still a beauty. The 245cd/m² brightness level is nothing…

PRICE £1,999 (£2,399 inc VAT) from microsoft.com/en-gb/store Arguably the most innovative laptop design since the original Surface, Microsoft’s Surface Book takes the 2-in-1 concept from the opposite direction; not so much a tablet that converts into a laptop as a laptop that deconstructs. The clever magnetic locking hinge that holds the screen and keyboard modules together is a brilliant piece of engineering, while you have to love details such as the way the keyboard curves away towards the sides. Disconnect the screen module and use it as a tablet and it’s a delight to use, helped by the 3,000 x 2,000 pixel resolution, the incredible 462cd/m² maximum brightness level and superb colour accuracy, with an average Delta E of just 1.01 and 96% sRGB coverage. In addition, the audio benefits…

PRICE As reviewed, £1,095 exc VAT from broadberry.co.uk Servers are an investment, and Broadberry’s CyberServe TS300 offers plenty of room to expand, so it can serve your evolving needs for many years. It comes with a fine mix of business-class features; storage options are a cut above the rest; and the price is within reach of the smallest business. Built on Asus’ TS300-E9-PS4 server platform, it’s also very energyefficient. We measured it sipping a mere 24W with the OS idle; even with its 3GHz Xeon E3-1220 v6 CPU under maximum load, it peaked at only 69W. That low power consumption is a reflection of the processor’s low 72W TDP, but it’s also helped by Asus’ Beat Thermal Choke III technology, which uses highly conductive gold-treated components to reduce motherboard choke…

PRICE Model 873230-035, £638 exc VAT from morecomputers.com HPE’s ProLiant ML30 Gen9 tower server has something for everyone. Larger offices will welcome support for the latest Xeon E3-1200 v6 processors and fast 2,400MHz DDR4 memory, while micro-businesses will love the fact that prices start at less than £400. You can save money on the operating system too, as HPE has partnered with ClearCenter to offer the ML30 preinstalled with the Linux-based ClearOS platform. The Community edition is free, while the supported paid-for Business edition turns the ML30 into a business server with access to over 300 apps. ClearOS offers a web-based management console, which is very simple to use. With a few clicks you can load up core gateway, DNS and Active Directory services, plus security features such as a…

PRICE £296 exc VAT from printerbase.co.uk Brother’s latest L8000 colour lasers deliver heaps of new features that will appeal to both small offices and busy workgroups. Sitting at the top of the tree, the HLL8360CDW offers great performance, improved colour quality and all the connection options you could possibly want. It can also grow with your needs, as its standard 250-sheet input tray can be supplemented with a 500-sheet tray or a base unit that takes four 520-sheet cassettes. The printer uses a similar chassis to the HL-L8350CDW, but its 800MHz CPU is twice as fast and memory has been quadrupled to 512MB. This extra muscle showed through in our print tests: where the older HL-L8350CDW only managed a pedestrian 9ppm in our 24-page colour DTP document, the HL-L8360CDW delivered…

Should you roll out Chrome OS laptops across your business? The answer is simple. Try it. But try it seriously. A few laptops scattered here and there is not a true warts-and-all trial. This requires planning and determination. After all, you’re probably on the cusp of deciding whether to go down the Office 365 path for the next decade, or to switch trains to the Google world. Such a decision massively impacts not only the desktop side, but also the server and infrastructure. And hence any decision requires deep thought. But the reality is that moving to a full Office 365 cloud infrastructure requires equal planning and care too. So whichever is the outcome, the work is going to be the same if you do things properly. For myself, I…

Aidan is a Microsoft MVP and author of two books on Hyper-V. He works for a technology distributor in Dublin, offering advice on areas such as Azure and Hyper-V. @joe_elway If you’re reading this, I’ll assume you’re either running Hyper-V already or giving it consideration. If it’s the latter, you have three options on where to run it: on-premises, with Microsoft’s business software running on Windows Server and Hyper-V platforms; hosting companies, using the same technologies to build hosted cloud solutions; or public cloud, using Azure, Office 365, Enterprise Mobility and Security, CRM 365 and more. As a result of the above options, how you protect your installation might be different too. I typically recommend “born in virtualisation” backup solutions. They support the hypervisor fully, and can offer modern solutions…

Poverty isn’t a tech problem – but technology and startups could help lessen its effects. That’s the argument made by social innovators, who would rather spend their intelligence, millions in funding and valuable time on tackling social problems than connecting random objects to the internet (I’m looking at you, Kuvée wine bottles). Can startups really build a better future for those being left behind? Telefonica’s accelerator Wayra and investment firm Big Society Capital believe so. They’ve teamed up with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and local finance firms to start a new accelerator in Oldham called Wayra Fair By Design that aims to tackle the UK’s poverty premium. That’s when people who already have less money end up paying more for goods and services than their richer counterparts, because they can’t…

