Table of contents for January 2018 in PC Pro

@PCPRO FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO i’ve been reading The Power by Naomi Alderman these past two weeks. She’s an interesting author for techies, not least because she also co-created the fitness app Zombies, Run! In The Power, it isn’t zombies that half the world needs to be afraid of: it’s women, now imbued with the power to zap others with powerful electronic shocks via “skeins”. Cue a major reversal in each sex’s fortunes. While I was reading, Harvey Weinstein’s reputation hit dirt as dozens of actresses came out in the wake of a New York Times article to say they had been sexually assaulted by the legendary Hollywood producer. So, you’re probably wondering, what has this got to do with a tech magazine? A fair question, but bear with me. The obvious first connection…

The key details of this month’s hot hardware releases Lenovo ThinkPad 25 The ThinkPad has come a long way since its introduction in 1992, with more than 100 million laptops sold. Those nostalgic for the early days of IBM design might appreciate this retrospective tribute. Although the internals of the 25th anniversary special edition bear little similarity to early machines, the ThinkPad 25 has several throwback elements of the black corporate classic, including the seven-row keyboard that some believe makes typing and input more efficient. The keyboard also features older style mechanical keys as opposed to the chiclet, isolated keys more common in current ThinkPads. The keys are backlit, which may disappoint those hoping for a flashback to the ThinkLight, which illuminated old ThinkPads from an LED in the top…

The price of storage has traditionally fallen like a paper aeroplane, starting high as new technology is introduced and spiralling downwards as fabrication plants make mass production cheaper. However, the storage in higher-end phones, tablets and laptops using SSDs has bucked that trend by being kept artificially high to protect margins for manufacturers, according to analysts and industry insiders. Storage is not a component priced according to the cost of manufacture, or even supply and demand, but simply on what companies think consumers will be prepared to pay. Google’s Pixel 2 handsets, for example, add £100 for an additional 32GB of storage, while the Pixelbook costs £200 more for the 256GB model than the entry-level 128GB version. That’s hard to equate with OEM contract prices for 256GB SSDs, which according…

Nicole Kobie is PC Pro’s Futures editor, but she also likes looking to the past. What little she can remember of it. @njkobie What’s old is new again, what comes around goes around, nothing is new under the sun – however you phrase it, the truism applies as much to the tech industry as any other. That’s not to say Silicon Valley hasn’t produced trailblazing inventions that have changed how we live. It has. It’s just that even tech’s most innovative companies are following an arc set by businesses 100 years before them. Here’s how it goes. First, a company unveils a disruptive business model, usually pairing customer convenience and lower prices. Both are easy wins – who doesn’t want to spend less time or money, after all? Amazon started…

The government is demanding that search engines and social networks remove terrorist-related content, or links to it, within two hours. But who decides what qualifies as terrorist-related content? No doubt some of it will be obvious, like instructions for making explosive devices, but what about posts and pages that are more to do with espousing a point of view than encouraging someone to take up arms? There are bound to be differences of opinion, and these will vary between countries, and between the liberal industries, encompassing some of the internet giants affected by the government’s plans, and politicians themselves. The latter group, let’s be honest, often comes across as somewhat stuffier. How are they going to settle the disagreements? Britain isn’t a world leader when it comes to social networks and…

DICK POUNTAIN DrBlu V4.1 Wireless Pro Sport Stereo Bluetooth Earphones £15 from pcpro.link/279blu My Christmas tech gift is a stocking filler that keeps on giving. As a walker (yes, you read that correctly), I like to listen to Spotify while tramping across heath or dawdling through park but, fed up with untangling wired earphones, I was keen to go Bluetooth. A £10 gift token led me toward startup outfit DrBlu, which uses the latest APT-X chipset and CVC6 noise-cancelling. I couldn’t believe these earphones’ sound quality: great detail, lots of well-controlled bass. The noise cancelling works, they pair with two mobile devices at once and can make phone calls through a built-in mic. A short connecting cable behind your neck ensures that the earphones don’t fall out and roll down…

Mental health apps have flooded the Google Play and Apple’s App Stores – but are they merely exploiting the vulnerable? Studies suggests mixed results. Research from the University of Liverpool found that only four of 14 apps listed in NHS apps library had any evidence of medical efficacy, although the collection has been rebooted since the paper was released. On the other hand, some have been found to be clinically effective, including the University of Cambridge’s Wizard, a brain-training app for boosting memory in people with schizophrenia, and Moodscope from the NHS. Anyone looking for a mental health app to augment clinical treatment should speak to their physician, and also look for one that has been developed with medical staff, is based on proven treatment techniques (such as cognitive behavioural…

PRICE 64GB, £524 (£629 inc VAT) from play.google.com Did you like the look of the original Pixel? If so, you’re in luck. The Google Pixel 2 looks almost identical to the original, which means no edge-to-edge display like the Samsung Galaxy S8 or iPhone X – but then the Pixel 2 does retail between £50 and £370 cheaper. If you aren’t familiar with the original Pixel, then the key things to know are that it’s thin, light and benefits from a textured aluminium back, which feels less slippery than the glass of its rivals. It’s an understated offering, with even the familiar Google “G” quiet: dark grey on a black background. The new Pixel is the same weight as last year, at 143g, but it now measures a svelte 7.8mm…

