Table of contents for 505 in Computeractive

I have a hate-hate relationship with product manuals, having never found one that was actually written by a human being. It’s as though manufacturers feed simple instructions into computers programmed to churn out incomprehensible bilge. I’ve never been fluent in bilge. That doesn’t excuse the modern trend away from manuals. Companies like Apple think their products are so simple to use that people don’t need them. However, while turning on an iPad is easier than building an Ikea wardrobe, all tech products would benefit from an accompanying handbook. The same applies to the internet, particularly Google’s numerous sites and services. But it’s probably too busy designing driverless spaceships to write one. So instead we asked Jane Hoskyn to create the definitive manual, packed with secret tips and expert advice. It’s…

Microsoft has admitted that it does disable some antivirus software made by other companies, but claims it’s because they won’t work properly on Windows 10, and that they want to limit competition from rivals. The company was responding to an anti-competition lawsuit filed by Kaspersky in the EU that alleges Microsoft “fiercely promotes” its own Windows Defender security software above rival alternatives. Writing in a blog post (www.snipca.com/24754), Microsoft’s Partner Director Rob Lefferts said that a “small number” of security programs – around five per cent – are incompatible with Windows 10. It therefore added a feature to the recent Creators Update that prompts the user to install a new version. However, he acknowledged that in doing so Microsoft also disables some parts of the antivirus. Lefferts added that Microsoft…

WARNING: JUNK AHEAD Junk offender: IObit Smart Defrag IObit’s free defragging tool Smart Defrag (www.snipca.com/24777) is not a bad program. It can help to make your PC run faster and more smoothly, and it’s broadly well-behaved. But like a kid who’s easily led astray, Smart Defrag has a habit of bringing unwanted friends home – and these friends change depending on the day of the week. Last Thursday afternoon, I ran Smart Defrag’s installer to see what lurked within. It was positively polite compared with the trail of Yahoo-spewing, browserhijacking horrors I’ve featured lately. OK, so it contained a triple whammy of PUPs – IObit Advanced SystemCare (an entirely separate program from Smart Defrag), password manager Dashlane, and an ebook – but none was pre-ticked, so they were easy to…

Tell us what’s on your mind Email: letters@computeractive.co.uk Facebook: www.facebook.com/computeractive Twitter: @ComputerActive www.twitter.com/computeractive Treat dating scams more seriously I was pleased to see the problem of online dating scams being addressed in Issue 504’s ‘Question of the Fortnight’ (‘How can we detect online dating scammers?’). I feel that this type of scam hasn’t been taken seriously because people tend to blame the victim for being so naive. Also, I think the actual number of cases could be much higher because many victims probably feel embarrassed that they’ve been tricked by someone promising them love and riches. There has been a lot of talk this year about reducing the stigma surrounding mental illness. Let’s also have a debate on internet scams that aims to minimise the shame and humiliation victims often…

Q I bought my daughter a Dell Inspiron 11 3000 laptop in January. The left hinge has broken but Dell says the warranty doesn’t cover this problem and is trying to charge me for a repair. Can it do this? Bill Grieve A No it can’t. At least, it can’t unless it proves that Bill or his daughter damaged the laptop. The onus is on Dell to do this because the fault appeared within six months of purchase. Whether it’s covered in the warranty is irrelevant. Bill isn’t the first Dell customer whose laptop hinges have broken. A quick search online brings up a number of similar complaints, and several claims that Dell doesn’t try very hard to fix the problems. We’ll contact Dell to point out its hinges are…

Contact us so we can investigate your case Email: consumeractive@computeractive.co.uk Please include both your phone number and address. Q A Nokia Lumia 630 phone I bought from Talkmobile in January 2016 became faulty nine months later. However, Talkmobile said it wasn’t responsible because its warranty only lasted 30 days. It then said the phone had a two-year warranty from Nokia, but the manufacturer disputed this when I contacted it last September. Can you help? Frank Bennett A Yes we can, but with different advice to what we normally give. Instead of contacting the retailer first, Frank should get in touch with Nokia, the manufacturer. This is because more than six months have passed since he bought the phone, so if he returned the phone to Talkmobile under the Consumer Rights…

Scams and threats to avoid, plus new security tools What’s the threat? Scammers are exploiting the recent tragic events in London and Manchester by tricking people with fake charity appeals. In particular, fraudsters are claiming to be raising money for victims of the Grenfell Tower fire. Posing as official charities and support organisations, they are emailing, texting and phoning people, and posting messages on social-media sites, requesting donations. Some scammers are even pretending to be victims of the fire, and are making direct appeals for money. Another tactic is to tempt you into clicking a link that promises to show you footage or images of the fire. Scammers often try to seduce people after tragedies and terrorist attacks with ‘unseen’ or ‘sensational’ videos and images that TV channels won’t show.…

