Table of contents for April 2019 in PC Pro

IF THERE’S ONE thing this issue of PC Pro teaches us, it’s that predictions are a mug’s game. On p124 you’ll find our 2020 special – a chance to look back at some of the things that have been predicted for the year 2020 over the years, and to wonder what on Earth we were thinking. Sadly, I now accept that I may never have a robot butler to call my own. However, one prediction that is edging closer to reality is driverless cars. Nothing to do with computers, you might think, but when I caught up with Nvidia at CES (see p28) the company took a very different view: after all, self-driving technology has everything to with supercomputing and machine learning. Appropriately, the neighbouring booth on the show floor…

Privacy experts are warning against new services that promise cash for data – platforms where consumers sell details directly into the data ecosystem. With Facebook, Google and data brokers facing criticism over the way they disseminate data, startups sense an opportunity to cash in by letting consumers sell their own information to the data exchanges. However, while the new companies – such as Datum, Ocean Protocol and Wibson, to name three – claim they are levelling the playing field by allowing consumers to profit, experts fear it will be a Pyrrhic victory. “You can’t solve the problem of your personal data being bought, sold, and commoditised through the hands of unknown unscrupulous third parties by you yourself commoditising your personal data and selling it to unknown unscrupulous third parties,” said…

@njkobie Facebook, Twitter and the rest are stupider than an 11-year-old child. I have one child in particular in mind, but we’ll get to her in a bit. The two social networks love adding new features that no-one asked for — algorithmically organised timelines! Promoted posts! New emoji! — but neither has managed to include one feature myself and many others would like to see: auto-deleting posts. I have apparently posted more than 21,000 messages on Twitter since I joined in 2009, and lord knows how much nonsense on Facebook since signing up in 2007. Over that time, how we use such sites has changed. In the early days of Facebook, it was perfectly normal to leave a message on a friend’s wall. Other people could see it, if they…

As usual, another excellent security article regarding two-factor authentication (2FA) over SMS by Davey Winder (see issue 293, p118). While I entirely agree with all the security issues he mentions, there are also fundamental functional problems with 2FA over SMS. It requires the mobile phone to be connected to the mobile network and able to receive SMS messages, which can be highly problematic internationally. Some websites and services won’t accept an international phone number and, even when they do, SMS delivery to international numbers or while roaming is highly unreliable. I have experienced this several times with the SMS codes simply not arriving, or arriving hours or days late, by which time they are useless as they’ve expired on the server. On one occasion, having spent an hour on the…

INTEL LAKEFIELD PRICE Not applicable AVAILABILITY Autumn/winter 2019 Intel’s CES announcements revealed more details of its intriguing Lakefield platform – including the code name. Inspired by a request from an anonymous system manufacturer, the idea is to create a low-power board that contains everything a PC needs to run, but in the same compact dimensions as a DDR4 memory module. Lakefield will include one powerful Ice Lake core and four energy-saving Atom cores. It’s Intel’s twist on the “big.Little” concept popular in phone processors, where lightweight cores keep the background processes ticking over, and the more powerful silicon fires up only as needed to handle more demanding tasks. It’s an intriguing idea that may find its way into ultra-slim devices; an Intel video showed a flipbook design similar to the…

Alexa is everywhere. Its takeover of an entire industry is stunning. If you are not Alexa-capable, either as a voice device or something that can respond to Alexa platform interfaces, you’re toast. Google is hanging on bravely, and Apple owns the high-value market with Siri, but Microsoft is nowhere to be seen. Other hits? The 2019 TVs from LG and Samsung are breathtaking, with real, meaningful and significant improvements in both picture quality and functionality. 8K upscaling makes sense, and Samsung demonstrated astonishing noise and artefact removal (under ideal conditions, of course). We also saw a growing openness from these companies, which is refreshing to see. There was also an array of amazing desktop monitors, including a truly drool-worthy ultra widescreen desktop monitor from LG coming later this year. Shall…

How often do you perform the same tasks over and over using your phone or PC? If you’re anything like us, parts of your daily routine will have a Groundhog Day feel, as you repeat yourself at set times, in certain locations or whenever specific events occur. Wouldn’t it be much simpler if you could hand off these chores to something built to process repetitive tasks? One of the most popular automation platforms is IFTTT (ifttt.com), and you’ll find some tips on using this on the following pages. But it’s possible to go much further: this month, we’ll explore some other tools that can perform many regular tasks entirely automatically. In every instance, what we outline is just an example, which can be built on using alternative extensions within the…

PRICE £608 (£729 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294acer While Acer is capable of making terrific kit for gamers, the Nitro 5 is a misstep, both as a gaming machine and as a budget option. Its performance is lacking, the design flawed and the touchpad almost unusable. Surely this £750 laptop is capable of doing something right? Let’s start with the design. At best, this can be described as clunky: it weighs 2.7kg, measures 26.8mm thick and has a large footprint of 390 x 266mm. Acer attempts to brighten up the boring red-and-black colour scheme with a chevron pattern on the lid and palm rest, but there’s no hiding behind its sub-standard build materials. The chassis is plasticky and feels cheap, while the thick bezels bordering the screen aren’t flush with the…

PRICE £4,074 (£4,889 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294sony Don’t be fooled by “4K projectors” costing around £1,000; these aren’t native 4K projectors, they use pixel-shift technology to simulate a 4K image. True 4K projectors, such as the Sony VPL-VW270ES, still cost a pretty penny. In fact, even at almost £5,000, this is Sony’s entry-level 4K projector. It uses Sony’s SXRD technology, which employs three 0.74in transmissive LCDs inside instead of the single, micro-mirror DLP chips used in cheaper 4K projectors, and this ensures super-sharp true 4K images at 4,096 x 2,160 pixels. The drawback? Heft. Where DLP projectors tend to be small, the Sony weighs a beefy 14kg and measures 496 x 464 x 205mm, so it’s best suited to a permanent installation–perhaps mounted to a VESA mount attached in the…

