Table of contents for April 2016 in PC Pro

EXCUSE ME, BUT I hope you don’t mind if I ask you to read to the end of this column? That would be terribly kind. It’s about manners, you see, a topic inspired by the excellent Radio 4 series fronted by David Mitchell on modern manners. The second programme dealt with the internet and phones. The latter is undoubtedly a scourge on society. I may not have the wit of Mr Mitchell, but is it too much to ask that you reach the end of my sentence before reaching into your pocket and checking your phone? It’s not my fault, I hear you cry. If I’m sitting in the pub and there’s a vibration in my pocket, how on earth am I meant to resist the temptation to check it?…

The LP is enjoying a Lazarus-like comeback, with a 64% jump in sales in 2015. There’s even new hardware hitting the market, including a relaunch of the £4,000 Technics SL-1200 turntable. It seems audiophiles like to physically own media in quality formats, although the debate over which formats offer higher quality or richer sound rumbles on. The 2.1m vinyl albums sold last year marked the LP’s best figures in 21 years, during which the CD has prospered and started to wane, while downloads and streaming have exploded. However, while audiophiles are leading a boom for vinyl, the LP remains niche and makes up a tiny slice of overall music sales. At the other end of the perceived quality spectrum, streaming music via services such as Spotify leapt 81% year on…

LAPTOPS Dell XPS 13 Late 2015 update, £1,149 dell.co.uk We already loved the Dell XPS 13, but this update makes it irresistible. Skylake processors, superfast SSDs and Thunderbolt 3 all help it fly through tasks, and the design is as amazing as ever. It’s the ultraportable we’ve been waiting for. REVIEW: pcpro.link/alxps13 ALTERNATIVES Apple MacBook Pro 13in with Retina display The Force Touch keyboard makes the MacBook Pro even better. Note, though, we expect a new model soon. From £999; apple.com/uk REVIEW: pcpro. link/almacp15 Asus C201 Chromebook It has weak points – the screen is okay rather than great – but the C201 is ideal for life on the move thanks to its outstanding 12-hour battery life. £150; currys. co.uk REVIEW: pcpro.link/alasusc201 Dell XPS 15 Dell takes the XPS 13’s…

“Our roads are chaotic – and if there’s one thing that computers definitely don’t cope well with, it’s chaos ” Who’s gonna drive you home tonight? If The Cars re-released that classic song today, the answer would probably be Google, Ford or even Nvidia. At least that’s what this year’s CES would have us believe. Autonomous driving technology was one of the key themes of this year’s show, with dozens of companies determined to stop us getting behind the wheel and turn us into screenprodding passengers instead. You could feel the tension of an arms race between the various manufacturers, all determined to claim their spot in this seemingly inevitable market. There were the traditional car manufacturers – Ford, Chrysler, Mercedes – all desperate to prove they weren’t being cowed…

When Las Vegas hosts a technology show, it doesn’t scrimp. There is no bigger tech event than the Consumer Electronic Show (CES), with its product releases, keynote speeches and monstrous stands. Here, we highlight the key products so that you get all the flavour of CES without having to tramp the halls. Every year we see several new trends being pushed at CES, but we’re old and wise enough to keep a weary eye out for hype over substance. We still have the scars from two consecutive CES shows when Sony, Samsung and the rest were pushing 3D TVs as if they were the saviour of home entertainment. This year? Nary a mention. Instead, the talk was of self-driving cars, connected homes, fitness, sleep and health trackers, and OLED screens.…

“Aeroplane hacks through media systems that allow you to monitor the traffic of customers of the flight. Getting access to the root system, and therefore control of the aircraft, would require physical access.” STEPHEN COTY, CHIEF SECURITY EVANGELIST AT ALERT LOGIC “Crimeware toolkits are designed to steal information, but there’s a limit to how much damage these threats can achieve. Given their goals and focus, they don’t really have the capacity to qualify as a catastrophe.” ELAD SHARF, SECURITY RESEARCH MANAGER AT PERFORMANTA “I’m really not worried about fitness trackers and smartwatches, or hackers stealing my biometric data. I’m more worried about transportation, utilities and the big stuff more likely to draw the attention of attackers with both the skills and motivation to carry out our biggest fears.” ADRIAN SANABRIA,…

PRICE £1,250 (£1,500 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com “Kudos to Asus: the Zen AiO is a premium all-in-one PC with plenty of power and a terrific screen... but it’s not perfect” Many all-in-one PCs aim for premium status, but few hold a candle to Apple’s iMac. Asus could actually compete thanks to the Zen AiO, though – this all-in-one has styling to match the spec. The Zen AiO’s gold-tinted, brushed-metal chassis and sharp, machined corners make it look and feel every bit the premium computer. However, form appears to have beaten function, with Asus mimicking Apple’s approach to port placement: four USB 3 ports, two HDMI ports, an SD card reader and 3.5mm audio jack are all rear-andcentre, making them comically difficult to reach. Unlike Apple iMacs, which are easy to…

PRICE £249 (£299 inc VAT) from jessops.com When the first Ricoh Theta appeared back in 2013, it broke the rules of photography – and I find the concept as appealing now as I did then. This is photography unhindered by all the usual conventions, photography without the frame, and it’s amazing how different that feels. Since launch, it’s been updated with the Theta m15 version, which added much-needed video support, while the Theta S boosts the quality of stills and video. The core appeal of the Theta remains the same. Hold it up, press the big button and move on. So much simpler than fiddling with exposures and ordering friends into a space that fits the frame. While you may not want the faff, you will still want good-looking photos…

