Table of contents for June 2015 in PC & Tech Authority

Upgrading any time soon? We’re not far off the next big thing in PCs, being of course Intel’s Skylake CPU, and with that, the 100-series motherboards. I’ll be doing a build as soon as the new gear hits, and it’s exciting to think about other new technologies that will certainly find their way into the new machine. Like an M.2 SSD, for sure. That will need to be a carefully balanced decision because with a bit of gaming in mind there’s anew need to plan how my PCI lanes are used. Traditional SATA SSDs have peaked in performance, so M.2 and/or PCIe is the way to go. But there’s no particularly strong reason not to just jump in now with a 99 or 97-series motherboard. One can’t wait forever for…

We’ve always said, we’ll take our time to create an experience that’s really unique. With Apple Watch, we’ve been stringing out the launch for an incredible seven months now. That’s something no-one in the industry has ever managed. In that time, the other guys have come along with watches of their own. But these low-cost products come and go. We’ve been working hard to make Apple Watch something you won’t want to replace, and our pricing strategy is a big part of that. And lastly – this is the part that I think is really exciting – inside Apple Watch you’ll find our lightest, slimmest battery ever. It’s an amazing piece of innovation, and I think you’re going to love charging it.…

1 TAG HEUER SMARTWATCH Tag Heuer has created its own Android Wear device. Designed to look like its luxury Carrera watch, it incorporates smart features such as location tracking. CEO JeanClaude Biver isn’t concerned about Apple’s rival, declaring it will “get young people used to wearing a watch.” 2 TWITTER CRACKS DOWN ON TROLLS Twitter is again trying to battle online trolls, this time by rolling out a “quality filter” that lets users opt out of seeing tweets from “suspicious” accounts, or those that contain threats or offensive language. So far, it’s only available on verified accounts. The company has also promised new measures to deal with abusive tweeters. 3 YAHOO DITCHES PASSWORDS If you still use Yahoo email, then passwords may soon become a thing of then past. Instead…

One of the last reasons to use Games for Windows Live, Codemasters’ DiRT 3, has made its move to Steam, leaving GFWL in the dust. Due to the length players had to wait for the transfer – the move was announced in 2013, Codemasters has made the game available as the Complete Edition, with all its add-ons and DLC included as a free bonus for those who already owned the title. The GFWL version of DiRT 3 will still appear in player’s Steam accounts, but due to differences in the two versions, save files will not be compatible. With the game making its move to Steam, this raises the question of what place Windows’ much maligned service has, with the service holding the dubious honour of a handful of popular…

390X POTENTIALLY COMING JUNE After the supposed specifications leaks we detailed last month about AMD’s upcoming R9 390X we’ve got some further clues about precisely when this card will arrive. In AMD’s recent quarterly earnings report, CEO Lisa Su stated that she expects to see growth across the board for AMD “improve our market share, particularly in the graphics business”, “So as we go into the second half of the year, we would like to see some regain of share in both the desktop and the notebook business.” Further on she says AMD will detail the graphics launches later this quarter. This essentially confirms the rumour that these will launch at Computex in June with press getting the official details beforehand in late May. There’s lots of heresay going around,…

It’s hard to believe there was no Photoshop before 1990. Its impact has since been magnified by the rise of digital photography and social media, and continues through an endless variety of rival products, but for a quarter of a century we’ve been living in the Photoshop age. “Photoshop changed the ontology of the photograph,” said Caroline Bassett, a professor of media and communications. “It revolutionised our sense of the relationship of the photographic image to the reality it remade. Before Photoshop, it was easier to believe a photograph captured the truth. After, we knew it was constructed. I think it’s the single most influential software package of the PC era.” This judgement would have surprised University of Michigan postgraduate Thomas Knoll when he began coding a graphics tool on…

1 Start with a community. If you’ve got a big group of people, you’ve got a hackspace. 2 Get a bank account. It can take a little while to sort one out, so start the process ASAP. 3 If you want a hackspace, you’re going to have to do it yourself. Don’t imagine you can get it started and others will do all the work. 4 Think carefully about what you want. If you intend to run a hackspace to make a living, you’re going to be disappointed. 5 Trust everyone until they give you a reason not to. All members must be equal; just have reasonable checks and balances. 6 Look outwards. Lots of people have done this before. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Visit other spaces. Be part of…