PRICE 32GB, £125 (£150 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/279hd10 The new Amazon Fire HD 10 is one of those products that doesn’t look all that exciting from the outside. It’s physically identical to the model it replaces, although it’s now available in blue and red along with the previous black, but there’s plenty of interest tucked beneath its humdrum exterior. Top of that list is Amazon’s digital voice assistant, Alexa. The Amazon Fire HD 10 represents the first time outside the Echo range of products that Amazon has introduced a hands-free Alexa mode; the other Fire HD tablets and TV streamers need you to press a button to activate voice recognition. Unlike the Echo family, it doesn’t have a far-field microphone array, but I found the tablet could pick up my…

PRICE £66 (£81 inc VAT) from digikey.co.uk When taking your first steps in the field of electronics, there are only a handful of tools you need: a good screwdriver, a passable soldering iron and a cheap multimeter. However, while you can diagnose a wide range of problems with such a multimeter, eventually you’re likely to need more - and that’s where an oscilloscope comes in. Where a multimeter allows you to take an instantaneous reading of a signal voltage at a point in time, an oscilloscope allows you to track and display changes over time. As with multimeters, oscilloscopes range from the cheap to the extremely expensive - with a far higher upper end than multimeters. The OpenScope MZ is a novel take on the concept. The creation of Digilent,…

PRICE Free from avast.com If you don’t trust Windows Defender to keep you safe from nasties – and, as we discuss on p92, that might be wise – then Avast is an attractive alternative. It has a few key strengths that set it apart from other free antivirus packages, and while the zero-cost approach inevitably comes with some compromises, they’re not too hard to live with. Let’s talk about the good stuff first. In AV-Comparatives’ most recent test, Avast blocked 99% of malware threats. To be fair, that’s not as exceptional as it may sound: antivirus suites are getting extremely good at spotting attacks, and in fact that 1% failure rate put Avast toward the bottom of the table. All the same, it’s better protection than you’d get from Windows…

PRICE 1yr, 3PCs, £15 (£18 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/279bull BullGuard’s most distinctive feature has long been its cloud backup module, which included a handy 5GB of online storage. This year, though, the storage has been ditched. In an age when ransomware makes it more important than ever to keep safe backups of your files, that feels like a step backwards. It’s not quite as bad as it sounds, though. While BullGuard 2018 no longer takes care of your backups itself, it’s been revamped to include native support for Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive as backup destinations, alongside local drives and folders. It’s a canny use of free resources – assuming you haven’t already filled up all those services. Aside from that, all the familiar BullGuard features remain. Those include a…

PRICE 1yr, unlimited devices, £17 (£20 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/279mca Since last year’s antivirus roundup, McAfee has parted ways with former owner Intel – and found a fresh new look. Gone is the clunky grey and green interface of yore, replaced by a more tasteful, modern design. The main functions now lurk at the bottom of the homescreen: from here you can scan for viruses, check your system for vulnerabilities and outdated apps, and clean up cookies and junk files. You can also set up True Key – an advanced password manager that supports face and fingerprint recognition alongside regular passwords, and works across Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. The free version lets you store up 15 passwords, but your McAfee subscription comes with unlimited access for up to five…

PRICE 1yr, 5 devices, £19 (£23 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/279nor The “Deluxe” in the name suggests extravagance, but the only difference between this and the single-user Standard edition is that you can install it on five devices (be they PCs, Macs or Android smartphones). There’s also a Premium edition, available for £30 a year, which supports up to ten devices and adds parental controls and a backup module with 25GB of cloud storage. Whichever version you choose, you get the anti-malware engine, and this blocked every virus that AVComparatives threw at it, for a perfect 100% protection score. Admittedly, this was undermined by eight false positives – Bitdefender achieved equally effective malware protection without a mistake – but that’s surely better than letting a malicious program slip through the net.…

Looking back at last year’s antivirus roundup, what’s most striking is how little has changed in 12 months. It may be no coincidence that the industry as a whole seems to be backing away from the traditional annual branding: it’s a bit hard to drum up excitement for the latest and greatest security suite when it’s plainly the exact same program as last year, perhaps with an antiransomware module baked in for good measure. That’s no bad thing, of course. It’s a sign that the industry’s maturing. Another sign is the way third-party firewalls have been falling out of favour in recent years. Too often in the past, software publishers have stuffed their offerings with unneeded features and utilities that just get in the user’s way – or, even worse,…

If you read Jon Honeyball’s column last month (see issue 278, p110), you’ll have seen his take on Centrality’s OneDeploy software. “If I had hundreds, or worse still, thousands of machines to move to Windows 10, OneDeploy would be top of my list of tools under consideration,” he wrote. Why? Simplicity is one of OneDeploy’s key features, with the ability to create builds in a matter of minutes compared to the hours of System Center. Plus, where System Center can lag behind Microsoft’s latest OS updates by six to 12 months, OneDeploy is right at the cutting edge. “OneDeploy is very much at the fore of being able to deploy even the latest operating systems,” said Mike Davies, managing director and founder of OneDeploy. Once you’ve created a build –…

