Table of contents for May 2017 in PC & Tech Authority

I know many of you aren’t ‘gamers’, just as I know many of you areffMost of you do like to play games, while, again, most of you also regard yourselves as purely into PCs – whether as a hobby or as a profession. This, I know thanks to our most recent reader survey from last year (so thanks to the great many of you that took the time do help us with that). But those who don’t identify as a ‘gamer’ must surely wonder at the number of gamer products that appear in PC & Tech Authority. The fact of it is that the gamer monker has so utterly and completely taken over PC gear that it’s attached to pretty much all the good stuff – whether the gear is…

PURPLE REIGN PC Case Gear Prism 1080 Gaming System $2,499 • http://tinyurl.com/mxup4xu Tempered glass and RGB lighting. This system is definitely ticking boxes for all of the latest fads for enthusiast PC fashion. Housing the latest in CPU fashion too in the form of the Ryzen 7 1700, this system is ripe for overclockers as the 1700 o­ ers the same core and thread count as AMD’s top end 1800X but being two SKU steps down from the top saves on the purse strings too. The stock Wraith cooler isn’t the best for overclocking but it’s not incompetent either. Sensible SSD and RAM choices paired with a great GPU, for the price point, make this a great system for budget conscious tinkerers who want a PC that’s dressed to impress.…

From its beginnings as a niche computer maker to its dominance as a lifestyle brand, Apple has maintained one proposition: its hardware is worth more because it’s better. The logo’s association with creative professionals was built on the Mac’s features and performance. However, as Apple flourished amid a shrinking PC market, the Mac Pro desktop tower was discontinued. Even 2013’s belated new Mac Pro desktop was compact rather than expandable. Meanwhile, MacBooks became the laptop of choice, but the designer’s favoured 17in was replaced by slim, light and general-purpose models. By 2016, it was common to see headlines such as “Apple’s disgracefully outdated Mac lineup is killing sales”. When an update to the MacBook Pro range finally arrived in October, many pros were less enthused by its innovative Touch Bar…

Given that the Zen architecture is basically brand new, there’s quite a lot of technical information about how AMD managed to increase its IPC performance so dramatically. We’re going to give you a look at the key technologies from a top down view, explaining them in a way that doesn’t require a computer engineering degree to understand. 1 As you can see from this image, each Zen core is split into two major regions. The blue area is the front-end, where instructions are fed into the processor and decoded into micro-operations. The red section is the back-end where the real computation takes place, focusing on integer operations. The orange works similarly, but handles floating point loads. This is a very similar layout to other x86 chips, but one of Zen’s…

At a mere $219, this is one of the cheapest R7 boards on the market, yet it still uses the X370 chipset. Throw in an X7 1700 for another $469, and – provided you don’t mind overclocking - you end up with a platform costing just $688 that will defeat a $1900 Intel i7- 6900K system. This is simply phenomenal value for money, and we have no doubt there are many 3D renderers out there with their credit cards at the ready. However, because it’s so a. ordable, ASRock has had to make this board as simple and featurelite as possible. There are just two fulllength PCI Express lanes, but at least they’re steel reinforced. There are another four PCIe 2.0 x1 lanes, though two of these will be covered…

While most cloud backup services restrict you to one PC, IDrive supports unlimited devices. The trade-o? is a fixed storage quota, although we doubt many individuals will be seriously constrained by the standard one-terabyte allocation. To help you make the most of your space, IDrive doesn’t automatically select what’s going to be backed up and what’s not. The client opens with a list of personal data folders, which you can customise to your heart’s content. Continuous backup is enabled by default, or if you prefer you can set your backup to run at certain times and on certain days. It involves a little back-and-forth, but you can define multiple backup jobs to run at set times, and back up files to both the cloud and local destinations. IDrive can also…