Apple invented mobile apps as we know them, and the iTunes App Store now hosts a tremendous range of games and creative tools, all designed to take advantage of Apple’s powerful processors and superb displays. Thanks to strict security policies, there are still some things you can’t do on iOS: you’re restricted by how much you can customise its look and feel, and you have limited access to the local file system. If you want to get your hands dirty, you’ll have to jailbreak your device. For most of us, though, the whole point of iOS is that no tweaking is required. It’s a slick platform for productivity, creativity and good old-fashioned fun, and all the apps we’ve chosen here work on both iPhone and iPad platforms. ESSENTIALS GOOGLE FREE;…

Android tablets can seem like much of a muchness, but the 8.4in Dell Venue 8 7840 is a refreshingly off-trend effort. It ticks the “super-thin” box, then upsets the apple cart with a barelythere bezel and dark metallic-grey finish. It’s an expensive-looking device, and by Dell’s measurements, it’s the thinnest tablet on the market: measuring 6mm at its thickest point, it undercuts the iPad Air 2 by 0.1mm. Into that slim frame, the Venue 8 7840 packs a quad-core Intel Atom Z3580 SoC and 2GB of RAM, providing a respectable level of performance. The SunSpider browser benchmark completed in 614ms – not up there with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4, but still pretty quick. Similarly, GFXBench’s demanding T-Rex HD (onscreen) benchmark achieved an average frame rate…

For many years now, Samsung’s smartphones have been among the best, packing in the latest technology. One thing has held them back from true greatness, however, and that’s design. With the Galaxy S6, the company has finally broken free of those shackles; the Samsung Galaxy S6 is, unequivocally, the best smartphone you can buy. It’s a stunner, framed in cool-to-thetouch aluminium; the Galaxy S6 is a beautiful phone to behold. It’s clad in Gorilla Glass 4 front and back, and the way it gleams and glistens in the light is quite entrancing. The S6 is available in White Pearl, Gold Platinum and Blue Topaz, but we think it looks best in Black Sapphire, which is e. ectively a very dark blue. As you’d expect from a modern smartphone, the S6…

$169.00 • www.aocmonitorap.com Imagine having to stage a presentation without a projector. Do you make your clients sit with you, arm in arm, and look over your screen together? AOC’s USB monitor is an ad-hoc solution for this problem; giving more screen real-estate than a single portable device can typically provide. In this case, the AOC performs admirably, providing decent visual quality and a strong colour balance, at the cost of high reflectivity and glare. While this shouldn’t be an issue in a low-lit room, it is a disappointing limitation. This, coupled with the screen’s propensity to smudging, the driver install needed – the screen is not plug n’ play as advertised – and the limited use of the screen, makes it obvious that AOC’s portable monitor would be limited…

$139 (240GB) • www.silicon-power.com Last month we featured a review of the Corsair Neutron XT SSD, which was one on the few drives available sporting a Phison controller. The Silicon Power S80 is another, and it’s a good deal with it priced at a dollar less that $140 for the 250GB drive reviewed (at the time of writing). The increasingly ubiquitous use of Toshiba MLC NAND is seen here, too. Peak performance is going to be around 510MB/s read and 450MB/s write in a perfect scenario, although this depends on the SATA controller and CPU in your system, as results can vary wildly so take this as a reminder that advertised performance as well as benchtests for SSDs don’t necessarily represent what you’ll take home with you. The S80 delivers…

MULTI-HEAD SCREWDRIVER A ratchet or electric screwdriver that supports a wide array of fitments will be more versatile than a typical crosshead screwdriver. They’re useful to have around the home for other tasks beyond building a PC as well. Choose one with a range of hex sockets that include at least 5, 6 and 7mm sizes. Magnetised tips will also help avoid losing screws down the back of the case. TORCH A good source of light, be it a dedicated torch or a flashlight app on your smartphone, will help avoid frustration when building inside your case, especially if it’s all black inside. It also brings peace of mind during intricate tasks such as making sure you’ve lined up the processor the right way and when connecting peripherals to a…