PRICE 64GB, £333 (£399 inc VAT) from blackberrymobile.com Although we heaped praise upon the BlackBerry Key2’s keyboard when we reviewed the phone in our recent Labs (see issue 292, p76), we had big problems with the price. It seems that TCL, the Chinese manufacturer behind the BlackBerry brand, is listening. By making a number of concessions, it’s produced this LE version at a price that just might tempt consumers and businesses alike. “Flip it over and you’ll find a rubberised back that feels wonderfully grippy in the hand and a genuine breath of fresh air” Key concessions The new Key2 LE comes in three configurations. For £349, you can buy the slate grey, single-SIM, 32GB version. An extra £50 doubles the storage to 64GB and gives you a dual-SIM–and the…

PRICE £342 (£410 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294mi8 Is it any surprise that Apple is losing sales momentum in China when the country is producing so many amazing phones of its own? The Xiaomi Mi 8 is the perfect example: a sub-£450 smartphone with an excellent camera, powerful components and flagship design. If this all sounds familiar, don’t panic: your memory isn’t failing you. We reviewed the Xiaomi Mi 8 Pro last month (see issue 293, p68), and the two phones have so much in common you almost wonder why Xiaomi bothered to bring them both out. One key shared ingredient is Qualcomm’s octacore Snapdragon 845 processor. This is one of the fastest chips you’ll find in an Android phone; as the graphs on p72 show, the Honor View 20 (see…

PRICE £106 (£127 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/295magic Devolo’s Magic WiFi kit promises “mesh WLAN without limits” – but it’s not the familiar sort of mesh system in which multiple nodes communicate wirelessly. Rather, its two stations use powerline networking to connect remote clients to your router: the mesh aspect simply means that you can add multiple access points to create a mesh-style topology. The approach has its advantages. While top speeds can rarely compete with a strong wireless signal, the connection isn’t troubled by things like radiators and walls, so it’s ideal for extending your wireless network into areas that may otherwise be unable to receive a stable signal. It’s also very easy to set up. Simply connect the base station to your router using the supplied Ethernet cable, then…

PRICE £63 (£75 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294ac55 The RP-AC55 is one of the smallest Wi-Fi repeaters in this Labs: but for the antennae it would be smaller than the tiny Devolo WiFi Repeater ac (see opposite). That means there’s no space for a mains pass-through, but Asus squeezes a Gigabit Ethernet port into the righthand side, and on the opposite side there’s not only a WPS pairing button but also an on/off switch. On paper, the RP-AC55 claims connection speeds of up to 867Mbits/sec, which of course has more or less zero bearing on the performance you’ll actually see. In practice, the fastest download speed I attained was 7.6MB/sec in the bathroom: that’s more than 60% faster than similarly specified repeaters from Devolo, Tenda and TP-Link, but a long way…

PRICE £41 (£49 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294dev Devolo’s 802.11ac repeater is compact – you don’t need to worry about its 59mm width getting in the way of nearby sockets and fixtures – and the white multisegment LED display on the front shows the strength of the connection to your router in a futuristic style. But this doesn’t necessarily guarantee whizzy downloads. With the Repeater installed in my regular hallway testing location, a reassuring four out of five LEDs shone out –yet test results fell short of expectations. In fact, as I roamed about the house I repeatedly found I was better off connecting directly to my router, even where the signal was much weaker. The problem is consistency. Most of this month’s extenders transferred our test files at fairly even…

PRICE £22 (£26 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294sock “A handy WPS button on the front of the face plate will automatically connect to your router and replicate its settings” Some of this month’s extenders are pretty compact – but for the ultimate in elegance and convenience, how about a repeater that’s built right into the plug socket? BG’s Wi-Fi Extender Socket is designed to replace a standard two-socket face plate, so it sits completely flush with the wall, and you don’t need to sacrifice a mains outlet to plug in an external extender. It comes in both standard white and a swish brushed metal design – and, as a bonus, it also features a 2.1A USB connector, so you can ditch the phone charger and free up another socket. The idea…

PRICE £40 (£48 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294re365 If you’re more concerned about style than speed, TP-Link’s RE365 extender is a winner for sure. Its distinctive hooped design and aqua trim are a breath of fresh air among this month’s characterless white boxes. The LED ring in the middle – which changes colour to show you the status of your network – is tasteful too, while the much smaller activity lights are tucked away at the side. The web-based configuration portal is equally smart. Like the WPA9610, the RE365 uses the same basic interface as TP-Link’s routers, allowing you to set up access controls according to a schedule, enforce either a whitelist or blacklist of clients, and turn down the transmission power, to make it harder for eavesdroppers to detect and…

It may not be obvious how best to handle having two separate wireless networks in your home But, before we begin, let’s forget about extenders for a moment – as you almost certainly already have two different Wi-Fi networks, one on the 2.4GHz band and the other on the 5GHz band. They’re both handled by your router, and you can use either to get online, but make no mistake: these are completely separate networks. If you don’t see two networks, that’s because many routers use the same name on both bands, and your computer will present them as a single connection. When you connect, your client will pick a band based on signal strength, and as you move around the house it will switch back and forth to follow the…

PRICE From £252 exc VAT from kerio.com If you’re looking to switch to VoIP on a tight budget, Kerio’s Operator is certainly an attractive option. Prices start at just £252, which includes the server licence, support for up to five users and the first year’s maintenance contract. After that, renewals are charged at around a third of the initial price, with additional user licences costing £21 each. Though the pricing is generous, you might also need to budget a few quid for softphone apps: while many VoIP vendors provide these for free, Kerio’s apps are only free on the desktop – its iOS and Android offerings cost £2.99 and £3.59 per user respectively. The server software is Linux-based, and can be installed on any reasonably specified hardware platform, or virtualised…

