Computeractive -julkaisun 574 -irtonumeron sisällysluettelo

Growing up, I’m sure we all knew someone who was always first to get the latest technology. For me, it was my school friend Matthew. His dad was the first in our street to get an Atari games console, a video recorder and a home computer. But seeing Ceefax on his (bigger-thanaverage) TV left the biggest impression. I rushed home and told my dad about the “magic words” that appeared on screen. Those words may have gone, but TVs are capable of more now than even Matthew’s dad would’ve imagined. And yet do we realise their full potential? We know we can watch Netflix and iPlayer on them, but how about connecting it to your PC or NAS drive to play your own videos? Jonathan Parkyn explains how to do…

A new Windows 7 bug is preventing users from shutting down their PCs, with an error message, “You don’t have permission to shut down this computer”. It’s not known what’s causing the problem, nor whether Microsoft will release a fix for it. The company has already released one fix for Windows 7 after ending support, to address a problem with desktop wallpaper (see Issue 573, page 6). Some users say you can fix the problem by creating a new temporary account each time you want to shut down your PC. To do this, type add or remove other users in Windows Search or the Start menu then click ‘Add user’ and follow the instructions. Next, log into the new user account, then log back out. Now log back into your…

BT 5G NOW OPEN TO EVERYONE BT has made its 5G mobile network available to all UK customers - previously it was limited to those signed up to its Halo broadband package. It’s available in 50 towns and cities across the UK, covering major areas like London and Birmingham as well as smaller places such as Hamilton, Rochdale and Walsall. Packages start at £45 for 6GB of data. Check if you can get it in your area at www.bt.com/mobile/coverage-checker. MOZILLA SAVES THUNDERBIRD TO MAKE MONEY The future of Thunderbird seems more secure after Mozilla set up a new body to run it. Called the MZLA Technologies Corporation, it will explore ways to make money from the email client. Thunderbird’s users had worried that it might close after Mozilla said in…

A new smartwatch is being developed to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s disease in the person wearing it. The project, which is being spearheaded by the charity Alzheimer’s Research UK, forms part of the Government’s wider ambition to use artificial intelligence (AI) to better understand and prevent diseases. Researchers will recruit one million volunteers and monitor their gait, heart rate, eye movements and sleep patterns. They’ll use this data to create ‘digital fingerprints’ – or common traits shown by people with dementia. The watch will then be programmed to spot warning signs years before symptoms develop. Experts now believe these signs can appear two years before diagnosis. Carol Routledge, director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said studies show that 85 per cent of UK adults would take a test…

WATCH OUT FOR… Coronavirus scams and malware What’s the threat? As the world reels from the global spread of Coronavirus infections, antivirus firm Kaspersky says hackers are exploiting people’s worst fears to infect PCs with malware and steal personal data. The company has spotted two types of attack. One takes the form of an email that claims to provide instructions for protecting yourself against the virus, and detecting it. However, the attachment included with the email (usually a Word document or PDF) is fake and contains malware. Opening the file will infect your PC. In the second threat, scammers send an official-looking email that claims to be from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States (www.snipca.com/34032). It directs users to a legitimate-looking (but fake) website…

Ever since Windows 10 was launched back in 2015, I have followed its ups and downs using daily alerts courtesy of Google, and it has never made for pleasant reading. However, now that Windows 7 has come to an end, I had to make a decision regarding the future. Although my PC has been updated with more RAM and a faster graphics card, it is more than nine years old and therefore past its best. Equally, some of my favourite software is the same age. I am a hobbyist cartoon animator and use several different programs to complete my work. Unfortunately, graphics software doesn’t come cheap, so replacing both my PC and software for a hobby was financially out of the question. So I was delighted in Issue 572 to…

I’ve just upgraded to a 4K PC monitor and have discovered my copy of MyHeritage’s Family Tree Builder displays the text incredibly small, even after increasing the DPI scaling. How do I fix this? Paul Derry It’s a problem with the program. The good news is that a minor update has been released that fixes this, but it’s currently not available by choosing ‘Help, Check for Updates…’ within the program itself. Instead, you’ll need to go to MyHeritage’s site (www.snipca.com/33916) and click a download link to get the latest version. Have a genealogy question for Nick? Email letters@computeractive.co.uk with ‘Grow Your Family Tree’ in the subject line.…