STEP 1: OPEN THE SOCKET LEVER AMD’s AM3, FM2 and FM2+ processors fit directly into a socket on the motherboard. The first step is to lift the metal lever to release the socket. The entire fixture will move slightly backwards and align the holes in the plastic socket with the connectors beneath. A STEP 2: FIT THE PROCESSOR The processor is a delicate component, so hold it from the edges and avoid touching the pins underneath. The processor will fit only one way into the socket so will require no force. There’s a small arrow on the corner of the processor and a matching arrow on the corner of the socket. Line these two up and the processor will simply drop into place with zero fuss. If it feels as…

All you need to set up your free Analytics account is a Google login and a small snippet of tracking code. This can then be embedded on your site with only a basic grasp of HTML and a little bit of time, after which your site statistics will be visible in the main Google Analytics interface. 1 CREATE AN ACCOUNT AND SIGN IN Start by going to google.com.au/analytics and signing in with your Google account (or creating it, if you don’t already have one). Next, select the Admin tab at the top of the page. Click on the Account dropdown menu and select “Create new account”. 2 CHOOSE WHAT YOU WANT TO TRACK You’ll then be taken to a page that asks: “What would you like to track?” Here you…

Phone manufacturers may upgrade their handsets every year, but others are more patient: the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP)is receiving itsfirst update since June 1999. HTTP/2 brings a host of new features, but the most significant will lead to faster page-load times for us all. Here’s how it works. WHAT IS HTTP/2? ANOTHER SEQUEL IN THE SPIRIT OF FAST & FURIOUS 2? In a way, yes. It’s like HTTP, but better, faster – and more secure. Okay, that’s not a great cinematic tagline, but this is a follow-up that’s worth a look. HTTP is the protocol by which links work and data is transmitted online, making it the foundation of the web as we know it. As the working group that creates these protocols noted when referring to the last version,…

Can you remember the first time you heard the phrase “the paperless office”? It was spouted on TV programmes such as Tomorrow’s World and in newspaper and magazine articles in the mid-1980s. Within a few years we’d no longer have print-outs, they said, because everything would be stored digitally and read off a screen. Thirty years on, and there are probably more piles of paper on my desk than ever before. We’ve greatly reduced printing certain types of documents, mind you: invoices and receipts are now generally emailed rather than posted, cheques have all but disappeared – and the postman now delivers mostly marketing materials rather than useful addressed mail. And of course many of us consume our media onscreen these days; you might even be reading this column on…

Marc Spitler is surprised. The coauthor of Verizon’s annual data breach investigations report is looking at the age of vulnerabilities exploited by attackers in 2014, and few if any come from 2014 - or even the two years prior. Instead, the largest number of successful exploits in 2014 used vulnerabilities identified - and patched -in 2007. “I was actually very surprised to see the diversity of years in the output and just seeing how prevalent items from eight years ago are,” Spitler tells PC & Tech Authority. In fact, attackers managed to find 30 vulnerabilities from 1999 that still worked. “Apparently hackers really do still party like it’s 1999,” Verizon states in its report. “Just because a CVE [common vulnerability and exposure] gets old doesn’t mean it goes out of…

LETTER OF THE MONTH WORKSTATIONS Thanks for what I think is the best ever issue I’ve read, and close to best best ever tech mag. I’ve been hanging out for your views on workstations for a long time and this issue delivered with excellent, but not quite perfect coverage. Plus, as a huge bonus, there were a number of other fantastic articles. I know there are limits on what you can cover in a single article, but I did notice some inconsistencies in the workstation evaluation. For starters, Lenovo has three other workstation models: the P300, P700 & P900 with which I am very familiar. You would have better comparing the HP workstation with the P700, a dual CPU capable machine and capable of higher performance configurations. This would have…

HP is claiming up to a 53% energy saving (compared to its previous models) in its new LaserJet range. The gains come largely as a result of re-formulated toner. The new toner comprises an outer colour layer surrounding a central wax ball. These microscopic toner balls aren’t a new idea, but HP’s new wax material has a far lower melting point than used in the past, so the heating element inside the printer takes less time and energy to melt them as the image is created. This in turn reduces operating costs. The new toner is supported in the HP LaserJet Pro M252, M277n and LaserJet Enterprise M552dn and M553 series. HP told us that moving forward, as new printer models are rolled out they will support the new toner.…