PRICE £158 (£189 inc VAT) from beatsbydre.com Sleek, compact and light, the Beats Pill+ is a deceptive little speaker. It’s just that little bit in love with itself, with a backlit “b” on the top in stark contrast to its black surround, but it packs plenty into that tiny form. Audio quality sits in the middle of the pack, but that isn’t a damning statement when the standard is so high: on a slow jazz track, for instance, the low echo of a bass drum is perfectly clear and all the instruments are easy to make out, so it can deliver subtlety. As soon as tracks get more tempestuous, though, the audio becomes a tad muddled. Moreover, note the lack of support for the aptX codec, but this isn’t surprising…

PRICE £149 (£179 inc VAT) from libratone.com This is a crazily versatile speaker, as we’ve come to expect from those Scandinavian iconoclasts at Libratone. You can think of it as a rival to Sonos, with multi-room audio support if you buy more than one (and you will be tempted). Connect it to your wireless network and it becomes an internet streaming radio: using the not terribly intuitive app, you can select up to five favourites and then select them directly using the touch-sensitive button on the top of the speaker. Or you can link it directly to your Spotify Premium account. Cleverly, there are very few places it can’t go. The strap makes it easy to carry with you or hang up on a hook in the bathroom. This is…

PRICE £83 (£100 inc VAT) from pinnaclesys.com “I like how an effect can be applied to a single cut, one of the underlying video streams or the entire multi-camera object” Pinnacle Studio may not have the name recognition of Adobe or Sony, but it has enough high-quality features to make it a worthy opponent to Premiere Elements and Movie Studio Platinum. New to this version is multicamera editing, with a streamlined interface to cut between footage shot simultaneously with multiple cameras. This might be handy for events such as speeches and first dances at a wedding, where multiple guests capture the action with their cameras and phones. Or cut between multiple camera angles shot during a theatrical performance. Studio 19 supports up to six simultaneous streams in the Ultimate edition,…

You’ll be hard-pushed to find a better-looking site than Barclays’. Navigation is well thought out, making it simple to find the feature you’re after. For instance, it’s easy to scan balances on all your accounts, and you’ll never get lost when managing your transactions. There are separate tabs for personal and business account lists. The latter can get a little unwieldy, though, since Barclays opens a business savings account to accompany every current account – we have six accounts on that half of the app when we only want three. Barclays also offers built-in cloud storage. This isn’t only for statements, letters and contract notes and so on from the bank itself, but also for any personal documents you might need to keep close by while doing your online banking.…

Years after its rivals, HSBC has finally produced a fully fledged app. And it’s, well, okay. One nice feature is Fast Balance, which lets you check your current account’s balance from the homescreen without logging in. However, it’s optional, just in case you’re worried who might grab your phone. The app’s money-management features are limited to basics such as paying bills and transfers to accounts already set up via the website. You can also make instant payments using Paym (paym.co.uk), but the recipient must also be set up on the service. Note that the iOS app isn’t native and so can be aggravatingly slow to load pages: frustrating when you want to do something in a hurry. Likewise, no Touch ID support is a real pain. Identical security measures are…

NatWest’s strong apps heritage shows: not only does it support every major mobile OS, but it has a features list that towers above most rivals. It does the basics – you can check account balances, monitor direct debits and standing orders, transfer cash between accounts and pay bills – but it also lets you top up a pay-as-you-go mobile and withdraw cash from a cashpoint without your card. The iOS version also supports Apple Pay, both on iPhones and the Apple Watch, and you can use the Touch ID fingerprint sensor to quickly log in without a password. The apps are native on every platform, so are quick to load and have a simple layout. Accessing your account via the website is more convoluted. You need a ten-digit customer number…

Avast Secure Line I believe a virtual private network (VPN) app should be installed on every phone. There are plenty to choose from, ranging from free to extortionate annual subscriptions. Which you choose may well depend upon device and platform availability, but paid-for apps will generally be faster and more stable in use. A good mid-range option is Avast SecureLine, which I’ve found to be reliable, easy to set up and use, and costs £14.99 per year. £1.25 per month is decent value to ensure that nobody is snooping on your online banking, especially when using unsecured public Wi-Fi hotspots. Avast Antivirus & Security Additional layers of security for your mobile device are never a bad bet. The sting is taken out of mobile antivirus a little by this Avast…

Smile’s recent redesign looks great. It’s utterly devoid of frills and very easy to navigate, with intelligent use of colour picking out important details such as links and your net worth (it deducts your credit-card debt from your overall, combined account balances to give you a more realistic idea of what you can spend). Logging in takes three steps on three separate page loads, and requires your account details, two digits from a PIN and a piece of memorable information. There’s no need to use an app or hardware reader to generate a login code, but you will need a reader, and your credit or debit card, to authorise new payments once you’re inside the website. Smile provides apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry, through which you can inspect your…

PRICE £187 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com “The router can present up to four virtual SSIDs and enforce client isolation to stop wireless users from seeing each other” Billion’s BiPAC 4500NZ is a budget-friendly router aimed at small businesses looking for a solid combination of WAN redundancy, site-to-site and client VPN support, and wireless services. Its primary WAN connection is handled by a dedicated Gigabit port, and it has an integrated 4G LTE module that only requires a SIM card slotted in the back. Installation is easy, aided by a wizard that runs through setting up internet access on the Gigabit or LTE WAN interfaces and enabling wireless services. It was quick to get these sorted, but you must remember to manually enable the router’s SPI firewall as, rather worryingly, this…