PRICE £344 exc VAT from okidirect.co.uk Oki’s MC573dn colour MFP offers a lot of features for a low price. Along with 4-in-1 print, scan, copy and fax operations, its LED-based engine is rated at a true 1,200dpi resolution and claims a speedy 30ppm print rate. The recommended monthly duty cycle of 6,000 pages makes it a great choice for print-hungry workgroups, and you get a free warranty extension to three years if you register it within 30 days of purchase. The printer’s flat paper path means it can handle heavy 220gsm media, and if you open up the front multipurpose tray and rear output slot you can even print banners up to 1.32m long. The classy output quality of the LED engine makes the MC573dn a great choice for producing…

PRICE £670 exc VAT from pcpro.link/279meetup There’s no doubt that 4K video conferencing (VC) will be the norm sooner or later, and Logitech aims to be one of the first in the queue for your business. Having already launched its 4K Brio personal webcam earlier this year, it’s now released the MeetUp, designed to bring Ultra HD quality to mid-sized offices and huddle rooms. At 400mm wide, the big sound bar can be attached to a wall with the supplied bracket, placed underneath a TV or monitor on its integrated stand, or fitted on top using the optional mounting bracket. In the centre sits the Logitech camera, with its 4K Ultra HD sensor and a lens that boasts a massive 120° field of view. It sits in a motorised carrier,…

“I faced a screen full of server-side gibberish, as some process decided it was having a bad Saturday” My village supposedly has excellent 4G coverage on Vodafone. I say “supposedly” because I just went to its Coverage Checker, entered my postcode, and its pin location on the map was a good eight miles away in the wrong village. Having poked the map to bring me back to my actual house, the diagram shows that I’m on the edge of a purple splodge of “4G Indoors and Outdoors” and a yellow splodge of “4G outdoors, variable indoors”. My iPhone 6 Plus gives me just one bar of signal when sat in my kitchen, so I think I’m more yellow than purple in my splodginess. The solution to up those bars? Hop…

“I’d much prefer it if banks rolled out secure two-factor authentication systems using one-time codes” Passwords are the perennial topic of the security consultant, continuing to provide food for thought and money in the bank year after year. Even with the inevitable progress of biometric alternatives, passwords and PINs form the basis of almost every login and authentication system out there. Keeper Security is the latest vendor to send me password-related research data. Having analysed some ten million passwords from 2016’s biggest data breaches, it reckons that 17% of folk still use 123456 as a password. That’s bad, but not as bad as the sites and services that let them. “Businessesneed tounderstand thattheyremain aweakspot unlessthreat awarenessis partofthe agenda” I continue to despair being faced with an outfit that restricts me…

If Wikipedia is to be believed, then “Ipsa Scientia potestas est” first appeared in Sir Francis Bacon’s Meditationes Sacrae of 1597. Scraping the barrel of my O-level Latin, it means “knowledge itself is power”, which is my current train of thought. If you look at the wide range of illnesses that face the NHS, type 2 diabetes (T2D) is arguably the most worrying. I’ve seen numbers that suggest up to a third of the population will end up with some sort of T2D, and the health cost for this is almost incalculable. I was diagnosed back in the summer of 2010. A year earlier, my blood picture and sugar levels were fine, but in that intervening 12 months my father’s health had taken a turn for the worst and died…

Unveiled The hottest hardware releases, including translation earbuds p12 ISPs spurn Of com code Smaller ISPs are sceptical over plans to help consumers p13 PC Probe Why do we pay so much for SSD upgrades in laptops? p14 web giants are under pressure from the UK government with a series of proposed clampdowns on areas as diverse as online safety, fake news and extremist material. Officials from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) have released plans to make the web companies pay for creating a safer online environment. As part of the Internet Safety Strategy Green Paper, the government claimed it wanted to make Britain “the safest place in the world to be online” and said it would impose a levy on the technology industry to pay for…

@PCPRO FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO small isps have reacted with scepticism to proposals from regulator Ofcom that are designed to improve information and recourse for consumers that suffer from lowerthan- expected broadband speeds. The regulator has set out plans that it says will make it clearer what speeds customers should achieve throughout the day, as well as setting a 30-day resolution deadline. The proposals are laid out in changes to the voluntary code of conduct, which would come into effect next year and enable customers to leave a new contract after 30 days without penalty if the ISP couldn’t fix inadequate lines. But there is uncertainty over how affected lines will be judged, whether the timeline is too short and how lines should be monitored. Under the proposal – which extends existing buyer…

Darien Graham-Smith is PC Pro’s associate editor. He’s tempted by the iPhone X, but has spent all his money on guitars he doesn’t need. @dariengs November is here, and that means the Apple iPhone X is at last available to buy. It’s been quite a wait since Tim Cook revealed the all-new flagship at Apple’s regular September event, though – so the Twittering classes have had plenty of time to form and share their opinions, before ever seeing the product in the flesh. I’ve been particularly struck by some of the negative responses online. Of course, there are always grumblers on social media, ready to snipe at everything Apple does, just as there’s invariably an equally dedicated contingent singing its praises. It’s not surprising that a high-profile new gadget such…

