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I’m not entirely sure what chaff is*, but I know that one of Computeractive’s most important duties is to separate the wheat from it. Countless apps, programs and websites launch every week, and they can’t all be worth using. In fact, most aren’t. They’re pure chaff. Jane Hoskyn discovered that when researching this issue’s Cover Feature (page 50). She tested numerous new phone and tablet apps – all free – under strict orders to recommend only the very, very best. In the end just 25 made the cut. They’re all wheat. My favourite is Readfeed, which I’ve used to catalogue the boxes of books cluttering up my house. Please let me know which apps you like, and whether we’ve unfairly omitted any. I’m happy to say that you can now…

Contact us so we can investigate your case Email: consumeractive@computeractive.co.uk Write: Consumeractive, Computeractive, 30 Cleveland Street, London W1T 4JD Please include both your phone number and address. Unfortunately, we can’t reply to all your letters. Can I cancel a renewed subscription? Q I don’t need Dropbox Pro anymore, but I forgot to cancel the automatic annual subscription. On 7 January it took £80 from my PayPal account for 2017. I know I can cancel a new subscription within 14 days for a full refund, but does this apply to ongoing services? Elli Morse A Yes, Elli can cancel, because under the Consumer Contract Regulations (CCR) renewed and new subscriptions are treated the same, giving you a 14-day period to cancel. You don’t need to give a reason, and if you’ve…

What should we use to publish our magazine? Q My husband and I are the editors of our local chapel magazine – an A5 booklet of around 24 pages. Currently, we use Microsoft Office Publisher 2007, but we understand it won’t be supported for much longer, and we’re about to buy a new PC anyway. At over £100, Publisher 2016 is rather expensive. Is there a free program we can use instead? Andrea K Marlow A Here’s your chance to try a couple of programs that we think do a better job than Microsoft Office Publisher – and they’re both free. First, have a look at Serif PagePlus (www.snipca.com/23141). Its drag-and-drop layout tools are very easy to use, and it’s ideal for creating booklets and small posters. However, you may…

Is your monitor killing you? Before you jump up and call the police, no, it probably isn’t actually killing you. But it’s probably not doing you any good. Most of us don’t have our workspaces set up according to ergonomic advice. The screen may be higher or lower than ideal, and often the lack of adjustment in the monitor stand makes it hard to do anything about that. If you are concerned, you can find a quick visual guide to a healthy working position at www.snipca.com/23120, and more detail on display adjustment at www.snipca.com/23121. Even when it’s set up correctly, using a large PC monitor for long periods exposes you to a lot of artificial light (called blue light), and research in the last few years suggests this may be…

When you need to transfer files between computers or just keep a copy somewhere safe, a USB stick is the obvious solution. The problem is they are very easy to lose, and whoever finds it can plug one into any PC and read your data. Most of us deal with files that we’d like to keep from prying eyes, whether they contain credit-card details or company accounts. That’s where an encrypted drive comes in very useful. Windows 10 includes a feature called BitLocker that lets you encrypt a connected USB stick. Unfortunately, you only get BitLocker with the more expensive Professional edition, which most of us don’t have. Encryption software is available from other developers, such as BestCrypt ($99 – about £81 – from www.snipca.com/23035), and there are a few…

No.12: ONE PORT THAT DOES IT ALL When Steve Jobs unveiled the iMac in 1998, the most controversial features were the ones it didn’t have: the chunky connections found on the back of other PCs. Parallel and serial ports were huge heavy-duty multi-pin sockets, with clips and screws to hold the plugs in. The iMac dumped them in favour of USB, a single compact connector that promised to work with a full range of new peripherals – just as soon as anyone started making them. The gamble paid off, and USB did become the norm. Now we have the Type-C version (pictured), with a truly tiny plug that’s always the right way round. It can even support DisplayPort monitors and Thunderbolt peripherals as well as USB 3.1. The problem is…