Google is building the future – or, should we say, Alphabet is. The company formerly known as Google is using the billions of dollars it earns every quarter to build internet-supplying balloons, driverless cars and smart contact lenses – and is diligently studying thousands of rodents to help all of us live longer. Such “other bets”, as they’re called in Alphabet’s financial reports, aren’t designed to pay off anytime soon. Over the last quarter alone, they cost the company $722 million. However, as Google co-founder Larry Page explains in Alphabet’s launch letter, “you need to be a bit uncomfortable to stay relevant.” Alphabet’s investors needn’t feel uneasy, as those “other bets” are set against the overall company profit of $7.8 billion for the quarter. But, Alphabet has already started to…

How does IBM Z differ from existing encryption? “Looking specifically at encryption of at-rest data, a key difference is how and where the encryption is integrated into the system. Encryption for at-rest data can occur at many levels of a system, including application, database, operating system and the physical media itself. We are providing encryption that is integrated into the operating system, which allows data to be encrypted at a very coarse scale with minimal overhead.” Who is this for? “This isn’t designed for any particular use case, and based on discussions with many clients, it’s expected to have broad appeal. The two main drivers from a client perspective are compliance and threat of a data breach. This cuts across all geographies and industries, [including] encryption for application data, encryption…

Jonathan Parkyn If Windows is running like a sloth and you aren’t sure whether to give it a tweak or an overhaul, Jonathan reveals how to add some much-needed zing on p30 Davey Winder Want to travel to the US but don’t want to hand over all your passwords – or withhold them from the authorities? Davey has the answer on p118 Gareth Halfacree The man who literally wrote the book on Raspberry Pi – along with founder Eben Upton – turns his attention to DIY games consoles. See p74 James Morris Workstation guru James gives Threadripper its first spin, and AMD’s new graphics chip Vega. He was more impressed by one than the other… see p54…

Eighth-generation Core processors Intel has revealed the first details of its eighth-generation Core processors. Built on the company’s 14nm process as a Kaby Lake refresh, the company claimed the new chips represented a generational leap, even though processors based on newer architectures will land later this year. “The first products in the range will use the 14nm+ tech and the family will extend to the first 10nm products as well,” said Karen Regis, Intel’s manager for consumer marketing. The company gave details of four processors set to appear in 80 different laptop and hybrid systems from September, with a focus on 4K and 360-degree video content. Two i7 chips – the 8650U and the 8550U – were set to launch in August, alongside the i5-8350U and i5-8250U, all drawing a…

The meters can only talk to the energy supplier that installed them, rather than the national network The government-led project to install 53 million smart meters in the UK by 2020 was supposed to make switching supplier simpler for consumers and reduce energy bills. In reality, compatibility problems have made switching more difficult and could mean that millions of installed meters will soon have to be scrapped. Spurred into action by a European directive, the projected £11 billion scheme started life under a Labour government, but has been pushed ahead – in spite of problems that many believe should have seen it postponed – under the Conservatives. At the heart of the problem is the ad hoc development of the system that has seen outdated meters installed in seven million…

Darien Graham-Smith is PCPro’s associate editor. He’s very much in favour of “write once”, but prefers not to run anywhere. @dariengs I recently met up with an old schoolfriend whom I hadn’t seen for many years. As is traditional on such occasions, we revisited some old memories, and recalled childhood dreams that we had never fulfilled. But the moment that made me feel the most wistful, the most conscious of what might have been, was when he casually pulled out a Windows Phone from his pocket. Officially, the Windows Phone platform is still a going concern. True, you probably won’t find a wall of handsets in your local Carphone Warehouse, but Microsoft is pressing on with its latest iteration, Windows 10 Mobile, and new Insider builds trickle out fairly regularly.…

Fame might be derived from a person’s extended family size, to which add Google hits on their name and Facebook friends I’m not prone to hero worship, but that isn’t to say I’m immune: my heroes include soldiers, scientists, philosophers and musicians, from Garibaldi to Richard Feynman. One of these heroes, Hans Rosling, died in February of this year, a Swedish doctor, academic, statistician and public speaker. That may not sound a heroic CV, but his heroism consisted of inventing ways to make statistics both exciting and comprehensible to the public, then deploying this ability to counteract panic about overpopulation. This wasn’t speculation, but based on his experience as a doctor in various developing countries. His brilliant 2013 documentary Don’t Panic - the Truth About Population (pcpro. link/277hans) used state-of-the-art…

A third of those who said that they’d been with their current provider for over two years admitted they hadn’t bothered to look elsewhere (do it!) but a similar number were aware of what was on the market and were satisfied that the price they were paying couldn’t be beaten. 22% put their loyalty down to great customer service while 12% were working their way through a lock-in period. We asked you what would tempt you to switch and almost everyone said higher speeds at lower prices were key, although some customers of Zen and Plusnet said that it would be very difficult for anyone to tempt them away because of the quality of service offered by those companies. [I’d switch for] zero downtime … and providing a good modem…

If you want to put a more significant spring in your PC’s step, tweaking a few Windows settings probably won’t give you the desired outcome. Instead, you may need to roll up your sleeves and push your existing hardware beyond its stated limits with a spot of overclocking – or carry out an upgrade or two. ADD AN SSD In the olden days, the main reason for upgrading a hard drive was to get more storage space. Now, it’s all about speed. It’s no secret that swapping out your old hard disk for a whizzy new SSD is one of the most effective ways to make your computer run faster. But even if you got wise to this and upgraded to an SSD ages ago, it’s worth remembering that solid-state…