PRICE £144 exc VAT from ebuyer.com “Security measures are good and the router’s firewall protects against common flood attacks such as DoS” Small businesses that demand secure access for their remote workforce may well find that TP-Link’s SafeStream TL-ER6120 is just what they need. For a very modest price, it supports up to 100 IPsec VPNs and provides dual Gigabit WAN links for essential internet redundancy. However, there’s more to this 1U rack unit. Security features include service blocking, application controls and website filtering. You get three Gigabit LAN ports, with the third functioning as a DMZ for protecting public servers. It even has integral 4kV surge protection so it won’t get fried by a lightning strike. Installation took us five minutes, with the tidy web console providing easy access…

@sammarshall “Left to their own devices, everyone would come up with their own solution” Office 365 may be a success story for Microsoft in terms of sales but, when you look at how people work, not much has changed since Office 2003. Take a team I recently helped, who wanted to improve how they managed projects in their organisation. They saw it as a knowledge management issue: every time somebody set up a new project, they did it in a slightly different way and spent time reinventing things that already existed. So, they asked for a “knowledgemanagement system”. However, it soon became clear that they didn’t need a specialist system at all – they needed to work more consistently – and the tools they required were already available. They had…

We explore the trends and technologies that are set to shape the future Matchmaking in the workplace How online dating tech could improve office recruitment p126 What is... D-Wave 2X? Find out more about Google and NASA’s quantum computer p128 Geek Day Out Art and tech meet at the Electronic Superhighway p129 What do the at-risk ancient monuments of Syria and the world’s oldest ham have in common? They’re both being preserved in 3D for future generations to enjoy (if not taste). The technology isn’t new, but smarter and smaller hardware is helping push its use by academics and archivists alike. Variations of the technology are being used to preserve monuments before they’re lost, resurrect those that have already fallen, and let academics, students and museum visitors get their hands…

President Obama called for gun-control measures with tears in his eyes, but his words will put smiles on the faces of smart-gun makers. He asked why the “most technologically advanced nation on Earth” doesn’t use biometrics to secure weapons. “If we can set it up so you can’t unlock your phone unless you’ve got the right fingerprint, why can’t we do the same thing for our guns?” he asked. Smart guns already exist. Armatix’s iP1 pistol will only fire if the user wears a watch with a matching RFID chip, whereas Mossberg’s handgun unlocks via an RFID ring. Identilock and Kodiak have also developed fingerprint scanners. The appeal of smart guns is clear, said independent security analyst Joseph Steinberg: they reduce the likelihood of people accidentally shooting themselves or others;…

Does the internet make our brains lazy? Forgotten something? Google it. Lost your way? Open satnav. Does this reliance on technology make our brains lazy? Research suggests we make less of an effort to remember a fact when we know it’s available at the touch of a button, a phenomenon dubbed “digital amnesia”. However, separate studies suggest this doesn’t mean our minds are becoming weaker, but more efficient at choosing what information is worth remembering – why waste brain space on trivia when you can remember something more important? That said, more research is required – it’s clear that the internet is changing our brains, but whether it’s bad news or not remains to be seen. pcpro.link/258alphr How real life imitates the games we play Do you see Frogger whenever…

“Is my temper under sufficient control to not say something to a rude person who pulls a face at our hard work? ” I’ve returned from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas complete with the usual annual flu. It seems you can’t pack nigh-on 200,000 people into a few enormous convention halls without bugs spreading like wildfire. It really does belie the claim that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. The mass illness sweeping the tech world at the moment is a predictable and unwelcome side effect of the world’s biggest, craziest consumer electronics show. Flu makes you grumpy and maybe that’s why there is so much press this year about how CES has apparently lost its mojo. Microsoft wasn’t there, although it’s hard to see what it…

Sam Marshall Giving users Office 365 without training is like installing a kitchen without also teaching cookery, argues guest columnist Sam Marshall on p117 Nicole Kobie Forget London: Nicole explains why it makes sense to set up a tech company in Cambridge, Cardiff, Cornwall, Reading or the North East on p40 Nik Rawlinson Nik shows you how to create publications, from newsletters to magazines, using this month’s bonus software, Serif PagePlus X4. See p52 Barry Collins If your laptop is crushed, who you gonna call? Most likely it’s Kroll Ontrack. Barry speaks to its UK managing director in Profile on p20…

