Table of contents for 568 in Computeractive

What’s your favourite thing about computing? For me, it’s the anticipation of downloading a new program and exploring its features. I’m never satisfied with the software I use because I can almost always think of ways it can be improved. Every time I install a new program I hope it will provide these longed-for options. We applied this criteria when selecting the software for our Cover Feature. Each program we recommend does something its rivals don’t – or does the same thing but much better. They also serve a particular purpose for the year ahead, whether that’s keeping your Wi-Fi free of neighbours’ creeping interference or your files safe from the growing threat of ransomware. If we’ve overlooked your own favourite software, please let me know so we can include…

London’s Metropolitan Police have trained dogs to sniff out phones, laptops, USB sticks and SIM cards in the battle against cyber-crime. Two springer spaniels, named Bolly and Murphy, can locate devices that police officers miss during searches. They’ve been trained to detect the chemical triphenylphosphine oxide, which is used to coat memory storage devices. During trials, Bolly used her sense of smell to find a laptop that a paedophile had hidden down the side of his bed. In other cases, the dog found a SIM card concealed under laminate flooring, and a camera’s SD card. Police in Devon, Cornwall and Dorset previously tested the technique in 2017. Bolly’s instructor PC Craig Calthorpe said: “Often suspects will give officers a laptop they claim to use to search the internet, but there’s…

Google has said it may label websites that typically load slowly in its Chrome browser as part of its campaign to move towards “a faster web”. It said there would be a system of “clear badging” to indicate how quickly sites load, punishing those that take a long time, and rewarding those that are quick. Google didn’t say how the labels would work, but said they could take “a number of forms”. It plans to “experiment with different options, to determine which provides the most value to our users”. One option it’s considering is showing the message ‘Usually loads slow’ (see left of screenshot) on a site’s loading page (also known as a ‘splash screen’), below a blue ‘progress’ bar indicating that the site loads slowly. It showed an example…

Who does Mozilla think it is, telling Facebook and Google to ban political adverts during the election campaign (News, Issue 567, page 9)? Talk about getting ideas above their station. This is a company that makes a browser (Firefox) for surfing the internet. That’s all it is. It’s not a charity, nor is it a faith or humanitarian group. Its arrogance in attempting to play a role in public life is staggering. If I wanted to really stick the boot in, I’d add that Firefox isn’t a very good browser anyway. More importantly, it’s just plain wrong to say the British electorate are too feeble to cope with the rough and tumble of online political adverts. I’m old enough to remember the first party political broadcasts on TV, and there…

In February, I bought a reconditioned computer on eBay from the Surrey-based firm KelsusIT. It was a Dell Optiplex SFF PC, which has a Core i5 processor, 16GB RAM, 2TB hard drive, and an SSD. It cost £278 and came with a 90-day warranty. In August, I had a problem with the hard drive not being found. I rung KelsusIT, who told me to send the PC so they could have a look, even though the warranty had expired. Not only did they examine the PC, they also installed a new hard drive free of charge. In an age when a lot of companies just want your money, it’s great to find one that is there to help. First class! Peter Hingston Has a company impressed you with its customer…

What app can I use instead of a dictaphone? Q While clearing out my shed, I stumbled across my old dictaphone and thought I could put it to use. Sadly, it hasn’t aged well and no longer works. Instead of buying a new one, could you recommend a phone app that will turn my phone into a dictaphone? Miles Jenkins A You may already have a basic voice-recording app on your phone. iPhones, for example, have a preinstalled Voice Memos app, which lets you start recording a voice memo by pressing the circular red button. You can name and rename each recording, but the app is otherwise fairly limited. Instead, we recommend using Google Keep (Android www.snipca.com/33350; iOS www.snipca.com/33349). To record a new voice memo, open the app, press the…

Q My Dell Inspiron 545 PC blew up recently and I’ve replaced it with a Palicomp Abyss, which I’m very happy with. I was going to trash the Dell when I saw Simon Mellor’s letter about converting internal drives into external storage (see Readers’ Tips, Issue 537, page 42). The hard drive I’ve removed is a Seagate BarraCuda 500GB, dating from 2009. It measures 5¾x4in, but most enclosures on sale are described as either 2.5 or 3.5in. Is there anything still on the market to suit it, and will it be compatible with a SATA interface? Dave Orchard A Ten years is a long time in tech, but hard drives have developed slowly. While old, your drive is of the same 3.5in SATA variety as those in use now. ‘3.5in’…