Over 100 people have given our 2015 Back Issue CD a five-star review on Amazon. Visit www.snipca.com/21619 to read them, and buy the CD yourself. Here’s what some of your fellow Computeractive readers have said: This exceeded my expectations. You tend to forget the amount of information there is in each issue. Simply wonderful. KeithHollobone Have been using these for some years. Great space-savers as well as a convenient method of storage and accessing data. Maureen Jenner Excellent product. I have purchased all of the 2015 printed editions. I can now use the disc as a reference source, in a compact, easily retrieved form. Wouldn’t be without it. DavidNelson Invaluable space saver. I have every issue of this CD back to Computeractive’s first appearance 18 years ago and many Windows…

IOS Recover storage space If you constantly see the Storage Almost Full notification on your iPhone or iPad, there are a few ways to delete redundant files and recover storage space. Videos and photos are the biggest memory hogs. Your best option is to install Google Photos (www.snipca.com/23185), then save all your photos and videos there. After doing that, delete those files on your device. To do this, open the Photos app, tap Select at the top right, tap Select beside all the dates, tap the bin icon, then tap Delete X Items. Your files won’t be deleted immediately. Instead, they will be saved to the app’s Recently Deleted folder, from where they can be recovered if necessary (within 30 days). To permanently delete these files (and thereby recover storage…

WINDOWS 7 Use hidden wallpapers and themes It’s fairly straightforward to set an image as your wallpaper background. Simply right-click the image, then click ‘Set as desktop background’. Alternatively, you can use themes which automatically change your wallpaper at intervals. To do this, right-click anywhere on your desktop, click Personalise, then select the Windows theme you want. Windows 7 has five hidden countryspecific wallpapers and themes. To access them, open the Start menu, type C:\ Windows\Globalization\MCT into the search bar at the bottom, then press Enter. You’ll see five folders (MCT-AU, MCT-CA, MCT-GB, MCT-US and MCT-ZA, which represent Australia, Canada, Great Britain, United States and South Africa). Each of these contain subfolders. In the sub-folder with the country’s full name you’ll find iconic national images, which you can right-click to…

What is it? A new way of looking at the world through a headset, formed by blending augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). The tech industry thinks we’re crying out for a new type of reality in which nothing bad happens. Sinks never block. Tyres never puncture. Shoelaces never snap. We can forget these everyday annoyances by swapping a disappointing ‘real’ reality for an exciting ‘fake’ reality. What makes it different to AR and VR? To answer that, let’s first explain the difference between AR and VR. In AR, digital elements are placed on top of the real world, providing entertainment or information. So, for example, as you move your phone around to capture different places on your screen, images related to the place will appear. You may see…

Most apps tend to hover around the £3-£4 mark. That’s because this price is the sweet spot (neither too much, nor too little) that makes us more likely to put hand in pocket. But there are ‘luxury’ Android and iOS apps out there that require you to have much deeper pockets. CYBERTUNER iOS-only £749.99: www.snipca.com/23150 You could probably buy a piano and pay for a professional pianotuner for the price of this app. It claims to be the ‘gold standard tuning software tool’, but the fact it’s not even been rated in the App Store suggests that no one’s buying it. BURTON’S LEGAL THESAURUS £30.03 Android: www.snipca.com/23156 iOS £39.99: www.snipca.com/23155 Here’s one that might actually be worth the asking price. Burton’s Legal Thesaurus is the app-based version of the popular…

Email us your problem and we’ll try to help: noproblem@computeractive.co.uk PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT Why can’t I install iTunes? Q A while ago I had iTunes installed on my Windows 7 PC. It worked fine, but I uninstalled it because I started using Spotify instead. However, I received a new iPhone 7 for Christmas, and the present included a subscription to Apple Music. I want to reinstall iTunes on my PC so I can use Apple Music on that as well as on my smartphone, but every time I try to do this, I receive an error message about halfway through the process that says there’s a problem with the ‘installer package’. I really don’t understand what the problem is because, as I said, this PC used to run iTunes…

32bit A measure of how much information a computer can process at once. Most older computers are 32bit. 4K Video with a resolution of at least 3840x2160 pixels. 64bit A PC technology that processes information in larger chunks. Most modern computers are 64bit. aptX A codec that’s used to compress audio so it can be transmitted over Bluetooth with minimal loss in quality. Architecture A set of rules and language that govern how hardware and software work. Archive To save emails so they are easy to search and find. Beta A version of software that’s being tested. Beta versions are often released so problems can be ironed out. Biometric Using unique personal characteristics, such as fingerprints, for identification. BIOS Basic Input-Output System. Essential software built into every PC that connects…