As much as I enjoy using Chrome, it does tend to hog my PC’s resources. On rare occasions, it gobbles up so much memory it brings my computer to a standstill, leaving me no option other than to open Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Escape), locate the Chrome processes (usually more than 20 of the blighters), then close each one by right-clicking and selecting ‘End task’. Trudging through Task Manager’s entries to shut down Chrome is an annoyingly slow process. I was delighted, therefore, to stumble upon NirCmd (www.snipca.com/33982, scroll to the bottom for the download links). Created by one of my favourite developers (Nir Sofer), this small tool lets you run more than 70 powerful system commands, including one that kills all Chrome processes in an instant. NirCmd doesn’t require installation and…

What is it? If you picture the cloud (which just means a shed somewhere full of computers) at the centre of a network, the ‘edge’ in this context is the gadget you’re using, whether that’s a PC, mobile device or internet of things gadget (for example, a smart speaker). Nothing to do with… Replacing the dude who plays lead guitar in Irish rock band U2 with a robot? No. What does it do? The same thing the data centre would do, but on a chip inside your device. At the moment, when you say ‘Alexa’ or ‘Hey, Siri’ or ‘OK, Google’, the app or smart speaker you’re talking to streams what you say to its servers, likely to be somewhere in the US. These do all the voice processing and…

PHONE | £389 from Amazon www.snipca.com/34044 Snaps for a snip The absence of ‘Red’ from the model name indicates that this is from Xiaomi’s flagship rather than budget range. But where the top of some manufacturers’ ranges means spending a grand, you can get the Mi Note 10 for less than half that, depending on whether you want the grey, white or blue-green version and who’s discounting it. Do shop around. The headline feature is a 108-megapixel camera based on Samsung’s Isocell Plus sensor. Like the more common 48-megapixel units, it uses ‘pixel binning’, which doesn’t throw away pixels but combines four into each one in the final image, improving detail and low-light accuracy. Although we found colours slightly off, it still took excellent pictures. There’s also a 5-megapixel sensor…

What was it? Pronounced ‘you-me’, this set-top box was launched in 2010 as a consumer video-chat solution. For $599 (then about £375, nearly £500 today) plus $25 per month, the whole family could sit around their HDTV (not included) and talk to friends and family over broadband. Why did it die? Umi arrived in competition with software like Skype, which anyone could use on their PC for free, and Apple’s new FaceTime, which users could also use for free. While some nerdy users praised the video quality, audio could be erratic. The price was quickly cut by $100, then another $100 for a lower-quality version, but oddly nobody wanted to pay even $400 for something they could already do. At best, such a product was vulnerable to “mass-market options that…

What you need: External hard drive; AOMEI Backupper; TinyTask Time required: Two hours What would you do if your computer suffered a catastrophic hard-drive corruption? If you have an external or online backup, your files would be safe. But unless you also had a way of resurrecting your hardware, they’d remain out of reach until you fixed or replaced your PC. That could take some time. That’s why a backup, while essential, shouldn’t be your only precaution against disaster. Here, we’ll show you how to set up your PC so that it clones its internal hard drive every night to produce a bootable copy of its contents that you can fall back on should disaster strike. 1 Set up your hard drive You’ll need an external hard drive of at…

BBC+ Free iOS www.snipca.com/34014 Android www.snipca.com/34015 The BBC publishes a huge amount of new content on its website every day. With BBC+ installed, it’s easier to find what interests you. It gathers every new video and, the more you watch, the more it learns about your tastes and pushes the kind of content you enjoy to the top of the list. Best for Discovering fresh content Attenborough’s Story of Life Free iOS www.snipca.com/34018 Android www.snipca.com/34019 Enjoy more than 1,000 of the greatest wildlife moments ever filmed, drawn from 60 years of the BBC’s natural history programmes. The range of content is truly impressive, there are themed collections, and everything is subtitled. Best for Wildlife fans Civilisations AR Free iOS www.snipca.com/34016 Android www.snipca.com/34017 Explore landmark exhibits from more than 30 museums…