What does it do? It connects peripherals such as storage drives to PCs, carrying data and electrical power. USB 3.1 – officially known as USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) or ‘SS 10’ – is the latest incarnation of the USB interface standard, allowing datatransfer speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second. Why would I want it? USB 3.1’s maximum speed is twice as fast as USB 3.0. That’s important for tasks like video editing that require huge amounts of data to be transferred in real time. In the past, hard drives couldn’t go any faster than USB 3.0, but today’s SSDs can. Plugging in a drive is also an easy way to upgrade a PC, and if you install Windows 10 on an external SSD (such as Samsung’s model…

SMART LIGHTING ? From £9 from Ikea www.snipca.com/24575 Ikea has made a global business out of mass-producing home furnishings to make them cheaper, and now it’s applying the same principle to home automation. This is one of the fastest growing sectors in tech. It lets you control light and heating using apps and software. The Trådfri lighting range – the name is Danish for ‘wireless’ – costs less than established rivals such as Philips Hue. And we were pleased to find it’s not hard to assemble. Trådfri items start at just £9 for an LED dimmable bulb, which fits a standard screw socket (bayonet adapters cost £1 for two from www.snipca.com/24574). It should last years and it costs only £1 more than Ikea’s comparable standard LED bulb. You’ll also need…

Inkjet or laser? Laser printers want to convince us that they’re as home-friendly as their inkjet counterparts, while some inkjets are as fast as laser printer. So which of these very different animals is right for you? Laser printer toner cartridges last several thousand pages but cost a fortune. Colour models tend to slowly use up the colour toners even if you only print black, then refuse to print at all when any of them is empty. This makes colour lasers awkward if you only print occasionally, and even for higher volumes they don’t necessarily work out cheaper to run than inkjet to run. They do offer crisper text and solidcolour graphics, but aren’t great for photos. For most of us an inkjet is the best choice, or a budget…

British Telecom Relate 2000 WHAT WAS IT? The Relate 2000 (pictured) was a videophone introduced in 1993 by British Telecom. It cost £749 (around £1,400 now) for two handsets. “The quality of the image is surprisingly good,” reported the Independent, but still “perhaps not yet clear enough to convince the public that videophones are more than a gimmick.” Sure enough, it didn’t catch on. HOW HAVE THINGS CHANGED? The Relate 2000 was sold in pairs because there was no standard for videophones, so anyone you wanted to call had to have the same model. Over a copper phone line, it could transmit five to eight frames per second (fps), shown on its three-inch black-and-white LCD screen. The sound was often out of sync. BT’s last videophone, the Videophone 2000, was…

Email us your tips: letters@computeractive.co.uk TIP OF THE FORTNIGHT Show contents of your Users folder in a Notepad file I read your ‘See all the folders and subfolders on your C Drive’ tip in Issue 504’s Make Windows Better, which explains how to display all the folders and sub-folders in your Users folder as dropdown menus. You can then save this info as a file to your PC. I believe there’s an even quicke way to do this, which I’ll come to. To remind readers: you open your Command Prompt (press the Windows button, type cmd, then press Enter). Next, type tree, then press Enter. You now see your User folders’ contents as a tree dropdown menu One thing you didn’t mention is that it can take a few minutes…

AGES 0?5 Baby Games for Toddlers* Free www.snipca.com/24749 (Android) Ideal for kids at nursery school, this app contains a collection of educational games and activities. These involve simple puzzles, counting numbers, identifying shapes and colours, identifying objects, matching similar items and tapping to find the correct object. AGES 6?10 A Comet’s Journey* Free www.snipca.com/24750 (Android) Free www.snipca.com/24751 (iOS) In this game, your child controls the comet’s path by tapping and swiping. The aim is to avoid collisions with other celestial bodies, while collecting fuel and travelling to certain points in space within a set time. AGES 11?16 Yellow* Free www.snipca.com/24752 (Android) Free www.snipca.com/24753 (iOS) Yellow is a new puzzle game with 50 levels. The objective in each one is to turn the entire screen yellow, but you need to figure…

Control formatting of pasted text Copied text from websites and documents has a nasty habit of carrying over its formatting and can therefore mess up the documents you’re pasting to. You can configure your office software to remove existing formatting by tweaking its settings, but this means you won’t be able to preserve formatting on those occasions you want to. Instead you should use PlainPaste (www.snipca.com/24649). Download the program, then double-click the PlainPaste.exe file to run it (it’s a portable program so you don’t need to install it). To use it, copy the text you want to paste using the Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut in the usual way, then paste (Ctrl+V) twice in quick succession. Doing so pastes the copied text without its original formatting. If you want to preserve the…