PRICE Diskless, £796 exc VAT from span.com For businesses seeking a highcapacity desktop NAS appliance, Synology’s DS1817+ was an appealing option, but it was held back by an underpowered Atom C2538 CPU. The new DS1819+ fixes that with a more powerful quad-core 2.1GHz Atom C3538, plus faster DDR4 RAM. It’s an impressively expandable design. It comes with 4GB as standard, but can be easily upgraded to 32GB via two SODIMM slots behind a removable hatch in the base. At the rear there’s a quartet of Gigabit Ethernet ports – if you need more bandwidth, the PCIe slot accepts industry standard 10GbE adapters. Or, you can fit Synology’s M2D18 dual-slot M.2 SATA/NVMe SSD card to provide a high-performance cache. And, if it’s capacity you crave, dual eSATA ports let you connect…

Just as having cyber insurance is not a “get out of jail free” card to be played when it comes to your security strategy, neither is it a guaranteed financial cushion should your business suffer a data breach and all the costs that come as a result. Being the victim of a cyber attack alone is almost never going to be enough; when it comes to making a claim you will need to show that you did everything that could be reasonably expected to protect your organisation from finding itself in the position it’s in now. Which is fair enough when you think about it: insurers won’t pay out if you leave your keys in an unlocked car and it gets stolen, so why should they if you leave your…

“Then I looked at the Vodafone website, and, to be polite, my head exploded with the confusion” @jonhoneyball “I remembered from years ago how a vendor had tried to put LCD panels into the top of keys” It’s not unknown for me to change my mind about something. Situations change, needs change, and the multifaceted decision-making process should always be open to revisiting and revision. So having said a few months ago that I wasn’t going to buy a new MacBook Pro anytime soon, I confess that I have changed my mind and made a significant purchase. What was the reason for my original thinking and what changed? Well, consider its predecessor, which was a 13in MacBook Pro based on a Core i7 with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB…

@userfriendlypc “The scammers constantly modify their attack delta to maximise their greatest weapon–plausibility” “Effective tech scams are like rainbows – not around for long, invisible to most and the pot of gold will never be found” Although this dates back a few years, I’ll never forget the tears in Joseph’s eyes as he told me what had happened. It was the first time we’d seen a computer scam have such a powerful effect. His PC had picked up the Ukash malware, which from a repair perspective just requires a boot disk and some tinkering with Regedit – but I want to give an insight into how some of our customers have been affected by different tech scams. Joseph existed in a bubble unchanged since the late 1970s when he was…

We explore the trends and technologies that are set to shape the future Have you bought your jetpack yet? What about that flying car? Nicole Kobie explores the predictions we got right about 2020, and where our crystal ball went haywire The year 2020 used to sound like the future, but now it’s only a matter of months away. What you once pictured that future would look like depends more on when you imagined it than any other factor, but there are plenty of visions of 2020 that won’t be coming true. Honda, Toyota and other carmakers pledged to have self-driving cars hurtling down the motorway by 2020, while US military agency DARPA wanted flying cars – depending on how you define either tech, they’re either already here or they’re…

What will the world of tech be like in 2025 or 2030? Not too terribly different from this one. Tech’s pace of change can feel fast, but people aren’t so quick to change. This isn’t cynicism speaking, although after more than a decade writing about what’s next, it’s tough not to roll my eyes. I’ve sat through keynote speech after speech declaring that laptops will soon have wireless charging, 3D printers will be in every home for quick and easy part replacement, and quantum computing is just around the corner. That said, I also remember scoffing at Twitter, covering my ears through the screech of connecting over dial-up broadband and leaving the house without my smartphone. Change does happen, it’s just slower and more subtle than the headlines suggest. Ten…

THE PRICE OF zero-day exploits has reached an all-time high – largely due to demand from the government and law-enforcement agencies who should be stamping them out. While companies such as Google run bug bounty schemes to encourage security researchers to disclose exploits they find, the black and grey market is far more lucrative, with payments for a single exploit peaking as high as $2 million. According to Zerodium – which calls itself the “leading exploit acquisition platform for premium zero-days” – rewards for researchers with hacks for iOS and messaging apps have never been higher. The firm says it will, depending on the quality and strength, pay $2 million for remote jailbreak exploits that require no user clicks – an increase of $500,000 on last year’s price. A local…

Although several platforms target user data for advertising, another driver is developing AI in healthcare. Google’s DeepMind was recently criticised after using millions of UK health records to improve AI, but the main criticism was that the health authorities responsible for the data hadn’t gained consent. But data as a tool for advancement is catching on. “Just providing data so that Oracle or Axiom can beef up your profile, so that you can be hit with adverts in a more honed manner, has little public and social value,” said McCann. “But there are cooperative schemes where everyone benefits.” McCann cited a Swiss-based project called Midata, where people can share medical data for the benefit of society. “Members of the co-op can decide to share this mass of data and, within…

@dariengs If you’re a major technology brand and you want to sell a new laptop, or high-end tablet, the key is to market it at creators. Not savvy millennials, not deep-pocketed executives, but creators. That’s been the unwritten rule for the past few years – and, as our own Barry Collins tweeted during CES, it’s a trend that shows no sign of dying out in 2019. It’s a clever bit of positioning, because who doesn’t want to be a creator? A regular laptop might be fine for the masses who just want to check their email and forward memes back and forth on WhatsApp, but it’s flattering to think of oneself as a member of a special class with loftier needs. And so we persuade ourselves that we need to…

