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There are lots of low-tech ways to re-use an old PC. I’ve got an old tower unit in my bedroom that I’ve skilfully turned into a table-cum-shelf. It took me about three seconds, and shouldn’t take you much longer. All you need to do is place some books on it, and maybe a cup of tea. Job done. The tasks we explain in our Cover Feature require a bit more work, but they’re vastly more rewarding. You’ll learn how to transform your PC into devices you’d otherwise have to pay hundreds for, such as NAS drives and security cameras. It’s proof you can teach an old computer new tricks. If you tackle some of the tasks, I’d love to see photo evidence. Email it to me and we’ll publish it…

The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is urging people with internet security cameras and baby monitors to change their default passwords so the devices can’t be hacked. Such devices let you monitor your home over the internet via a live camera feed. They can also send you alerts through the web when they detect activity, and record footage for you to watch later. But this also means they can be accessed by hackers who guess their passwords, letting them watch what’s happening in your home. Burglars can use this to work out when you’re not at home. There have even been reports of hackers spying on children through baby monitors. The problem arises because some cameras have default passwords set by the manufacturer that are easy to guess, such…

Virgin Media has admitted that some of the customer details leaked online may have contained info about porn, gambling and extreme-violence sites people had visited. In early March the company revealed that one of its “marketing databases” containing the details of 900,000 customers had been freely available on the internet for 10 months, and had been accessed at least once by an unknown user. At the time it claimed the database contained phone numbers, home addresses and emails, but nothing else. But researchers at TurgenSec, the London firm that found the database, said it contained more than 1,100 records of customer requests to block or unblock certain websites, some of which were sexually explicit or glorified violence. These websites were linked to the customer’s name and contact details. It included…

The Church of England is to launch a ‘Google Maps for graves’ website to help family historians search for burial records and locations. It will spend the next five years photographing tens of millions of graves, covering all 15,000 Anglican burial grounds in England, as well as those of other denominations and unconsecrated sites. Once complete, it will be one of the largest free resources for family historians, though some parts of the website may require payment. The scheme has been trialled at two churches near Huddersfield. Surveyors used laser-scanning tools to create digital maps of churchyards at All Hallows’ Church in Kirkburton (www.snipca.com/34234), and Emmanuel Church in Shelley (www.snipca.com/34233, pictured). Local volunteers photographed the monuments, transcribed the epitaphs on the gravestones, and scanned and transcribed the parish registers. In…

£50 a year to keep using my email address Regarding Issue 575’s ‘Question of the Fortnight’ (‘Will Ofcom ban charges for old email addresses?’), we had a long-running dispute with TalkTalk over their disgraceful service. We had four years of frustration and were unable to access a paid-for family-history website, before they unilaterally transferred our account to Fleur Telecom as a fait accompli. This year, they are now expecting us to pay £50 a year to keep our original ‘@tiscali’ email addresses, which we’d had for nearly 12 years from the time before TalkTalk took over Tiscali. I spent a lot of time trying to get satisfaction through the CISAS arbitration service, but they agreed with TalkTalk that it was a “legitimate business decision” to charge us for the continued…

If you win a case in the Small Claims Court, you can’t assume you’ll get your money quickly. It’s a lesson reader Mary Turner has had to learn. In our first update on her case (see Issue 568), we reported how the court ordered a local PC shop to refund her £1,325 for a botched repair. However, she still had to fight to get her money because the owner of the PC shop disputed the decision by claiming to be a “vulnerable person”. Mary didn’t give up. She decided to issue a “warrant of control”, in which bailiffs or sheriffs chase the money for you. She decided to opt for sheriffs (https://thesheriffsoffice.com) because, unlike bailiffs, they have the power to enter a person’s home. This did the trick. The shop…