If your club’s finances could do with a boost, why not consider asking your members to donate items that you can then sell on eBay? While your existing members will probably be happy for all auction proceeds to go to the club, you might get more people willing to donate items if you pledge to donate a portion of all sales to charity. Create your charity listing Once you’ve collected items to sell, you need to create your eBay listings for them. Don’t worry if you’ve never used eBay before - simply register for a free eBay account at www.snipca.com/33995, then click Sell (you’ll find this at the top-left of the main eBay window) and follow the steps to list your item. When you reach the ‘Selling details’ section, tick…

Subscribe to today and save on the single issue price. Each issue of Computeractive will be delivered directly to your device each fortnight. HOW TO SUBSCRIBE… … on an iPad or iPhone STEP 1 Return to the Computeroctive 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 confinn … on a Kindle Fire Kindle Fire subscriptions come with a FREE one month trial. STEP 1 Tap 'Free Trial Subscrtptlon' in the Computeroct/ve Ubrary STEP 2 I Chose your subscription term from the drop down menu on the popup that appears STEP 3 Tap 'Subscribe' … on an Android device STEP 1 Open the Google Play Store homepage…

PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT What’s causing my PC to freeze? Q My problem has various computer geeks baffled. My two-year-old PC with a 3.79GHz AMD Ryzen 5 1600 six-core processor, 16GB RAM and Windows 10 often freezes for about 30 seconds then continues as though nothing had happened. It can occur at any time. For example, halfway through typing an email the cursor stops and there’s nothing for it but to remain patient until the PC carries on again. I’m a fan of Computeractive, having taken the magazine since the first copy. Chris Witts A It's always great to help such a loyal reader. If we had to wager on the single most likely cause then our money would be on the hard drive. An ailing disk or flawed drivers…

Learn advanced touchpad gestures I’m one of those annoying people that sits on trains tap-tap-tapping loudly on their laptop, disturbing people trying to skim-read that morning’s Metro. I’ve tried tapping more softly, but my fingers are like pneumatic road drills. If you’ve sat next to me over the past few years, please accept my apologies. When my laptop goes quiet, it’s usually because I’m attempting to do something with its touchpad: right-click a browser tab, perhaps, or highlight a block of text. The problem with this is that my touchpad rarely does what I want it to. Copying and pasting text somehow ends up opening 15 websites; scrolling down is more a case of screwing up. “To perform these gestures, surely you’d need fingers as dexterous as Ted Rogers in…

Microsoft has removed a Windows 10 security update that was freezing computers and causing problems when booting. The update, named KB4524244, was released as part of the company’s ‘Patch Tuesday’ updates on 11 February. It was meant to fix a potential security flaw with the UEFI, which is the modern replacement for BIOS, but started to backfire within hours. Microsoft confirmed online that it will not re-release the update (see www.snipca.com/34104), saying it was causing problems with the ‘Reset this PC’ feature (also called Push Button Reset). It said that when restarting their PCs affected users might enter recovery mode with various options listed at the top of the screen. They may also load the desktop but see the error message, ‘There was a problem resetting your PC’. Microsoft added…

Half of the UK’s 10-year-olds now own a mobile phone even though more parents than ever think the internet does their child more harm than good. The figures, from Ofcom’s 2019 ‘Children’s Media Use and Attitudes’ survey, also show that nearly a quarter of three and four-year-olds have their own tablet, while 15 per cent of them are allowed to take it to bed. After interviewing 3,500 children and parents, Ofcom has declared 10 as the age when children gain “digital independence”. “The mobile phone is the device of choice for children”, said Yih-Choung Teh, Ofcom’s strategy and research group director. He added: “I’m conscious that for these children who have never known a world without the internet, in many respects their online and offline worlds are indistinguishable”. The survey…