As a simple Derbyshire lad, PC Pro editorial fellow Dick Pountain finds the concepts of ristretto and corretto a bit too S&M. I love coffee. Or rather, I love making and drinking coffee – not talking about it, bragging about it or agonising over equipment choices. I neither roast nor grind my own beans, and am a stranger to the burr grinder. Instead, I work my way along Sainsbury’s shelf of Fairtrade ground coffees (tip: Sumatra Mandheling is very nice). Occasionally, when I can be arsed, I go to the little guy in Delancey Street NW1 who employs gorgeous old-school gas roasters that give off sparks and fill the street with perfume. I don’t buy any coffee that has passed through the alimentary canal of a tree-bound feliform, and avoid…

PC Pro and Alphr.com readers seem to have the balance about right, with only 36% unhappy that they’re spending too much or too little time on social media. One anonymous reader advises “pausing the accounts if you want to keep them, logging out, deleting them from your phone and clearing your history”. Andy Walker would go further, suggesting “remove yourself from Facebook”, and assuring us that it’s “not as hard as you think. In two weeks you’ll have got over the withdrawals and realise what a waste of your life it was”. Samuel Martins offered another tip: “Add a timer on your social media platforms so that you can set how long you can access them in a day.” SUBSCRIBE To subscribe to PC Pro, visit subscribe.pcpro.co.uk. For existing subscriber…

Holly Elmore suffers from depression. Last year, when she felt consumed by negative feelings, she found a way to improve her mood and stave off the worst of her illness: looking at her own Instagram feed. Like many social sharers, her account was a collection of positive, self-promoting snaps, a helpful reminder that there was plenty in her life to feel good about. “It’s like a gratitude journal,” she explained. It’s anecdotal evidence that social media can make you happy, but it runs contrary to headlines that shout that Facebook et al are making us lonely, depressed, jealous and anxious. While there’s plenty of academic research to back up the claim that social media is bad for your mental wellbeing, don’t delete your accounts quite yet. For some people, social…

Feel miserable after using Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, but not ready to delete your account? Start with these top tips to finding happiness online. CULL Clear out the list of people you follow to those you actually want to hear from, muting or unfriending anyone who makes you feel unhappy. REPLACE Find feeds that bring you joy, whether it’s adorable animals (@ thedodo), jokes (@wholesomememes), a self-care bot (@everydaycarebot) or whatever you know makes you smile without fail. INTERACT Stop clicking like or tapping the heart icon, and leave a genuine message or start a project such as #100happydays. LOOK BACK Your own feed might highlight the good in your life, but if you see many of your posts have a negative tone, it may be time…

@PCPRO FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO PRICE £41 (£49 inc VAT) from store.google.com Google isn’t used to being second. And yet, that’s the uncomfortable position it finds itself in within the smart speaker world. The reasons for that are twofold: first, Amazon was fastest out the blocks. Second, Amazon also twigged early on that buyers might not feel comfortable dropping £150 on multiple trumped-up Bluetooth speakers, and came up with the Echo Dot, a £50 version that offers all the functionality of the larger speaker for a fraction of the price. Google can’t turn back time (yet – who knows what it’s cooking up in its labs), but it can neutralise the second problem, and that’s where the Google Home Mini comes in. It does everything Google Home does but is designed to link…

PRICE £2,325 (£2,790 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/279rog The Asus ROG Zephyrus bucks all trends. It marries GTX 1080 graphics with a super-slim chassis, and the result is a beautiful and powerful ultra-portable gaming laptop. Even from afar, the Zephyrus is a head-turner. It measures 17.9mm thick, while its svelte frame and brushed-metal chassis look gorgeous. As you open the Zephyrus’ lid, you’ll first notice the odd placement of the keyboard and trackpad. The former is flush with the front of the laptop and, with no wristrest to house it, the touchpad sits to the right. That’s not the only strange design touch. If you look to the side as you open the lid, you’ll see a plastic plate extends, making it look as if the laptop is broken. In fact,…

PRICE From £274 (£329 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk The Apple Watch divides opinion. People either live by it, can’t see the point of it or baulk at the design (and the price). Yet, Apple recently announced that it now sells more watches than any other brand in the world. It shows no sign of relaxing its hold on that top spot either, with the Series 3 including one potential game-changer: 4G. Not that you can see much difference between the Apple Watch Series 3 and its predecessors. The 1.65in screen remains obstinately square, while the power button and Digital Crown again sit on the right-hand side of the face. Still, it doesn’t take Sherlock to spot this is a Series 3 versus the Series 2: that Digital Crown is now…

You might have thought that the virus threat was old news, but 2017 saw a spate of ransomware attacks that caused mayhem for individuals and businesses alike – not to mention crippling the NHS for several days back in May. Clearly, you can’t be complacent about security. If you’re not already running a high-quality security suite, it’s time you picked one. And even if your protection is up to date, it’s worth keeping an eye on the market to see which product is performing best before you renew. In the Labs this month we’ve put 13 security suites to the test, running the gamut from ultra-lightweight free options to feature-packed bundles that include their own firewalls, parental controls and more. We also turn the spotlight on the ransomware threat, and ask…