The next major update to Windows 10 may add a security feature that locks your screen when you move away from your computer. The option, seemingly called Dynamic Lock, has been spotted in a recent Preview Build of the operating system, available to people signed up to Microsoft’s Insider Program (https://insider.windows.com). Dynamic Lock is expected to arrive in the Creators Update, a major overhaul of Windows 10 due in April. But reports vary on how it will work. Some experts had thought it would use Windows Hello, Microsoft’s biometric security system that logs you in by recognising your face via a webcam and checking your fingerprint on a device that reads them. Once you’ve set it up, you no longer need a password to log in. But others on the…

Tell us what’s on your mind Email: letters@computeractive.co.uk Facebook: www.facebook.com/computeractive Twitter: @ComputerActive www.twitter.com/computeractive Dating sites tempt you with ‘fake freebies’ After reading Issue 492’s Final Straw about ‘fake freebies’ (right), I think Ken Rigsby should have mentioned dating websites. Most of these sites entice you to register and create a profile for free. You have to divulge your personal details and spend loads of time filling out questionnaires and uploading photos. Then once you verify your email address you become a member - or so you think. In most cases, only when you try to send a message do you discover that you have to pay for a premium membership to proceed. I don’t expect such a service to be completely free as they need to make money like any…

WATCH OUT FOR… Hidden autofill boxes online What’s the threat? Finnish web developer Viljami Kuosmanen unearthed flaws in Google’s browser Chrome and the LastPass plug-in that allow scammers to steal your personal information by hiding ‘autofill’ fields on a website. These are the boxes that get automatically filled with your address and phone number, for example, when you type your name in the first box. The ‘autofill’ option is useful because it speeds up form-filling. But Kuosmanen discovered that hackers could conceal boxes to steal more personal details beyond those you think you’re submitting. He created a website to illustrate the point. Visit www.snipca.com/23025 and you’ll see two boxes, for your name and email address. In the ‘Name’ box type the first letter of your name. If you have autofill…

New products tested by our experts PC | £679 from PC Specialist www.snipca.com/22318 Laptops can sell themselves on all sorts of factors; how slim, light and stylish it is may matter to you as much as what’s inside it. But when it comes to a desktop tower PC, you probably just want the fastest PC you can get for your money. Recent months have seen significant new processors from Intel and the big graphics card makers AMD and Nvidia. That means you get more power for your Brexit-stricken pound. To prove the point, here’s PC Specialist’s Enigma K1, which pairs Intel’s new Kaby Lake CPU and Nvidia’s GTX GPU to create a machine for under £700 that’s ready for graphics and games as well as everyday Windows 10 tasks. “For…

What does it do? Stores files and makes them available over your network to all your PCs. A network-attached storage (NAS) box looks like an external hard drive, but it’s really a little PC in its own right, running software that handles the networking and may offer extra features, like playing back videos or handling your Apple iTunes library. You can also make backups to a NAS drive. You connect it to your broadband router using an Ethernet cable. Makers include Western Digital (www.snipca.com/23193, above), Synology (www.snipca.com/23191, below) and Seagate (www.snipca.com/23190). Why would I want it? Files on a NAS are equally accessible from all the computers on a network. Some also come with apps to make them appear on mobile devices, or directly over the internet, sometimes called a…

What can I use to view stereo photos? Q Being of a certain age and limited budget, my main means of communication is a basic pay-as-you-go mobile phone. But I’m a photographer and currently experiment with stereo imaging using two cameras. Google produces a cardboard stereo viewer for phones, and I wondered if there was an Android tablet the same size as a phone, which I could use with this to enable my stereo results to be viewed? Terry Buchanan A When it comes down to it, Terry, we’re all of a certain age and limited budget. Google’s Cardboard (pictured) is intended for 3D virtual-reality content, which works differently from stereoscopic images. But the MPO Viewer for Cardboard app lets you view stereo pairs in the MPO file format. You’d…