What you need: Web browser; email account Time required: 10 – 30 minutes The best advice, where spam is concerned, is often to ignore it. Certainly don’t reply to it – and don’t click unsubscribe, either, unless you’re sure it’s from a legitimate sender. What do we mean by legitimate? Generally, someone with whom you have an existing relationship, like a shop you’ve bought from, or a broadcaster whose competition you’ve entered by email. If a message is from someone you don’t know then, however enticing that ‘Unsubscribe’ link might be, resist the urge to click it. Doing so would just confirm that the spam was received by an active inbox, which makes your address all the more valuable when it’s sold to the next highest bidder. But what should…

Expenses: Simple Tracker Android www.snipca.com/33278 Free Entering expenses is easy: tap in the value, add some tags and provide a description. If you need to claim your money back, you can export your entries as an Excel spreadsheet or, if you’re catching up after a busy trip, import a spreadsheet instead. Dollars is the default currency, so be sure to switch to Sterling in the settings. Best For Working with Excel Money Manager* iOS www.snipca.com/33281 Android www.snipca.com/33282 Slice and dice your cash flow with daily, weekly and monthly views of your spending, and a calendar overview for broader oversight of your income and expenses. Entering transactions is a breeze: assign a category, tap in the value and add a quick description. Best For Managing spending over time Spendee* iOS www.snipca.com/33280…

LIBREOFFICE WRITER Use advanced PDF options If you want to quickly create a PDF from a LibreOffice Writer document, click File, Export As, then ‘Export Directly as PDF’ and choose where to save it. This creates a PDF with the default settings. However, you can control how your PDF is viewed by selecting ‘Export as PDF…’ instead. Doing so gives you more options on how it displays when it’s opened. For example, in the Initial View tab you can set the PDF to open with either the Bookmarks pane (select ‘Bookmarks and page’) or with thumbnails of each page visible alongside the main PDF (‘Thumbnails and page’). Below this, you can change the initial magnification level. In the User Interface tab, you can set options such as centering the PDF…

1 Stop re-arranging your desktop Even the largest screen can feel cramped when running several programs simultaneously. Rearranging them can help, but it’s not an ideal fix for software that works best in full-screen, such as video-editing tools. That’s where Windows’ virtual desktops can help. Click the Task View icon (film strip beside the Cortana and Search icons on the left of your taskbar) to reveal a timeline of recent activities, two virtual desktops and a ‘New desktop’ button (see screenshot below). Each desktop acts like a separate screen, letting you use different programs on each and switch between them quickly by pressing Alt+Tab. Alternatively, hold the Windows and Ctrl keys then press the left and right arrow keys to move between desktops. 2 Avoid long filenames Creating long, descriptive…

AMAZON MUSIC NOW FREE (WITH ADVERTS) Amazon has made its music-streaming service free, letting you listen to playlists and “thousands” of radio stations - though you’ll have to put up with adverts unless you upgrade to a paid-for version. As the company explains online (www.snipca.com/33360), the service is available through the Amazon Music app on iOS, Android and Fire TV, as well as on the internet at https://music.amazon.com. REVISIT OLD TECH IN ARGOS CATALOGUES Argos has published an online archive of its catalogues, featuring classic technology from years gone by. Called ‘The Book of Dreams’ (http://argosbookofdreams.co.uk), the collection contains every annual catalogue from 1974. Highlights include Atari games consoles from 1981/82 (www.snipca.com/33365) and the Vic 20 computer from 1983/84 (www.snipca.com/33366). TOMORROW’S WORLD Could this be the star striker at the…

Asus has unveiled one of the first Wi-Fi 6 cards for desktop PCs, letting you upgrade an old computer so it can use the new, faster wireless technology. The PCE-AX3000 (pictured) is a PCI Express expansion card that can hit speeds of 2.4Gbps when used with a compatible router. It also supports Bluetooth 5.0, letting PCs connect to peripheral devices like mice and keyboards. Wi-Fi 6, technically called 802.11ax, boosts theoretical signal speed from 3.5Gbps to 9.6Gbps, though you’ll never get close to this using routers in your home. Its main benefit is that your signal can be split up across more devices. Previous Wi-Fi standards were designed when households had fewer devices – typically just one or two computers. But it’s estimated that by 2023 the average UK household…