Hackers are targeting Apple Macs more than Windows computers for the first time ever, new analysis shows. Antivirus developer Malwarebytes said it detected 11 attacks per Mac in 2019, compared with 5.8 for Windows machines. It also found that Apple threats rose by 400 per cent over the same period, though this was partly down to an increase in the number of Macs running Malwarebytes. By contrast, Windows attacks increased by just one per cent. In its ‘State of Malware’ report for 2020, Malwarebytes said hackers are being attracted to Macs because of its increasing market share. Recent figures show that 17 per cent of all computers worldwide run macOS, up from 12 per cent a year ago. The company added that Apple threats differ from Windows because they’re largely…

Can I get a refund if my Sonos speakers stop getting updates? LEAD CASE Q I’ve just heard that Sonos isn’t going to update its older speakers from May of this year. I only bought one, the second-generation Play:5 (pictured), about a year ago for £438. If this stops working, will I be able to claim a refund? Sarah Smith A No, Sarah won’t be entitled to a refund. The law doesn’t tell manufacturers that they must continuously update their products to keep them working. It’s true that the Consumer Rights Act (CRA) lets you make a claim for up to six years, (five in Scotland), but it doesn’t specify that goods have to last that long. However, one of the basic consumer rights provided by UK law is the…

SYSTEM TOOL Ultimate Windows Tweaker 4.7 www.snipca.com/34089 What you need: Windows 10 Windows includes plenty of customisation options, but only for what Microsoft wants you to change. If you crave more control, download Ultimate Windows Tweaker (go to the link above and the download will start after a couple of seconds). It’s a portable program, so there’s nothing to install. Simply extract the contents from the ZIP, then run the EXE file. The various tools are split into sections down the left side of the window and cover everything from tweaking the taskbar to customising the context menu that appears when you right-click a file. This version adds a particularly useful new option that stops your Start menu searches being blighted with results from the web. By default, if you…

WARNING: JUNK AHEAD Junk offender: Foxit Reader I’m always dismayed when good software turns bad. Foxit Reader (www.snipca.com/34079) used to be a decent PDF reader with useful features, including some annotation and editing capabilities. Not so long ago, I used to recommend it as an alternative to Adobe’s increasingly bloated Acrobat Reader program. Indeed, my records tell me that I recommended Foxit Reader in these very pages, back in Issue 515. Since then, things appear to have gone downhill for the once-brilliant PDF tool. Start installing it and it’s not long before you’re greeted by a confusing screen with a pile-up of pre-ticked boxes that would see you adding several tools to your PC (see screenshot) if you weren’t careful. In fairness, some of these options are useful. Shell Extensions,…

EBOOK READER | £100 from Amazon www.snipca.com/33990 Bedtime stories Amazon’s Fire tablets come in a Kids Edition, and now you can get a similar bundle with the Kindle ebook reader, normally priced £100 but reduced to £75 at the time of writing. “A regular Kindle, plus a year’s worth of classic kids’ ebooks” As with the tablets, the Kindle itself is the regular model (£70 from www.snipca.com/31621, see our review, Issue 555, page 23). It’s already IPX8 waterproof, and the Kids Edition cover adds some cushioning all round plus a cover to protect the screen. This snaps closed magnetically, like an iPad case, and doing so puts the Kindle to sleep, while opening it automatically wakes it. We have two concerns about the case, though. One is that the inside…

PHONE | £200 from Argos www.snipca.com/34034 Gee, that’s cheap! In another victory for marketing logic, the Moto G8 Plus differs from the Moto G8 in that it has a 6.3in screen and 64GB of storage, while the Moto G8 doesn’t actually exist. Still, if there was a Moto G8, the Moto G8 Plus would doubtless be better. With a glossy pink or blue plastic back, it feels mid-range rather than budget, with a decent processor that runs Android 9 smoothly and can cope with all but the most demanding 3D games. The IPS screen has a bit of bezel at the bottom, and only covers 88.5 per cent of sRGB colours, but goes exceptionally bright. Fighting for space with the NFC fingerprint reader, the impressive rear camera array has only…

LAPTOP HP Envy 13 (2019) £1,149 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 tenthgen, but there’s no GPU option and the cheapest sensible configuration is £1,049 from www.snipca.com/33309 ANDROID TABLET Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 9.7 £329 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. ALTERNATIVE…