PRICE 1yr, 3 devices, £28 (£33 inc VAT) from bitdefender.co.uk Bitdefender scored highly in last year’s Labs, and the 2018 release brings some new goodies into the mix. One is the new Safe Files feature – a ransomware protection module that pre-emptively blocks unknown applications from writing to particular folders without your explicit authorisation. All the obvious locations are protected by default, and you can add as many additional folders as you like. It’s a simple measure that should stop ransomware – if you deny access to anything you don’t recognise. The other notable addition is webcam protection. You can now disable your camera completely – ensuring you can’t be spied on – or block it only for your web browser. You can also whitelist specific apps, or enable notifications…

PRICE Free from avg.com AVG is now owned by Avast, and although the parent company hasn’t officially confirmed it, we suspect that the two packages are built on the same antivirus engine. That’s fine by us, though, because it’s a highly effective engine. Just like Avast, AVG put in a strong performance in AV-Comparatives’ tests, blocking 99% of malware with just three false positives. It also proved quite nimble when it comes to performance. It scored a “fast” rating for browsing the web, and for the first runs of the file-copy and application-launching tests. On subsequent repetitions of those tests, it stepped up to “very fast”. But if AVG is internally the same as Avast, the look and feel is different, with a simpler and more clearly laid out homescreen.…

PRICE 1yr, 3PCs, £42 (£50 inc VAT) from eset.com Eset has a reputation for forensic accuracy and lightfooted performance – and the company’s latest internet security suite makes a respectable fist of living up to that image. In AV-Comparatives’ tests, Eset repelled an excellent 99.7% of threats, wrongly intercepting just one false positive. That’s good enough to inspire confidence, but not quite as smooth as Bitdefender’s clean sheet. Similarly, in the performance tests, Eset proved fast for web browsing, and for file copies – even on initial access, when many suites stumble. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for opening applications: here, AV-Comparatives rated first-run opening speeds as mediocre. The lightweight concept extends to the interface. As you click around, what chiefly strikes you is how little there seems to…

PRICE Free from microsoft.com If you don’t like change, brace yourself. First, Microsoft’s simple, free antivirus tool has officially had its title elongated to include the word “Antivirus”. Second, the familiar Defender interface – which had gone basically unchanged since the launch of Microsoft Security Essentials back in 2009 – is no more. As of the first Windows 10 Creators Update, you interact with Defender Antivirus solely through a couple of Settings pages within the Windows Defender Security Center. There’s one thing that hasn’t changed, though: Windows Defender Antivirus yet again did worse in this month’s real-world protection tests than almost any other security suite. It didn’t fare quite as badly as McAfee Total Protection, but coming 12th out of 13 suites is nothing to be proud of. It’s also…

PRICE 1yr, 3 PCs, £35 (£42 inc VAT) from trendmicro.co.uk Trend Micro Internet Security has a straightforward interface. It’s divided into four pages, dealing with protection for your device, privacy, data and family respectively – and there’s something useful on every one. Under Device, for example, you’ll find general antivirus settings, plus a toggle for “Mute Mode”, which suppresses all alerts and notifications. There’s also a PC Health Checkup tool, which automatically fixes security risks – such as unpatched applications – and disables unneeded startup items that could be bogging Windows down. On the Privacy page you’ll find a web-based tool that reviews your privacy settings on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn, and alerts you to any potential for over-sharing. It’s powered by a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox and…

PRICE £101 exc VAT from pcpro.link/279eps If you’re short on office space, Epson’s WorkForce Pro WF-4720DWF could be the MFP for you: it packs all the key features into a compact footprint, measuring around 43 x 38cm. Combining print, copy, scan and fax functions, it claims speeds of 20ppm for mono and colour and, at £101, it’s very affordable. It’s cheap to run too, thanks to Epson’s high-capacity “35XL” cartridges. These deliver laser-beating running costs of 1.8p for a mono page and only 6.3p for a colour one. The standard “35” cartridges cost less up front, but per-page printing costs will end up being much higher. Epson’s software installer provides a handy network setup tutorial, and loaded all Windows 10 drivers for us. It then found and applied the latest…

“When it comes to drone rules and regulations, much of the footage online shows them being broken” One of my favourite toys right now is my DJI Spark. It’s a drone, but not just any drone. What makes the Spark so special is its size. It’s small enough that you can easily carry it around in a coat pocket or a small bag, but the reduced size has other benefits too. The main one being that you don’t seem to get as many negative reactions from those concerned about privacy and spying as you do when flying a larger drone. It seems that, in this regard at least, size really does matter. Also, I find that a smaller drone makes far less noise than its bigger stablemates – which, again,…

“Spending money on storing your stuff isn’t an investment in tech; it’s an investment in a good night’s sleep” Nobody really understands catnip. Why should there be a plant that has such a powerful hold over the entire genus felidae? It’s irrational – just like the relationship people have with their data and things on which they store it. Why do people passively accept the idea that because a favoured, cheap tech vendor says it’s “great for backups!”, they should go ahead and believe them? When I get drawn into someone’s selection process – or worse still, a recovery – most of my time isn’t spent leafing through product catalogues. It’s dealing with the catnip problem. Those buying a backup device seem quite sure that what they really need isn’t…