Norton Online Backup doesn’t have a local interface to speak of: all that’s installed on your PC is a lightweight agent that runs in the background. Backup parameters and other actions are handled from the web console, which opens when you double-click on the Norton icon. In truth, there’s not much to configure: your options divide into three tabs headed “What”, “When” and “Other”. The first of these lets you specify the types of file to back up – such as music, pictures, contacts and so forth – and add or exclude specific files and folders. Under “When” you can switch from continuous protection to a daily, weekly or monthly schedule. Finally, the “Other” tab lets you throttle backups by dragging a slider from “fastest” to “slowest”, although there’s no…

This month’s Labs has been of more than professional interest to me. The truth is, I need to sort out my own backup situation. Yes, I’m one of those terrible people who lectures friends and colleagues about backing up, yet doesn’t have a proper system in place himself. In fact, I’ll admit it: my home setup illustrates some quite serious backup mistakes. It’s not that I’m blasé about the possibility of losing my data. At home I have a 6TB NAS appliance, which hosts File History data for all my Windows machines – plus Time Machine for the increasing number of Mac clients in my household. So I know that if I manage to leave my laptop on the W7 bus, my data at least can be recovered. So far…

Flaming Samsungs aside, most of us lament our batteries for their lifespan and charging time. But what if there was a better way? Researchers are searching for an alternative to the standard lithium-ion, redesigning how batteries work and trying new combinations of chemicals, in the pursuit of a long-lasting, fast-charging and safe alternative for smartphones, l aptops, electric cars and more. They’ve come up with a range of ideas, redesigning them from the ground up and substituting new materials. Although chemical challenges and funding complaints mean we’ll likely be stuck with lithium-ion for a while, the future of charging could be just over the horizon. Here’s what researchers are considering – and why. PROBLEMS WITH BATTERIES It’s impossible to discuss lithium-ion batteries without acknowledging their apparent propensity to overheat and…

KRAKEN PRO V2 If you like big audio, value clear team communications and don’t mind looking stylish, then the Kraken series from Razer is worth sticking your head in. With bold colours and refined acoustic engineering, these bad boys are a mean solution for hardcore gamers. With fat 50mm drivers the Kraken Pro V2 and 7.1 surround Kraken 7.1 V2 headsets create a rich and unashamedly loud soundstage. They’re tough, too, with a sturdy aluminium frame wrapping around the entire headset. BLACKWIDOW CHROMA V2 Through a combination of upgrades to the already widely respected BlackWidow keyboard, and a choice of three different mechanical switch types, Razer has created a new flagship keyboard in the form of the Razer BlackWidow Chroma V2. The three switches available cover the gamut of popular…

For those who really need a portable drive with very fast transfer speeds PLUS easy portability, portable SSDs are a good option. Samsung’s T3 is the class-leading option here. Its attractive tapered slab shape looks fantastic and is nice to hold in your hand. The case is sturdy metal and Samsung claims it can survive up to a 2m drop. The big technical advances since Samsung’s original T1 are the inclusion of USB Type 3 port as standard, its use of stacked 3D V-NAND to improve capacity while keeping costs reasonable, and the use of xFAT formatting to enable compatibility with PC, Mac and Android without the need to create OS-dependant partitions or make compromises with formatting. Our testing yielded speeds of 435MB/s read, and 418MB/s write, exactly within expectations.…

PRINTER TIME While it’s not a brand new model, we recently tested the Epson Workforce WF-3620 and loved every bit of it, as you can read in our review on page 44. So in it goes, replacing our long standing previous champ the still excellent Canon Pixma IP 8760. TOP NEW ROUTER After using the Synology RT2600ac there’s just no way it can’t go into the A-List. Synology has delivered tremendous performance along with its famously brilliant and beautiful interface. This is all the router you need for most homes, able to meet demanding media streaming and multiple users online without choking each other’s performance. PC DESKTOP ALL.IN.ONE Apple iMac 27in with Retina 5k display PRICE $2,799 SUPPLIER www.apple.com/au The Apple 27in iMac with Retina 4K display is great. The…