1 Microsoft calls time on ageing Internet Explorers Microsofthasended supportforseveral versionsofInternet Explorerasit continuestopush userstowardsthe latestversion. Januarymarked thefinalupdatefor outdatedversionsof InternetExplorer,although whichoptionsremainavailabletoendusers dependsontheirinstalledversionof Windows.Onlythelatestcompatibleversion foreachOSwillbesupported–peopleusing WindowsVistawillbeabletopatchInternet Explorer9,whileWindows7andWindows8.1 usersonlyhaveInternetExplorer11asa supportedMicrosoftbrowser. Thecompanyisalsoendingsupportfor Windows8;securityupdateswillonlybe availableforusersthathaveupgradedto8.1. 2 Employers can read your personal chat messages, court rules Employersarewithintheirrightstoaccess privatemessagessentviachatorwebmail accountsoncompanycomputerson companytime,accordingtoEuropeanCourt ofHumanRightsjudges. Althoughworkemailshavelongbeen consideredfairgameforemployers,arecent casehighlightsthatbossescandelveinto personalchatorwebmailaccounts– providedstaffwereusingtheaccounts duringworktime. Thecasewasbroughtforwardafter aRomanianengineerwasfiredforusing YahooMessengerforbothworkandprivate communicationsoncompanytime.The engineerarguedthecompanyhadviolated hisrighttoconfidentialcorrespondence,but theEuropeanjudgessaiditwas“reasonable thatanemployerwouldwanttoverify thatemployeeswerecompletingtheir professionaltasksduringworkinghours”. 3 Chrome browser’s speed boosted by 26% Googleistorolloutanewcompression technologyforitsChromebrowser,with thecompanyboastingthenewalgorithm willmakesurfing26%faster. Thecompanysaysitwilluseanew “Brotli”algorithmtocompressdatasuchas fontsandotherpageelementsthatcanslow webtraffic.Thenewalgorithmwillreplace thetwo-year-oldZopflialgorithmtocutdata transferlevelsandbatteryusage.Itcould alsobeusedinrivalbrowsers. “Wehopethatthisformatwill besupportedbymajorbrowsers inthenearfuture,asthesmaller compressedsizewouldgiveadditional benefitstomobileusers,suchaslower datatransferfeesandreduced batteryuse,”saidZoltánSzabadka, softwareengineerforGoogle’s compressionteam. 4 Industry campaigns against US back doors Apple’sTimCookandexpertsfrom42 countrieshavecalledonUSofficialstoback downontheirplanstoforcetechcompanies toincludebackdoorsinencryptionsystems. USauthoritieswantaccesstoencrypted messagesthatonlysecurityofficialswould beabletouse,butprivacyexpertsbelieve anybackdoorwouldcreateweaknesses thatcouldbeexploited.“Usersshouldhave theoptiontouse–andcompaniestheoption toprovide–thestrongestencryption available,includingend-to-endencryption, withoutfearthatgovernmentswillcompel access,”readstheopenletteron securetheinternet.org. 5 Google admits cars would have crashed with out human intervention DocumentsloggingGoogle’sdriverlesscars haverevealedthattheauto-drivingvehicles wouldhavecrashed13timesin14months hadahumannottakenoverthewheel,and thathumanshadtotakethereins341times duringthetestperiod. Ofthe341“disengagements”,272 involvedthesoftwarerealisingtherewasa problemandaskingthedrivertotakeover,…

BACKGROUND INFO ON INNOVATIVE BRITISH COMPANIES KEYFACTS IN A NUTSHELL Kroll Ontrack claims to be the world’s leading data recovery specialist. It rescues data for consumers, corporations, governments and the police. Its European headquarters are in the UK. LOCATION Epsom in Surrey and 26 offices globally FOUNDED 1972 STAFF 1,100 (worldwide) WEBSITE krollontrack.co.uk It’s fair to say the staff at Kroll Ontrack like a challenge. Whether it’s the vital but grim task of recovering data from the black-box recorders on the Space Shuttle Columbia, or the recent retrieval of data from a Polish customer’s 20-year-old Amiga 600, the clean rooms at Kroll Ontrack’s premises see a huge variety of hardware – much of it in an appalling state. However, it’s not the fire-damaged or fractured hard disks that seem to…

It’s easy to score when you keep moving the goal posts. That’s long been the government’s tactic when it comes to broadband targets, and it’s still getting away with it. Late last year, the government announced a plan to offer subsidies of around £350 for satellite broadband to anyone stuck on a line slower than 2Mbits/sec. That pledge from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) may sound promising at first, but scrape an inch below the surface and it’s clear how cynical the government and digital economy minister Ed Vaizey have become. Back in 2010, the government promised that everyone in the UK would have access to connections of at least 2Mbits/sec by the end of 2012, later delaying it until 2015. At the beginning of December, with…

Cortana seems to be the price we’re expected to pay for Windows 10. I have nothing to hide, but I didn’t ask for it and don’t like Google, Microsoft or any other company tracking my use of the web. Like many, I downloaded “Shut Up 10” to take back some control of my PC, but I still found my hard drive light flickering and Cortana using both memory and processing power, even with search disabled. It isn’t doing that for nothing, is it? The answer given to a user of the Microsoft Community forums when he asked why processes run, even when they have been disabled, was: “It’s your computer but it’s Microsoft’s operating system”. Perhaps that says it all. I’m using its operating system and I haven’t paid for…

“As a rule of thumb, only choose a maximum of two fonts – one for headlines and one for the copy ” This month’s bonus software downloads include the excellent PagePlus X4, Serif’s powerful desktop publishing application for Windows (including Windows 10). While it might not have usurped Adobe InDesign in the nation’s magazine production offices, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t: it has all the tools required to design and output professionalgrade publications easily and quickly. Over the next three pages, we’ll walk through the process of laying out a one-page publication and introduce all of the key tools you’ll need to get started. ■ General principles If you’ve used a desktop publishing (DTP) tool before, you’ll already be familiar with many of the key concepts involved. If not,…