HOT SAMSUNG The mighty giant took a dive last year with the Galaxy 5, which was, let’s face it, lacking in charm and style, and with a very messy Android implementation, but has bounced back in sharp form with the Galaxy 6. The OS is trim and tidy and the highend Edge is a real looker. NOT HTC With a mere fraction of Samsung’s marketing budget, HTC won minds and wallets nevertheless, with last year’s lovely One M8 handset, which outshone the Galaxy 5 whichever way you looked at it. But this year’s One adds nothing, looks garish with a gaudy gold band and uncompetitive battery life.…

Is Logitech suffering some sort of long drawn out contraction? The company that once dominated gaming devices has slowed new product releases to a trickle, and all we see now are mice and keyboards – yet Logitech were more or less last to the party with a mechanical keyboard. There is but a single joystick in the current range, where in the past there were many. The Extreme 3D Pro is four years old. Saitek and Thrustmaster have filled the void with fresh and innovative gear, but it was all Logitech’s for two decades, did they just throw it away? The wonderful G940 HOTAS controller was discontinued just as the flight sim scene was reinvigorating. Then there’s the G27 steering wheel... if ever there was a case where a single…

With Photoshop’s increasingly sophisticated tone controls, anything dark can be lightened and vice versa. That of course includes skin. In 2008, L’Oréal was accused of “whitening” Beyoncé in pictures described by celebrity site TMZ as “severely Photoshopped”. The company’s response, that it was “categorically untrue” that it had altered her “features or skin tone”, only highlighted the elusiveness of truth in photography. Every image we see has been altered – as we were reminded in 2015, when untouched images leaked of a naturally blemished Beyoncé in another L’Oréal campaign. Writing for The Guardian, film critic Vanessa Walters noted that 2008’s “racially ambiguous” styling was “a tactic Beyoncé appears to have used herself previously – perhaps to make her image more commercial”, reflecting the “legacy of slavery or colonisation”. A different…

Intel has long been the dominant force in mainstream computing, but the company was caught on the hop by the maker movement. When the Raspberry Pi, powered by chips designed by its rival ARM, began selling in earnest, Intel responded by creating boards of its own: the MinnowBoard, the Galileo and, most recently, the tiny-yet-powerful Edison and the wearable-centric Curie. Although some, such as Pimoroni’s Paul Beech, dismiss Intel’s creations as “frankenboards” made by combining unsuitable individual components, the company continues to show genuine interest in the market. It has launched Intel Maker on its website to consolidate its efforts, offering a Learning Center web portal focused on teaching makers how to use its creations. Intel is a minor player in the market compared to Arduino and Raspberry Pi, but…

Windows 10 isn’t only for PCs, laptops and tablets. The same codebase will also run on Windows 10 phones and compact tablets, as will these universal Office apps. However, their appearance is very different on these small-screen devices. The ribbon menu used in the tablet apps simply doesn’t work on small screens that are predominantly used in portrait mode. Instead, Microsoft has built the ribbon menu into the app bar at the bottom of the screen. This overlays the menu options (Bold, Underline, Bullets, Numbering and so on) over the top of the document; you select the feature you want to use, hide the ribbon menu, then apply it to the document laying beneath. Users can scroll through the ribbon tabs on a dropdown menu. Crucially, Microsoft also reformats documents…

HTC’s play for the smartphone throne has been somewhat overshadowed by the Galaxy S6 this month. While Samsung has radically overhauled its flagship, the HTC One M9 barely improves on its predecessor. It’s faster than the One M8, and we like the new refined design. However, the screen remains the same size and resolution as before, and it isn’t a patch on the S6 when it comes to performance. Battery life takes a turn for the worse and the new 20.7-megapixel camera, which lacks OIS, produces disappointing photos and video. HTC’s front-facing BoomSound stereo speakers continue to impress, but this is the only area in which it bests the Samsung Galaxy S6. OVERALL…

$255 • www.steelseries.com This is the top of the range gaming headset, of the non-wireless-variety, from Steelseries. The sides glow in any of your 16.8 million favourite colours, or, sit steady on one tone if you prefer. It’s actually a decent look with the serious black or white of the rest of the unit. There’s no in-line control, but on the side of one speaker is a volume control. The microphone is retractable, and in testing gives a clear distinct sound. The actual big game sound is, well, big and boomy. The closedear cups create a sound pressure that fills the volume, creating an oddly spatial sound. Sounds feel compressed, fighting each other to break clear. As a result they’re also a little fatiguing to listen to. This is compounded…