JON HONEYBALL Jon is the MD of an IT consultancy that specialises in testing and deploying hardware @jonhoneyball While trying to recover from the inevitable post-CES flu, and catching up on the work backlog, I’ve been going over several items that raised their heads at CES. One that really piqued my interest is the new security router/Wi-Fiunit from Norton, a Symantec-owned brand. Now it’s probably best to put my cards on the table, and this may shock you, but I’m a naturally cynical person. And most of the AV companies make my cynicism-ometer hit the end stop and bend around a few times. If you want to see examples of just how cynical these firms can be, browse their websites and try to work out which features are included in…

You may just possibly have noticed that there’s a lot of news floating around about news right now, and in particular how accurate it is. Mr Trump’s team frequently claims that all the news outlets aren’t telling the truth, and that this is a bad thing that must be punished. Part of their communication strategy is to bypass the mainstream and go straight to the end user via Twitter, with typical directness. The inevitable result, like a flamethrower in a dry forest, is a firestorm about “what exactly is truth in news?” It’s a fascinating subject, because it goes to the heart of why we have channels through which we consume such information. In the past, a news organisation was the only way in which news, and opinion about that…

FONTIFICATION Jon Honeyball’s article, March 2017, about missing fonts doesn’t mention the answer to this problem. I was receiving files from a Word user and as I was using LibreO  ce Write, it showed I had a problem as the files were songs with the chords in the line above the words. Unless the same letter spacing is used, things won’t line up. Fortunately there is a free answer, Google’s fonts, in this case Carlito = Calibri and Caladea = Cambria. They are identical in size and shape and can be downloaded from: https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/carlito and https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/caladea After installing, if using LibreO  ce Write: Open Tools > Options > Fonts > Tick “Apply replacement table” Find in to the box under Replacement Table: Font: Calibri – Replace with: Carlito. Click on the…

Just for the fun of it Everyone’s bullish about virtual reality. Developers are continuing to develop new titles, and are starting to design games that take advantage of the unique opportunities of the medium. The makers of the HMDs themselves are starting to see sales increase, and with that increased market, we're seeing the first round of price drops, with Oculus now cutting about a hundred dollars from the Rift's starting price. And, at the Intel Extreme Masters in Katowice, Intel is pushing the technology hard – after all, you need high end PC hardware to make the most of VR, so anything which drives CPU sales is definitely a good thing. The one sticking point, though, remains the lack of truly killer titles and applications. Even Intel's own Frank…

Ryzen is a rising. From the plucky little microprocessor company we all want to see do well, AMD, Ryzen has gotten o. to a good start. With its primary party trick being its fantastic performance per dollar ratios it certainly has everyone in the business talking and saying good things, but once you let the crepuscular (God/sun) rays of shiny awesome new tech seemingly beaming out of these products dim, you begin to see that Ryzen so far is a great jack of all trades but master of none. Ignoring price, performance is the main factor we judge CPUs by. Performance is a function of core and thread counts, IPC, memory bandwidth and clock speeds amongst others, all of which AMD cannot currently lay claim to being the best at.…

You won’t find better reviews anywhere in Australia! One thing we never su€ er from is a blasé attitude to new tech. Even the lowliest, most mundane new product excites us. When a new box arrives in the o. ce it’s guaranteed the whole team will swarm around wanting a gander. Well, that’s not entirely true, when you’ve seen one Bluetooth speaker, you’ve seen them all. But when a truly seismic shift occurs in PC tech we all go kind of crazy. Such is the case with AMD’s Ryzen. There are many factors at play here. There’s no denying that many people – particularly those who were into PCs big-time in the early-2000s – have a sentimental soft spot for AMD. And that’s ok, it’s human nature, when one is…