SYSTEM TOOL InstalledAppView 1.00 www.snipca.com/34303 What you need: Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 We aren’t fans of all that unwanted software Microsoft pre-installs with Windows 10 – and judging by your emails, neither are you. While they don’t take up much space on your hard drive, they clutter your Start menu and can slow your PC by running in the background. To make matters worse, some are harder to remove than a pub bore at closing time. This is because Microsoft greys out the Uninstall button when you view them in the Apps section of Settings (press Windows+I, then click Apps). InstalledAppView from NirSoft is a powerful tool that lets you see all such apps in a handy list and makes it easy to uninstall those you don’t want. As…

WARNING: JUNK AHEAD Junk offender: DVDVideoSoft Free Video Editor If you’re looking for a simple, free video-editing tool, then you could easily end up stumbling upon DVDVideoSoft’s Free Video Editor. Search for ‘best free video editing software’ and its website (www.snipca.com/34280) ranks pretty high in Google’s results. I’m long enough in the tooth to take the program’s claim of being “the best free video editor of the year 2020” with a healthy bucketload of salt. But from the screenshots and description on the tool’s web page, Free Video Editor looks like it might be just the job for trimming lengthy clips and then converting them to any number of video-file formats. Just the sort of tool I’ve been looking for, in other words. What the website doesn’t tell you, however,…

PHONE £279 from Amazon www.snipca.com/34286 Real bargain, too We’re getting used to seeing mid-priced Chinese-branded smartphones with big screens, iridescent finishes and lots of cameras for under £500, and here’s one at a very competitive price. Inside is a Snapdragon 730G chip, which offers very fast general processing with an extra boost to graphics that handles advanced 3D games better than many similarly priced models. It’s also energy-efficient, with the battery, charged via the supplied fast USB-C adapter, lasting nearly 22 hours in our video-playback test. The 6.4in AMOLED screen incorporates a fingerprint sensor (with NFC contactless payment) and sits within invisibly slim but slightly raised borders. This feels odd, but might offer some drop protection. The default ‘vivid’ mode wildly exceeds the standard sRGB colour space, making it both…

Winner of a ‘Great Pick’ award in Issue 571, Rapoo’s 9900M wireless keyboard-and-mouse set is multiinput, which means you can pair up to four PCs, tablets or other devices via Bluetooth, plus another via the supplied radio receiver. This lets you flip between them by pressing switches: there are two of these - one on top of the mouse, the other under the keyboard. The keyboard is just 4mm at its thinnest, with a stainless steel base and aluminum alloy panel, bringing you comfortable tactile pressing. The accurate scissor-key structure allows you to press the buttons with ease. The rechargeable mouse is comfortable to use, and has a pleasing matt finish. As well as the usual vertical scroll wheel, there’s a separate wheel for horizontal scrolling placed under your thumb.…

ANDROID Annotate attachments in Outlook Microsoft is on a roll, releasing important updates for each of its mobile apps seemingly every week or so. This time around, it’s Outlook’s turn, with a smart new tool for annotating attachments. While writing your email, tap the camera icon and take a photo of a document you want to share. Rather than dropping it straight into your email, Outlook displays it in a basic editing screen. Tap the tools at the top and you can draw on the photo directly to highlight the most important points (see screenshot below). Sadly, it doesn’t work with pictures you attach to the email from your photo library. ANDROID Ask Google to read the web When there’s a long article you want to read, but you also…

WINDOWS 7, 8.1 & 10 Quickly reveal subfolders in File Explorer Searching for individual files in File Explorer isn’t difficult - simply type the filename (or part of it) into the search box top right. However, if you don’t know the name of the file you’re looking for, being able to see all subfolders within a folder can help you to locate it. Instead of opening each sub-folder yourself, use this simple trick to quickly reveal all subfolders. First, open File Explorer (Windows key+E), then navigate to the folder you want to browse using the navigation pane on the left. If you can’t see this, click the ‘Navigation pane’ button on the top toolbar, then make sure ‘Navigation pane’ is ticked (see screenshot above). Next, press the asterisk key on…