Find out what other products we liked. Buy our new 2015 Back Issue CD: £15 from www.snipca.com/21619 LAPTOP Asus ZenBook UX305CA £650 from www.snipca.com/22321 Tested: Issue 475 This metal-cased ‘ultrabook’ looks much more expensive than it is. There’s no touchscreen or 36-degree hinge, just great quality all round and an ultra-sharp display. The M3 processor is adequate for most tasks, though not gaming. ALTERNATIVE Dell Inspiron 15 5000 If you need a full-size Windows 10 laptop with a DVD drive and a desktop PC-level i5 processor, this is a solid choice. £540 from www.snipca.com/21650 DESKTOP PC Palicomp AMD Avenger £500 from www.snipca.com/20927 Tested: Issue 479 AMD’s Athlon X4 880K processor gives this PC solid performance with money left for GTX 960 graphics and a very fast 128GB SSD as well…

What you need: Android phone; Trusted Contacts app Time required: 10 minutes Trusted Contacts is new phone-only app by Google that can help if you’re ever in danger or in an emergency. After adding your close family members and friends, the app lets you share your location with these ‘trusted contacts’, or request to see where they are. If there’s no response to a request within five minutes, the recipient’s location is automatically sent to the person who requested it. The app works only on Android phones, but Google are working on an iPhone version. STEP 1 Install the Android phone app from www.snipca.com/23138. Open the app, tap Sign In, then log in using the Google account you use on your phone. You’ll now see a series of screens that…

Picky Free iOS: www.snipca.com/23170 Modifying the sharpness, brightness, contrast and tone of each photo in your collection can take ages. Instead use Picky, which autocorrects and fixes your photo with one tap. It lets you compare your edited version with the original, and select the best from duplicates. Roku Free Android: www.snipca.com/23171 iOS: www.snipca.com/23172 Roku (www.snipca.com/23186) is a great way to stream video to your TV. Its app has recently been redesigned with a new What’s On tab – a list of popular movies and programmes you can buy, rent or stream for free. The app also contains a new remote-control interface to replace the physical one. Inkitt Free Android: www.snipca.com/23173 iOS: www.snipca.com/23174 This app has thousands of free novels from new and aspiring authors across a wide range of…

OFFICE Use less common symbols and create your own short forms This is one of those rare tips that work across all Office desktop programs. It will come in handy if you often need to insert less common symbols (such as the copyright mark, euro symbol or trademark) and involves typing a sequence of keys. In all programs (except Outlook) click File at the top left, Options at the bottom, Proofing on the left, then click the AutoCorrect Options button. In Outlook, click File, Options, Mail on the left, the Editor Options button, then click the AutoCorrect Options button. Ensure that ‘Replace text as you type’ is ticked at the bottom. You’ll now see a list of the key sequences you need to type to insert these symbols (see screenshot).…

Pity the overworked app maker last September. As summer gave way to autumn, Android 7 (Nougat), Apple’s iOS 10, Google’s Pixel phone and the iPhone 7 were all released within days of each other, heralding a busy period for app developers. Technology that once seemed science fiction – artificial intelligence (AI), voice control and biometrics – became a fact of life in Android and iOS. Keen to ride the wave of these advances, app makers spent the next few months busting a gut to get new apps and updates rolled out. In November 2016 alone, more than 65,000 new apps were added to the Google Play store. But this really was a case of quantity over quality. Of the countless apps released since September, we’d suggest that a mere fraction…

Q I have an older TV, which I use with a Freeview tuner. I sometimes linger my finger over the remote’s Teletext button, but pressing it just reveals a blank screen now. I know the digital switchover was to blame but I wonder why Teletext didn’t make the jump. Lynn Burnett A The correct generic name of the technology is ‘teletext’, with a lowercase t, or ‘videotext’ — although few people ever called it that. Teletext with an uppercase T was, confusingly, both the brand name of the teletext service broadcast by ITV from 1993 onwards, and the name of the company that produced it. Before 1993, ITV’s teletext service was called Oracle. The BBC’s teletext service was called Ceefax. There were others, but those were the most memorable. Teletext…