This PC comes from TI Computers and like their system from last issue, also comes pre-overclocked out of the box. The system is housed in a Cooler Master MasterBox5 chassis which has plenty of room inside for everything, even a 240mm radiator up front if desired. Two thirds of the front grill lifts o€ easily for cleaning as it acts as a filter for the included 120mm fan up front ports, 4x USB 3.0 ports, 2x USB 3.1 gen2 ports, a PS/2 port, DVI-D, VGA, HDMI (for future Ryzen APU support) and three audio jacks all on the motherboard. With the graphics card providing a further 2x Display Ports, 2x HDMI ports and another DVI-D port. Looking inside the see-through side panel while it’s on you won’t see any RGB…

There are thousands of nefarious hackers out there who would absolutely love to install a piece of nasty ransomware on your computer. There’s always someone who wants to use your nifty Internet of Things devices to fight in a massive distributed denial of service attack and there will always be scammers after your juicy personal information so that they can steal your identity. These examples are just a handful of the thousands of ways someone can take over your computer and do what they want with it, exposing you and your family to unnecessary risk online. WHO TO TRUST? Unfortunately, it’s easy to fall for hacker’s traps. You or your kids click some link in an email. Maybe you click an innocent looking ad. Or you click link a friend…

As this is an entirely new platform, it obviously comes with a new chipset to power the AM4 socket design. There are initially three new chipsets at launch. Enthusiasts will want to go for the X370 chipset, which is aimed at power-users. Then there’s the B350 for mid-range users, followed by the A320 for entry-level. Unlike Intel chipsets, some of the traditional southbridge duties are handled by the Zen CPU itself, leading to an almost SoClike design. This allows the new chipsets to handle AMD’s Ryzen processor, 7th Generation APUs and upcoming Raven Ridge APU, and AMD intends for all of its upcoming products up to 2020 to work with the new AM4 socket. This is a common strategy from AMD, where its sockets tend to last for several years,…

This was the board that AMD actually sent out with our test CPU, which suggests already that it’s going to be rather darned good. And indeed it was, delivering a wealth of features all at a very nice price point. It’s a rather sexy all black design, though as with all boards at this price point it’s covered in a variety of RGB lighting options. Three full-length PCIe lanes are included, though only the top two are version 3.0 – the last is 2.0. The top two are steel reinforced, and can be split to run at x8/x8 to deliver SLI compatibility. Another three single length PCIe x1 lanes are included. A single M.2 slot is ready for your high-speed storage, and it’s the real deal, delivering four lanes of…

Backblaze’s headline o ering is the same as CrashPlan’s, namely unlimited cloud backup for US$5 a month. In fact, if you pay for a year upfront, it’s cheaper than CrashPlan, coming in at just US$50. The philosophy is very much “set-andforget”: simply point Backblaze at a hard drive and it will start continuously backing up almost everything it finds, meaning you don’t need to fiddle about configuring complicated backup parameters or schedules. Generously, external drives are backed up, too. That said, there aren’t many advanced options to configure. You can throttle bandwidth and CPU usage, as well as optionally specifying a private encryption key for unbreakable security. It’s also possible to use the Backblaze web interface to track the geographic location of a registered client, in case it’s lost or…

Livedrive is yet another lightweight backup client o? ering unlimited cloud storage. It’s a bit more expensive than rivals, but you might appreciate not having to commit on a yearly basis. Getting started is easy. You can select folders to be backed up by drilling down a directory tree in the main console; external drives can be added as well as internal ones – although USB flash drives aren’t supported – and up to 30 older versions of updated files are retained. It’s also a decent performer: our 5GB folder of personal data was backed up in 2hrs 18mins, which isn’t bad at all, and when we hit restore, the files came back down the line in 33 minutes. It’s worth noting, though, that Livedrive’s datacentre is located in the…