You’ve got 10 entrants for a running race and need to decide the lanes for each. They’re a suspicious bunch, so you need to assign lanes without being accused of bias. What do you do? Use a spreadsheet formula, of course! In either program, enter the name of each runner in column A, then the numbers 1 to 10 in column B. To add the random numbers that will decide the lane order, enter =RAND() in C1, then copy this formula from cells C2 to C10. We’ll now use these random numbers, which are all between 0 and 1, to re-order column B. Using your mouse, select columns B and C (make sure you leave column A unselected). In Excel, select the Data tab at the top, click Sort. Next,…

While it would be unfair to criticise Amazon for the number of scam calls made in its name, we can question the methods it uses to persuade people to sign up to Prime. If you discover you’ve signed up to Prime without realising, you’re not alone. Many people have chosen one-day delivery when buying products, only to find that they have unwittingly signed up to a 30-day free trial. When the trial period ends, you’re charged a £7.99 monthly fee. To check whether you’re a Prime member, log into your account at www.amazon.co.uk, click the ‘Accounts & Lists’ menu button at the top (to the right of the search box), then select Your Prime Membership 1 . You’ll either see ‘You are not a Prime member’ 2 or, if you’ve…

Google has stopped warning users that it’s unsafe to install browser extensions from the Chrome Web Store on the new version of Microsoft’s Edge browser. As reported in Issue 575 (page 9), users visiting the Chrome Web Store in Edge were seeing the message ‘Google recommends switching to Chrome to use extensions securely’, above a link to download Chrome. Google was heavily criticised for the message, which many experts saw as a scaremongering attempt to discourage people from switching to Edge. They also said it was misleading because any security flaws in extensions are likely to affect both browsers. Initially, Google didn’t comment on the message, but later said it was shown because Edge doesn’t support Google’s Safe Browsing feature, which tells users when they’re about to visit an unsafe…

The UK’s four major phone networks have signed a deal that will let customers switch networks in order to receive a reliable 4G signal. In March EE, O2, Three and Vodafone agreed to set up the Shared Rural Network (SRN) by 2025, three years later than first planned. The networks will invest £532m in new masts and equipment, backed by £500m from the Government. When complete, the network will guarantee coverage to an extra 280,000 premises, along 10,000 miles of roads. The Government says the scheme will “make poor and patchy rural phone coverage a thing of the past”, and that remote areas in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will see the biggest improvements. It also hopes the network will spur economic growth in previously neglected areas, and close the…

Hoaxes about the Coronavirus are spreading almost as fast as the disease itself. The web is full of nonsense such as how eating garlic and so-called ‘miracle minerals’ protects you from catching the virus. Health organisations and websites are working together to remove these misleading stories. All these lies make it hard to identify the truth, though some vital messages have got through, such as washing your hands for 20 seconds and self-isolating. But one question that still concerns many people is whether the Coronavirus can survive on the devices they use every day, such as phones and tablets. Health officials are now beginning to address this issue, and their advice is clear: yes, you should clean your devices regularly. If you don’t disinfect a device, the virus can stay…

I find myself standing on the precipice of a dilemma. I currently use Windows 7 and love it. It’s the first operating system I ever used (having got into computing quite late in life), and so treat it as my ‘first love’. However, while no expert, I’m techy enough to know that I should stop using Windows 7. I have no desire to be hacked by criminals exploiting flaws that Microsoft will never fix. Yet I remain nervous about upgrading to Windows 10. I’ve tried it on my friends’ computers and it seems easy enough, but I’ve also heard lots of negative stories about updates causing endless problems. I like an easy life. I doubt I’ll have the technical knowhow to deal with such problems, so I’m seriously considering sticking…