Email us your problem and we’ll try to help: noproblem@computeractive.co.uk Q Over recent weeks my PC seems to have got slower and slower. A bit of testing on my part suggests that Outlook is the cause, as when this isn’t running everything seems to run normally. Over the years I’ve collected a lot of emails, because I don’t like deleting anything — I’m talking tens of thousands of messages here. In an effort to speed things up I spent a whole day deleting loads of older and unnecessary messages, but I noticed that it didn’t seem to make the database any smaller (it started at about 8GB and it’s still at around 8GB, even having deleted thousands of emails). My PC is still slow when Outlook is running. Why doesn’t…

Q I deal with lots of different documents from lots of different people. I use Word 2016 but some clients use earlier versions, so I might receive files with either a .docx or a .doc extension. Word 2016 handles either without bother, and I can also save in DOC format for the handful of clients that can’t open DOCX files. But the DOC files don’t seem any obviously better or worse than DOCX ones, so I often wonder – what’s the difference? Felicity Heart A The short and sweet answer is that the differences are largely technical and, to a very large extent, irrelevant to users in the real world. Digging deeper, the fundamental distinction is that DOCX document files are based on an open standard known as Extensible Markup…

KEN RIGSBY is Computeractive’s Mr Angry As I get older it seems that everyone is getting younger. Policemen (and women), obviously. There are doctors, who in an alternative life could be my children. And postmen (and women) who are so fresh-faced they look like they’re on their way to school in the morning. On that last point I should be clear that I have nothing whatsoever against very young postmen (or women). However, the Royal Mail’s staff turnover seems so high nowadays that few posties stick around long enough to progress past their teens. That’s a shame, because there are quite a few benefits to having an experienced postman who knows his job. Ours is called Tony and – no doubt with one eye on the Christmas tip that Mrs…

Microsoft has taken the surprising decision to release a security update for Windows XP, which it stopped supporting in April 2014. It was part of Microsoft’s ‘Patch Tuesday’ for June, which contains updates for all versions of Windows, from XP to 10. In the blog post announcing the updates (www.snipca.com/24767), Microsoft said that it took this action to provide “further protection” against highly destructive ransomware attacks like WannaCry. It’s only the third time the company has released a fix for a product it no longer supports. Microsoft added that it was particularly worried about attacks from hackers backed by nation states, saying its decision was “based on an assessment of the current threat landscape by our security engineers”. The company didn’t go into further details, but it’s probably responding to…

Almost half of people aged 65 to 74 use social media, while more than a quarter of over-75s have a tablet, a new Ofcom report has found. The statistics come from its annual ‘Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes’ survey (www.snipca.com/24757), looking at how people “use, understand and feel about” technology. Compiled in the autumn of 2016, it shows a rise in ‘social seniors’. Facebook is by far the most popular service, with nearly 90 per cent of those using social media having an account on the site. Around six per cent use the messaging tool WhatsApp. Social media is attracting more over-75s, too, with 41 per cent now using it, up from 19 per cent in 2015 Tablets are also growing in popularity in this age group – 27 per…

Microsoft has unveiled a new keyboard for Windows 10 that lets you sign into websites and your computer using your fingerprint rather than a password. Called the Modern Keyboard, it contains a fingerprint scanner between the Alt and right-click buttons to the right of the space bar (see image). Placing your finger on the key unlocks the computer, which can connect to the keyboard via either Bluetooth or a USB cable. Its position means it shouldn’t get accidentally tapped while the user is typing. The scanner works with Windows Hello, Microsoft’s biometric system of identifying users. As well reading fingerprints, Hello can use a webcam to scan a user’s iris and recognise their face. Check which computers support Hello at www.snipca.com/24780. The keyboard, which looks almost identical to the Surface…

The BBC is forcing people using iPlayer to sign in, a move that will help the corporation to identify viewers who access the service but haven’t paid for a TV Licence. It comes after a change in the law last year, making the Licence mandatory for watching or downloading BBC programmes on iPlayer. The corporation denied it was cracking down on people not paying the fee, but admitted that “the information you provide us with can help TV Licensing ensure that people are abiding by the law and minimise licence fee evasion”. However, it claimed it wouldn’t use “mass surveillance techniques or ask internet providers for IP addresses” to pinpoint those who evade the fee. Instead it will “match” users’ emails to see if anyone who has signed in has…

Facebook baby-dangler “1,000 likes or I will drop him.” That was the caption beneath this photo, posted on Facebook by a man who’s now serving two years in an Algerian prison for holding this child off a 15th-floor balcony with one hand. The other hand, of course, was employed taking the photo. It’s a shocking case, and very much of its time. ‘Likes’ are the new social currency. People are deranged by greed for them, just as the lure of cash has driven unspeakable acts through history. It gets worse. The unnamed man, who was “a relative of the child”, accused Facebook users of Photoshopping protective railings out of the photo. If you’ve ever used Photoshop you’ll know that’s almost impossible. Worse still, the child’s father defended the dangler and…