Obnoxious web adverts Ido worry about how quickly time goes. Why, it seems only yesterday that I was curled up on the sofa in front of my faux log fire, and tuning in to watch the first airing of the John Lewis Christmas advert. You know the one! Something sad unfolded, and that made me feel similarly melancholy. But then it ended with a happy twist, which left me with a nice warm feeling inside. It had animals, and children, and snow — and it didn’t really feel like an advert at all. “Ever visited a site only to have a screenblocking panel slide into view when you start to read?” Hold on. Wasn’t that the previous year’s advert? Or perhaps I’m thinking of some rival store’s festive commercial? Waitrose,…

WARNING: JUNK AHEAD Junk offender: Vuze After 15 years writing about software, I finally installed my first BitTorrent client, Vuze (www.vuze.com) - and it welcomed me by trying to sneak a Yahoo search PUP and a fake security tool on to my PC. Perhaps it serves me right for meddling with BitTorrent. It’s used by video pirates to share copyrighted films, software and music for free, after all. My intentions were ethical, honest. I wanted to share enormous videos files from my PC to my laptop, and Vuze looked like a great way to do that. The installer for the new free version of Vuze – ‘The Most Powerful BitTorrent Software on Earth’, according to itself - began by downloading Java to my PC without asking. You know Java. That…

I don’t want to downplay the dangers that children face online, but we really shouldn’t need an ombudsman to protect their rights, as suggested by the Children’s Commissioner for England (News, Issue 493, page 9). Instead of the Government taking action, parents need to adopt more responsibility for the wellbeing of their children. But sadly we seem to live in an age where parents let their kids do what they like, then blame somebody else when things go wrong. Parenting isn’t easy. I’ve raised three children, often through difficult times personally. They’re all in their late teens and early 20s now, and I was very strict about regulating their internet access. Fortunately, when they were much younger they didn’t have to worry about the plague of social media and the…

SYSTEM TOOL Task Manager DeLuxe (TMX) 2.4.1 www.snipca.com/23000 What you need: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8/8.1 or 10 Get a much closer look at all your PC’s running processes using this fast, lightweight program that doesn’t even need to be installed. Task Manager DeLuxe, also known as TMX, is a powerful alternative to the built-in Windows Task Manager. If you’re a regular reader you’ll know there are already good Task Manager alternatives such as Process Explorer (www.snipca.com/23017) and Process Hacker ( processhacker.sourceforge.net) – but TMX is more than a match for them. It offers a wider range of real-time detail about your PC and operating system, and makes the information much easier to navigate. Unlike similar programs, TMX has a search box and also uses browser-style tabs to divide your…

The last Ricoh colour laser printer we tested, the C250DN (see our review, Issue 474), distinguished itself by being very cheap. This one doesn’t, but it’s actually very reasonably priced for a multi-function printer (MFP). The scanner on top has a 35-sheet automatic document feeder, and you get Ethernet, USB and Wi-Fi connections as well as fax (assuming you have a telephone socket handy). This is a business-level colour laser printer, designed to churn out large numbers of sheets quickly on a regular basis. Support for the PostScript 3 and PCL 6 printer languages, along with a generous 256MB of internal memory, means it should cope easily with any printing job. We were generally impressed with the print quality. On standard copier paper, text and graphics looked crisp and solid,…

Home-networking specialist devolo has launched GigaGate, a new high-speed Wi-Fi bridge that transmits a gigabit internet signal from a router to a secondary location. With a transmission capacity of up to 2Gbps, it creates a precise connection that delivers fast internet to key locations in your home. The prize here is the GigaGate Starter Kit, comprising the Base and the Satellite. Email your address to cacomp@dennis. co.uk with ‘bridge’ in the subject line by midnight 14 February. You can buy the Starter Kit, priced £219.99, from devolo’s website: www.snipca.com/23093. For information follow @devoloUK on Twitter, and watch devolo’s YouTube channel: www.snipca.com/23094.…