What you need: Android phone; Your Phone apps; Windows Time required: 20 minutes Sometimes a tool comes along that’s so useful, it’s hard to imagine how we managed without it. That’s exactly how we feel about the new calling feature in Microsoft’s Your Phone app. By linking your phone to your PC, it lets you answer calls without having to scurry into another room to grab your phone. You can also make calls directly from your PC; and even switch active calls between your phone and PC. Be aware though that the calls feature only currently works with Android phones. STEP 1 First, go to the Your Phone page on the Microsoft Store at www.snipca.com/33972. If you see a Get button 1, click it, follow the link to open the…

iOS Find out your altitude using elevation sensors Your phone is packed with more sensors than any of us use on a regular basis. One of those, if you have an iPhone 6 or later, is a built-in elevation sensor. To find it, open the Compass app (if you don’t know which folder it’s in, swipe down on your home screen and type comp into the search box, then tap the result), which as well as showing your orientation and geographical coordinates, displays your elevation at the foot of the screen (see screenshot right). If you don’t have an iPhone 6 (or later), you’ll need to resort to an app, which will draw the relevant data from highly accurate, publicly accessible databases after searching them based on your location. There…

WINDOWS 10 Hide Microsoft’s adverts for its new Edge browser Microsoft isn’t averse to pushing its own software and services on Windows users. Run a search in the Start menu, for example, and any web results will load in Edge (even if you’ve set a different default browser). And now Microsoft seems set on persuading Firefox users to upgrade to the new version of Edge. When they open the Start menu, Firefox users now see a message urging them to try Edge. It appears in the Suggested section at the very top of the Start menu. If you’re perfectly happy with Firefox and don’t want to see ads for Edge, you can turn off the Suggested section of the Start menu. Open Settings (press the Windows key+I), click Personalisation, then…

What’s on the other end of your charging cable? It’s easy enough to answer that question when you’re at home, but what about when you’re plugged into a public charging point at a train station, pub, coffee shop, airport or on a bus (pictured below)? Behind the USB socket, there could be a tiny computer quietly stealing your data – a hacking attack known as ‘juice jacking’. The concept of juice jacking is as simple as it is scary. You believe you’re plugging into a standard powered USB socket when, in reality, you’re connecting your phone or tablet to a computer run by hackers designed to do a simple job very effectively: siphon off your personal data so that hackers can use it to steal your identity or install malware…

Why can’t I scan with Google Drive? Q I really liked the idea of being able to scan documents using Google Drive, as described in Issue 570’s In The Club (page 48). However, I can’t get them to work. I’ve tried on both an iPhone and iPad with the latest iOS and iPadOS, and the Google Drive app was a fresh install. When I tap the ‘+’ (plus) button I don’t see any option to scan. What am I doing wrong? Martin Parton A You’re not doing anything wrong. We were using the Android version of the app and, while we did provide a link to the iOS version, this doesn’t have a Scan button. Instead, it has a ‘Use camera’ option. This is because it doesn’t actually support the…

Microsoft has been criticised in the past for taking ages to acknowledge problems caused by updates, so we’re pleased it yanked this blighter (KB4524244) within days of it appearing. But why hasn’t it said more about the KB4532693 problem? This kind of inconsistency is maddening. Microsoft needs to create a more effective way of telling users what to do. It could start by finding a better way to label updates because these numbers mean nothing to the average person. Why not include the year and month in the code to make it feel more relevant?…

You’ll soon get a more accurate estimate of your new broadband speed when you change provider, under rules being introduced by Ofcom. At the moment, estimates are based on data from customers whose homes have similar characteristics, such as size of property or distance from the exchange or street cabinet. This method was designed for copper broadband lines, where signals can get slower over distance, particularly between the street cabinet and the home. But it can lead to misleading results because there are various environmental factors other than the broadband connection that can affect speed. Ofcom wants to revise the rules to reflect the increasing number of homes that can get full-fibre connections. The accuracy of a speed estimate is crucial because it lets you cancel your contract without a…