SpiderOak might not be the best known name in backup, but it has some interesting plus points. For one, you get unlimited file versioning, so you can roll back through history as far as you like – at least, within your 100GB allowance. The client also uses local encryption as standard: everything is encoded on your PC before it’s uploaded, using your account password as the encryption key. By default, this password isn’t relayed to SpiderOak, so as long as you stick to using the desktop client, the company has no way of decrypting your information. If you log in to the web console, the company’s “zero knowledge” position is lost, but from here you can download files to any PC, and set up password-protected sharing to allow friends and…

If you’d rather not get tied into a rolling subscription, you can always take the traditional route of backing up your data to a local device. Of course, this means your data will be at risk if (Heaven forfend) your house or office burns down, but if you buy a NAS appliance you may still have the ability to browse and access your files from anywhere in the world. This is often referred to as a “personal cloud”. There are other pluses to this approach. Because a NAS appliance lives on your local network, you can browse and restore old files at the full speed of your LAN connection, which will be many times faster than any internet service. There are plenty of options to choose from, with devices from…

Aorus, a premium gaming brand powered by Gigabyte, delivers a full spectrum of gaming products ranging from gaming laptops, motherboards, graphics cards, mechanical gaming keyboards, to many other gaming hardware and gear, offering the most extreme gaming experiences for enthusiasts worldwide! RYZEN - POWERFUL IN PURPOSE. EFFICIENT IN DESIGN The new Gigabyte Gaming and Aorus Gaming Motherboards will be built with support for AMD Ryzen CPU architecture. Ryzen, built on the AMD AM4 platform, has crucial technologies that ensure users have the most efficiency when it comes to performance and power consumption. With features like Pure Power, Precision Boost, Neural Net Prediction, Smart Prefetch and an Extended Frequency Range, Ryzen is ready to address the needs and demands of gamers and enthusiasts. Our Aorus Ryzen boards will feature RGB Fusion,…

PAUL OCKENDEN Paul owns an agency that helps businesses exploit the web, from sales to marketing and everything in between @PaulOckenden As promised last month, I’m going to look at a few more cloudbased cameras in this column. On the desk in front of me I have a Nest Cam, a Ring Stick Up Cam (complete with solar panel accessory), a Y-Cam Evo HD, and finally, the new Arlo Pro I mentioned last month. All apart from the latter were kindly loaned to me by the folks at Vesternet. Let’s begin with the Arlo Pro. I’m using the new camera with my original Arlo base station, so I’m not able to test the siren or the local USB recording that the complete updated system provides; I’m just focusing (excuse the…

DAVEY WINDER Davey is an award-winning journalist and consultant specialising in privacy and security issues @happygeek I start this month’s column with a question: which type of user authentication system is the most secure? Is it a hardware token, a codegenerating application, a code delivered by text message, or a system using push notifications? I guess that most readers will be in a similar situation to me, being faced with all sorts of additional verification being sought to access one service or another. My business bank makes me input a passkey on my smartphone, which then spits out a time-limited code; my personal bank relies on me recalling a lucky dip of characters from a passkey, having already entered a PIN; and PayPal likes to send me one of those…

Jaimie, Leader Computers: “Leader Computers have been seeing strong demand for gaming rigs based on the new Ryzen platform, the demand is outstripping early supply and the supporting motherboards have also been on tight allocation. From all the builds we have been doing our initial opinion is Intel have a fight on their hands for the first time in nearly a decade! The value proposition for Gamers cannot be ignored, with the top of the line Ryzen R7 1800X being of a very similar performance to Intel’s Flagship CPUs at close to half the price. We look forward to developing a range of very high performance Resistance gaming rigs based on the Ryzen platform which will be incredibly attractive from a bang Vs buck perspective. Watch this space!” Jaya, Mwave:…