WATCH OUT FOR… Fake Action Fraud emails What’s the threat? Action Fraud – the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime – has become the subject of a scam itself. Criminals claiming to be from the organisation are emailing people in an attempt to get them to hand over personal and financial information. It’s a new and ironic twist on a familiar ruse, where victims are sent emails or letters informing them that they have been conned out of money, spinning some vaguely plausible yarn about how their recent claim for a PPI rebate was, in fact, a cyber-scam originating in Thailand. The email claims that you can recover a large amount of lost money by contacting the sender, at which point you’re persuaded to hand your financial details…

LEAD CASE Can WD charge me for recovering data from faulty drive? Q I have a faulty Western Digital (WD) My Cloud 3TB external hard drive that’s still well within the manufacturer’s warranty period. I do back up the data on it, but I’m still worried that I might lose some of the files it stores. If so, I’ll have to pay to recover it, but WD says it won’t refund me this cost. I think WD should be responsible for saving and/or recovering this data without charging me. Am I right? Graham Spicer A Only if WD states in its contract that it will pay to recover data. If not, then it doesn’t have to refund Graham the cost, and nor would it have to compensate him for the…

Create and customise your reports Our readers continue to ask us excellent questions about refining and presenting their research. Alan Legg wants to know how to edit a PDF of data in Family Tree Builder (FTB) so he can add pages that show acknowledgments, links and images. To create an FTB PDF you can edit, simply open it in Word. This is trickier in LibreOffice. You need to upload the PDF to PDF Pro (www.snipca.com/33124), convert it into a Word document, then import it into LibreOffice Writer. Publish reports using Legacy Family Tree Another approach is to publish reports using the versatile Legacy Family Tree (https://legacyfamilytree.com). Once installed, return to Family Tree Builder and choose File, Export GEDCOM. Follow the instructions, saving the file to your Documents folder and making…

WARNING: JUNK AHEAD Junk offender: IObit Uninstaller Free 9.1 I like to think of myself as a fair person and I’m usually happy to give something a second chance. That’s why I thought I’d give IObit Uninstaller Free another go. IObit has a reputation for serving up a side order of junk when you install its free tools, and I’ve warned against Uninstaller in previous issues. But, with a new version of Uninstaller released last month, I thought I’d see whether IObit had taken the opportunity to change its dubious ways. Short answer: no. If anything, Uninstaller Free is even more cunning than before. Run the installer and it immediately throws an ‘optional offer’ at you – namely another IObit tool, Advanced SystemCare. Many people will click ‘Accept and Install’…

What is it? It’s an Apple iPhone 11 Pro, but with more – you know – gold, plus titanium, onyx and 137 diamonds. Made by Russian company Caviar, it’s called the Solarius Eclipse (pictured). What does it do? The same things as a normai iPhone 11 Pro. Plus, thanks to a mechanical watch movement built into the back, it tells the time. The iPhone 11 Pro already tells the time. Ah. Right. In that case, just the exact same things as an iPhone 11 Pro. What’s the catch? It costs $137,000 (about £107,000). So can I do without it? At that price, you might have to. But if you want to cash in your pension, it might make a lovely Christmas present for the lady in your life. And for…

KEYBOARD £100 from Logitech www.snipca.com/33334 Why would you pay £100 for a keyboard without mechanical switches or fancy LED lighting? The MX Keys does a pretty good job of answering that question. It’s essentially a modern tile-style ‘island’ design (flat keys with gaps between), but instead of moving almost no distance with hardly any sense of having pressed anything, the contoured keys guide your fingers and let them feel what they’re doing. The travel and click is just enough for comfort without making a clackety noise to annoy others. An optional palm rest adds a tenner to the cost. The plain white backlighting adjusts automatically to ambient light, but you can also fiddle with the brightness yourself, or turn it off to increase the rechargeable battery’s estimated life from 10…