Price: $99.www.logitech.com.au Logitech’s latest mouse takes a radical departure from previous designs, with a large thumb-rest, and polygonal artistic flourishes. It sure looks striking, and in the hand it all comes together to offer a mouse that feels very comfortable for even all-day computing It’s a wireless mouse, too, and once you plug in the small receiver it installs without any hassle at all. The MX Master utilises what it calls a ‘Darkfield Laser’, and it’s certainly smooth in use, though far from a gaming-grade mouse. It also has a unique scroll wheel that can be locked or unlocked, and has an interesting latch that lets the wheel spin then lock in place. If you spend a lot of time scrolling through long documents or websites, it’s a great feature,…

$29.95 • www.allocacoc.com Perhaps your power cables are plugged into one or several power boards, perhaps also festooned with double adaptors, all in a precarious and unsightly clump of electrical danger. We too suffer this headache, and like you it’s usually a challenge to find a spare socket for ad-hoc device connections. No more! The Powercube is one particularly tidy solution. The little cube has four power points, one to a face, and another side has two USB ports for power – each putting out a standard 5V. It’s handy dandy for recharging USB devices and the whole compact cubular shebang comes with a plastic bracket for mounting. Stick it under your desk, out of sight, but within easy reach. The bracket attaches via an adhesive strip. There’s no form…

STEP 1: REMOVE THE SIDE PANEL(S) To get inside the case you’ll need to first remove the side panels. Some cases will use thumbscrews so this will be easy, otherwise grab your crosshead screwdriver to remove the screws. The priority will be the left side panel (when viewing the case front on). If you know there’s space to work behind the motherboard tray in your case for cable routing, then remove the right panel as well. A STEP 2: TAKE OUT ACCESSORIES Most case manufacturers will place all the accessories and instructions inside the case itself for easy transportation. Make sure you take all of these out. It’s not uncommon for the screws to be in a box mounted in one of the hard drive bays, so be sure to…

STEP 1: IDENTIFY MOUNTING POINTS Most cases come with at least one fan pre-installed, and they normally have two (excluding the fan built into your power supply). Typically one is installed in the front as an air intake and another at the back as an exhaust. That way cool air is drawn into the system and across your components, with the warm air expelled out of the back. If you only have one fan, or are building a very powerful PC, then a second, third and even fourth fan might be a good idea. First you need to identify what size fans your case will support. Standard sizes are 80mm, 120mm, 140mm and occasionally 200mm, but consult the case’s manual or specifications. Some mounting points are able to support two…

Upgrade Australia, our first crossbrand event celebrating PC & Tech Authority, PC PowerPlay, Hyper, and Atomic, has been and gone, and it was a great night. We took over the stage at UNSW’s Roundhouse, and invited along some of our favourite partners to share a night of tech, talks, hang-outs, and deepdives into the latest and greatest PC hardware. We had MSI showing off some really versatile laptops, Synology sharing its secrets to clever cloud storage in the home or office, and Steelseries talking us through its great range of gaming peripherals. Our old friend Dino was on hand to catch us up on Gigabyte’s latest, and Intel, a major supporter of the event, had three fantastic speakers, including local Technical Manager Graham Tucker, talking via a pre-recorded interview, about…

PANDA INTERNET SECURITY 2015 Panda Internet Security 2015 is an accurate and reliable security suite, packed with features yet also surprisingly lightweight. The package opens with a stylish Windows 8-like console, colourful tiles representing each of its many functions and features. The “Scan” tool is sensibly positioned at the centre left where you’ll see it right away, and you can have the program running afirst check on your system in a couple of clicks. www.pandasecurity.com/ REGISTRATION & INSTALLATION: - Download and run IS15.exe - Proceed with the installation process. - Upon a successful installation, a prompt will ask for your email. Enter your email and activate when you receive an email from Panda Antivirus. - Congratulations! You now have a 6 month trial for Panda Internet Security 2015! - For…