Here’s a prediction of life in 2030. Every morning we’ll wake up to hear the news on Amazon Radio, complete with adverts personally targeted to our tastes. We’ll then trudge downstairs to eat AmazonBix for breakfast, reading more adverts on the the cereal box, before being picked up by an Amazon drone and flown to work. By 2030, 99.9 per cent of the population will be working for Amazon, packaging and posting items to each other. At 2pm everyone stops to sing the Amazon Anthem, which praises the benefits of same-day delivery. When we get home we’ll turn on the TV to watch an evening of programmes from ABC (Amazon Broadcasting Corporation). Every advert break is personalised: “Hello Mr Smith - we know that your hedge trimmer broke at the…

Q I recently went on to Argos’s website to buy a shed, which had a price of £229.99. On entering the catalogue number to check if it was in stock, the price came up £70 more expensive at £299.99. When I went into the store and asked the manger, he said the catalogue price was only an “invitation to trade”, and that exchange rates with Ireland meant the price had gone up. I’d love to hear your views on this. Graham Arnold A Argos hasn’t done anything illegal selling the shed at the higher price, but we think the store’s manager could have done a better job of explaining why, rather than using the technical term “invitation to trade”. It’s actually the wrong term anyway – any price displayed in…

EE coughs up £30 compensation for broadband problems How much compensation should ISPs give customers if their broadband goes down? EE appears to think that £1 a day is enough. After initially blaming BT Wholesale for the problem, it has now paid Computeractive reader Steven Asquith £30 for the 30 days he was without broadband (read his case in Issue 504). It also reimbursed him the £85 he had to pay to access the web through mobile broadband. If EE hadn’t done this, Steven could have taken his case for compensation to the Communications Ombudsman. To win he would have needed to provide evidence that being without broadband left him out of pocket, and outline the inconvenience he experienced. He would also have been able to cancel the entire package…

KeePass 2.36 http://keepass.info/download.html PC security is always a balancing act between safety and convenience. For example, we all know that we shouldn’t use the same or similar phrases in our passwords, but it’s often hard to think beyond our pet’s name or favourite book. Password managers such as KeePass help, of course. Its new version (2.36) adds the option to search for passwords that are identical or similar. To do this, click Edit along the top, hover your mouse over Show Entries, then click Find Duplicate Passwords or Find Similar Passwords (see screenshot). Another useful option here is Password Quality Report, which tells you how strong your password is in ‘bits’ by analysing how hard it is to guess. As KeePass explains at www.snipca.com/24732, only passwords with bits of more…

http://capture2text.sourceforge.net What you need: Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 Take a photo of something with words on it – such as a poster or letter – then use this small, portable tool to automatically convert the words into digital text that you can copy and edit. Similar OCR (optical character recognition) software is increasingly being built into office programs like LibreOffice, but Capture2Text does it in a much more nimble package. It’s fiddly to master, though. Position your mouse at one corner of the text you want to capture, press Win+Q and then drag your mouse over the text – without pressing or clicking. Finally, left-click to generate plain text in a separate window (see screenshot). Version 4.3.0 adds a useful Bubble Capture option – press Win+S to automatically capture…

PHONE £634 from Amazon www.snipca.com/24711 Yes, it really costs £634! And that’s with a £15 discount on the manufacturer’s price. It’s still more than 50 quid cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy S8, to be fair, or £85 less than the similarly sized Google Pixel XL. However, call us cheapskates, but we think top-of-the-range phones are getting too expensive. Taking that much money off you requires a gimmick, and the U11’s is squeezing. No, not your wallet until the pips squeak, but the phone itself. Sensors on the sides detect when you grip it harder, triggering the camera. This actually makes it slower and more wobbly than using the on-screen button. You can perform other tasks by squeezing, such as opening an app. This aside, the U11 is a pretty 5.5in…

PC £500 from PC Specialist www.snipca.com/24779 Like many of today’s budget desktop PCs, the Enigma K3 GT is based on an i3 processor from the bottom end of Intel’s Kaby Lake range. However, it does have a speed-boosting trick up its sleeve: Intel’s new Optane technology (see box below), which promises to make its bog standard 1TB hard drive perform more like an SSD. In our tests, read speeds under the most favourable conditions zoomed up to over 750 megabytes per second, not quite the advertised 846 but extremely quick nonetheless. Write speeds, peaking at just under 120MB/s, were still in standard hard-drive territory, but unless you often save or copy huge files, or transcode video, that won’t affect you much. So we’d chalk this up as a win. Compared…