I would like to nominate the Glasgow company Ligo (www.ligo.co.uk). In September last year, I purchased a pair of Thomson Wireless headphones (pictured) from them, via Amazon. A couple of weeks ago I kept getting an annoying buzzing sound from the right earpiece. I emailed Ligo to explain my problem, and I received a very nice message back, telling me they would send a replacement set of headphones, and that I could keep the broken pair. I received these three days later, and they worked perfectly. I thanked them for their excellent service. Norman Clark Contact Ligo • Email helpdesk@ligo.co.uk • Phone 03333 44 80 44 • Website www.ligo.co.uk/contacts Has a company impressed you with its customer service? Please let us know: editor@computeractive.co.uk…

How can I identify the largest files on my PC? Q I seem to spend at least an hour every week deleting files in an effort to reclaim space on my hard drive. Following your advice, I also run Storage Sense regularly, but this only results in minimal gains. Can you recommend a simple tool to help me free up space on my ageing hard drive? Karl Isleworth A A quick way to identify space hogs on your hard drive is to use a search tool called Everything (www.voidtools.com). Although more commonly used for hunting down files by name, it can also display the contents of your entire hard drive, sorted by size. When you run the program for the first time, it indexes your hard drive (don’t worry, even…

PC £600 from Palicomp www.snipca.com/34223 Rising star Making silicon chips isn’t an exact science. All right, that’s not true. It involves some of the most exact science there is, placing components a few nanometres apart. At this scale, a human hair is like a tree trunk falling on your Lego. So even the most advanced manufacturing process can’t guarantee every silicon wafer will meet precisely the same specifications. Freshly made chips are tested and allocated to a class depending on their performance. When you buy a chip under a particular part number, you might be getting one that was at the bottom of that class or the top. “For everyday Windows tasks, this powerful, inexpensive PC is just the job” That’s where overclocking comes in. Manufacturers may sell chips near…

SECURITY CAMERA £49 from Amazon www.snipca.com/34274 One to find them all Ring, owned by Amazon, has attracted controversy with its doorbell security cameras, which some police forces are encouraging residents to install. While users find it reassuring to see who’s at their front door, there are concerns that Amazon logs everything recorded. “This affordable cam is easy to install and set up, but online storage costs extra” Whatever you think about that, this particular camera is only for indoor use, and it’s affordably priced for a wireless cam from a big brand. All you need to install it is a mains socket and broadband with Wi-Fi, plus the Ring app on your Apple or Android phone or tablet. It works best integrated with a Ring Alarm and other Ring cameras,…

Q I currently use a Polaroid LE-GB222 22in TV as my monitor, running at 1440x900 pixels. I’m looking to replace it on a budget. Both of your Buy It! recommendations (see page 33) appeal, but I’d prefer something bigger than 24in, with built-in speakers. Is there any difference in picture quality between monitors and TVs? Peter Hiden A TVs use similar technology to PC monitors, but prioritise different aspects of picture quality and process video differently. If you’re using one, check in Start, Settings, System, then Display that Windows’ display resolution is set to match the screen’s actual resolution, so the image isn’t upscaled or downscaled. Most TVs don’t have as many pixels per inch as monitors, making the image coarser when viewed from your desk rather than from a…

MEDIA STREAMER £25 from Amazon www.snipca.com/34290 Not bad for a pony Roku (pronounced ‘roh-koo’, not ‘rock you’, disappointingly) has revamped its family of streaming media players, this being the cheapest. Designed to bring internet streaming video to any TV set that’s modern enough to have an HDMI socket but lacks built-in smart features and apps, it’s now an arch-topped puck resembling a bar of soap – and cleans up when it comes to choice of streaming. In the box are a remote control, an HDMI cable and a microUSB power cord, but no mains adapter, so you’ll have to search your kitchen drawers for one unless your TV set has a suitable USB port. The unit needs a clear line of sight to the remote control for its infra-red interface,…

What you need: AutoCopy; Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 Time required: 20 minutes Copying photos - or any other files - to your PC from a single USB stick or CD is easy enough, but if you have a stash of sticks or discs that you need to copy files from, it can get fiddly. You have to insert one USB stick or CD/DVD, open File Explorer, select the files, copy them to a folder on your PC, then wait for it to finish before moving on to the next one. As we explain here, using AutoCopy takes the pain out of this whole process. STEP 1 Download AutoCopy from www.snipca.com/34235. Scroll to the bottom of the page, then click the ‘Download (version 2.0 a)’ link 1 . Open the…