It’s three years since I backed Oculus Rift on Kickstarter – following a chance meeting with its creator Palmer Luckey – and much has happened since. Facebook has bought Oculus for US$2 billion, the Samsung Gear VR is on sale, and the internet is abuzz with rumours about Valve, Sony, Microsoft and Google’s plans for virtual and augmented reality. I’d been making 3D games, apps and AR for years, so I found myself in a great position to transition to VR. The majority of my work now is creating VR and AR content for companies that want to produce highend, immersive experiences. I’ve worked on training tools, games, architectural visualisations and art installations. Those may sound very diff erent, but there are a number of common factors to almost every…

The latest trends and products in the world of technology Forget the $24,000 Watch Edition: for many, Apple’s boldest revelation at its launch event this month was a laptop featuring a single USB port for both charging and attaching peripherals. The latest version of the Apple MacBook is even thinner than current MacBook Air models, and partners a Retina display with a lightweight Core M processor, therefore needing no internal fan. It also includes a new “Force Touch” trackpad that can differentiate light taps from harder presses (as does the new MacBook Pro), and is the first Apple device to use the USB Type-C connector, which carries data, video and power via a single cable. Controversially, Apple has included only one such port, meaning the laptop can’t be charged while…

W indows 10 is on its way, and Microsoft has been slowly unveiling its features ahead of its full release later this year. Here are five intriguing revelations about the next generation of Windows that you need to know. GOODBYE IE, HELLO SPARTAN Windows 10 will replace the much-maligned Internet Explorer 10 with a new browser, dubbed Spartan. Microsoft has built it from the ground up to be lighter-weight and cleaner than its predecessor; new features include the ability to handwrite annotations directly onto web pages. But IE isn’t entirely dead – it will be made available for enterprises and anyone else who needs the legacy browser for apps. WINDOWS FOR FREE Microsoft has also revealed that most Windows users will receive the new OS as a free upgrade. If…

Alessandro Guarrera and Ben Mansill on what’s important In what can only be a good day for sci-figamers everywhere, Frontier Development has released Elite: Dangerous is on Steam. This follows the release of the game’s beta for Mac, and the news that it will be available as a timed exclusive on the Xbox, and available in future for the PS4. News of the game’s release has set o€ a storm of questions across Elite’s forums. It’s unknown if those who’ve backed or already bought a copy of Elite: Dangerous will be given a Steam key, though, Frontier Development executive producer, Michael Brooks, says the game can be added to the Steam library like any other non-Steam game. When asked if there’ll be Steam achievements and playing cards available to those…

50TH ANNIVERSARY OF MOORE’S LAW Back in 1965 Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, after a few years of seeing the exponential growth, or doubling year-on-year, of transistor design density, made the observation in an article published in the trade magazine Electronics that “over the short term [10 years] this can be expected to continue” and that as this happened the economics would bring the costs (a big factor in those days) down dramatically too. Later this observation was coined by the professor Carver Mead in 1995 as “Moore’s Law”. Fifty years later Moore’s observation is magically still holding true (though revised to an 18-month cadence), to the point where last year in 2014 over 250 billion billion transistors were produced worldwide. That’s over 8 trillion transistors made every second! Moore’s Law…

T here are few things more frustrating than a broken promise. Michael P sent us the following email and asked us to follow up. “I ordered a Dell monitor some weeks ago. Since then Dell has repeatedly altered the delivery date - in my case at least four times, and meanwhile the order information still claims the estimated delivery date is March 3. Dell is claiming there is a parts shortage, and has been for several weeks, and saying there is no stock of the monitor. However, whilst on the phone to their customer service people, I used the online chat to Dell, and this is part of the transcript: 03/13/2015 12:51:02PM Michael: “Hi, the Ultrasharp U2515H monitor - how long would it take to get to me in Australia…

ARDUINO A low-cost microcontroller, the Arduino uses a library dubbed Wiring to make programming the brains of an embedded hardware project as easy as possible for beginners. arduino.cc RASPBERRY PI The darling of the microcomputer world, the not-for-profit Raspberry Pi Foundation has sold more than five million of its sub-£30 compact computers, mainly to schools, universities and hobbyists. raspberrypi.org MAKERBOT Although the company has come under fire for taking inspiration from open-source projects such as RepRap, only to close its own designs, MakerBot 3D printers remain extremely popular. makerbot.com MAKEY MAKEY A great way to get kids interested in electronics, Makey Makey turns anything from bananas to pencil marks into capacitive touch-sensing buttons for devices such as the Arduino or the Raspberry Pi. makeymakey.com FLOTILLA Pimoroni’s latest creation, fresh from…