£15 fromwww.snipca.com/23209 Find out what other products we liked. Buy our new 2016 Back Issue CD: LAPTOP Dell Inspiron 15 5000 £699 from www.snipca.com/23375 Tested: Issue 459 Now updated with Intel’s seventhgeneration processors, this laptop ( not the 2-in-1 version) now edges the ZenBook below and starts at just £449, but mid-range configurations with SSD and AMD R7 graphics are the best choice. ALTERNATIVE: Asus ZenBook UX305CA If you want something sleeker, this offers basic performance in a superbly slim and light metal case. £600 from www.snipca.com/23376 ANDROID TABLET Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 9.7 £600 from www.snipca.com/24140 Tested: Issue 501 Samsung’s new mid-sized tablet has a wonderful HDR screen and comes with a pen included, unlike Apple’s iPad Pro. But its processor isn’t the fastest and it’s disappointingly expensive, especially compared to…

For many years, if you wanted to scan a magazine page, receipt or photo you needed a desk-cluttering scanner. These days you can take a good-quality scanned copy of anything by simply taking a photo of it. Adobe Scan is a new free app that scans anything you point your device at. You can then use its editing tools to refine your scan, save it as a PDF, save it to your PC, or send it to whoever you want. STEP 1 Install the Adobe Scan app on your phone or tablet (Android www.snipca.com/24653; iOS www.snipca.com/24654). When it launches, swipe through the introductory screens 1 . You need to create an Adobe ID to use the app, so tap Sign Up 2 and enter your name, email address and a…

ANDROID & iOS Hide your photos from prying eyes Whenever you open Google Photos, you’ll see all the photos and videos saved to your account (with the most recent shown at the top). If you want some photos to stay private, so other people can’t see them when you pass your phone around, use the new Archive feature. Bear in mind that archived photos will still appear within any albums you’ve added them to and in your search results. To use the feature, open Google Photos (Android www.snipca.com/24741; iOS www.snipca.com/24742), then tap and hold the first photo or video you want to archive until a tick appears on it (and tick boxes appear on all the other files). Tick to select all the files you want to archive, tap the…

WINDOWS VISTA, 7 Access your Videos folder faster The Windows 7 Start menu includes shortcuts to your Pictures and Music folders, but not to your Videos folder. If you use this folder often, there’s an easy way to add it to your Start menu. First, right-click the Windows button at the bottom left and select Properties. In the window that appears, select the Start Menu tab, then click the Customize button. Scroll to the bottom of the menu that appears until you reach the Videos section. Here, you can choose from two options (see screenshot below) that add two different types of Videos folder shortcuts to your Start menu. Select ‘Display as a link’ and you will be taken to the Videos folder when you click the shortcut in the…

You can copy text on phones and tablets (iOS and Android) by long-pressing a word, then tapping copy. But by using the right apps you can add additional options Clipper (www.snipca.com/24652), for example, is an Android app that stores the previous 20 pieces of text copied to its Clipboard tab. Once you’ve installed it, open it and swipe through the introductory screens. You can organise your lists by adding items on your Clipboard to a folder. Tap Lists, then the ‘+’ symbol (bottom right), type a name for your folder, then tap Create. Tap Clipboard, then long-press any of the entries until tickboxes appear. Tick the boxes next to items you want to add to your new folder, tap the folder icon (top right – see screenshot), then tap the…

THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO GOOGLE’S HIDDEN TOOLS In the new and updated Definitive Guide to Google Hidden Tools, the experts at Computeractive lift the lid on Google’s most popular services to reveal more than 390 ways to make them even more efficient, useful and tailored to your needs. These include clever new add-ons for Chrome, smart hacks for YouTube, and the best things you can do in Google Maps, Drive, Gmail and more. It’s an essential guide to unlocking the hundreds of secret settings, options and tools that Google offers. You’ll learn tips and tricks that you can use every day online. BUY IT NOW FROM AMAZON at www.snipca.com/22784 THE ADVANCED GUIDE TO WINDOWS 10 This 196-page guide is packed with expert advice in plain English, to help you unlock…

Q My LG LSM-100 Scanner Mouse is invaluable, but online chatter suggests it’s incompatible with Windows 10 Anniversary Update (AU) — and LG won’t be providing a fix. I’m still using Windows 10 build 1511, and Creators Update (CU) has no features I want either. With Microsoft recently ceasing support for some earlier Windows 10 editions, is it possible to select which upgrades are installed, so that I might continue using the full facilities of the LG Scanner Mouse? It seems stupid that a £55 gadget is rendered useless due to its incompatibility with new operating software. Brian Kennedy A We assume that you’ve set your PC as being on a metered connection, thus preventing Windows 10 AU from installing — otherwise it certainly should’ve done so by now, followed…