ISPs do actually want to retain customers and are often willing to offer cheaper deals as an incentive, but they’re unlikely to phone up or mail you with money-saving deals voluntarily. Some, such as TalkTalk, will move you onto a new contract where you get the same deal as new customers, while others are prepared to play hardball when customers come calling for a cheaper deal and threaten to leave if a better price is not forthcoming. “Often, they will call your bluff,” said Dan Howdle, telecoms analyst at cable.co.uk. “Anyone doing that should be able to quote a better deal. If there’s a service from Virgin that costs £20 a month less and you get more channels and you have those details, then they know you’re not bluffing.” Beware,…

“If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny...” Yoda Episode VI: Return of the Jedi Every web startup faces the same challenge: how do you get noticed amongst all that competition and build traffic? The clever money says leave all that search engine optimisation (SEO) stuff to the professionals. Yet money, clever or not, is the one luxury most startups don’t have. This can often lead to a DIY approach to both SEO and online marketing, which is no bad thing if done properly. The temptation to cheat and follow the dark side when building traffic is strong. Yet, grey- or black-hat SEO, along with social media follower farming, isn’t the panacea you may have hoped for. So, what’s the alternative to either investing…

As Jon Honeyball discusses on p110, Microsoft also offers a novel little hockey-puck shaped controller called the Surface Dial. The idea is that you place this on the Surface Studio’s reclined screen, using whichever hand you’re not using for the pen; press it down and you’ll feel a little haptic buzz, and then a radial context menu will appear. Spin the Dial to cycle through the available options, and give the unit another click to select. It’s a neat idea, and it makes working with a stylus more viable. It’s certainly less fiddly than trying to use the pen to navigate the standard mouse-driven Windows interface. There are two catches, however. First, while the Dial can be used to scroll or zoom in most apps, anything cleverer relies on developer…

PRICE £833 (£999 inc VAT) from pcspecialist.co.uk Now that AMD’s barnstorming Ryzen 7 chips have made their mark, the rest of the family is emerging. The Vulcan X 02 is the first system we’ve seen with a Ryzen 5 CPU – nominally a mid-range chip, but still a very powerful chunk of silicon. It comes with a base clock speed of 3.6GHz, boosting to 4GHz as load demands. When AMD’s XFR technology decides that there’s enough room in the “thermal envelope”, you can get an extra 100MHz on top of that. If you’ve been paying close attention, you may notice that these speeds precisely match those of the top-end Ryzen 7 1800X – and the 1600X also comes with the same cache configuration, combining 512KB of L2 cache per core…

PRICE £1,418 (£1,702 inc VAT) from lenovo.com The X1 Carbon has been one of our favourite ultraportables since it was introduced back in 2012, and in many ways this fifth generation changes little. It’s slim, unapologetically black, packs supremely quick components and has a price to match its high-end ambitions. We could have said the same five years ago. But Lenovo has delivered improvements to its flagship portable even compared to last year’s model, shaving a few grams from its weight and slimming it down yet further to 16mm thin – to say 16mm thick seems wrong. Its footprint is 322 x 216mm, comparing well to the 332 x 229mm Toshiba Tecra X40 opposite. You now have a choice of 7thgeneration Intel Core processors, along with two Thunderbolt 3 USB-C…

PRICE £328 (£394 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com Not long ago we considered 120Hz the pinnacle for gamers. Then came 144Hz, 165Hz, 180Hz... and now 240Hz. ViewSonic is one of the latest manufacturers to produce a monitor with this huge refresh rate, but will you notice the difference versus a 144Hz monitor? Even if the answer to that question was no, you’re bound to fall in love with the design and build quality of the XG2530. Thin bezels make the screen feel bigger than its 25in diagonal, and although the stand is made from plastic, it’s sturdy and allows you to tilt, pivot and fully rotate the display. The black and red colour scheme is a little boy racer, with even the XG logo reminiscent of Volkswagen’s GTi branding, but if…

PRICE £158 (£189 inc VAT) from creoqode.com If you’re in the market for a pocket-size handheld console, the Creoqode 2048 should drop right off your list. At almost 30cm wide and weighing 538g, the 2048 is an absolute beast of a machine thanks primarily to a large full-colour LED matrix display that dominates the front of the device. Originally designed for digital signage, the LED matrix is low resolution – just 64 pixels wide by 32 pixels tall – but extremely bright. The Creoqode 2048’s display, thankfully, comes preassembled; the kit as a whole can be assembled almost without touching a soldering iron using only the bundled tools and a cross-head screwdriver. That “almost” is important, though. While the 2048 is indeed designed to go together using little more than…