Microsoft Sudoku Free iOS www.snipca.com/34252 Android www.snipca.com/34253 With daily challenges, the option to play with ‘charms’ rather than numbers, and three skill levels, Microsoft has thrown every feature it could think of at its new Sudoku app. There’s even an ‘irregular’ feature – enable this and rather than playing in three-by-three boxes, you’ll be scattering numbers across weird and wonky configurations. Photoshop Free (with Creative Cloud subscription) iPadOS www.snipca.com/34254 Adobe’s Photoshop for iPad has new tools to celebrate the image-editing program’s 30th birthday. Chief among them is an object-selection tool, which can automatically detect the edges of items within an image to make selecting them easier. It also has a revamped set of type tools, allowing you to get more creative with your layouts using either a finger or Apple…

Every Windows user account on your PC is set up as a Microsoft account or a local accoun. The former is an online account that also signs you into other Microsoft services (such as OneDrive and Skype), while the latter is a standard offline account, much like those used by Windows 7. Microsoft is keen for everyone to use Microsoft accounts. In this page of Issue 571, we explained how to avoid having to create a Microsoft account when installing Windows 10 and instead opt for a local one, and here we’ll show you how to do the same thing when creating additional user accounts on your PC. When creating another user account (click your username within the Start menu, select ‘Change account settings’, ‘Family & other users’, then ‘Add…

How old is your club? What led to its formation? And what major milestones has it reached since its launch? Details such as these not only help you and fellow members appreciate just how far your club has come, but can also prompt new members to join. And what better way to illustrate its achievements than with a timeline? Don’t worry if your design skills are lacking. As we’ll show you here, you can use an online tool called Visme to create an impressive timeline in next to no time. First, go to www.visme.co and click the blue Sign Up Free button in the top-right corner. If you have a Google or Facebook account, you can sign up using one of those, otherwise enter your name, email address and a…

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 Kindle Fire subscriptions come with a FREE one month trial. STEP 1 Tap 'Free Trial Subscription' in the Computeractive library STEP 2 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 and navigate to the Newsstand…

Q Prompted by your warnings about the end of support and dangers of using old versions of software, I’ve recently ditched Office 2007 and instead subscribed to Office 365. I wanted to anyway, as I fancied the 1TB of OneDrive storage. There’s a lot to learn! One thing that seems new is that Word now underlines various words in red or blue. I don’t really understand what these marks are. Or rather, I’ve figured out that the red marks indicate errors or repeated words, but I don’t really know why some words are underlined in blue. Could you explain? Christine Barnard A Sure. The fundamental difference is that the red underlines indicate what Word believes to be literal errors – spelling mistakes or, as you say, repeated words. By contrast,…

Ofcom has fined BT £245,000 for overcharging EE customers for calls they made to 118 directory enquiries services. The regulator imposed a price cap on 118 numbers in April 2019 in order to “protect vulnerable people and ensure fairer prices”. Many older people and those without the internet still call 118 for information. However, BT – which bought EE in 2016 – failed to introduce this new rule immediately and continued charging 6,000 customers for a total of around £42,000 between April and June last year. BT did manage to correct most bills before EE customers paid them, but in the end customers were still overcharged £10,000. All customers have since been refunded. Ofcom called BT’s error a “serious breach” of its rules, particularly considering that potentially vulnerable people are…