Why is Cybereason RansomFree creating random files? QIn Issue 503’s Cover Feature (page 57) you recommend Cybereason RansomFree to guard against ransomware. I installed it, but have since noticed some peculiarly named files and folders in my Documents folder and on my desktop (see screenshot below). My antivirus software reports a clean bill of health (as does Malwarebytes), but the overnight appearance of so many files still worries me. What’s going on? Should I delete them? Jack Luxon AThe files you mention are actually known as ‘honeypot’ files, which are designed to trick any ransomware infections that contaminate your PC. Ransomware will try to encrypt these files first and when that happens Cybereason RansomFree will pounce – think of it like a spider trapping flies in its web. These files…

The hackers behind the WannaCry attack were from North Korea, UK and US spies have claimed. Following investigations security officials from GCHQ and the NSA blamed Lazarus Group, the cyber-criminal gang linked to North Korea’s spy agency, the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB). North Korea was first accused within days of the attack, in mid May. But later analysis from US security company Flashpoint suggested the attackers might be Chinese, because the grammar and punctuation used in the WannaCry message indicated they were “native or at least fluent” in the language. However, new evidence from the NSA shows that WannaCry contained IP addresses in China previously used by the RGB. It said it could attribute the attack to North Korea with “moderate confidence”. You’ll like this… The TEO robot can iron…

UK’S MOBILE INTERNET ‘FASTEST IN WORLD’ The UK has the fastest mobile internet in the world, according to US tech company Akamai Technologies. It found that the average speed in the UK is 26Mbps, followed by Germany on 24.1Mbps and Finland on 21.6Mbps. The top eight countries are all European, with Australia and Japan placed ninth and tenth respectively, much higher than the US in 28th. The global average is 7.2Mbps – 15 per cent faster than last year. KODI ADD?ONS SITE CLOSES One of the most popular websites listing unofficial add-ons for TV-streaming software Kodi has been unexpectedly shut down. TVAddOns, at www.tvaddons.ag, had links to 1,500 add-ons, many of which allowed people to access paid-for content illegally. It comes amid a wider crackdown on Kodi led by broadcasters…

THREE FINED FOR 999 FAILURE Ofcom has fined mobile network Three £1.9m for not being able to guarantee that customers could make emergency 999 calls at any time. It discovered the flaw following an investigation last year into a temporary loss of Three’s service in Kent, Hampshire and parts of London. It found that calls had to pass through one data centre, leaving the network vulnerable to a single point of failure. Three now uses multiple data centres to direct calls to BT’s network. RANSOMWARE ATTACKS LONDON UNIVERSITY University College London has become the latest organisation to fall victim to ransomware. The attack in mid June forced the university to disconnect large parts of its IT system. It is believed that the ransomware infiltrated the network after someone clicked a…

MORRISONS FINED FOR SENDING SPAM Supermarket Morrisons has been fined £10,500 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for sending marketing emails to customers who had said they didn’t want to receive any. A total of 130,671 emails were sent in late 2016 to people with a Morrisons store card. Customers were asked to change their marketing preferences in order to receive discounts and earn points from using their card. AMAZON TO START SELLING CARS Amazon looks set to start selling cars online in the UK, following a trial in Italy with Fiat. Details were leaked by the German car magazine Automobilwoche, which claimed that the company was hiring car salespeople in the UK. Amazon hasn’t confirmed the report, but retail experts say it makes commercial sense for the company to…

Alot can happen in 262 million years. Continents can drift, mountains can rise, species can evolve then become extinct. It’s also how long it would take hackers to break into Virgin Media’s latest router, the Hub 3.0, which makes it safe enough for us – and we suspect for most people. But worryingly 864,000 Virgin customers still use the older Super Hub 2 router, and that can be hacked in just four days. This alarming discovery was made by a team of hackers working with consumer group Which?, as part of an investigation into the security of home devices that connect to the internet. The weak point of the router was its default password. It was only eight characters long, using just lower-case letters from the alphabet, with two letters…

James Mayhew attempts to defend Facebook as a source of breaking news (Letters, Issue 504), and I’m sure he’s right that people can find out what’s happening via the site. But overall I think the impact of Facebook on society is negative. I haven’t always thought this way. In the first few years I used it friends and family treated it like a novelty, sharing photos, quizzes, quotes and so on. But then something changed and it seemed to coincide with the EU referendum last year. I’m not particularly political, and didn’t vote in the referendum, so I was upset that overnight Facebook had been taken over by people who just wanted to spit venom at those who dared to have a different opinion. This was very different to the…

Q You recently wrote about PayPal Buyer Protection allowing a reader to reclaim an amount that was over £1,000. Last time I used this service (over 10 years ago) the transaction limit was £500. Is this no longer the case? Stephen Murchieson A PayPal has been increasing its protection over a number of years. In 2004, the most you could receive for a disputed transaction was £250. Now there is no lower or upper limit to what you can claim. In April 2014, it extended the time a buyer could open a dispute from 45 days to 180. If it finds in your favour, you receive a full refund, including original post and packaging costs. However, users need to remember that PayPal doesn’t always rule in the buyer’s favour. So…