Gamers have their powerhouse rigs, designers their all-in-one workstations, but for most of us a premium laptop is our ideal PC. Thin, light and crafted from high-end materials, they’re both functional tools and objects of desire, built to work whenever and wherever, but also to look the part when we’re out in public. A premium laptop tells people that you’re not just a drone with a corporate laptop or an average Joe with a budget computer, but someone who demands the best. It’s the computing equivalent of travelling business class. The standard has been set over the last decade by two devices. Apple’s MacBook Air defined the Ultrabook form factor and created the demand for thin-and-light metallic laptops. Microsoft’s Surface Pro, meanwhile, redefined the 2-in-1 convertible, creating the high-end tablet…

PRICE £993 (£1,191 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/277miix “Lenovo could have dropped the ball when it comes to the screen but no, it’s excellent, with a sharp 2,880 x 1,920 resolution” Lenovo won’t win any awards for innovation when it comes to the Miix 720’s design – it takes all its cues from the Surface Pro playbook – yet it still manages to find room for small improvements. The result is a premium hybrid that doesn’t quite steal the Surface Pro’s crown, but gives it some serious competition. If you’ve used a Surface Pro, the basic design won’t give you any real surprises. The lightweight tablet module is 9mm thick and weighs 780g – almost identical figures to the Surface Pro 2017 – and it latches onto the magnetic connector on…

PRICE £850 (£1,020 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/277asus How far can you stretch the terms ultra-thin and ultralight? In the case of the ZenBook Flip UX560, Asus might be stretching both to breaking point: this 15.6in convertible, which is 18.5mm thick and weighs 2.2kg, is arguably neither. We have our doubts about a convertible of this size, but the 360-degree hinged form factor works for ad hoc presentations while in tent mode, or watching movies. The Flip looks good for such a big-screen laptop, either in its silver version or a metallic black. It feels bulletproof with an incredibly robust hinge, while that extra size means it can cram in not just a USB-C port, but three full-sized USB 3 ports, an HDMI port and a headphone/microphone jack. The fly in…

PRICE £1,000 (£1,200 inc VAT) from consumer.huawei.com (estimated price) Huawei’s first attempt at building a 2-in-1 Surface-like hybrid had its strengths – primarily its looks – but these were hard to appreciate when faced with its unstable folio keyboard design and awful typing experience. Luckily, with this year’s iteration, Huawei has pretty much cracked it. Bound in its folio keyboard case the MateBook still feels quietly luxurious, but the hinged support on the rear now holds the tablet more securely on its magnetic contacts – at a wider range of angles. What’s more, it’s genuinely nice to use. As it sits flat on the desk or your lap, you miss the more comfortable raised angle of the Surface Pro, but the lightweight action and relatively spacious layout help you get…

“You still need practicality, which is why the laptops I’ve enjoyed using most this month are the ones with both style and substance” Believe me: working on a Labs like this is both a blessing and a curse. It’s the former because you get to spend time with some of the most expensive, most exciting devices around. It’s the latter because you know that time is limited and you’ll soon be going back to the everyday stuff. I imagine it’s like this for motoring journalists who get to test drive the latest Porsche or Ferrari. You’ve had the best, now get used to the rest. I’ve spent a few weeks trying out the finest the laptop world can offer, but I actually spend most of my time working on a…

PRICE As reviewed, £1,541 exc VAT from dell.co.uk Dell EMC’s PowerEdge T130 is a tempting proposition for small businesses with big demands. The system we tested came with a 3.9GHz Xeon E3-1280 v6 processor, and 16GB of DDR4 memory, yet only costs £1,541. The specification can be trimmed to suit any budget and workload, as Dell EMC’s Smart Value Flexi options let you swap the CPU for a cheaper 3GHz Xeon E3-1220 v6. Cut the memory to 4GB, and select a basic 1TB hard disk, and you can get a viable server for a hugely affordable £465. The T130 is suited to businesses with modest storage requirements, as the chassis only supports cold-swap LFF hard disks. The lower bays of our test system came populated with a pair of 2TB…

“There are many organisations that provide phishing simulations, to show users how they can get fooled” Social engineering? Sounds sinister. It is, but not in an Aldous Huxley, Brave New World kind of way. The dictionary definition would be something like: “Deception with the intent of gaining confidential information for fraudulent purposes.” In practical terms, this typically means someone trying to trick you into sharing your login credentials, or installing malware. Ah, you mean like phishing. Isn’t that a consumer problem? Phishing is one social-engineering trick, but the definition includes any attack methodology that relies on trust and deception. And it’s certainly not merely a consumer problem: when Imperva researchers set up honeypots to attract phishing attacks, they found that business data was highly sought after, with 25% of the…

25th May 2018 The EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force in May 2018, creating new rights and responsibilities over the handling and processing of personal data. All British businesses will be affected, as the UK will still be a member of the Union – and even after the UK leaves, you’ll need to follow the rules if you want to offer any type of service to the EU market. Indeed, there’s a good chance that the GDPR will be adopted into UK law. So it makes a lot of sense to act sooner rather than later and get your business ready. What is GDPR? GDPR replaces the 1995 Data Protection Directive, strengthening individuals’ data-protection rights and synchronising those rights throughout the European Union. Almost all businesses will…