2D TESTS We test desktop PCs, netbooks and laptops with our own, custom-built, 2011 Real World Benchmarks. We split the results into three categories: Responsiveness, Media and Multitasking, with the Overall score an average of the three sub-scores. For instance, responsiveness replicates light browser and productivity workloads. The Media test involves running iTunes for audio conversion, Photoshop CS5 to crunch large images and Sony Vegas 10 to edit home video. This then gets run simultaneously alongside Cinebench 11 in order to get a handle on the multitasking ability of the system. 3D TESTS We use pre-recorded demos in Crysis and DIRT 3 to test gaming performance where relevant. We have three standard test settings, depending on the power of the graphics card: Low, Medium and High. To test gaming performance,…

This is the second FreeSync display to hit the labs this month – for more details about AMD’s new display technology, head over to the LG display review a few pages away. So what does BenQ’s FreeSync display bring to the table? The biggest difference is that this is a 144Hz display, which means FreeSync will work all the way up to 144fps before defaulting to V-Sync on or o . However, the lowest supported refresh rate is 30Hz, which is about as low as FreeSync can go before motion starts looking stutter. This is a huge improvement on the LG’s minimum of 48Hz, as it means gamers can run titles at 40fps and above and still get super smooth motion, without any artefacting or stuttering. Below this the display…

Samsung’s S6 edge grabbed all the headlines when it first launched, but it isn’t worth the extra $150 premium. Sure, the curved screen looks exotic, and it adds some handy features, such as the ability to drag in from the edge to view missed calls from favourite contacts. However, all the important parts of the S6 and S6 edge are the same. The only notable difference is the S6 edge’s 2% larger battery. The increase in stamina doesn’t justify the higher price, though. OVERALL…

$279.00 • www.steelseries.com Rather than follow the normal mechanical keyboard bandwagon and use Cherry switches, Steelseries has gone its own way with the Apex M800, designing a new mechanical switch the company calls the QS1. The proprietary switch is less clicky than many popular mechanical switches, giving the M800 a softer feel that can take a little getting used to. The giant double-sized space bar also takes some getting used to – it’s a boon whilst gaming as it’s nearly impossible to miss but when typing, the size of the spacebar and the lack of any type of wrist rest makes it all too easy to miss-hit. It’s also a magnet for greasy fingerprints. Each key features a centred, bright LED that can be individually programmed using the extremely userfriendly…

$84 • www.antec.com We have to say up front that this case is most assuredly not for everyone. With its fauxmilitary styling it’s very much aimed at the gaming crowd, and would make for a great box to play Battlefield 4 on. If you just want a simple, plain case for your computing, you might want to look elsewhere. But if the style works for you, then you’re actually getting a pretty solid chassis for your money, though the stock configuration has one front, two fans exhausting through the top panel. It’s an atypical setup, though the case does come with a fan controller, so you can keep on top of noise. There’s room for a 240mm radiator of water-cooling is your thing, and there’s lots of room inside the…

STEP 1: FIT SUPPLY ON TO SHELF Increasingly, a lot of cases now position the power supply unit (PSU) in the bottom of the case. This can be preferable as the sheer weight of some PSUs means systems can be unbalanced when they’re mounted at the top. It can also make for neater cabling as the power cables don’t hang down. Which way round you install the PSU could be dictated by the case you use, so be sure to consult the manual. In some cases, you can decide to point the PSU air intake fan up or down. With the PSU fan pointed up towards the case internals, the fan can help draw warm air in and then expel it out of the rear of the case, helping to…

Dual-channel architecture is a motherboard technology that essentially doubles the amount of available memory bandwidth, helping to remove any potential performance bottleneck when the memory is unable to match the processor’s performance. By installing a pair of memory modules in two matching banks, each module is able to access the memory controller separately to increase throughput bandwidth. It’s generally a good idea to match the two memory modules for best compatibility, and many modules are sold as paired kits. If one module is rated at a slower speed than the other (for example, if one is 1,600MHz and the other is 1,333MHz), both will run at the slower speed in dual-channel mode. If you’re installing four modules they don’t all need to be identical, but make sure pairs match up…