RESIZE IMAGES IN WINDOWS POWERTOYS Microsoft is working on a new version of Image Resizer for its PowerToys collection of relaunched programs. The forthcoming tool is a modern edition of the image-resizing option that came with Windows 95. It will let you quickly resize pictures using settings you’ve chosen. UPDATE YOUR NETGEAR ROUTER NOW Netgear has urged people using its routers to install an emergency firmware update to fix four security flaws that hackers could exploit to take over your network. The company posted links for downloads to more than 50 affected models, including the Nighthawk X4S 7800 (pictured). Visit www.snipca.com/34269, www.snipca.com/34270 and www.snipca.com/34271 to see if your router is at risk, then follow the instructions. TOMORROW’S WORLD Last year, six-month-old Freya Minter from Essex became the youngest ever female…

BT Openreach will soon launch a network that lets broadband providers offer customers an internet service without forcing them to also pay for a landline. It said that the service, called SOGEA (Single Order Generic Ethernet Access), marks “the beginning of the end” for the old analogue Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) that provides the existing landline to homes and businesses. Currently, most customers signed up to ISPs that rent their cables from Openreach have to pay for a landline alongside their broadband in a ‘bundled’ package. Many customers resent having to pay a ‘tax’ for a landline they hardly use any more. With SOGEA, which goes live on 1 April, broadband providers will be able to offer optional online phone services instead of compulsory landlines. It will allow BT,…

Can Currys charge for a laptop repair? LEAD CASE Q My granddaughter’s HP laptop, bought from Currys in August 2018, developed a fault with the hard drive. HP keeps referring us to Currys, which would only help if I paid £60 to send the laptop away for examination. We’d also have to pay for any repairs and shipping. Under the Consumer Rights Act (CRA), I feel the goods are not fit for purpose and our statutory rights allow us to demand a replacement. Am I correct? Alan Phillips A It’s not that simple with a device you’ve owned for more than 30 days.After 30 days and within the first six months, the retailer is allowed to repair goods first, providing it can’t prove the fault has been caused by accidental…

Create a descendant chart Reader David Calvert is writing a book about his ancestors, and wants to use genealogy software RootsMagic (www.rootsmagic.com) to produce a family tree relevant to each chapter. His problem is that all the trees he’s tried show direct lines only – that’s father-to-son, mother-to-daughter, grandparent-to-grandchild and so on – excluding extended family such as siblings, cousins, uncles and aunts. He wants to make charts that include more than just direct descendants, and is happy to consider any program that can work with GEDCOM files. Use RootsMagic’s descendant chart One solution would be to use Family Historian’s ‘All Relatives’ view (see ‘Grow Your Family Tree’, Issue 574), or Family Tree Maker’s ‘Extended Family Chart’ (though this costs £80). We’ll come back to Family Tree Maker in a…

It might be old, noisy and absurdly expensive to run, but I wouldn’t be without my trusty Canon MG3150 printer. I spend far too long staring at screens, so occasionally enjoy printing documents to read in the old-fashioned way. And despite replacement ink costing nearly as much as a brand new printer, I’ll keep using my MG3150 until it throws in the towel (hopefully long after it celebrates its ninth birthday later this year). My printer also offers loads of customisation, letting me tinker with it so it runs just the way I want. Windows, on the other hand, doesn’t make it easy to tweak these settings. Not only is reaching them a journey in itself (open Settings, go to Devices, ‘Printers & Scanners’, then select your printer and then…

LAPTOP £600 from Amazon www.snipca.com/34230 Not so heavy metal Catastrophe theory isn’t about disasters, it’s the study of sudden shifts caused by small changes. Since the 1990s, laptops have got steadily smaller and lighter. But at some point an odd thing happened: although the most popular 15.6in models were easier to carry than ever, the ‘standard’ choice switched down to 13.3in. That screen size may be fine if you spend most of your time editing one document at once, reading one website or playing one game. It’s less impressive for watching a film, and potentially downright annoying if you need to see two pages side by side, or use creative programs with lots of palettes. Today’s high-resolution LCD screens can fit more detail into a smaller space, but our eyes…