Jon is the MD of an IT consultancy that specialises in testing and deploying hardware @jonhoneyball Microsoft makes a number of products under the Surface brand name. Without question, these have been a huge success for the company, gaining considerable traction and kudos in the market. It hasn’t been plain-sailing, mind: some of the devices have required ongoing firmware patching, and I swing between admiration and anger at my Surface Book that frustrates and delights in equal measure. Aspects of its engineering delight me every time I use it. But its ability to botch its Wi-Fi connections when returning from power save – especially if I’ve moved location – drives me nuts, requiring yet another unnecessary reboot and restart. One member of the Surface family that gets little attention is…

Davey is an award-winning journalist and consultant specialising in privacy and security issues @happygeek “Travel Mode deletes those vaults from your device that you haven’t flagged as being safe for travel” International travel presents a host of security issues that don’t apply at home. The long arm of the law can reach into places you didn’t realise abroad: your laptop and smartphone, for example, or possibly even your social media accounts – but more on that in a moment. Let’s stick with protecting your privacy and securing data on your devices to start. In the past, I’ve recommended using a barebones Chromebook linked to a Google account established solely for travel purposes, and so not linking to any sensitive or truly personal data. I have, on occasions, even resorted to…

My strong, armchair-lawyer hunch is that such a change is illegal under UK law The news that DJI, that purveyor of fine flying drones, would be grounding its Spark product from a particular date unless you updated its firmware has caused quite a rumpus. Unless you updated, the drone would simply refuse to fly. I’m assuming that something sensible happens if you’re actually flying as the clock ticks over midnight. However, given it’s likely that this would be in the dark, it wouldn’t be wise to be flying then anyway. Cue the usual furore. Indignant comments such as “how dare they force me to update?” have been splatted across the intertubes. But it has opened up the whole question of the rights of companies to force you to update. I…

MICROSOFT HAS BEEN hit by a damning verdict on the reliability of its Surface hardware – and faces questions over whether it blamed Intel for its own faults. Consumer Reports, the US equivalent of consumer watchdog Which?, stripped Microsoft’s portables from its recommended list after a survey of more than 40,000 users found “25% of Microsoft laptops and tablets will present their owners with problems by the end of the second year”. Microsoft dismissed the findings with a curt statement, saying: “While we respect Consumer Reports, we disagree with their findings. Microsoft’s real-world return and support rates and customer satisfaction data show we are on par if not better than other devices in the category.” However, leaked documents suggest that Consumer Reports’ findings aren’t vastly dissimilar to Microsoft’s. The charts…

RESEARCHERS HAVE DISCOVERED it’s possible to bury malware in one of the most unlikely places possible – inside human DNA samples. DNA is being studied by technicians at Microsoft and other tech companies as a means of storing data in less space than we do today. It offers huge potential, but researchers at the University of Washington have warned that developers must consider the security of software tools working with DNA, as they could provide a rich environment for malware to thrive. “We don’t want to alarm people or make patients worry about genetic testing,” said associate professor Luis Ceze. “But as these molecular and electronic worlds get closer together, there are potential interactions that we haven’t really had to contemplate before.” DNA sequences are typically stored as an ASCII…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Dell XPS 13 (New) Ultraportable from £1,149 from dell.co.uk Dell only needed to refine its brilliant XPS 13 design to keep top spot, and that’s what it does: it’s slightly quicker and adds more options, but it’s the edge -to-edge 13.3in display and compact chassis that lift it above the opposition. Oh, and it’s now available in Rose Gold. REVIEW Issue 270, p54 ALTERNATIVES NEW ENTRY Apple MacBook Pro 13 (2016) The high price stops it from taking Dell’s top spot, but a nine-hour battery life, sleek design and – for a premium – the Touch Bar make this a stunning machine. From £1,249 from apple.com/uk REVIEW Issue 268, p54 HP EliteBook x360 1030 G2 Want a convertible 13.3in laptop that only weighs 1.3kg, lasts for 10hrs and packs…

Barry Collins is the former editor of PC Pro and current co-editor of The Big Tech Question (bigtechquestion.com, since you ask). @bazzacollins The opinions business has an awkward habit of biting you on the backside. There I was, only a month ago in this very column, bleating about how unfair it was of the EU to pick on Google for exploiting its search monopoly, and now I’m about to kick lumps out of Google for the very same reason. Still, I’m nothing if not even-handed. And searingly hypocritical. A few months ago, the editor of this fine organ and I launched a new website. Like many a new launch, we picked a smartlooking, responsive theme for WordPress, tweaked it here and there, bought the URL and hosting package and set…

When good maths goes bad It goes without saying that the technical and scientific knowledge of your contributors is amazing, but one would have thought that it would include basic maths. That’s is why I was stunned to read a schoolboy howler in Anthony Leather’s review of the Intel Core i9-7900X (see issue 276, p50). Talking of the difference between the £1,500 Broadwell-E and the £1,000 7900, he refers to “that 50% drop in price”. Most primary school children would be able to tell him that a change from £1,500 to £1,000 is in fact a drop of 33%. James Gourley Tim Danton, editor-in-chief, replies: Well spotted, James. The other way around – going up from £1,000 to £1,500 – would of course be a 50% increase, which perhaps explains…