LAPTOP NEW ENTRY HP Envy 13 (2019) £799 from www.snipca.com/33308 Tested Issue 568 Thanks to eighth-gen Intel processors and dedicated Nvidia MX250 graphics, this sleek aluminium laptop offers a practical combination of all-round processing power and portability, topped off by 8 hours 30 minutes battery life – and the touchscreen is now excellent too. ALTERNATIVE Dell XPS 13 Gets the most out of Intel CPUs, now tenth-gen, but there’s no GPU option and the cheapest sensible configuration is £1,199. www.snipca.com/33309 ANDROID TABLET Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 9.7 £357 from www.snipca.com/30707 Tested Issue 501 Now discounted and with a stylus included, this full-size HDR tablet is a better deal than the new Tab S4 (see Issue 540). Apple’s faster £319 iPad with optional £89 Pencil is superior, but lacks microSD expansion.…

ANDROID Make your phone more Windows-friendly Microsoft’s support for Windows 10 Mobile, its operating system for smartphones, comes to an end on 10 December. Fortunately, though, since it stopped trying to compete with Android and iOS, Microsoft has been doing some great work on Google and Apple’s platforms. The mobile Office apps are among the best on any app store, and Microsoft Launcher (www.snipca.com/33269) has long been one of our favourite alternatives to the default interface of many Android phones. It’s just been updated with a more convenient search bar, and a new darker interface that automatically kicks in if you’ve set Android to use dark mode. However, the biggest draw is likely to be the ‘Continue on PC’ tool, which lets you switch between editing documents on your phone…

WINDOWS 7, 8.1 & 10 Sort files in large folders File Explorer lets you organise folders by name, type, size and more (just click the appropriate column heading). However, it also has a keyboard shortcut that lets you quickly sort what’s displayed. Open a new File Explorer window (Windows key+E), then go to a folder with multiple files (for example, your Downloads folder). Next, make sure you’re using the Details view (click the View menu, then Details). Press the Tab key until the column heading bar is selected - at which point the Name heading will be highlighted light blue. Use the left and right arrow keys to select the column you want to use to sort the folder’s contents (such as Name, Type or Size). Next, press the down…

If you’ve spent time compiling and editing a spreadsheet and ended up with a lot of empty rows, the whole thing can look messy. One option is to select each row in turn, then right-click and click Delete Rows, but this isn’t practical on large spreadsheets. Instead, use Calc’s AutoFilter tool to do the job for you. Open your spreadsheet, press Ctrl+A to select all cells, then open the Data menu, followed by AutoFilter. A filter will now be applied to your spreadsheet, allowing you to sort the data by specific columns and more. In this case, however, we want to use the filter to only display rows that are empty. Click the down arrow at the top of the first column and select Empty (see screenshot), which tells Calc…

We might not be able to predict precisely what joys and disappointments the coming year will bring you, but we do have a pretty good idea about the key technology trends that will dominate 2020. In the short term, we know that January will see the demise of Microsoft’s much-loved Windows 7 operating system – an event that will have significant repercussions for the way that many of us use our PCs. We know that 5G mobile network connections will (finally) start to speed up our phone signals. Malware makers and hackers will find new ways to break into our devices and steal our data. But there’s so much more happening, too. Over the longer term, many industry analysts believe we’re on the cusp of a fourth industrial revolution. This…

Was your Ditto advice incorrect? Q In Issue 565 (page 38) you included a Workshop about Ditto, as an alternative to Windows Clipboard. In Step 2 of this you stated that the shortcut to open the Ditto panel is Ctrl+, (comma). However, this is wrong. The correct shortcut is Ctrl+’ (apostrophe). Frank Chammings A Yep, you’re quite right. Unfortunately, we tripped ourselves up precisely because the comma and apostrophe symbols look very similar. Somewhere during proofing we ‘corrected’ one to the other, thus actually creating a mistake! A little ironically, as we later explained in Step 6 of that same Workshop, it is possible to change Ditto’s default shortcut. So, if you want the keyboard combination to be Ctrl+, (comma) – or practically any other two keys – then you…