You recommended the Ultranote 1V laptop from PC Specialist in Issue 405, so I visited its website (www.pcspecialist.co.uk) and found that there were many options available, including a choice of screens, processors, memory, SSDs and hard-drive sizes. As each specification is chosen or changed, the total price is adjusted. This helped me make the right decision. A phone number was provided, enabling me to have a useful discussion with a friendly, helpful and knowledgeable member of staff. They gave us help to set up a new email account. A week or so later we had problems with this, but we solved them with the advice they offered. So we have a small, light, fast laptop with no unwanted or unnecessary software. Thanks to Computeractive and PC Specialist. Michael Main HOW…

https://calibre-ebook.com What you need: Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 Jane Hoskyn recommends new programs that won’t cost you anything Share your ebook library on your home Wi-Fi, using the superb new version of this open-source program. Calibre now lets you use the browser on your tablet, phone and laptop to securely access and read your ebooks – without having to download e-reader apps, let alone pay for an e-reader device. This new ‘Content server’ is the most exciting new feature in version 3.0, Calibre’s biggest update since August 2014. The new version also adds support for reading ebooks on highresolution screens such as iPad ‘Retina’ displays, and lets you convert EPUB, MOBI and other ebook formats to Microsoft Word (DOCX). As ever, Calibre lets you download, read and convert ebooks,…

We tell you what software to use What should I use to trim videos to size? Q I have been looking for a free download for a basic video trimmer, but I keep finding that everything I try is not actually free but just a sales pitch for a much more complex version. Can you suggest a free tool? Keith Pover A You’re right, Keith – programs like Movavi Video Editor (www.movavi.com) can be installed for free, but then you’re redirected to a sales pitch and realise you’ve actually installed a seven-day trial. It’s a similar story on Android and iOS. A couple of years ago I paid £1.76 for the Pro version of the excellent Android app VidTrim (www.snipca.com/24759), after getting fed up with the ugly watermark slapped across…

SPEAKER £90 from Amazon www.snipca.com/24719 There are more Bluetooth speakers priced around £100 than there are unnecessary email filters (see Final Straw, page 74), which makes it that much harder to find a really good one. But Ultimate Ears (UE) has a great track record, having made some of our favourite audio products in recent years. At just 10cm high – or four inches in real money – the Wonderboom looks like a fattened drinks can. It can connect to one or two devices at a time, and remember up to eight. You can also pair two Wonderbooms. It doesn’t support the higher-quality audio technology aptX, but nor do any of Apple’s products, for example, so that’s hardly a must-have. Rated IP67, it’s waterproof enough to drop in a swimming…

Do I need a phone or a tablet? Q I need a mobile device to show off my photo collection, make calls, listen to music when I’m out and about, and access the internet when I need to. But phones are too small, and tablets don’t let you make calls! I really don’t want to pay twice. What should I buy? Judith Murray A Only mobile phones have the ability to handle conventional calls to and from UK phone numbers, but a few mobile networks are starting to support ‘Wi-Fi calling’, which routes phone calls over an internet data connection. In theory that could work with tablets, but the only network that actually supports tablets so far is O2, via its TU Go app (www.snipca.com/24718, see screenshot). You’ll need an…

HARD DRIVE £222 (500GB) from Amazon www.snipca.com/24762 Governments disagree about whether encryption is a blessing or a curse, but for the moment anyone can encrypt any data they don’t want their friends, neighbours or rulers peeking at. Windows 10 includes BitLocker, which encrypts drives, but only in the Pro edition. The rest of us can use free or paid-for encryption software, but here’s an alternative. Instead of plugging in an external drive and typing a password into software to decrypt it, you get a drive with a built-in keypad. Once you’ve used this to change the default PIN to your own, the drive is automatically encrypted. Wake it up, or connect it to a different PC, and nothing happens. Only when you tap your PIN into the keypad does it…

What you need: Tablacus Explorer; Any Windows version (XP to 10) Time required: 30 minutes File Explorer (Windows Explorer in Windows 7 and earlier) is one of Microsoft’s best tools, but there’s still room for improvement. That’s where Tablacus Explorer comes in. It’s a free program that lets you open folders on your PC as separate tabs – similar to how your browser works. Even better, you can split the program window into two panes and open multiple tabs in each. We’ll show you how to use it to access, move and copy multiple files quickly. STEP 1 To download the latest version of Tablacus Explorer, go to www.snipca.com/24769 and click the Download link 1 . The program is a compressed file, so you’ll need a file-compression program – such…