Email us your tips: letters@computeractive.co.uk ✓ TIP OF THE FORTNIGHT T See how websites looked in the past Last year I came across the brilliant website Wayback Machine (www.snipca.com/23135), which shows you what websites looked like on specific dates in the past. So I could easily see, for example, what the BBC website looked like when it launched in 1996. Type the website’s URL into the search field, press Enter, select a year in the timeline at the top, then click any date with a blue dot (see screenshot) to see what the site looked like on that date. Once the website loads, you can click to read stories (as long as they’re still archived). This all works fine unless you’re not sure of the website name. For example, I…

AGES 0-5 123 Awesome Park* Free www.snipca.com/23175 (Android) £2.29 www.snipca.com/23176 (iOS) This game will teach your toddler how to count from one to 20. The activities include selecting the correct number, dragging and dropping the correct number of items and tracing the number’s outline. They receive a prize at the end of each completed task. AGES 6-10 Bounce Classic HD Free www.snipca.com/23177 (Android) Free www.snipca.com/23178 (iOS) Nokia phone users will remember this game in which you had to avoid bursting a ball as you progress through 11 levels, dodging sharp obstacles including pins while jumping through hoops. The game can be played in offline mode. AGES 11-16 NASA Science Investigations Free www.snipca.com/23179 (Android) Free www.snipca.com/23180 (iOS) In Nasa’s new app, you play the role of an astronaut on board the…

Access even more scanning options PrivaZer is a system-cleaning tool that has much in common with our favourite junk-removal software CCleaner. We covered some of its core tools in a recent Workshop (Issue 477, page 35), but it has other useful features that we didn’t have room to cover. For example, PrivaZer’s Advanced mode offers extra scanning options to give you more control over each scan. To see these, Click ‘Basic user’ at the top right in the main menu (it will change to ‘Advanced user’), then click ‘Scan in-depth’ in the dropdown menu, select Computer and click OK. Every type of scan offered by PrivaZer will be listed on the left. As an example we’ll use ‘Copy, burning’, which removes the temporary files generated when you burn CDs. To…

As great as we think our top 25 free new apps are now, we can’t promise you’ll be using them all a year from now. Here are 10 apps that you’ll use for years to come… 1 ADBLOCK BROWSER Android & iOS: https://adblock browser.org Browse faster, more securely and with less screen clutter, using this mobile browser. 2 PUSHBULLET Android & iOS: www.pushbullet.com/apps Send whatever you want – photo, document, text message, web link, enormous video file – to friends, your PC and your other devices. 3 PIXLR Android & iOS: https://pixlr.com/mobile This camera, photo editor and collage maker in one is the best all-round photographic app of them all. 4 WATTPAD Android & iOS: www.wattpad.com Delve into Wattpad’s library of 40 million free ebooks – then use the app…

Perhaps you installed it for its brilliant email program, Windows Live Mail (WLM). Maybe you liked the simplicity of its video-editing tool, Movie Maker, or used Photo Gallery to organise your digital snaps. Whatever your reasons, Windows Essentials 2012 and all its tools were effectively killed off on 10 Jan 2017, when Microsoft officially terminated support for the once-popular free software suite. Not only is Windows Essentials no longer available to download from its web page (www.snipca.com/23166), but it’s also potentially unsafe to carry on using the suite’s applications if you have them installed. Because the tools will no longer receive security updates from Microsoft, they could quickly become vulnerable to hackers and malware. Microsoft admits that using Windows Essentials programs now represents an “increased security risk”. The safest way…

How can I make a program load at startup? Q Recently (Issue 489, page 56) you recommended ScreenWings. It ran fine and I could switch it off and on, but could you advise me how to set it up to run at startup, which stops hackers taking screenshots of your PC? Ian Watkins A You can use Windows’ Startup folder to make any program load when your PC boots. To open the Startup folder, press Windows key+R to open the Run box, type shell:startup then press Enter. Next, copy the desktop shortcut of the program (ScreenWings in your case) into the Startup folder by right-clicking the program’s shortcut, selecting Copy, right-clicking within the Startup folder and selecting Paste. To reverse the effect, delete the shortcut from the Startup folder. Where…