PRICE £1,374 (£1,649 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk “I even like the buttonless touchpad and found myself acclimatising to its solid clicks and range of multifinger gestures” Dell has scaled up the elegant carbon-fibre and metal design of the XPS 13 to create the company’s most stylish 15in laptop yet. Throw in the latest quad-core Skylake processors, Nvidia graphics and the option of blazingly quick NVMe SSDs, and the Dell XPS 15 is ready to do serious damage to your credit card. Squared-off slabs of cool-to-thetouch metal sandwich a thin wedge of carbon fibre; long rubber feet poke through the underside; and the clean, crisp design is all straightline geometry and subtle curves. The XPS 15 is one handsome devil. Tilt back the lid, and there are only a few millimetres…

PRICE £75 (£90 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk “You can work on offline documents using a Chrome extension if you take the Chromebit to somewhere with dodgy internet” The Asus Chromebit is a new twist on the stick PC. Intel started the trend with the Compute Stick, and plenty of other manufacturers have joined in since, including Hannspree with its Micro PC – a device we really wanted to love, but couldn’t quite recommend (pcpro.link/258hannspree). The Asus Chromebit is different. Unlike the Intel and Hannspree devices, it runs Google’s lightweight Chrome OS, which seems to make more sense for the form factor. So, who is this tiny machine for? It is here we strike our first problem. Even Asus doesn’t seem to know, mentioning in the same marketing breath families, businesses,…

PRICE £48 (£58 inc VAT) from dabs.com “If Continuum appeals, and you’re prepared to spend another £60, there’s no other flagship or smartphone OS that does anything as clever” Acouple of months after the launch of Windows 10 Mobile, we finally got our hands on Microsoft’s official Display Dock, the adapter required for the operating system’s most exciting feature, Continuum, which promises to turn your smartphone into a portable PC. At the moment, Continuum only works on the Microsoft Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL, since it requires a USB Type-C connection to connect to the Display Dock. As a result, the Display Dock won’t be any use if you have an older Lumia phone, but it’s likely that future Lumia handsets will have the feature. Once you’ve connected the…

PRICE £149 (£179 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com “Put on orchestral music and it feels like you’re there; listen to a radio play and you can hear every detail” The biggest and boldest speaker on test here, the JBL Extreme is our top party choice by a mile. It packs bags of bass that rebounds around the room – and your entire house – and you can connect up to three phones simultaneously if you want to vary the DJ. The speaker handles classical music and vocals well, but lacks the clarity of the KEF Muo, in part due to that non-toosubtle bass. Unlike the KEF, though, the JBL Xtreme is rugged enough to go anywhere: it’s “splashproof” rather than waterproof, but you could take it out on a drizzly day…

PRICE £83 (£99 inc VAT) from ao.com “You can shower with it, leave it in the rain, even immerse it in a metre of water for half an hour” Designed to be inexpensive multiroom speakers with wide appeal, Philips’ Izzy range focuses on simplicity. You don’t even need to connect it to your wireless network because it creates its own: just hit the “Group” button on each speaker you want to synchronise, and one of the speakers takes the lead as the “Master” speaker. Your music source communicates over Bluetooth, so always needs to be within 10m of the master speaker. That’s a drawback, but it means you can access any streaming service from your device; rivals such as Sonos need to add support. Also, note the BM5 isn’t portable:…

First Direct was among the first banks to offer 24-hour telephone banking back in the 1990s, and its experience stood it in good stead in the rush to online banking a decade later. Its website and apps are mature and feature-packed, and there’s a host of extra services to support the core software. The website covers most of your banking basics, allowing you to make payments, set up standing orders, and even apply for loans and mortgages. However, it’s light on extras. Beyond displaying your statements in a list and managing direct debits, there’s very little to play with. The First Direct Plus system looks promising. It aggregates account information from non-First Direct companies, including credit cards and utilities, to give you an overview of your finances. But it’s very…

Lloyds was one of the first banks to offer an app. Well, sort of. Back in the 1990s, while other leading banks were dipping their toes into web-based banking, Lloyds created its Electronic Chequebook system, which ran on the Psion 3a pocket organiser. Nowadays, of course, Lloyds offers a full basket of online banking tools: a web-based banking facility that also adapts to mobiles and tablets, as well as Android and Windows Phone apps, and separate apps for iPhone and iPad. Actually, on the iPad, “app” is a slight misnomer, as it’s simply the normal website wrapped up in an app layer. It does at least adopt the login facility from the other apps, where once the device is registered with Lloyds, you can log in with only three randomly…

The Royal Bank of Scotland’s history may date back to 1727, but it was one of the first to embrace online banking. It’s also one of the few to offer apps for all the major mobile OSes, including Windows Phone, and some of these have been available for years. We’re pleased to see support for the latest hardware developments, too: if a fingerprint reader is available on your phone then it can be used to log in to the app (or you can use a PIN). On an iPhone, the app can perform most banking functions, including checking your statement, paying bills and managing direct debits or standing orders. There are extra capabilities such as using a passcode to obtain cash from a machine without your card, top up mobile…

“The number of times I go into a physical branch now pales in comparison to how often I check online or switch on the app” It’s been three years since we last compared all of the different banks’ online offerings, but if I was to guess how often the “average” (always a dangerous word) reader has switched provider, I’d say zero. Certainly that’s true for me. I’ve been a loyal HSBC customer for more than 25 years, although when it lured me in with a “£50 free cash!” offer, it was called Midland Bank. If I try and cast my mind back to what made me choose, bearing in mind all the banks at my campus university had such offers, I think I was probably enticed by its location: two…