Google has apologised for sending users’ private videos to strangers. It admitted that between 21 and 25 November 2019, a “technical issue” meant some videos users downloaded from Google Photos (www.google.com/photos) were sent to other people by mistake. The problem affected Google’s Takeout service (https://takeout.google.com), which lets you download content saved in your Google accounts, including photos and Gmail emails, as well as videos. Between those dates, some videos being downloaded through Takeout would have appeared in the archives of other people using the service. If you tried to download videos during that period, you should assume it didn’t work properly and try again. Google emailed users affected by the breach (see www.snipca.com/33979), saying the “underlying issue has been identified and resolved”. It has carried out an “in-depth analysis to…

Like Phil Grey (Letters, Issue 572), I sometimes boot up my old XP computer. It’s an Evesham Axis 2600 purchased in 2003 for £999. It’s still in use, but not connected to the internet. I just love using some of the programs that won’t work on Windows 10: Picture it Publishing; Digital Image Pro 9; Live Pix; Print Shop Deluxe (pictured); Family Fun Train Town; and Microsoft TrainSimulator. Such easy programs to use. I find some of today’s photoediting programs complicated, so occasionally revert to my XP PC. In fact, I have just completed a montage of old photos spanning 50 years for my Daughter’s 50th birthday, using Digital Image Pro 9. I wonder how many of your readers will remember these old programs? Len Faulkner CA SAYS Let’s ask…

Create a horizontal ‘pedigree’ chart Reader and keen genealogist Dave Selway got in touch to ask us whether we could recommend a program (preferably free) for creating and printing ‘pedigree-style’ charts that include all ancestors, including cousins. A pedigree chart is more basic than complete family trees. Typically it displays only direct ancestors (not cousins), and presents them horizontally, not vertically. What Dave wants is to use the horizontal style of pedigree charts, but add cousins that would normally be excluded. How practical these charts are depends on the size of your tree. Too many generations or ancestors can lead to branches spreading left and right, and trees spanning multiple sheets of paper. Select ‘All Relatives’ in Family Historian to create a pedigree family tree with all your relatives, including…

What can I use to create music scores? Q I enjoyed your tip on using LibreOffice to write down ukulele chords (Issue 550, page 20). My grandchildren have now both started playing the piano and want to compose their own music. Is there a similar LibreOffice plug-in that will help me do this with them? Paul Jackson A There’s a very simple LibreOffice plug-in called Music Paper Drawing (www.snipca.com/34099), that inserts a series of musical scores on to the page. However, a better option is to create and print blank scores from www.blanksheetmusic.net, which your grandchildren can then fill in with notes. Click the Piano icon at the top to add treble and bass clefs, then the Print button (bottom right). Alternatively, you could download the excellent MuseScore (free from…

PRINTER | £190 from HP www.snipca.com/34025 Low beam We’re sceptical about the practicality of colour laser printers. Could this one change our minds? With USB (for Windows only), Ethernet, Wi-Fi and even fax, it’s as flexible as any inkjet, even if its tiny LCD and numerous buttons make setup and operation a bit fiddly. It’s a multi-function machine, incorporating scanning and copying, and unlike most laser models, which raise the scanner on little stilts, it’s all in one. This makes it very compact, but means printed pages have to emerge from a high-up slit on to an unsatisfactory flap. And that wasn’t our only complaint about paper handling. When laser printers overheat pages, they tend to jam. This happened several times during testing, so we wouldn’t necessarily trust the 179fnw…

Q I’m a non-gaming ‘silver surfer’ and use my desktop PC for general home tasks and streaming. It’s now more than 10 years old. Last year, I upgraded it with Windows 10 on an SSD, but how difficult would it be to upgrade the whole system? On a budget of £300-£350, should I rebuild or go for a new or refurbished PC? Ray Bingham A Storage and memory are good candidates for upgrades, but your bottleneck now will be the main processor (CPU). Replacing this would also mean a new motherboard, and at this point you’re not keeping much! We’d recommend a new PC with at least a quad-core Intel i3 or AMD Ryzen chip. Did you buy a retail copy of Windows 10? Palicomp’s Carbon AMD Dual PC, for…