32bit/64bit A measure of how much data a PC can process at once. Most older computers are 32bit, more modern ones are 64bit. 3G/4G/5G Technologies that deliver faster mobile broadband. 4K Video with a resolution of at least 3840x2160 pixels. 720p/1080p/1440p Common types of high-definition video of 1280x720, 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 pixels respectively. 802.11ax Wi-Fi standard with speeds up to 10 times faster than 802.11ac. Also called Wi-Fi 6. Action camera A digital camera designed to record action while attached to a person’s body or equipment. AMOLED Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode. An alternative technology to LCD for creating flat-panel displays. Backhaul The process of sending data to a wired access point to reach the wider internet. Beta A version of software that’s being tested. Cache A temporary space for storing…

Openreach has started to make 1Gbps full-fibre broadband available to some of the UK’s remotest villages and small towns, using new methods to lay cables in difficult terrain. For the first time it’s using a diamond cutter to dig trenches (pictured). This is a giant rotating circular blade embedded with diamonds at the edge, making it sharp enough to slice through carriageways and footways. It leaves a neat channel into which fibre-optic cables can be laid. The specialist equipment can install 700 metres of cables in a day, which is 20 times faster than traditional excavation methods. It’s also using a GeoRipper, a powerful digging tool that cuts narrow trenches across soft ground such as fields. In addition, Openreach has installed remote fibre nodes into existing roadside cabinets to ‘piggyback’…

Psychiatrists have called for addiction to online shopping to be recognised as a mental-health condition. In a study published in the journal Comprehensive Psychiatry, researchers from Hannover Medical School in Germany claim that about five per cent of adults in developed countries – more than 2.5 million Britons - suffer from buying-shopping disorder (BSD). Around a third of patients who had sought treatment showed signs of being addicted to shopping. The study links it to a “higher severity” of anxiety and depression, saying compulsive purchasing is “primarily used to regulate emotions, for example to get pleasure or relief from negative feelings”. It says the rise of online shopping has made the problem worse because the internet provides increased “availability, anonymity, accessibility, and affordability”. Signs of being addicted include rising debt,…

How can I keep running Windows 7 safely? Your response in Issue 567 to Jack Isles’ letter caught my eye, when you say you’ll be publishing features on how to keep Windows 7 running safely. I assume many of your readers would welcome this information and guidance as soon as possible so that we can be fully set up by 14 January. While I could update to Windows 8.1, it’s fair to say that operating system was/is universally disliked. Updating to Windows 10 would involve considerable work and expense: a new computer plus, quite likely, scanner, printer and so on. My present computer (a Dell Dimension 9150) was bought in February 2006 and has been completely without fault. However, I doubt it would be capable of running Windows 10. As…

We often say that taking a company to the small claims court should be a last resort, and that mediation might produce a faster result. But that relies on the company cooperating with you. When they don’t you can face months of frustration, as reader Mary Turner found out when she chased a refund of £1,325 from a local PC shop for a botched repair (see Issue 547). We told her to consider mediation after the shop suggested it and the court advised her to agree. She followed every step to the letter, filing the required documentation and evidence (via Citizens Advice: www.citizensadvice.org.uk) to the mediators and the defendant. She was willing to be flexible, dropping her claim for interest and out-of-pocket expenses. But the defendant misused this procedure, using…

VIDEO CONVERTER HandBrake 1.3 www.handbrake.fr What you need: Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 (64bit only) HandBrake is a powerful tool that lets you convert all your video files (including those from old camcorders) into MP4, MKV and WebM formats so they can be played on your PC, as well as on tablets, phones and smart TVs. If you have some home movies on DVD, HandBrake will convert these too, but it can’t bypass copyright protection so can’t be used with commercial DVDs. If you have a large number of video files to convert, you can add them all to a queue then leave HandBrake to go through each one in turn. This version introduces a new design to the Queue window, providing detailed information about each queued video along with…

PHONE £450 from Currys www.snipca.com/33258 You may well assume that the Oppo Reno 2 differs from the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom (£650 from Carphone Warehouse, www.snipca.com/32462) in that it lacks the 10x zoom of its stablemate. Well you’d be right and wrong because the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom actually only has 5x zoom. You get 10x by adding 2x digital zoom, which, as always, simply blows up the pixels. The more accurately named Reno 2 has a 2x optical zoom. The 2x telephoto lens is just one of four cameras on the back (pictured below); the others being a regular lens, an ultra-wide, and a low-res black-and-white sensor that provides depth mapping for the blurred-background portrait mode. We found the latter barely worked, but in other respects the cameras do…