I love strings. I don’t mean balls of string, G-strings, particle physics string theory or puppet strings. I mean that plain and simple old data structure, a load of ASCII arranged in a row, the second type we all learn after numbers. “Hello World!” is a string; strings are the way that computers talk to us. Okay, now they all contain a chip that can turn strings into sounds, but that’s just to humour us – inside, they talk strings. All the words I’m typing here are strings. The first computer language I learned was BASIC, on a Commodore 4K PET back in 1979, before the advent of bitmapped screens. Being a wordy sort of person, and having no graphics available, I found string functions grabbed my imagination. One of…

CES isn’t just the world’s biggest technology show, it’s the world’s craziest technology show. Almost 200,000 people descend upon Las Vegas for the chance to see what’s going to be released, and it’s a truly motley collection of people: the exhibitors, the “buyers” for companies such as Dixons Group, plus thousands of journalists to spread the word. This year, we saw one stand-out theme: screens. Not boring old TVs, but flexible screens that may well change the shape of the devices we use in years to come. We also saw a fascinating mainstream debut for Samsung’s MicroLED tech, which not only gets rid of the bezels but frees us all from the idea of a fixed resolution panel. Want weird and wonderful resolutions? Samsung’s MicroLED tech can do it. We…

PRICE £140 from uk.creative.com AVAILABILITY Now Ispent a couple of hours with Creative Labs at CES as it showed off a production-ready version of a technology it prototyped last year. In essence, it’s an amplifier/DSP processor box that feeds your headphones and allows for the creation of true 360-degree spatially correct sound from appropriate multichannel sources. The concept isn’t new. The human hearing mechanism relies on a clear understanding of the shape of your head, and your ears, to determine where a sound originates from. This is because the head, nose, forehead and ear pinnae create a different acoustical path to one ear compared to the other when the sound source is off centre. This “occlusion” is unique to each user, and the ear/brain interface learns when we’re babies. Binaural…

AMD RADEON VII PRICE $699 AVAILABILITY 7 February 2019 AMD president Dr Lisa Su announced its first 7nm gaming CPU: the Radeon VII. AMD’s benchmarks suggest it’s around 25% faster than the previous top-of-theline Radeon RX Vega 64, but the gaming community has reacted cautiously. Why? There’s no native ray tracing support, rumours suggest AMD won’t be able to produce the cards in huge volumes for the foreseeable future (something it disputes) and the gamers were hoping for a bigger jump in frame rates. NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2060 PRICE £329 from nvidia.com AVAILABILITY Now If spending almost $700 on a graphics card doesn’t fill you with glee, Nvidia’s launch of the GeForce RTX 2060 should. It won’t be as fast as the Radeon VII above, but early benchmarks suggest that…

Put the spec sheet of your smartphone’s camera side-by-side with that of the latest DSLRs and you may struggle to see the difference. Massively high megapixel counts, f/1.2 lenses, RAW image shooting… the similarities are striking. Manufacturers have been quick to capitalise on rapid improvements in sensor tech, while boosts in processing power mean phones are capable of doing the sort of image editing on-the-fly that would have had Photoshop users watching the egg-timer cursor not long ago. But just how good are smartphone cameras? If the manufacturers are to be believed, the days of DSLRs are well and truly numbered, and the marketing blurb coming from smartphone makers is as hyperbolic as ever. We reveal why the hype doesn’t quite match the facts. SENSORY PERCEPTION Can you fairly compare…

PRICE £1,899 (£2,279 inc VAT) from toshiba.co.uk When is a laptop not a laptop? When it’s a tablet with a sturdy detachable keyboard that also packs a second battery! Admittedly, this isn’t going to win the Edinburgh Fringe funniest joke award, but it’s something you should keep in mind when considering the fascinating Portégé X30T-E. I say fascinating because this is a 2-in-1 like no other. In some ways, it’s reminiscent of the Microsoft Surface Book 2: they’re both essentially laptops, except the screen detaches when you want to use it as a tablet. And in other ways, it’s like a Surface Pro: the screen includes a kickstand to give the screen support when on a flat surface, and the keyboard detaches in a very similar way. The one crucial…

PRICE £2,167 (£2,600 inc VAT) from yoyotech.co.uk or Game stores This is the second system we’ve seen to partner Intel’s Core i9-9900K with a GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card, a combination that debuted in the Asus ROG Strix GL12CX (see issue 291, p57). As the adage goes, good things come to those who wait–and in this case you not only save £400, but also have a much quieter and more agreeable system. That’s good news. When you’re in the midst of a game, no doubt simultaneously broadcasting to your loyal Twitch fans, quiet-running fans when the system is pushed are hugely welcome. And that’s where the Warbird X2 scores a major victory: while you can hear low-level fan noise all the time, it only steps up a mild notch when…

In association with SCHOOLS, COLLEGES AND universities are all too familiar with falling budgets, rising workloads and time pressure. And they’re also familiar with promises about how technology can improve productivity, when it can just cause more aggravation and paperwork. So we’d understand your cynicism if we described an assistant that would always be on call, could automate marking and even help administrators deal with the paperwork associated with new students. Well, put aside your cynicism for a second. That assistant is already here and is helping hundreds of schools and colleges around the UK. While it may look like an ordinary printer, the real brains of the operation lie in the way Kyocera’s technology helps you–every single day. Create and automatically mark tests Everyone hates marking, so what if…

PRICE Red MX, £67 (£80 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk Cherry describes the MX Board 1.0 Backlight as “the ideal keyboard for avid writers”–and it’s a claim I’ve been putting to the test myself over the past three months. There are two versions of the board: one with “silent” Red MX switches (code G80-3816LWBGB-2) and one with noisy Brown MX switches (G80-3816LXBGB-2). If you go for the former option, don’t expect actual silence. The Red MX switches aren’t exactly intrusive, but you can clearly hear every press. Still, they’re much quieter than the Brown MX keys, whose loud clickety-clack will be familiar to anyone who used IBM’s big mechanical keyboards of yore. If someone were sitting next to you in an office banging away on a Brown MX keyboard, you might…