Windows has made great strides when it comes to longevity. In the days of Windows 95 or Windows XP, the operating system gradually turned into a middle-aged man eating a fry-up for breakfast every day – the arteries became so clogged that the only option was major surgery: reinstall and start afresh. Things have improved but are still far from perfect. The drip-drip of downloads, data and driver installations will slowly hamper the performance of even the most highpowered PC. Maintenance is essential if you don’t want a trip to the operating theatre. In this feature, we’re going to reveal many ways to put the zing back into your PC. The advice is broken into three sections: light touch, advanced tinkering and, finally, the nuclear options – including wipe it…

Okay, let’s imagine that a) you’ve tried our previous suggestions and they haven’t yielded enough ‘zing’ for you, or b) you’d rather just cut to the chase. Either way, the options we’ve outlined below are more drastic than anything else so far in terms of the procedures involved, and are more likely to have a significant impact on your PC’s performance. But they’re also – as the heading above suggests – potentially more apocalyptic, so you’ll need to be absolutely certain you’re happy to commit before you start. UPGRADE YOUR PROCESSOR If you’ve identified your processor as your bottleneck (using Windows Resource Monitor or a free tool such as HWMonitor from cpuid.com, for example), and you can’t (or don’t want to) try overclocking your CPU (see p35), then replacing the…

Mobile plans have traditionally had a similar approach to acquisition and retention of customers as ISPs, with high costs for service providers at the start of a minimum-term contract. “Operators spend on average €200 to acquire new smartphone customers – as subsidies on handsets and other rebates – and you lock them in for two years,” said Fredrik Jungermann, analyst at mobile research firm tefficient. However, being locked in doesn’t breed loyalty and means operators are obliged to spend a lot, which takes time to recoup. Increasingly in the US and with SIM-only services in the UK, those models are changing and bringing surprising results for churn rates and customer satisfaction. Instead of regularly changing suppliers in the search for a better deal or new handset, customers are staying with their…

Remember when your phone used to see you through a whole day? If that’s just a distant memory, you’re probably already looking for an upgrade – or you’ve resorted to carting around an external battery. Neither of these solutions is exactly ideal, though, and the good news is that there are methods you can employ to keep your phone running for longer between each charge. IDENTIFY THE CULPRITS Step one is to identify which apps are using more than their fair share of battery power. This isn’t hard to do: if you’re using an iPhone, open Settings, tap Battery and scroll down to Battery Usage. On Android, swipe down from the top of the screen, tap the battery icon and then tap More Settings. On both platforms you’ll see a…

Laptops and PCs We run our own benchmarks on every Windows and macOS system we test. These are based around image editing, video editing and multitasking (where we run the video editing benchmark while simultaneously playing back a 4K video). At the bottom of each laptop and PC review you’ll find the system’s score in each of these tests, plus an Overall score. If a laptop scores 70, say, then it’s 30% slower than our reference system – a PC with a Core i7-4670K and 8GB of RAM. If it scores 160, then it’s 60% faster. We test laptop battery life by playing back a full-screen video until the battery runs out. We set the screen brightness to 170cd/m2, or as close as we can get using its settings, and…

PRICE £3,795 (£4,554 inc VAT) from armari.com Our first taste of the AMD Ryzen Threadripper comes in the form of Armari’s Magnetar S16-TRT1000G2. This uses one of Armari’s custom chassis designs, but it’s far from the small form factor of the V25 (see issue 270, p82). Instead, this is the kind of system that may house multiple graphics cards and storage devices during its life. The system includes the top Ryzen Threadripper 1950X installed in an ASRock X399 Taichi motherboard. Armari partners AMD’s 16-core processor with 64GB of PC3200 Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 memory in four DIMMs. This takes advantage of the quad-channel memory architecture provided by Threadripper, while four additional empty slots allow room for a future upgrade to the 128GB maximum of the motherboard. The CPU is kept…

PRICE £1,792 (£2,150 inc VAT) from yoyotech.co.uk Look familiar? The Yoyotech Redback N6 is essentially a gaming version of the Redback N6 WS workstation (see issue 275, p58). It’s £50 more expensive, and you only get half the DDR4 memory – 16GB to the N6 WS’ 32GB – but the AMD Radeon Pro WX 1700 graphics card has been swapped out in favour of an EVGA-built GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition. It’s not as if many changes from the N6 WS were necessary. You still get that exquisite Game Max chassis, with tempered glass on the front and both sides, plus a smart LED-illuminated honeycomb pattern at the front. A button on the top I/O panel cycles through various colours and effects, for a touch of easy customisation. Best…

PRICE £1,404 (£1,685 inc VAT) from laptopsdirect.co.uk Want a fast ultraportable business-focused laptop? Packed with the latest security tech? Then you’re in luck: aside from the mainstream budget laptops, this sector is currently more fashionable than a pair of Superdry skinny jeans. These two pages alone offer you a choice of just-such laptops, while our group test (see p76) offers another shelf-full of options. That means Toshiba must try extra-hard to stand out – although that isn’t obvious when you first set eyes on the Tecra X40. It’s more understated than stylish, with a dark blue brushed metal finish evidently designed to make an impression in the boardroom rather than the coffee house. The only dash of contrast is the pair of anodised aluminium hinges on either side, but if…