PRICE £349 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com “The Vigor 2860Ln isn’t the cheapest SMB router, but you’ll be hard-pushed to find this many security features elsewhere” DrayTek’s SMB routers have always focused sharply on WAN redundancy, and the latest Vigor 2860Ln has it by the bucketful. Along with an integral ADSL2+/VDSL2 interface, this curvy white box has a Gigabit WAN port, accepts a 3G/4G USB adapter and has a 3G/4G SIM slot around the back. If that isn’t enough, the 2860Ln is 2.4GHz 802.11n wireless-enabled, endowed with a standard SPI firewall and offers application controls, plus optional web-content filtering. We haven’t finished yet, either: the router also supports 32 IPsec VPN tunnels and can manage up to five simultaneous SSL VPNs. Installation is a cinch: wizards abound in the busy web…

PRICE £1,745 exc VAT from boston.co.uk “The Fenway is a power miser: in idle, we measured it sipping 53W and peaking at only 93W with the CPU under extreme load ” Boston’s Fenway 2104-0C is a slimline 1U rack server packing Intel’s latest Skylake Xeon E3 v5 CPU. Aimed squarely at small to medium-sized businesses, the 11-member Skylake family of server CPUs delivers a choice selection of new features, most notably a drop from 22nm to 14nm and support for 64GB of fast DDR4 memory. The Fenway is built around the entry-level 3GHz E3-1220 v5, which has four cores, an 8MB L3 cache and a low 80W thermal design power (TDP). Support for Intel’s Turbo Boost 2 lets it shift up to 3.5GHz in times of need, but Hyper-Threading is…

The iPad sitting here on my desk has just shy of a hundred apps installed, yet if I think back over the past month, I’ve used perhaps six of them. This isn’t unusual – most people find that their phones and tablets quickly become a graveyard of unused apps, and the last thing you want is for your company’s app to join them there. If your business app is simply a static brochure, you’ve probably wasted your money. Your budget would have been better spent on making your website mobile-friendly. Apps should actually do something, and that usually means providing a service or some kind of entertainment. Without this, you’ve got one foot in the grave before you’ve even started. In these days of ubiquitous connectivity, you don’t need to…

EXPERT ADVICE FROM OUR PANEL OF PROFESSIONALS @jonhoneyball My iPad Pro is still used on a daily basis and I am writing this very column on it, in between sessions and meetings at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES). I’m getting on fine with its clip-on keyboard and finding the key action to be good. Much of that is down to the firm base click and the slight roughness to the key tops. The biggest problem is juggling the multi-bending sections of the keyboard when you try to put it into the working position, which can feel like wrestling with an octopus. I just wish there were a better set of applications ready for it today, ones that really took advantage of both its performance and flexibility. Hopefully they will…

@happygeek “Security vendors now suggest that 20% of phishing attempts are made using social media” Social engineering, in the form of email phishing, remains the most common type of online attack, and the harsh truth is that everyone should know that by now. A safe way to learn is by exposing people to sandboxed versions of the threat, and PhishMe is one organisation that employs simulations to train employees to identify and mitigate such threats. At the end of 2015, PhishMe published its “Enterprise Phishing Susceptibility Report” (pcpro.link/258phishme), which analysed the year’s data from 400 customers. Admittedly, the majority of its 4,000 or so simulations were done in American companies with 1,000+ staff, but the technique scales well to smaller enterprises in different countries. The important statistic in the report…

CyArk’s Project Anqa aims to collect and archive more than 500 sites around the world over the next five years – and that means gathering and storing an incredible amount of data. That’s why CyArk has teamed up with Seagate. “On average, each individual site is three terabytes in size – equivalent to 1.3 billion typewritten pages,” said Ulrich Plechschmidt, managing director for cloud systems at Seagate Technology in Europe. “By the end of the project, when all 500 sites have been completed, Seagate will have stored two petabytes of data – the equivalent of 500,000 high-definition movies.” He added: “When the project first began it was a relatively small but ambitious initiative. However, the CyArk team didn’t necessarily anticipate the enormous amount of storage they’d need so quickly.” The…

Hits and misses A year and a half ago, we started this column to highlight what we considered to be the most interesting, technology-related crowdfunding projects. Here, we take a look back at how those projects have fared and ask if crowdfunding is an effective way to get tech products to market. Does crowdfunding work? For every Pebble – which raised a huge $20 million (£14 million) on Kickstarter – there are plenty of failures. Of the 16 projects we’ve picked so far, only four were funded, a hit rate of 25%. That’s better than average: Kickstarter states only 20% of tech projects hit their target Some were easy wins. The Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega games machine was 150% funded and the Sense ICON smart bike light quadrupled its goal.…

Background and analysis on all the important news stories Vinyl comes full circle A journey through time: how music formats have changed p12 Five stories not to miss Our quick-fire guide to the world of tech in the past month p13 PC Probe Why Netflix’s attempt to ban VPNs is doomed to fail p14 PC SALES FIGURES make for grim reading. According to figures from research group IDC, PC shipments fell by 10.8% in 2015 compared to 2014, dropping below 300 million units for the first time since 2008. Moreover, the long decline looks set to continue, despite potential upgrades to Windows 10. That’s bad news for the companies that made their name during the golden age of the PC: Dell, Microsoft, Intel and others. As the PC continues to…