As is surely appropriate for a second opinion, I’m going to approach the BlackBerry Key2 LE slightly differently from Alan: instead of thinking of this as being a replacement for your phone, consider it as a second device. In particular, how would it work as a business-supplied phone for your staff? My view? It was born for this role. As a main phone, the Key2 LE’s drawbacks are annoying–that oddly shaped screen, the lacklustre camera, mediocre speed–but as a second phone such criticisms dwindle into insignificance. I’d even argue they become a plus. If there’s a clear divide between work and home, then you can enforce the strict security measures that Alan mentions in the main review without annoying staff. If they want to check their personal email then they’re…

PRICE £167 (£200 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294smart While its parent company attracted all sorts of unfortunate headlines, Huawei the phone manufacturer had a phenomenal 2018. The Mate 20 Pro was arguably the phone of the year. But the world’s second-largest smartphone maker isn’t just focused on those with big bank balances: 2019 is starting with a budget handset, the Huawei P Smart. Not that you’d think it’s a budget device to look at it. As the name suggests, it’s a smart-looking device with slim bezels and a display that pushes across the entire front of the device, barring a small circular notch at the top. It can still unlock the phone via face recognition, but there’s a handy fingerprint reader on the rear of the phone. Holding the P Smart…

PRICE £110 (£132 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294x6s If you’re looking for a dinky little extender to plug unobtrusively into a wall socket, this won’t be a case of love at first sight. Standing nearly 23cm tall, the Nighthawk X6S is the size of a full-blown router – and its upright design makes it tricky to hide away under a sofa or on a shelf. Yet the Nighthawk X6S’ unusual size is justified by what’s inside. Most Wi-Fi extenders use a single radio to talk to both your router and connected clients: this results in constant contention, which slashes the effective bandwidth. The X6S boasts a tri-band design, in which a single 2.4GHz radio is partnered with two 5GHz radios – one of which handles backhaul communications with the router, while…

PRICE £120 (£144 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294ac87 At a whopping 118mm across, the Asus RP-AC87 is the largest wall-mounted extender we’ve ever encountered. There’s a rotating mains plug built into the rear, so you can angle it upwards or sideways – but forget about plugging anything else in on either side. We’d have appreciated a mains pass-through socket, and perhaps more than one Gigabit Ethernet connector. At the front, two multi-segment LED indicators show the strength of the connection to your router on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. With four external aerials it’s easy to get a good signal, and Asus claims a maximum 5GHz data rate of 1,734Mbits/sec, matching Netgear’s flagship X6S. In our tests, the RP-AC87 was a decent performer. Download speeds were head and shoulders above…

PRICE £83 (£100 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294x4s The Netgear Nighthawk X4S wireless repeater uses a tri-band radio array to maximise your throughput, but this model comes in a more compact, wall-mounted form. However, it entails compromises. For one, the X4S’ internals aren’t as powerful as its big brother’s, with a theoretical maximum data rate of 867Mbits/sec on the 5GHz band, versus the 1,733Mbits/sec of the X6S. Still, such figures can be misleading. A performance gap was clearly visible in our tests, but the X4S averaged a respectable 68% of the overall speed of the X6S – and in the kitchen, bathroom and utility room it was still faster than any other rival. It only faltered when we stepped out onto the rear terrace: evidently its smaller aerials struggled to punch…

PRICE £26 (£31 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294ph5 Thirty quid is remarkably cheap for a complete powerline Wi-Fi extender kit. And while Tenda’s AV1000 units aren’t much to look at, they don’t feel like budget devices. The base unit is compact and the access point is cleanly designed, with illuminated push-buttons to initiate WPS pairing, and to connect the unit to a partner. A mains pass-through socket would have been nice, though. The real trade-off is that this is a 2.4GHz-only extender. That doesn’t rule it out of contention: it will still work with all your wireless devices, and it’s fast enough for web browsing and even HD video streaming. 4K is likely to be a stretch, though – Netflix recommends a connection of at least 25Mbits/sec for that, equivalent to…

Practical buying and strategic advice for IT managers and decision makers Businesses hate to spend money fixing things that aren’t obviously broken – so if you’re still relying on old PSTN and ISDN telephone systems, that’s perfectly understandable. Yet there are plenty of good reasons to make the hop to VoIP, a mature communications technology that can deliver so much more than traditional landlines. Probably the most persuasive argument is the huge reduction in operating costs. Both local and international calls are much cheaper over VoIP than regular phone services – and if you have multiple offices, many providers will let you make calls between your own sites for free. It’s worth bearing in mind that sooner or later you’re going to have to move whether you want to or…

PRICE From£7.99 per month exc VAT fromringcentral.co.uk RingCentral Office is one of the most popular cloud-hosted VoIP services around, and it’s easy to see why. It has a huge range of call-handling features and a wide choice of call plans, so you can keep costs down by picking one that fits your needs. For maximum flexibility you can even opt to pay monthly, but yearly contracts offer a substantial 38% price reduction. The Standard plan comes with plenty of bells and whistles. For a monthly fee of £14.99 (on a yearly commitment), each user gets 750 outbound call minutes, plus 250 minutes of calls to specified freephone numbers. Detailed call analytics are provided, plus access to RingCentral’s sophisticated “interactive voice response” menu feature. Even the basic Entry version still offers…

PRICE £124 exc VAT from ebuyer.com Zyxel’s NWA1302-AC is a wireless AP with a difference. As well as the expected 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless services, this little white box has three Gigabit LAN ports, one of them PoE+-enabled. This makes it ideal for meeting rooms, reception areas and any areas needing both wired and wireless network services, and it can also power devices such as IP phones. Physically, the NWA1302-AC is unassuming. It measures just 90 x 170mm, and looks like a plain plastic box – although it has a sturdy metal baseplate. The three Ethernet ports are tucked away at the bottom, while the uplink port is concealed in a recess at the side. A supplied mounting plate means the unit can be easily located near to – or…