FITNESS TRACKER | £29 from Amazon www.snipca.com/34080 Arm and no leg When this whole idea started, we could see the point of an electronic wristband that monitors your exercise, but then the tech industry ran away with it and created the smartwatch, an electronic wristband that monitors your exercise, plays your music, replaces your travel card, runs your smart home and empties your wallet. We’re glad to see there’s now a resurgence of proper no-nonsense fitness bands at down-to-earth prices. Just as the Huawei Honor Band 5 (see our review, Issue 571, page 29) is an even cheaper version of the affordable Huawei Band 3 Pro, the Galaxy Fit E undercuts the plain Galaxy Fit, largely by omitting built-in GPS. You still get a heart-rate monitor, which partly explains the…

Tuned to deliver great sound throughout the audio range, Rock Jaw’s Alfa Genus V2 earphones come with 8mm dynamic drivers that pack a powerful punch, guaranteeing crystalclear highs as well as booming lows. You can use the three filters to customise the sound to suit your ears: The silver filter gives you an enhanced bass, ideal for rock, hiphop, R&B, and electronic music. The black filter gives more treble, emphasising higher audible frequencies for genres including classical, acoustic and jazz. It’s also ideal for the spoken word, so will suit regular readers of ebooks. The gold filter gives a more balanced, natural sound overall, suitable for all music genres. The aluminium casing makes the Alfa Genus V2 look robust and hardwearing without sacrificing style. They’ll blend in with whatever you’re…

What you need: LibreOffice Calc or Excel; Windows 10 Time required: 30 minutes From the moment it’s made, your laptop’s battery starts to deteriorate. Use your laptop for a year or so and the length of time its battery can keep it powered will be noticeably shorter. Here, we show you how to find out your battery’s current capacity compared to when it was made, then use Windows’ built-in logs to create a chart giving you an idea of when it will stop working completely. We’ve used LibreOffice Calc to create the chart, but it’s a similar process in Excel. STEP 1 Open a Command Prompt window by clicking Start, then typing cmd.exe. Type powercfg/batteryreport 1 to run a quick scan of your battery and retrieve all relevant logs. After…

Fantastical 3 Free iOS www.snipca.com/34010 Fantastical by name, fantastic by nature. We’ve long loved this calendar app for its ability to interpret plain-English input. Type Lunch with Dan at 1pm next Monday at his office and it breaks up your sentence, using 1pm, next Monday’s date and ‘office’ as the time and location, and ‘Lunch with Dan’ as the subject. So simple, so effective. The new Fantastical 3 introduces weather forecasts. SongOwl £1.99 iOS www.snipca.com/34011 Using your phone’s existing music library, SongOwl introduces tools that let you control how your music is sorted and grouped. It creates ‘paths’ that help you organise your library in the sequence that makes most sense to you, not just what Apple’s developers think works best. The interface adapts to match the cover art of…

LIBREOFFICE WRITER Create your own QR codes If you’ve ever wondered what those strange boxes containing a mix of black and white blocks are (usually seen on emails, product packaging, billboards and websites), they’re called QR codes and are essentially a type of barcode. The idea is that you scan the QR code with your phone, which then displays information or sends you to a website. LibreOffice 6.4 (released in January) includes a built-in QR code generator, letting you add them to your documents. You could, for example, add a QR code to a printed newsletter, directing readers to a specific website. Instead of having to type the full web address, recipients would just need to scan the QR code with their phone. All modern phones have a QR-code reader…

1080p High-definition video with 1920x1080 pixels. 3G/4G/5G Technologies that deliver faster mobile broadband. 4K Video with a resolution of at least 3840x2160 pixels. Action cam A digital camera designed to record action while attached to a person’s body or equipment. Adware Unwanted adverts that come with software. AMOLED Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode. An alternative technology to LCD for creating flat-panel screens. ARC A format for compressing files, used in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Bandwidth A measure of how much data can be transferred through a connection at one time. BIOS Basic Input-Output System. Software built into every PC that connects the vital components. Buffering Downloading a certain amount of data before starting to play a video. Can cause delays to your streaming. Cache A temporary space for storing…