TP-Link’s KC120 security cameras give you crystal-clear video 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It has a 130-degree wide-angle view; accurate, balanced lighting; and 1080p resolution for rich, sharp colours. Its night-vision mode works at up to 25 feet, while the two-way audio with built-in microphone and speaker lets you keep in touch with your family. It also works with Amazon’s Echo Show or Fire TV, letting you watch live video stream with a simple voice command. It records a clip every time it senses motion or detects a sound. These are stored online, so you can watch and download them from anywhere. To enter this competition, email your home address to cacomp@dennis.co.uk with ‘KC120’ in the subject line by Tuesday 17 December. Good luck! You can buy…

Photoshop iPadOS www.snipca.com/33271 £9.99 per month after one-month free trial Photoshop is free to download but pricey to maintain when you consider that its closest competitor, Affinity Photo (www.snipca.com/33275), is £20, one-off. However, as well as Photoshop’s powerful tools, your subscription buys you 100GB of online storage, which makes swapping work back and forth between your PC and iPad easy. gowithYamo iOS www.snipca.com/33273 Android www.snipca.com/33274 Free From exhibitions to life drawing classes, this app is packed with great artistic events within striking distance of your home. Using the app to check in at an exhibition earns you points, which you can spend on experiences like pottery classes, gallery tours, tote bags, poster prints and more. Candide iOS www.snipca.com/33277 Android www.snipca.com/33276 Free Point your phone at a plant and Candide will…

When you blaze through costly printer ink at a rate of knots, you might be left wondering exactly what (or who) is to blame. Windows has a hidden setting that lets you store your entire print history, letting you see exactly what’s been printed, by whom, and when. To start recording this information, open Settings (Windows key+I), go to Devices, then ‘Printers & scanners’. Select your printer from the list on the right (if you have more than one, you need to set each one up in turn), click Manage, then ‘Printer properties’. The settings window for your printer will now open. Select the Advanced tab, then tick the ‘Keep printed documents’ option near the bottom (see screenshot) and click OK to save the changes. From now on, whenever you…

Advertise and manage tickets for a club event You’ve spent hours planning an event, now comes the hard part: getting people to attend. Not only that, but you want to keep tabs on how many people are coming. Eventbrite is a great online tool that lets you do both: your event will be advertised to other Eventbrite users and will appear in Google searches, and anyone interested can reserve a ticket online. As long as you don’t charge for tickets, the service is free. Create your event page First, you need to create an Eventbrite account at www.snipca.com/33244. Once you’ve registered, return to the home page and click Create Event. In the Basic Info section, give your event a name. Make sure you include the type of club you run…

Subscribe to computeractive today and save on the single issue price Each issue of Computeractive will be delivered directly to your device each fortnight. SEE NEXT PAGE FOR SET-UP INSTRUCTIONS HOW TO SUBSCRIBE … on an iPad or iPhone STEP 1 Return to the Computeractive library STEP 2 Choose your subscription term and tap twice on the 'price' box STEP 3 Choose whether to create an optional PixelMags account STEP 4 Enter your Apple ID password to confirm … on a Kindle Fire STEP 1 Kindle Fire subscriptions come with a FREE one month trial. STEP 2 Tap 'Free Trial Subscription' in the Computeractive library STEP 3 Chose your subscription term from the drop down menu on the popup that appears STEP 4 Tap 'Subscribe' … on an Android device…

Tweak Windows 10 to make it better How many tweaks make a transformation? It’s a question not dissimilar to the Trigger’s Broom paradox you may remember from Only Fools and Horses. In one of the show’s most memorable scenes (watch it at www.snipca.com/33298), the nation’s favourite road sweeper proudly tells Del, Rodney and Boycie that he’s been honoured by the council for using the same broom for 20 years, though it has had “17 new heads and 14 new handles”. Even writing this now, I can’t help chuckling. “ Windows definitely feels snappier and smoother, a spring in its step where before it was limping ” This conundrum has many other forms, most notably the mythical Ship of Theseus, well known to philosophy students. I’m more interested in whether my…