What is it? Designed by Chinese manufacturer TCL, which is best known for its TV sets, this 6.65in smartphone prototype folds out into a 10in tablet. Haven’t we seen a bunch of folding phones before? Well, yes. And they all have weird problems, like creases and cracking and dust getting in the hinges and screens that were easy to scratch. So what’s better about this? In some ways, nothing – TCL doesn’t seem to have any radical new solutions to any of the fundamental practical problems of folding screens. But we can at least say the trifold phone would be cool if it actually worked. There’s arguably little point in doubling out a normal-sized phone to reveal a square screen, a shape nobody ever wanted a screen to be and…

PHONE £100 from John Lewis www.snipca.com/34284 Tons of value The Plus in the name is well deserved, because you get more here for £100 than you’d expect. Carphone Warehouse will even sell you the E6 Plus for £80 if you buy a £14 top-up. Sign up to a 12-month £20 plan with 20GB of mobile data and the phone comes free (see www.snipca.com/34282). The shiny plastic case, in red or grey, is almost entirely filled by the tall 6.1in screen. It’s annoying that they’ve taken a notch out of this at the top for the selfie camera despite the sizeable empty border at the bottom, but such is the fashion. On the back is a fingerprint reader, only for unlocking, not contactless payments. Face recognition is also supported. There’s also…

LAPTOP HP Envy 13 (2019) £929 from www.snipca.com/33308 Tested Issue 568 PRICE DROP 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 £347 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 £349 iPad with optional £89 Pencil is superior, but lacks microSD…

There’s a saying, ‘use the right tool for the job’, which probably explains why my phone is packed with apps that I use for one task only when many of them could double up. Alongside a dedicated negatives-scanning app, I have others for capturing (and cropping) photos, trimming videos, creating PDFs from documents, and more. While some apps could perform many of these tasks combined, it’s so easy to hide them away in a folder – and they’re either free or inexpensive – that I’d rather use what I feel most comfortable with, rather than compromise to save a little space. How did you get on with digitising your old negatives? Please let us know: letters@computeractive.co.uk…

TIP OF THE FORTNIGHT Add image-converting options to right-click menu I’d like to recommend XnShell to readers. It’s a free tool that adds annotation and conversion options to the right-click (context) menu for image files in File Explorer. This means you can convert files into other formats such as BMP (see screenshot) without having to open another program or upload them to web-conversion sites. It will also rotate, flip and resize files. JPEG files can be rotated without losing any image quality, and you can easily edit their IPTC metadata. To start, visit www.xnview.com/en/xnshell then scroll down and click the download button you need (32bit or 64bit). There’s no junk in the installer. Once installed, right-click any image then hover your cursor over the XnShell label to see the options.…

Monopoly Bingo Free Android www.snipca.com/34257 iOS www.snipca.com/34256 This combines Monopoly rules with Bingo. The aim is to win points on your bingo cards to spend on houses and hotels. Play with multiple cards at once, and score points for getting lines and corners, just like in real bingo. It’s easy to play and very addictive. Best For Fans of the bingo hall Scrabble Go Free Android www.snipca.com/34258 iOS www.snipca.com/34259 Battle in a duel against other players, with just five turns each; create words from anagrams; play with letter tiles that are constantly changing; and play Scrabble on your own as you race to beat the clock. If you’re looking for a fresh take on the classic word-based game, it may be just what you’re looking for. Best For Tech-minded wordsmiths…

MICROSOFT EXCEL & LIBREOFFICE CALC Stop random numbers updating If you followed our tip above, you’ll notice the random numbers update each time you edit your spreadsheet. There are two ways to stop this from happening. The first is to copy the random numbers produced by the formulas and paste them as numerical values. In Excel, you can do this by right-clicking where you want to paste them, then selecting the Paste Values option (a clipboard icon with 123 next to it - see screenshot below). In Calc, right-click, select Paste Special, then Number. Alternatively, you can set your spreadsheet to stop automatically recalculating formulas. In Excel, click File, Options, followed by the Formulas tab and select Manual under ‘Calculation options’. Be aware, however, that this affects all your Excel…