@PaulOckenden “EE is furiously plugging holes in its network availability–you can’t have PC Plod unable to radio in for help” Astrange thing happened this month. Two readers contacted me with seemingly different questions, but when I dug deeper, they were both different versions of the same underlying thing. You might remember how I’ve often written that, when considering changing networks, you should do a manual search on your phone to see which of them comes near the top of the list as these will have the strongest signal. Well, James contacted me via Twitter to say that he’d done this, but he was surprised to see his phone list Virgin Mobile as one of the networks available. James explained that his phone was on the Three network, so was surprised…

@happygeek “Automation is the key that will unlock a truly profitable criminal treasure chest” “The World Wide Web might be a more secure place if Edge didn’t get that engine transplant” Microsoft is to pack up developing the Edge browser that has plagued the Windows 10 users it tried to force it upon. Good riddance to insecure rubbish. Okay, maybe that’s a little harsh, but Edge has hardly done much to warm itself to the security community. You’ve only got to look at the fact that it was the single most pwned browser client at the latest Pwn2Own contest. This doesn’t mean that Chrome is secure, merely that it’s a better bet than Edge at the moment. Edge isn’t dead, though, nor will it be killed off by Microsoft: what’s…

On sale 14 March 2019 LABS Secure yourdata Many products promise they’ll protect you in the event of an attack such as ransomware. But will they? We put them to the test Subscribe today Start your subscription to PC Pro and claim a free three-in-one USB charging cable, while stocks last. You can read PC Pro in print, on your iPad, iPhone or Kindle Fire. See p108 for details. FEATURES How to play the latest games on any computer You’re no longer stuck with the graphics in your laptop. We pitch cloud gaming against external graphics cards Secrets of Google Drive, Docs and Sheets If you want to get more out of Google’s excellent suite of tools, make sure you read our practical guide Were you born a cyber victim?…

1 Microsoft puts Windows 10 Mobile out of its misery Microsoft has told device users still running Windows 10 Mobile to swap platforms to either Android or iOS. Microsoft warned that security updates would cease in December 2019 and that services on the platform would stop working. 2 Apple bruised as China market bites Apple was hit with some unwelcome economic reality when it saw its share price slump on dwindling sales in China, amongst other factors. Its share price plunged by 7.5%, or $55 billion, following the profits warning. 3 Google falls foul of privacyregs Google’s legal woes continued with a £44 million fine by the French data protection agency CNIL over EU Data Protection Regulation violations. The agency ruled that Google provided poor levels of information for users…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Dell XPS 13 9370 Ultraportable from £1,199 from dell.co.uk This 2018 update to the all-dominant Dell XPS 13 keeps tweaks to the minimum: slimmer bezels, eighth-generation Intel Core processors and the promise of even longer battery life are the most important benefits. Just keep in mind that Dell has embraced USB-C ports at the expense of the old-fashioned Type-A variety. REVIEW Issue 284, p54 ALTERNATIVES Apple MacBook Pro 15in (2018) A machine for true power users with amazing specifications, including that infamous Core i9 – and up to 4TB of SSD storage. From £2,349 from apple.com/uk REVIEW Issue 288, p48 Dell XPS 15 We all know what to expect from Dell’s XPS 15 range, yet it continues to reign supreme – this time thanks to sheer speed, courtesy…

@bazzacollins Las Vegas isn’t the first place you go for a good dollop of common sense. The CES show floor even less so, with everything from smart lightbulbs to 100in flat screens bathed in hype and bluster. So it came as something of a surprise to turn up at one of the many conferences of CES’s press day and find myself nodding along to a speaker delivering sentence after sentence of sensible dialogue. Even more surprisingly – it came from one of the car manufacturers. Now, I’m something of a self-driving car sceptic. It will happen one day, of course, but I think the chances of self-driving cars mingling seamlessly with human-operated vehicles on the roads is far-fetched. There are far too many knotty challenges to overcome. At best, you’re…

LENOVO THINKPAD X1 YOGA GEN 4 PRICE From $1,929 AVAILABILITY June 2019 The big change to the X1 Yoga in this fourth incarnation is its all-aluminium chassis, which helped Lenovo to reduce its footprint by 17% compared to its predecessor – and it’s lighter, too, at 1.39kg. That’s quite an achievement for a convertible with a 14in screen. While we aren’t besotted by its slate-grey looks, the overall effect is of a sleek convertible that will be a joy to travel with. Note that Lenovo still finds a home within the chassis to stow the ThinkPad Pen Pro, solving one of our problems with the otherwise excellent Toshiba Portégé X30T-E (see p48). With the promise of up to 15 hours battery life, two Thunderbolt 3 ports and a privacy cover…

ROYOLE FLEXIBLE SCREEN PRICE Not applicable AVAILABILITY Now Bendable screens are this year’s hot tech. Endless queues formed to see the Royole FlexPai in action, with the firm’s Android-powered “tablet” folding in half to create a double-screened phone. In truth, the FlexPai feels like a sample rather than a fully fledged product – but you can buy a “developer model” from royole.com/flexpai for £1,209, with buggy software and middling screen quality. However, that misses the point: device designers need no longer be constrained by flat, unbendable screens, but instead imagine radical new ideas. LG SIGNATURE OLED TV PRICE Not specified AVAILABILITY Distant The LG Signature OLED TV is something special. When not in use, the screen rolls down into a base unit that looks like a giant speaker. But when…