PC Pro readers and experts give their views on the world of technology “Many of the things we capture at the time may seem mundane and pointless, but won’t always remain so ” I’ve had it with deleting files. Once upon a time, when floppy disks were genuinely floppy and came with a fixed capacity of 360KB, clearing out unwanted data was a necessary discipline. That’s no longer the case: today you can buy a 4TB hard disk for £100. It’s crazy that we’re still so cavalier about permanently destroying documents and spreadsheets once they outlive their perceived usefulness. To an extent, it’s psychological. As soon as you put a single file into the Windows Recycle Bin, the icon changes to show it overflowing with virtual papers. What would you…

“I messed around for a while trying to do US-style minimalism, constructing complex fugues that no human could play ” You might have gathered by now that music ranks joint first, alongside photography and programming, among my favourite recreations. In fact, I combine all three in various ways, for example by applying filters to process my pictures, and by writing code to generate musical compositions. Around 15 years ago, I first became interested in computer composition, and was inspired to write my own MIDI interface in Turbo Pascal 4. Rather than generating real-time music, this unit let me output MIDI files from Pascal programs, which could then be played in my sequencer of choice. I messed around for a while trying to do US-style minimalism (think Philip Glass), constructing complex…

PRICE £458 (£549 inc VAT) from lenovo.com/uk “You can use it as a normal laptop, watch movies with it in ‘tent’ mode or rotate the keyboard 180 degrees for ‘tablet’ mode” While other PC makers have fiddled with their hybrid laptop/tablet designs, Lenovo has stuck rigidly to the Yoga principle since the dark days of Windows 8. Although rigid possibly isn’t the right adjective: the Yoga’s flexibility makes most laptops look more wooden than Jason Statham playing Hamlet. You can use it as a normal laptop, watch movies with it in “tent” mode (like an inverted “V”), or rotate the keyboard 180 degrees so it sits flush against the lid in “tablet” mode. The downside of most previous Yogas is that, in the latter position, you’re left with a very…

PRICE £125 (£150 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk “The ZenWatch 2 doesn’t pretend to be anything but a low-cost, stylish Android Wear smartwatch and at that job it succeeds well” The Asus ZenWatch 2 is among an increasing number of Android Wear smartwatches struggling to find a niche in the bold new world of wearable tech. It’s a secondgeneration smartwatch, but as with many other newer devices, there isn’t much on paper to entice. Indeed, take a look at the specifications (and the appearance of the watch for that matter) and you’ll see hardly any difference between it and the first Asus ZenWatch. To start with, it has the same processor as its predecessor: a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400. It has the same 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage, which…

PRICE SIM-free, £358 (£429 inc VAT) from vmall.eu “If you’re looking for that big-screen phone experience with few of the drawbacks, the Mate 8 should be on your shortlist” Can a 6in smartphone such as the Huawei Mate 8 ever be practical? That’s the first question that leapt into my mind when I pulled the Chinese phone manufacturer’s latest handset from its slim, black box. I didn’t think such large phones were practical when Google released the Nexus 6 a little more than a year ago; and now, after a week of using the Mate 8 as my main handset, I still don’t think I’d want to own a phone this big. That isn’t to criticise Huawei’s design engineers in any way. They’ve done a stunning job on the design…

PRICE £250 (£300 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk If the KEF Muo was to walk into a roomful of Bluetooth speakers, a respectful hush would descend: it’s royalty when it comes to audio quality. Put on a piece of orchestral music and it feels like you’re there; listen to a radio play and you can hear every detail; play a thumping drum’n’bass track… well, that’s where you may be disappointed, because at this size it inevitably lacks punch. There’s no lack of style, though, with the “storm” grey of our sample looking suitably regal. Naturally, it supports aptX Bluetooth, and can be paired with another Muo to provide stereo output. Cleverly, it can be used either vertically or horizontally: an internal sensor determines its orientation and changes the output. Is it…

PRICE £83 (£100 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com Roughly the size of a pencil case, the UE Boom 2 is designed to be your carry-anywhere speaker to survive all weathers. You can shower with it, leave it in the rain, even drop it into a bucket of water. Its tough-rubber finish also means you can chuck it into a rucksack or a suitcase and not worry about it. Battery life is yet another strength – the longest we’ve come across, at a quoted 15 hours. Its weakness is sound quality, with a lack of warmth evident in our testing. Pianos, for instance, emerged a little harshly, and supposedly funky tracks such as “Get Lucky” felt like they’d been smartened up and slipped into starched shirts. It’s a speaker for those people…

You can now change banks in seven working days, and after reading this comparison of ten major banks, you may well decide it’s time to switch. It’s shockingly easy to do. Just apply – online, naturally – and explain you want to switch. Your new bank will do the rest. To compare the banks, we asked members of our team to review their own for ease of use, features and security. These days, it’s not enough to have a great online portal, so we asked everyone to put their bank’s app through the fiscal mill. The ultimate goal is for the app to offer almost every service, but as you’ll see, many banks fall well short of this dream. With convenience comes risk, so we dispatched Davey Winder to report…

Despite a recent revamp, the Halifax online banking service leaves more to be desired than its interest rates. Login requires three separate pieces of information: a username (this can be saved on the computer), an alphanumeric password, and three digits from a piece of “memorable information”, which is performed using dropdown menus to thwart potential keyloggers. The login is then delayed by a splash screen advertising the latest Halifax promotion before you finally get to the guts of your accounts. The main screen gives you clear snapshots of all your balances, as well as shortcut links for viewing statements and making payments or transfers, but there’s little in the way of power features. Scanning through statements is a buttonclicking chore, but at least the search facility is well implemented: this…