At the recent Open Source Leadership Summit (OSLS) well-known security expert and CTO of IBM Resilient, Bruce Schneier, floated an interesting observation: “I contend that we’re building a world-sized robot without even realizing it” he said, referring to the combination of the internet and the billions of devices connected to it. There are three core elements to this: sensors, prevalent among internet of things (IoT) devices; the ‘smarts’ of processors on these devices, but also those in the cloud; and the actuators that a. ect our environment, such as smart thermostats changing temperature or – an easier analogy to relate to – a driverless car steering on the road. Earlier in the year in a blog post Schneier had elaborated on this idea, stating “you can think of the sensors…

There are plenty of tools out there to help map your network and see what’s connected at any given time, as well as identify your network’s weak spots. The good news is that these needn’t cost a fortune – or, indeed, anything at all. Even if they don’t require a direct financial investment, however, they do require you to invest some time to learn how to best use them and properly understand the results they’re returning. For the small business that really wants to get to grips with network security, there’s plenty to be said for adopting the “think like a hacker” approach. Using the same vulnerability discovery tools as they do is one great example, and such tools don’t come any better than Metasploit. Unfortunately, Metasploit is no longer…

2D TESTS Desktop PCs and laptops are tested using our own custom bench testing suite, which has been carefully designed to test all aspects of a system and rate them in a way that’s useful to you. Our benchtesting cover three main tests: a typical video editing test, a demanding 4K video editing test and a multitasking test that stresses all aspects of the system. We look at the time it takes for each test to run, which is then compared to our reference PC to produce a normalised result. This score is shown on a graph, and to help you understand just where the PC we’re reviewing sits in the grand scheme of things, we will often include other system’s scores. The median score of 100 is based on…

Having a backup internet connection used to be something only businesses making heaps of cash could justify. But with the popularity of cheap pre-paid 3G and 4G data plans, having a contingency plan for when your internet goes down at home or small business, is cheaper than ever. Billion’s latest BiPAC 8920NZ VDSL modem router makes implementing a secondary internet connection seamless. From the outside, the BiPAC 8920NZ looks just like any other Wi-Fimodem router on the market. It supports VDSL, so it’ll work with FTTN/FTTC NBN and has a dedicated Ethernet WAN port, as well as 4-port gigabit Ethernet switch. A USB port on the back allows for an external HDD to be attached to act as network storage. The core feature of the BiPAC 8920NZ is its tri-WAN…

Made by Gigabyte under their new gaming banner, Aorus, this motherboard is targeted at the mid-range gamer. It sits right in the middle of the pack when it comes to price, another huge benefit of the R7 series when compared to Intel’s competing products, which require vastly more expensive motherboards. As with all of the boards this roundup, the GA-AX370-Gaming 5 is based on the top-end X370 chipset, so comes with the usual feature set. There are three full-length PCIe lanes, all steel reinforced, and the top two can be split to operate at x8 speeds, supporting SLI. The third will function at x4 speed, but only if the three separate PCI Express x1 slots are all empty. A single M.2 connector is supplemented by the inclusion of an additional…

Considering the exceptional value of the other boards in this roundup, there’d better be something darned special about the MSI X370 Xpower Gaming Titanium. At just under $500 it’s by far the most expensive board here, which is a bit of a contrast to the whole premium performance/friendly price approach to the Ryzen proposition. It has the usual PCIe arrangement; twin PCIe 3.0 full length slots with another single full length PCIe 2.0 slot, along with three PCIe x1 slots. That’s one less than both the Asus and Aorus. Twin M.2 slots are included, one limited to PCIe 2.0 x4, while the other runs at full speed. There’s also a U.2 port, but this can’t be used at the same time both M.2 ports are being used. SATA connectivity is…

Carbonite is the original all-you-caneat cloud backup service, and the basics work just as you’d expect: once installed it continuously backs up most user files, including documents, spreadsheets, email archives and music. If you prefer a more structured timetable, you can configure a single daily backup at a specified time, or specify quiet hours so Carbonite doesn’t interfere with your working day. One distinctive feature of Carbonite is its Explorer integration. Adding items to your backup is a simple case of selecting them in Windows Explorer, then rightclicking and selecting “Back this up” from the Carbonite contextual menu. A coloured blob should then appear overlaid on the file’s icon: green means safely backed up, orange means awaiting upload. It’s a great way to see at a glance what’s backed up…