There isn’t much point in buying the X30T-E unless you’re going to use it as a tablet frequently. You can get away with finger prodding to a certain extent, but if you’re serious about writing notes, annotating documents or sketching on-screen, you’ll need to invest in a stylus. Toshiba sensibly includes one in the box, unlike Microsoft. It’s an active stylus – feeding off a single AAA battery – and is one of the best examples I’ve used. While it’s always an exaggeration to say “it feels like you’re writing on paper”, the combination of stylus and screen comes extraordinarily close here. The principle reason for this is a detectable friction between nib and screen, and combined with excellent palm rejection technology, I immediately felt comfortable drawing on screen and…

PRICE £1,333 (£1,599 inc VAT) from cyberpowersystem.co.uk If I had £1,599 to spend on a gaming PC right now, this is the exact specification I’d choose. Intel’s eight-core, overclockable i7-9700K processor goes perfectly with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2070 graphics, and 16GB of fast RAM ensures everything runs without a hiccup. It proved a winning formula for PC Specialist a few months back, with its Vortex Adonis (see issue 292, p58) earning a place on the A-List. And now, Cyberpower UK–the British arm of a US company that’s been building PCs since 1998–has used the same recipe to create a PC that tackles the Adonis head on. Since the core specification is the same, performance is, as you’d expect, very similar. The Cyberpower scored 281 in our benchmarks compared to 271…

PRICE £67 (£80 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294yeti “Not everyone wants a mic that measures 30cm high and weighs 1.6kg, as in the Yeti’s case–so the Yeti Nano is shrunk down” Blue has carved out an enviable reputation for its microphones, and for the Yeti in particular. As its name gives away, the Yeti Nano is a compact version of one of the most famous desktop mics in the business. After all, not everyone wants a mic that measures 30cm high and weighs 1.6kg, as the full-size Yeti does–so the Nano is shrunk to a more travel-friendly 21.1cm, and weighs only 630g. To give the Yeti Nano a real-world test, I threw it in my case and took it on a journey to CES (see p28), where I and other members…

PRICE £208 (£250 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294jbl Following on from the Google Home Hub and Lenovo Smart Display, the JBL Link Visit View is the latest Google Assistant-powered smart speaker to hit the shelves. You can use it to play music and YouTube videos, show cooking instructions and control all your smart devices from one place. You can even make free audio calls to mobiles and landlines. Despite having an 8in display, the JBL Link View is much closer in size to the 10in Lenovo Smart Display than the diminutive 7in Google Home Hub. At 100mm deep, it’s small enough to squeeze on a large bedside table. Unlike its rivals, the JBL Link View is also IPX4 water-resistant, which means it’s protected from water splashes. So why is it so…

PRICE 128GB, £417 (£500 inc VAT) from hihonor.com/uk Honor’s View 20 introduces the world’s first in-display selfie camera. Yes, Honor has eradicated the hated notch, without having to resort to sliding mechanisms or mechanised pop-up cameras–just a tiny, unobtrusive circular cut-out at the upper left of the display. It’s an impressive feat, beating Samsung to the punch by many months. The View 20 is also the first flagship phone in almost six months to feature a 3.5mm headphone jack. It’s refreshing to see a manufacturer refusing to slavishly follow an inexplicable trend. Design and build quality But the phone’s biggest talking point is that notchless design. Instead of extending down from the bezel, the camera is set into the upper left of the phone’s large 6.4in display. It’s gloriously unobtrusive,…

PRICE £317 (£380 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com Nokia calls the 8.1 a “value flagship”, by which it means that this phone isn’t kitted out with the fastest components, but packs everything else you’d expect of a flagship phone: a 6.2in, 18:9 IPS display, some of the best cameras around and a slim, stylish design. Crafted from a single block of aluminium, and available in either blue or “Steel/Copper”, the silvertinted highlight around the edge looks swish. A slim 8mm depth and smooth-coated rear also make it nice to hold. Slightly rounded corners are another nice touch, and the screen is topped with a layer of NEG Dinorex to protect from scratches and drops, rather than Corning Gorilla Glass. A circular fingerprint reader is placed on the rear of the phone…

This month, we’ve tested our extenders in a real-world domestic dwelling – a two-storey maisonette in inner London. The speeds we’ve observed will inevitably differ from what you might see in your own home: perhaps you’ll experience less interference, resulting in a faster connection. Or, perhaps you’ll have thicker walls that result in more limited coverage. However, if extender A consistently performs better than extender B in our home, that’s a good indicator that it will do so in your home, too. For testing, we use a router located in the living room at the front of the house. Each extender is installed in the central hallway on the upper floor – a location not too close to the router, but offering a good connection. We then test how quickly…

PRICE £83 (£100 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294wpa TP-Link’s powerline networking kit has a lot in common with Devolo’s Magic 1 WiFi package. It comprises a chunky base unit that connects to your router via Ethernet, and a slightly chunkier access point that plugs in elsewhere in your home and hosts the extended network. And just like the Devolo system, it claims to deliver data rates of up to 867Mbits/sec over 802.11ac. As always, though, that figure bears very little resemblance to the transfer speeds you’ll see. In my tests, the fastest download rate I obtained was 11.1MB/sec – equivalent to around 89Mbits/sec, or barely more than 10% of the advertised speed. Even knowing that real-world performance never lives up to manufacturers’ claims, this was a disappointment. The Devolo extender kit…

PRICE £107 (£128 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294dlan The dLAN 1200+ kit is an older incarnation of Devolo’s Magic WiFi powerline kit, and the resemblance is hard to miss. The two systems use the same physical casings, sport the same pairing buttons and include the same Ethernet provision – namely one Gigabit port on the base unit, for connection to your router, and two on the access point for wiring up static devices. Skim down the spec sheet and you’ll see that their radios are also rated at the same speeds. The difference is the powerline tech: the Magic units claim a maximum data rate of 2,400Mbits/sec, while the dLAN 1200+ (as the name suggests) offers only half of that. This certainly doesn’t mean you’ll see twice the download speeds from…