GESTURE CONTROLS FOR computers, televisions and VR aren’t new – although they’re often hand-flailing failures that are less convenient to use than a mouse or remote. Christopher Clarke, a PhD student at Lancaster University, is hoping to change that with a simple control system dubbed MatchPoint. This uses a webcam to interpret basic gestures, letting you wave a hand to turn up the volume or nod to change the channel – or flip to a new song using your cat. MatchPoint works by showing a set of controls on the screen: small targets that are activated by mimicking its assigned motion, such as pausing with a wave of the hand. Users can then interact with the system through gestures alone, handy for following a cooking tutorial without setting down your…

1 AR not ready for the big time, claims Cook Apple boss Tim Cook claimed artificial reality hardware was not yet good enough to kickstart a smartphone-like rush of new applications, despite admitting that the companywasstill pushing investment into the arena. Although Apple rivals–suchas Facebook with the Oculus Rift–have pushed head sets onto the virtual reality market, he feels that early offerings have been underwhelming, telling The Independent:“The technology it self doesn’t exist to do that in a quality way–there are huge challenges with that.” 2 Microsoft tight-lipped on vulnerability database theft Microsoft came under fire for failing to reveal the extent of a 2013 breach that reports claim allowed hackers to access a database of known, but unpatched, vulnerabilitiesacross the Windows platform. Such weaknesses are seen as a goldmine…

security experts say the KRACK Wi-Fi vulnerability may never be completely resolved due to the sheer breadth and age of the systems affected by the threat. KRACK, short for Key Reinstallation Attack, exploits a fundamental weakness in the WPA2 protocol that supposedly locks down wireless networks. Mathy Vanhoef of imec-DistriNet, who found the weakness, said “attackers can use this novel attack technique to read information that was previously assumed to be safely encrypted”. Software vendors moved quickly, with Microsoft and Apple releasing updates and Google promising an Android patch, but any devices that are no longer supported will remain vulnerable. “It’s not a single vulnerability – in some levels this will be resolved pretty quickly from the major OS vendors, and on some levels it will never be resolved,” said…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Dell XPS 13 (2017) 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. REVIEWIssue 270, p54 ALTERNATIVES 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 in plenty…

@PCPRO FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO Barry Collins is a former editor of PC Pro and thus has first-hand insight into the psychology of waning dictators. @bazzacollins With milk bottles piling up on the door step and neighbours reporting a strange pong to the police, Microsoft has finally conceded the inevitable: the Windows Phone is dead. Funeral’s on Thursday, no flowers. Being the stubbornly proud company that it is, Microsoft gave word of Windows Phone’s demise in the least conspicuous way possible: a reply to a tweet. Windows head honcho Joe Belfiore was asked whether it was time to abandon Windows Phone, to which he replied: “Depends who you are... As an individual end-user, I switched platforms for the app/ hw diversity… Choose what’s best 4 u.” He went on to reiterate that Microsoft…

@PCPRO FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO RASPBERRY PI ZERO W £10 from shop.pimoroni.com Time was when a computer for Christmas was the best you could hope for. Now they’re cheaper than a bumper box of chocolates. The Raspberry Pi Zero W is remarkably twice the price of its predecessor, the W standing for the integrated wireless that was added to this model in the form of Bluetooth and 802.11n 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. With wireless integration, the Pi Zero W suddenly becomes much more useful as a cheap computer for a specific job, particularly a low-power server. It’s also a great choice for custom projects, for patient people with a steady hand and a soldering iron. Ultimately, it’s hard to be anything other than impressed by a computer that costs less than £10 and can fit…

Online shopping can make you happier, as long as you buy time, according to a paper from a group of American, Canadian and Dutch researchers. “People who hire a house cleaner or pay the kid next door to mow the lawn might feel like they’re being lazy,” said study lead author Ashley Whillans, assistant professor at Harvard Business School. “But our results suggest that buying time has similar benefits for happiness as having more money.” Participants were handed $40 to spend, and told to either buy themselves something nice or spend it on outsourcing a task. Those who did the latter reported higher levels of satisfaction. What does that mean for the internet? One way to use the internet and apps to boost your happiness could well be outsourcing your…

If you’re wary of switching to IPv6, that’s understandable. Nobody wants to learn a whole new networking system – plus, IPv6’s huge hexadecimal addresses are undeniably intimidating. But IPv6 is actually a lot simpler than you might suppose. It runs over your existing infrastructure, and effectively operates as a completely independent, parallel network – so unless you’re a professional network engineer, you don’t need to learn about tunnelling or 6to4 gateways or anything like that. You just need to make sure that the devices on your network are all IPv6-aware, and have valid IPv6 addresses. That latter point may require you to tick a box or two on your router’s administration pages, but it’s hardly a major project. You will need support from your ISP, too: you can check your…

PRICE 64GB, £666 (£799 inc VAT) from play.google.com Say it quietly, but there’s nothing all that special about the Google Pixel 2 XL. It might be the search giant’s flagship smartphone for 2017 but there isn’t a single thing it does that rival manufacturers haven’t done already – and done better. You want a screen with barelythere bezels and curved corners? Take your pick. A phone that responds if you squeeze it? Yep, HTC got there first. How about water-resistance, an 18:9 aspect ratio display, and ridiculously high prices? So passé. Google will point to its imageprocessing technology and the exclusive Google Pixel launcher as features to mark out the Pixel 2 XL from the Android competition. And, in the absence of major problems elsewhere, those would be enough to…