The MozyHome front-end is tastefully compact, but click on Settings and a rich interface opens up. You can select which files to back up according to type rather than location, then easily add specific items and folders using the directory tree view – or by right-clicking in Windows Explorer and using the MozyHome contextual menu. By default, backups run when your computer is idle, and you can specify what that means in terms of CPU usage and user input. If you prefer your backups to run at a set time, you can set a schedule from every day to once every seven weeks. One nice feature is the “Mozy 2xProtect” option, which lets you mirror your cloud backups to a local volume for quick recovery. Using local media also extends…

SugarSync is an unusual backup service. At first you might take it for a cloud-syncing tool rather than a true backup solution, and certainly it can be used in that way, keeping files and folders continuously in sync across all PCs with the client installed. You can also share public links to your uploaded files, and share folders with other SugarSync users, o. ering either readonly or full access. To that extent, SugarSync makes a perfectly good alternative to the likes of Dropbox and Google Drive. Where it di. ers is that you’re not limited to a specific folder. SugarSync works with any number of folders, located anywhere on your system, so you don’t have to adjust your way of working to suit it. You can also specify that certain…

When your most sensitive data resides physically inside your own home or office, it’s easy to assume it’s completely secure. Unfortunately, even if your data is encrypted at rest – which is certainly not something you can take for granted – resourceful burglars and opportunist hackers may still be able to get in, by taking advantage of insecure or saved passwords. For the most sensitive files, therefore, your safest bet is to invest in a specialist device. Regular readers will have seen Davey Winder and Jon Honeyball write, in particular, of the iStorage datAshur Pro. This flash drive uses AES-256 encryption and is physically secured with a PIN, so it can’t be accessed by anyone until the correct code is entered on its keypad. It’s available in capacities up to…

PC & Tech Authority, PC PowerPlay, Atomic and Hyper are joining forces once again to bring you another spectacular night of cutting edge PC technology, the latest advances in gaming and the coolest new gear around. The last Upgrade Australia event was hosted in Sydney, so now we’re heading back to Melbourne with an all new show with new partners and gear. Get ready to experience the latest PC hardware, talk to experts in the field, witness live demonstrations, feast on free food and drink and stand a pretty good chance of walking away with freebies. We know you can’t wait to get your hands on the latest and greatest PC gear so jump on the website and register right away! Register at: www.pcauthority.com.au/upgradeaustralia WHERE: Melbourne ‘s Monash University, Caulfield…

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KEVIN PARTNER is a serial entrepreneur who has set up a number of successful online businesses Despite the rise of social media, email is still king of the internet marketing heap. I ran a promotion recently with a group of other creatives, using a combination of email, Facebook and Twitter promotion, and you won’t believe what happened next. Over the period of the promotion, 87% of transactions could be attributed to an email, 8% to Facebook and the rest to Twitter. This, despite the social media audiences being an order of magnitude bigger than email lists. The continuing e­ ectiveness of email makes it all the more surprising that marketers don’t innovate in their communications with customers. For example, it’s common to use an email sequence to sell a product.…

STEVE CASSIDY Steve is a consultant who specialises in networks, cloud, HR and upsetting the corporate apple cart @stardotpro It’s one thing to talk about preventing disaster; real experience is both rare and valuable. What happens when you’re actually sitting down to work out what’s left of a business’ data, with the owner breathing down your neck and the clock ticking on both your diagnosis and the likely action plan? Like almost everyone I talked to during this month’s crisis, I have a full repertoire of ways of keeping restorable backups; not a full repertoire of tools to try to drag data out of a hard disk that’s just become a bubbling, evil swamp of despair. So, feel free to do what all those colleagues and contacts did, taking up…