Nationwide Building Society has a reputation for being dependable. Its online offering provides an experience that’s just that, even if it isn’t exactly one to get pulse racing – but then what banking service does? It feels like little has changed in Nationwide’s online banking over the past decade, albeit in a pleasantly familiar way. The traditional blue colour scheme is the same as ever, although you now have the choice of three marginally different themes, and it’s maintained its simple navigation and swift interface. Nationwide customers are provided with a card reader, but you don’t need it to log in if you prefer to use your private credentials. No doubt aware of the fiddliness of the card reader, it’s only compulsory for big transactions or those you haven’t paid…

Santander’s websites and apps have become so allencompassing that you’ll rarely find yourself having to visit a high-street branch or even call the customer-service line. Logging in is secure, too. Not only are you asked to enter three characters from your security number (also used for phone banking), you also have to enter three characters from your longer password, which is only used for your online account. As reassurance that you’re not being phished, you’re shown a unique memorable word and picture every time you log on to prove you’re connected to the real Santander website and not a fake. Menus on the left and top of the page give access to everything else you might need, including standing orders, direct debits, account details and overdraft applications. You can apply…

Practical buying and strategic advice for IT managers and decision makers The Business Question Does your business need an app? Our experts have the answer p102 Cheat Sheet How to properly understand the threats to your business p104 Essential admin tools for SMBs How to make the most of administration software p106 Small businesses relying on consumer-grade routers are making false economies and putting themselves at risk. There may be a plethora of cheap and provocatively designed home routers on the market, but few have the features businesses need to deliver secure and reliable internet, or remote access to their staff. Most consumer routers focus on providing superfast wireless services with everything else taking a backseat. Apart from that all-essential firewall, you’ll be hard-pushed to find business features such as…

PRICE £144 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com “After entering upstream and downstream speeds for each WAN port, we could apply a minimum bandwidth to specific services” The LRT224 from Linksys looks a top choice for small businesses that demand the best VPN features. Costing less than £150, this compact steel box can handle up to 50 site-to-site or client IPsec VPNs and augments these with support for PPTP, OpenVPN and Linksys’ very own EasyLink VPN. It has four Gigabit LAN ports and two more for WAN links, where it performs link failover or load balancing across them. Security features include a standard SPI firewall and DoS protection, along with support for custom access rules and simple website filtering. The wizard-aided installation had the router up and running in less than five…

PRICE £273 exc VAT from printerland.co.uk “The Secure Printing option lets users assign a PIN to a print job, which will be held in the queue until the PIN is entered on the panel” If you’re short on office space, Canon’s i-Sensys MF724Cdw could be the printer you’re looking for. This A4 colour laser multifunction device (MFD) has a reduced footprint, but still manages to pack in plenty of office-friendly features. It offers print, scan and copy functions; nippy 20ppm colour and mono print speeds; an integral duplexer; and wired or wireless network support. Its 8.9cm LCD colour touchscreen makes light work of walk-up printing and copying, but it lacks NFC and phone-fax functions. If you need these, check out the Canon MF729Cx instead. The 600ppi colour flatbed scanner on…

@PaulOckenden Wearables and automotive technology are everyone’s predictions for the “next big thing” this year, and they’re the same things that were going to be huge last year. And the year before that. My prediction is that home automation (and its trickle down to small and medium businesses) will be the sector to see massive growth. I accept that we’ve all been predicting a home automation boom since Tomorrow’s World was broadcast in black and white but, half a century later, I believe the prediction will finally come true. The reason for this confidence isn’t the ever-expanding range of hardware and software available, although that obviously helps, but more the fact that I’m seeing so much noise about home automation online, and indeed in communications from readers of this column.…

@stardotpro It’s like the cats versus dogs thing: columnists exist to ask questions while ministers exist to avoid them. This particular encounter wasn’t my first brush with the higher echelons of government, but it was my first visit to the House of Commons. The event was a round table sponsored by hosting giant Equinix. The topic was “cybersecurity”, something I’d normally leave to m’learned colleague Mr Winder, but on this occasion it strayed closer to my remit since it was all about improving security by moving your data into the cloud (or in this case, preferably Equinix’s cloud). At least, that’s what the advance publicity claimed, but the agenda took a right turn as soon as Equinix’s UK MD Russell Poole finished talking. From sober assessment of the advantages of…

FORGET MYERS-BRIGGS tests: if you want to know how your colleagues think, turn to Saberr. The British startup claims it can predict the performance of your office team based on how well you get along, using an algorithm informed by online dating. We spoke to its founder, Alistair Shepherd, who uses the software to make all his hires – and even spot which startups are about to fail so he can poach their staff, which is how the company picked up its current CTO. ■ What does your system aim to do? Our software forecasts how teams and individuals will perform based upon their ability to interact with each other. When you work with people who you like and get on well with, your performance is at its best –…

Quantum computing again? Haven’t we been hearing about this for years? The idea of trading bits for qubits – which can be a one, zero or both simultaneously – isn’t new. But for the first time, someone’s making the concept work on real-world computing problems. Google and NASA have been studying how quantum systems can advance artificial intelligence and machine learning, and solve difficult optimisation problems, using hardware from quantum firm D-Wave. It’s the latter challenge, called quantum annealing, that’s generating fresh excitement, with the researchers solving a major problem using the D-Wave 2X, which could help bring quantum computing into the mainstream. So Google didn’t make the hardware? No, NASA and Google simply have a standing order with the Canadian company to receive its top-end machines. That’s now the…