PRICE From £91 (£110 inc VAT) to £300 (£360 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk Intel has been on the back foot in 2017. The momentum has all been with its old rival AMD, whose Ryzen CPUs have offered more raw processing power than Intel’s Kaby Lake desktop chips – at lower prices. But the processor business moves quickly. Intel’s new eighthgeneration desktop chips – dubbed Coffee Lake – bring more cores and higher clock speeds than ever before. Can Coffee Lake topple Ryzen and win back the CPU crown for Intel? ▄ Inside Coffee Lake First, the bad news: if you’ve been waiting for Intel’s promised move to a 10nm manufacturing process, you’re in for a disappointment, because Coffee Lake isn’t it. Intel has promised that the first 10nm processors will…

IN ASSOCIATION WITH SEH TECHNOLOGY SEH-TECHNOLOGY.COM Employees have the freedom to use their mobile devices to carry out tasks from any location, but organisations also need to ensure that corporate resources and data are kept safe. As the mobile workforce grows, so does the challenge. By 2018, the number of employee-owned smartphones and tablets used in the enterprise is expected to top one billion devices, according to figures from Juniper Research. ▄ Growing security threats This also means there is a greater attack surface from hackers. Users downloading content and apps can expose organisations to malware and data-snooping software. They will frequently use devices on unsecured networks at coffee shops, airports, hotels and other public places, meaning corporate data stored on such devices is susceptible to breaches. In addition, data…

PRICE £250 (£300 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/279fit The Fitbit Ionic has drawn criticism for its looks, but much of that was based on PR shots: in its metal flesh, I grew to like the square face and minimalist design. It’s comfortable and light, with a curved body that hugs your wrist. During exercise, I simply forgot it was there, but it helps that the bright touchscreen is protected by scratchproof Gorilla Glass: you needn’t worry about bumps during workouts. Brightness is also high enough to see all the on-screen details, even in direct sunlight, and this dims automatically when you’re indoors. Useful at night when you want to check the time. Or, for that matter, if you want to check messages, because the Ionic features Fitbit’s new OS – complete…

PRICE 1yr, 3 devices, £17 (£20 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/279kas Some security suites pride themselves on elegant simplicity. Kaspersky goes the other way, packing in what’s probably the industry’s most extensive feature set. Last year’s release was so heavily laden with features that you might well wonder what could possibly be added to justify the new 2018 release. Surprisingly, the answer is more or less nothing. There are no new buttons to play with at all – just a few under-the-bonnet technical updates. For example, the ransomware module now does a better job of spotting when something’s tampering with your files, and there’s now extra protection to stop viruses from infecting your computer while it’s being restarted. Those are good things, but a major upgrade this ain’t. It’s telling that…

PRICE 1yr, 5 devices, £25 (£30 inc VAT) from avira.com Avira Antivirus Pro is a strippeddown antivirus scanner, with no ancillary features such as parental controls or file encryption. For an extra fiver you can get Avira’s full Internet Security Suite, but this isn’t much different: the main addition is the Firewall Manager module, which provides a friendly front-end to the Windows firewall settings. Unless you spend a lot of your time reconfiguring your network, it’s probably not worth it. Avira does give you the option of tacking on a variety of optional extras at install time. One is the free System Speedup module, which cleans up cookies, temporary files and so on. Note that it doesn’t do anything that’s likely to actually make your computer run faster: if that’s…

PRICE 1yr, 3 devices, £28 (£34 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/279fsec In terms of malware prevention, F-Secure’s internet security suite – known for the past few years as SAFE – does a pretty good job. Its protection score of 99.7% equals Kaspersky’s, and only misses perfection by the tiniest margin. Unfortunately, AV-Comparatives found that the score came along with a whopping 38 false positives – a dreadful result that’s miles behind any other contender. Maddeningly, there isn’t even a way to get the software to double-check with you before quarantining files: you just have to let SAFE do its thing, then go into the software and manually restore any items that have been wrongly removed. It’s a shame, because SAFE is quite an attractive security suite. As with Eset, the interface…

PRICE Free from pandasecurity.com Panda Free Antivirus is one of the simplest antivirus utilities there is. In terms of malware protection, all you get is basic file scanning, a browser extension for Chrome, Firefox and IE, and a USB “vaccination” tool to protect your flash drives against infection. There are some secondary tools: Process Monitor details the programs running on your PC, and flags any that are unrecognised or unsigned. And in cases of severe infection, the Rescue Kit page lets you build a bootable USB flash drive, or download Panda’s portable Cloud Cleaner, to kill rogue processes and unlock files that otherwise can’t be scanned. Finally, and oddly, there’s a page dedicated to recent news stories about viruses. If you’re turned off by bloated security suites, this compact feature…

Many Windows security vendors offer companion apps for smartphones and tablets. But if you’re using an iPhone or an iPad, you don’t really have much to worry about. Thanks to iOS’ heavily locked-down security model, there’s never been a major virus outbreak on the platform. On Android, things are less clear-cut. Its open design is inherently more exploitable than iOS – but what you may not realise is that Android comes with a number of smart built-in security measures. For a start, Android makes it impossible for any app to be installed without your explicit permission. That immediately limits the danger from “drive-by downloads” – if an installation alert pops up out of the blue, you can simply cancel it and carry on. Indeed, by default you can only install…