PRICE £500 (£600 inc VAT) from nokia.com “Under the aluminium, the Nokia 8 has the sort of internals you’d expect from a flagship phone – including the latest processor” The Nokia 8 aims to make a statement: the world’s oncedominant phone brand is back. Not that the 8 is the first new Android smartphone from Nokia. Last month we reviewed the cheaper Nokia 3 (see issue 276, p57), and it has also released mid-range Nokia 5 and 6 handsets. But the Nokia 8 is the most important – the premium handset that’s set to compete with the likes of the iPhone and the Galaxy S8. It’s wonderfully slim, measuring 7.3mm, and because it’s hewn from a single block of aluminium it has a solidity like few other phones. Its chamfered…

PRICE £29 (£35 inc VAT) standalone or £29 (£35 inc VAT) per year with 250GB cloud storage, from acronis.com “Active Protection monitors your system for ransomware-like activity and blocks any untrusted processes” You can imagine the software architects at Acronis scratching their heads as each annual release rolls around, trying to dream up new features for a backup suite that already contains the kitchen sink. In fact, one of this year’s most significant enhancements isn’t in the software at all: it’s a big boost in the included Acronis Cloud storage, from 50GB to 250GB. The price has gone up too, but only by a fiver, to £35 per annum. That also includes all product upgrades as they’re released, plus phone support and – bit of a weird one this –…

PRICE €39 (€47 inc VAT) from gamebuino.com The Gamebuino immediately distinguishes itself from the competition by having a microSD card slot. Rather than loading games one at a time onto its microcontroller “brain”, games are stored as precompiled memory dumps on this card – and even the smallest microSD can hold hundreds of thousands of titles. The microSD slot is key to the Gamebuino’s clever ability to switch games on-the-fly. Where the Arduboy and Creoqode 2048 are both limited to a single game, requiring connection to a PC running the Arduino IDE to switch to something else when you’re bored, the Gamebuino is far more flexible: just reset the device, choose a new game from the file browser, and wait a few seconds for it to load into memory. Like…

While there are premium gaming laptops and premium mobile workstations, for this Labs we’ve chosen to focus on thin-and-light designs with touchscreen capabilities. These come in a range of convertible formats, not to mention more traditional laptop styles, but they all offer strong design, high-end materials and the kind of screens and features you won’t find on the average laptop. Just factor in the following when you make your choice. Style, size and weight Unless you’re looking for a big screen or raw horsepower, premium laptops are all about getting maximum style and usability inside the minimum size and weight. After a few years where the 13.3in laptop was king, the preferred size seems to be drifting down to the 12 to 12.5in of the Surface Pro and MacBook, while…

PRICE £1,041 (£1,249 inc VAT) from microsoft.com/en-gb/store “ The 3:2 aspect ratio makes sense when you’re web browsing or working on a single application, making the screen seem bigger” It might be the least radical laptop or hybrid that Microsoft has yet produced, but that doesn’t mean the Surface Laptop is short of fresh and innovative thinking. The design, for example, drops the MacBook Air chrome look for matte-finish aluminium, a range of subtle colour tones and an angular, slimline style that looks amazing. And it’s as smart as it is stylish. Weighing only 1.25kg and a little bigger than a hardbound A4 notepad, you could comfortably carry Microsoft’s laptop around all day, yet it has the 13.5in screen and ergonomics to get just about anything done. That screen is…

PRICE £834 (£1,001 inc VAT) from saveonlaptops.co.uk If you’re looking for maximum screen space on a thin-and-light laptop, Acer’s Spin 7 is an interesting proposition. It’s compact, with the sort of footprint you’d associate with a 13.3in laptop, and just 11mm thin, while the 1.6kg weight is perfectly manageable for a convertible design. Open the lid, though – or push it back so that it sits flat against the base for a tablet-style configuration – and you’ll see a narrow-bezel 14in screen. That’s a big plus when you’re working across multiple apps on your desktop, even if the 1,920 x 1,080 resolution seems a little lacking. It’s still a bit too big and heavy to double as a tablet, but fine for watching video or standing screenoutwards in a tent…

You might think that having chosen your preferred laptop from this month’s Labs, the actual purchase would be easy. Sadly, manufacturers and stores sometimes seem hell-bent on making it as difficult as possible. For a start, they usually sell what’s essentially the same product in a range of different configurations, featuring different processors, screen technologies and storage capacities. They then label these with model numbers of such complexity that you could spend months trying to work out the minor distinctions. To make things even more complex, some stores may still be selling what’s effectively the same laptop but with last year’s components inside. The cheaper model may include a sixth-generation Core i5 rather than a seventhgeneration processor (look for a product name that goes Core i5-7xxx rather than Core i5-6xxx;…