Microsoft have revamped the Skype Android app, adding several new features (for more info on these go to www.snipca.com/24724). Our favourite is Highlights, which lets you record a video or take a photo, personalise it by adding text or scribbling something across it, then share it with your Skype contacts and groups. Your video/photo will automatically disappear from the recipient’s device after seven days. Skype’s iOS app will be updated with these new features soon. STEP 1 Install the Skype app on your Android phone or tablet (www.snipca.com/24725) or update your existing app in the Play Store. Open it, tap Sign In, then log in using your Microsoft account. When you first log in, you’ll see options to choose a theme and sync your email address contacts with Skype. After…

ClippyCam* Free iOS: www.snipca.com/24746 By default, your device lets you take a photo or video using either its front or back camera, but not both at the same time. This app lets you do exactly that. It’s a great way to record a stunning location or memorable event and capture your own reaction while you were witnessing it. Ace File Manager Free Android: www.snipca.com/24747 It’s not always easy to know which files are consuming valuable storage space on your device. This app gives you a detailed graphic breakdown of all your files – apps, downloads, videos, photos and documents – and lets you sort them by type or size. You can then delete items you don’t need. Autoset £1.69 Android: www.snipca.com/24748 This handy app lets you automate your device settings depending…

OUTLOOK Create multiple email signatures for different contacts It’s easy to create several Outlook email signatures, then simply choose which one you want to use for each email you send. For example, you can create a more formal one for business emails and a more fun one for friends. To do this, click the File tab at the top left, Options at the bottom, Mail on the left, then click the Signatures button on the right. Now click the New button, enter a name for this signature, click OK, then type the signature you want in the field at the bottom. You can format your signature using the options at the top. To add an image, click the small image icon at the top right. Similarly, to embed an internet…

What is it? A robot that has taught itself how to write musical scores. After looking for common patterns in over 5,000 pieces of music, across all genres, it can now compose and play its own music on a marimba – a percussion instrument similar to a xylophone. Previously, it could perform with humans in real time, jamming and improvising, but not generate its own compositions. Is this another example of machine learning? Yes. Shimon’s creator Mason Bretan, from the Georgia Institute of Technology, created the algorithms that let it analyse music, then gave it the first four bars of a new composition and waited to see what would happen. Shimon didn’t disappoint, producing two pieces of music each around 30 seconds long. Where can I hear them? On YouTube.…

Q In Issue 502’s Problems Solved you answered Sydney Clarke’s question about Outlook.com’s vanishing spell-checker, where you explained that the service now used the browser’s built-in dictionary. I hope you can help with my related problem – I accidentally added a misspelling of my own surname to the dictionary. I wanted to add it precisely because I regularly mistype it. This is because my name has letters that are close together on the keyboard, and I’m fat-fingered. But now my mistypes aren’t marked as mistakes! How do I remove the misspelled word? I use Edge in Windows 10. Mick McNamara A You can do this but the method is far from obvious. First, press Windows key+E to fire up File Explorer and then use this to navigate to C:\Users\[YourUsername]\AppData\ Roaming\Microsoft\Spelling.…

Q When I use System Restore I get a message that says it has failed while “restoring the directory from the restore point”. It also says something about the source being AppxStaging and destination being %ProgramFiles%\ WindowsApps. None of this means anything to me, but I would like to have this function back. I’m running Windows 10 but haven’t yet applied the Creators Update. Richard Murray A This is a bug, and Microsoft is aware of it. It is working on a fix but until then the workaround is to rename the WindowsApps folder that’s causing the problem. To do this you’ll need to enter what’s known as the Windows Recovery Environment. First, click Start, followed by the settings cog, then ‘Update & security’, followed by Recovery. Next, under ‘Advanced…

Q In Issue 502’s Problems Solved, you explained to Dave Brownstone how to ‘hide’ unwanted apps on his Samsung phone. I have an Apple iPhone 4s. Can I do the same? Kevin Greene A Yes and no. Newer iPhones, running iOS 10, allow users to remove most Apple apps. This is done by tapping and holding an app icon until it begins to jiggle, and then tapping the cross at the relevant app icon’s top left. To restore apps hidden in this way, launch the App Store app, search for the app’s name and then tap the download icon (a cloud with a down-pointing arrow). Unfortunately, this won’t work with earlier versions of iOS and the latest edition available for your iPhone 4s is iOS 9.3. However, there are a…

1080p Of the common types of high-definition video, this is the best quality: 1920x1080 pixels. 32bit A measure of how much information a computer can process at once. Most older computers are 32bit, more modern ones are 64bit. 3G/4G A set of technologies that delivers faster mobile broadband, so called because it is the fourth generation of mobile-data networking standards. 4K Video with a resolution of 3840x2160 pixels. 64bit A technology that processes information in larger chunks. Most modern computers are 64bit 720p A common resolution of high-definition video: 1280x720 pixels. aptX A codec used to compress audio so it can be transmitted over Bluetooth with minimal loss in quality. Bandwidth A measure of how much information can be transferred through a connection at one time. Beta A version of…