PRICE £538 exc VAT from printerbase.co.uk Brother’s MFC-L8900CDW laser is aimed at workgroups of up to five users – and even if they all have different needs, its versatility, speed and output quality should satisfy everyone. It’s well connected too, as it supports USB, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n wireless, Wi-Fi Direct, AirPrint and NFC for tap-toprint services. Scan, copy and fax functions are easy to use, thanks to a big 12.6cm colour touchscreen with clear icons. You can also customise the display by adding up to four extra screens, each offering eight shortcuts to predefined copy, scan or fax jobs. The standard 250-sheet paper capacity will be fine for light printing duties, but if you need more it can be hugely expanded with an optional tower-style base unit that adds four…

PRICE £306 exc VAT from printerland.co.uk Kyocera’s Ecosys M5226cdw aims to minimise the hassle of maintenance: on top of the standard two-year, on-site warranty, the print drum and developer are covered for three years or 100,000 pages. The only things you’ll need to keep an eye on for the foreseeable future are its four toner cartridges. The device provides print, copy, scan and fax functions, and unusually it can support both wired and wireless network connections at once. At £306, it’s very affordable, and print costs work out to a mere 1.3p per mono page and 9p for colour prints. The laser engine is rated at a true 1,200dpi, but Kyocera makes clear that taking full advantage of this resolution may have an impact on print speed. In practice, our…

PRICE Sensor and 1yr cloud subscription, £650 exc VAT from irisnetworks.com It’s vital to stay abreast of what’s happening on and around your wireless network, but Wi-Fi monitoring and analysis products can often be complex and expensive. Enter Cape Networks’ new Wireless Sensor, which keeps an eye on your network and presents a wealth of information in a superbly designed cloud portal at a very tempting price. Be clear, this is no simple bandwidth monitor. The sensor doesn’t just count packets: it tracks the availability of web services and even monitors internal network devices. It’s a doddle to deploy, too. We simply screwed the sensor onto the wall using the supplied bracket, connected it to the lab’s PoE switch and registered it with our account from the cloud portal. It’s…

Overall, I think that the Data Protection Bill will be a positive force: not only for protecting the rights of individuals when it comes to the collection and use of personal data, but also in bolstering cybersecurity implementation for businesses large and small. The threat of potentially fatal fines for a business should they fall foul of the new law will help focus security spend where it can be most effective. Regulatory compliance will therefore hopefully move from being, as far as security is often concerned, a checkbox affair to a truly business-critical consideration. That’s not where the positives end, either: giving ordinary people more control over how their data is used is always a win. Likewise making it a “recordable offence” to alter personal data in such a way…

“Basic instinct allows us to see the change, but not the bigger picture and the benefits change will bring” “Changing one thing can often mean changing another to ensure systems and processes integrate properly” As any experienced IT professional will know, changing an IT system isn’t as simple as buying a new product and rolling it out to employees. There are many implications for users that, if acknowledged, will make for a much smoother and more positive go-live. An IT trainer’s role in the project may appear to be simply to learn how the new system operates and train the users in how to use it – rather naively, I approached my first role on this type of project with the attitude that it would be as easy as that!…

Robots and automation are coming for our jobs. What are we going to do about it? The automation revolution we’ve heard so much about could disrupt society and “cause instability”, according to Irakli Beridze, senior strategic advisor at the UN’s Crime and Justice Research Institute, which has just opened a new Center for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. That global destabilisation will happen “if societies do not adapt quickly enough”, Beridze told local newspapers at the centre’s launch. Good thing that we’ve had so much warning, then, as tech leaders can’t stop going on about the risks of automation, even as they push the tech forward. Tesla’s Elon Musk and DeepMind’s Mustafa Suleyman were just two signatories of an open letter this August calling for the UN to take action on…

Goodbye internal combustion, hello electric – that’s the refrain from car manufacturers, many of which are promising to shift to emission-less vehicles, while governments galore have outlined plans to ban petrol and diesel within three decades. Vacuum genius Sir James Dyson has hailed that bandwagon, pledging £2.5 billion in R&D investment and 400 engineers to develop a UK edition. A billion pounds of that cash is directed at the battery alone, with Dyson working on solidstate models designed to last from Cornwall to Scotland. The British engineering firm hopes to have cars on the road by 2020, racing rival Toyota with the same roadmap to use solid-state batteries in electric vehicles within three years. Here’s why both firms are looking at solid-state technologies – and what challenges may see them…

Regulators appear to have finally woken up to transport startups. Uber lost its licence in London, rival Taxify was suspended after just three days, and even bike-share startups have been slapped around by local councils, after oBike left a few too many bicycles scattered about on pavements. Transport for London (TfL) divided public opinion by failing to renew Uber’s licence to operate in the capital, with the regulator saying it wasn’t satisfied that the controversial cab-hailing app was “fit and proper”. The decision has nothing to do with driver pay – a separate issue that TfL should also act on – but concerns over Uber’s use of its “Greyball” software to avoid regulator attention, as well as how the company conducts criminal background and medical checks. Then there’s the small…