STEP 1: CONNECT CASE CABLES TO THE MOTHERBOARD There will be a number of different loose cables coming from your case that will need to be connected to headers on the motherboard. Connections for the power button, reset button and status LEDs are all grouped together. The cluster of headers you need might be labelled ‘Panel’ or ‘JFP1’. Consult your motherboard manual to be sure. Get the cables ready to be attached. They might have been tucked away behind the motherboard. You can see an example of what you should be looking for on the right A. If you have trouble connecting the fiddly headers by hand, use a pair of pliers to help you. STEP 2: CONNECT THE POWER CABLE One of the cables is the two-pin power cable,…

STEP 1: FINAL CHECKS Now that everything is attached, now is a good time to do a final check. Make sure all the motherboard connections are securely in place. One of the most common reasons for a boot failure is a loose cable, so it pays to double- or even triple-check. Similarly, make sure all the components, such as the RAM and graphics card, are seated correctly. Make sure there’s no loose cabling that could obstruct the fans. STEP 2: ATTACH THE FRONT OF THE CASE With the final checks completed, you’re ready to re-assemble the case. If you removed the front of the case to install an optical drive or attach a fan, now is the time to re-attach it. It should just clip back into place, but consult…

Whether you’re running a personal homepage or a corporate website, Google Analytics is a powerful tool for monitoring the number of visitors to your site. It doesn’t matter if your site gets one hundred or one million impressions per month – Google will record what every single visitor gets up to, helping you to understand and improve their experience. Indeed, we use Google Analytics on the PC & Tech Authority website, to gain a real-time overview of how the site is performing, and to examine how individual pages and sections of the site are doing. If you’re new to online analytics then the Google Analytics interface can seem daunting atfirst. But as we reveal below, you need to learn only a few simple techniques to start working out what is…

1 If you’re new to Hootsuite, you’ll need to enable your Twitter account on the service. Click “Add Social Network” and follow the prompts to authorise your account. You can now add a few columns to yourfirst stream, or try scheduling a few tweets. Your next task: relieve yourself of some pressure by adding a fellow contributor. 2 To work with other contributors, you’ll need to define an organisation. Click your profile icon in the top left of the Hootsuite window and choose “Start collaborating with others”. This will prompt you to create an organisation; enter your company name, choose an image, add your Twitter account, and click “Create Organization”. 3 An organisation contains individual teams, which in turn contain individual members. You’ll need to click “Add a Team” even…

Yesterday I visited the offices of Kroll Ontrack, a company that’s well known for its data-recovery software tools, but is also famous for its hardware-recovery service. Many years ago, I reported on Kroll’s tool for digging inside Exchange Server EDBfiles, which was staggeringly simple to operate – just run the tool, point it at the EDBfile and then walk through the entire structure right down to the mailbox, into the inbox and then down into any subfolders. Then you could search for a particular email or set of emails, and write them out again. This was ideal when a vital email that contained an important contract had gone missing, and you were pretty sure it was in a backupfile of a few years ago. Getting that old backup file mounted…

Idon’t want to go over too much old Lenovo Superfish ground – read pcpro. link/248sf1 if you need to catch up – but much of my time in February was taken up pointing my clients and readers towards online removal tools such as the LastPass Superfish Checker (lastpass.com/superfish). Without wishing to downplay the seriousness of the vulnerability that Superfish opened up, the period during which people were at risk was pretty short – although it was installed on 16 million consumer laptops, it was limited to those shipped between September 2014 and February 2015. I came across only one person with an unwanted Superfish installation, and by following the simple instructions set out at LastPass they were soon cleared of it. I was actually more concerned by the software-development kit…

What is something worth? It’s a tricky question to answer, because questions about value for money are rarely straightforward. If the device is a functional item, then you can ask whether spending more money will allow it to do its intended task better. Will it do it more reliably? Will it last longer, and require less maintenance? Then there are the more nebulous things. Do I like it, and like it enough to spend the money? Do I feel good; better than I would with a cheaper item? Do my friends prefer it, and do I like the image it projects to people? Answering those questions is difficult, either for something generic or more specific. For example, a rare painting might sell for $60 million. Does that make it “worth”…