What are they? A new set of icons for Microsoft’s main tools, including File Explorer, Office, Windows Defender, Calendar, Calculator, Mail and the Microsoft Store. They’ll appear on Windows computers as well as Android and iOS devices. What makes them ‘fluent’? Welcome to Microsoft’s baffling world of jargon. In its parlance, ‘fluent’ is a design style that has five key components: light, depth, motion, material and scale. And what does that mean? It’s a cross between the two main types of computer design: skeuomorphic and flat. In skeuomorphic design, icons look three-dimensional and resemble how items appear in the real world. An email app, for example, would have an icon containing an envelope, with shadow effects to add depth, while a note-taking app’s icon would resemble a notebook. By contrast,…

You answer the phone at home, only to be met with silence. A few seconds later, a recording of a robotic-sounding voice pipes up, claiming to be Amazon calling about your account – specifically, your Prime membership (Amazon’s subscription service that includes one-day delivery for selected items). Except that it’s not. The call is, in fact, another in a series of Amazon-related scams. According to Action Fraud (the UK’s reporting centre for cyber-crime - www.snipca.com/34296), the criminals running these scams have raked in over £1m so far and they show no sign of stopping. The actual content of the recorded message varies. Some inform you that hackers have gained access to your Amazon account and used it to buy Prime membership. Another more recent message tells you that your Prime…

PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT Will an old printer work with Windows 7? Q I opened up an old HP PSC 500 multifunction printer I had left untouched in the attic for years. In the box were two CDs designed for Windows 95. I fitted the ink cartridges and powered it up OK. However, when I tried to connect the printer I saw it had a 25-pin male D-shaped connector plug, but my PC has USB. Where can I obtain new drivers for my Windows 7 laptop to drive the printer? Mike Phillips A We’ll confess that our gut reaction was that a device that’s 20-odd years old and connects via an obsolete interface probably has no place on a modern PC. Moreover, when a decent multifunction printer can be picked…

Is MiniTool malware? Q I was interested to read about MiniTool MovieMaker 2.0, mentioned in Issue 573’s Best Free Software section. When I first tried to download it, my Avast security software blocked it with a warning of the presence of a virus. I then tested the program using the VirusTotal website (www.virustotal.com). Almost all the antivirus tools indicated there were no problems, so I went with the majority view and installed the program. I then scanned the program with Avast and all was fine. The program ran well and was and easy to use, if a little slow. However, on a subsequent run Avast indicated that the program had an infected file called ‘experience.exe’, with a threat called ‘IDP.Generic’. This has now been placed in my virus chest, and…

1080p High-definition video of 1920x1080 pixels. 3G/4G/5G Technologies that deliver faster mobile broadband. 32bit/64bit A measure of how much data a PC can process at once. Most older computers are 32bit, more modern ones are 64bit. 4K Video with a resolution of at least 3840x2160 pixels. 720p High-definition video: 1280x720 pixels. 802.11ac A standard for wireless networks that allows for much higher transfer speeds than 802.11n. 802.11ax Wi-Fi standard with speeds up to 10 times faster than 802.11ac. Also called Wi-Fi 6. Add-in Microsoft’s name for tools that can be added to Office software. Adobe RGB A wider colour space than sRGB. AMOLED Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode. Technology for creating flatscreen displays. AVI A type of video file that can hold many types of audio and video. Backhaul Sending data…

Alexa, can you write this column for me?” Well, it was worth asking. Since buying my Amazon Echo a year ago, I’ve got into the habit of asking Alexa for many things: news updates, today’s weather, answering crossword clues (but only as a last resort so I can kid myself it’s not cheating). I was sceptical about the appeal of smart speakers when they appeared. As our Gadget Graveyard column shows every issue (see page 29), numerous devices have launched hoping to change the world, only to fail miserably. “If you get stuck just say ‘Help!’, though not too loudly unless you want neighbours rushing around to check you’re OK” I still remember back in the early 1980s my parents bringing home a Breville sandwich toaster, claiming it would revolutionise…