PRICE £707 (£848 inc VAT) from shop.bt.com Aless expensive sibling of the Miix 720, the Miix 510 hopes to give you a taste of the premium 2-in-1 experience at a lower price. However, it’s not hard to spot signs of the reduced budget. The type cover has the same faux-leather style as the 720’s, but feels thinner and less luxurious. Meanwhile, the keyboard loses its backlighting, there are fewer connectivity options and the screen drops in resolution from 2,880 x 1,920 to 1,900 x 1,200. Don’t be too disappointed, though. Clipped onto the tablet section at a raised typing angle, the keyboard cover bounces more than the Miix 720’s or the Surface 2’s, but it has the same comfortable, spacious layout and a crisp action. The touchpad may be smaller…

PRICE As reviewed, £593 exc VAT from lambda-tek.com “Power-wise, the TX1320 is the match of servers twice its size, with support for the latest Xeon E3-1200 v6 processors” Hailed as Fujitsu’s smallest ever tower server, the TX1320 M3 will appeal to space-poor SMBs. The price tag matches its compact dimensions, yet squeezes in a wide range of business-class features. Power-wise, it’s the match of servers twice its size, with support for the latest Xeon E3-1200 v6 processors and up to 64GB of fast 2,400MHz DDR4 memory. Our review system came with an entry-level 3GHz Xeon E3-1220 v6 CPU, but you can pick any of six models, including the premium 3.9GHz E3-1280 v6 via special order. While the system we tested came with two cold-swap hard disks, other versions of the…

PRICE Standard/1 server/3 years, £689 exc VAT from acronis.com “While short of Acronis’ recovery time objective, getting a Windows server back in under seven minutes is good enough for us” Acronis’ Backup 12.5 suite brings a wealth of new features: more versatile backup options, broader platform support, granular Exchange mailbox protection and even built-in ransomware protection. One improvement is virtualisation support. Acronis Backup now works with six hypervisor platforms, and can automatically convert backups to VMs. Acronis also adds support for standalone tape drives, autoloaders and libraries for automated archiving. Backup 12.5 is available in standard and advanced editions; if you buy the former, you can upgrade to the latter by simply adding a new licence. The management server can also be deployed in the cloud, but this doesn’t currently…

Chromebooks dominate US education, and by ABI Research’s calculations they will account for 7% of global notebook PC sales by 2021. They’re cheap, easy to maintain, run a long time on a single charge, and are close to malware-immune. Little wonder they’re winning converts well beyond the classroom. Netflix customer support is a pure Chrome OS environment, Pinterest has installed Chromebox for Meetings in its conference rooms, and the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham decided to roll out 2,000 Chromebooks and 500 Chromeboxes, rather than upgrading its existing PCs when Windows XP went end of life in April 2014. If these big names have switched, should you? “Enterprises developing tailored in-house apps will soon be able to run them on desktops, laptops, tablets and phones” Realistic expectations The first…

Paul owns an agency that helps businesses exploit the web, from sales to marketing and everything in between @PaulOckenden If you’ve ever seen a picture from a thermal imaging camera, it’s very likely to have come from a Flir model. Although there are a few other players in the market, Flir seems to be spectacularly dominant. The company is nearly 40 years old, and originally set up to provide thermal imaging for aircraft – the kind of things you see whenever the military boasts about a precision missile hit during times of conflict. The Flir name comes from “forward-looking infrared” – the type of camera that’s mounted on a plane. Airborne cameras are just a small part of the thermal imaging market these days. There are also many handheld cameras,…

Steve is a consultant who specialises in networks, cloud, HR and upsetting the corporate apple cart @stardotpro It’s difficult to admit that you’re a fan of Donald Rumsfeld. Most people remember him as a warmonger, but it’s his comment about “unknown unknowns” and the nature of knowledge that will always stick in my mind. He even called his memoirs “Known and Unknown”, a nod to the mental tongue-twister he came out with to describe the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in the defeated state of Iraq. To me, that appreciation of the division of everything in the world into things you can understand and affect, and things you can’t, is an admission of humility. I realise that a column in PC Pro isn’t where you’d normally come for analysis…

Olio This British-based app was created by Tessa Cook, who grew up on a farm in North Yorkshire, and her co-founder Saasha Celestial-One (her parents were hippies). They note British households throw away £700 worth of food a year. To cut waste and help those in need, Olio links up neighbours and local businesses to share food near sell-by dates. Casserole Club This is another way to use up your leftover tomatoes. Casserole Club links together people who like to cook with their older neighbours. They then provide not just a free, home-cooked meal but also a visit from a local friend, helping to combat both poor nutrition and loneliness. Forget Facebook, this is a real social network. Chatterbox There are 117,000 people with refugee status in the UK, and…

Money used to be easy to understand: if you had a paper bill with “£5” on it, you knew what you could buy. Digital currencies such as Bitcoin are rather more complex, with their value derived from how much has been “mined”, a euphemism for applying electricity and processing power to solve difficult equations solely to lay claim to a Bitcoin (or slice of one). But there are other uses for the blockchain beyond anonymously ordering pizza from takeaways run by hipster nerds or buying drugs online. At the heart of much blockchain innovation is Ethereum, which lets developers use the blockchain to run applications. Sort of like a distributed computer. Here’s what you need to know about the next blockchain tech. Blockchain? Let’s start with that. Old-fashioned Bitcoin was…