PRICE £18 (£22 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294a15 With its pocket-money price tag, the Tenda A15 is the cheapest Wi-Fi extender we’ve seen. It’s also the smallest: even with its two little aerials on the sides, it will plug into any socket without obstructing neighbouring plugs. While a compact design is convenient, it tends to go hand in hand with a low-power radio and small antennae – and those in turn have an impact on performance. Skim down our feature table and you’ll notice that the A15 claims a maximum data rate of 433Mbits/sec on the 5GHz channel, while every competing product promises at least double that. It was hardly a shock, then, to see the A15 place well down the table in our speed tests. Over 802.11ac it gave us…

PRICE £23 (£27 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/294p200 Incredibly, Tenda’s P200 + PW201A powerline networking kit manages to undercut the company’s own PH5 AV1000 system: the two-piece set will cost you just £27. It’s not just cheaper, but smaller too, the access point having a compact footprint of 60 x 94mm, while the base is somehow even more petite at just 53mm square. Given the price and size, it’s not a huge surprise to discover that this is another 2.4GHz-only extender kit. But, while the PH5 claims a maximum connection speed of 1,000Mbits/sec over your electrical wiring, the P200 cites a much more pedestrian 200Mbits/sec. Predictably, therefore, there’s a sizeable performance gap. Where the PH5 delivered a pretty respectable 4.5MB/sec in the kitchen, the PW201A served up just 1.8MB/sec, and barely…

“And yet… hand on heart, if my friends and family were to ask me whether they should buy a Nighthawk extender, I’d hesitate” The last time I put together a roundup of wireless extenders was way back in 2016 – and I have to admit, this time around I wasn’t expecting to see anything particularly new. After all, we’re still using the same 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio bands, and it’s going to be a good few years before the forthcoming 10Gbits/sec 802.11ax standard finds its way into consumer devices. For now, the likes of you and me are still using the same 802.11ac connections we were three years ago, and with the advent of mesh technology, I doubted there would be much life left in the extender market at all.…

PRICE 16SC Standard: £536 exc VAT with 1st year maintenance from 3cx.com One of the best known names in the IP PBX business, 3CX Phone System has plenty to offer SMBs that want to host their own VoIP platform. It’s loaded with features and it’s licensed by the number of simultaneous calls you want to support, rather than the number of physical extensions – so you don’t have to agonise over who gets a phone and who doesn’t. What’s more, the 16SC service, which supports 16 simultaneous calls, is completely free for the first year, including support. After that, you can start paying the standard rate, or drop down to the always-free 4SC version. Phone System can be installed on either a Windows or Linux server – and it doesn’t…

PRICE From £14.95 per month exc VAT from sipgateteam.co.uk If you’re starting out small, but looking for a cloud VoIP service that can grow with your business, Sipgate Team could be the ideal choice. Its flexible monthly contracts help you keep costs under control, and you don’t have to worry about picking the wrong plan, as you can instantly upgrade or downgrade your services whenever you wish. The entry-level Light plan starts at £14.95 per month for three users – a mere £5 each. The catch is that this doesn’t include calls to landlines and mobiles, which are charged to your account as they’re made. For most users, therefore, it makes sense to tack on one of Sipgate’s call packages. These start from an extra £30 per month and include…

“You’re statistically more likely to make a cyber claim than have a fire… employees are very susceptible to social engineering” “There’s more cyber-enabled crime than all other crimes put together,” said Duncan Sutcliffe, director of Sutcliffe & Co Insurance Brokers. “Yet here we are insuring against fire, flood, burglaries, while only 5% of businesses are buying cyber insurance.” Sutcliffe admits that it’s a hard sell. Cyber insurance doesn’t cover anything tangible, such as a building, car, or office full of computers, yet the potential for damage caused by a data breach, leak or unauthorised server penetration can be far more serious than the loss of hardware. “Cyber is an extension to a lot of traditional insurance policies,” said James Brady, head of cyber for specialist insurance provider Hiscox, who has…

@stardotpro “Like most of the businesses I see, I had fallen into the trap of assuming that horse power conquers all” Simple questions, complex answers. That’s what the network business often throws at us, although you’d be forgiven for thinking that this is by conscious design or a moment of lunacy once you’re deep into the diagnosis of any given network problem. I spent a lot of time on the phone to EDF Energy in the closing months of 2018. Initially this wasn’t about networks, but rather about billing. EDF swore blind it had been reading my meter, which was a pretty clever feat because it’s mounted in a cubby with an externally accessed door, and when I went to verify its claims it was corroded shut, the big square…

Predicting more than a decade out is both easy and difficult: genuine change can happen over such a time period, but that makes accuracy difficult. Will Higham argues that ten or more years is plenty of time to get through legislation for driverless cars and to create truly smart homes, with LCD or similar technologies letting us re-decorate our walls at the click of a mouse. “I think we’ll definitely start seeing robots in homes,” he said. By 2030, Higham also predicts more human integrated tech, such as finger, voice or brain-controlled devices – something futurists have long predicted – as well as new materials, such as graphene and lab-grown meat. Cheesewright thinks the real revolution in smart homes will be how they’re powered, with decentralised, renewable sources, such as…

I always find it intriguing to follow the rises and falls, the ebb and flow, of the IT marketplace. What’s in and what’s out? Who are the rising stars, and who are the has-beens? It’s not always about shiny new ideas. We still rely heavily on old-fashioned tools such as word processors and spreadsheets. Look at Microsoft Office and you’ll see little that’s significantly changed from 20 years ago. Yes, the products today are much more capable than those of the past. But it’s hard to pin down any big changes that make a real difference to individual users. Windows as an operating system hasn’t really changed that much either. The shift to 64-bit, the new memory management model, new graphics engines and a host of other details are all…