Tabla de contenidos para August 2023 en PC Pro

@PCPRO  FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO We spend our lives in bubbles, whether we like to admit it or not. Bubbles defined by the people we socialise with, the news sources we trust and the brands we buy. It’s rare for our status quo to be challenged, and often quite upsetting when it is. I don’t know whether I’m fortunate or not that my status quo is challenged – or at least gently ruffled – on a weekly basis by PC Pro readers. Why do you do this, they ask? Shouldn’t you do that instead? Sometimes I agree to disagree, but other times I realise that those readers are absolutely, 100% right. If you read our Readers’ Comments page two months ago (see issue 344, p24), you’ll know that one of those challenges prompted…

The legal showdown between Apple and Epic Games has finally concluded – with a near knockout victory for Apple at the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The judge has ruled, much to Epic’s frustration, that the App Store is not a monopoly, and therefore that Apple is free to continue insisting on a 30% cut from transactions made inside iPhone and iPad apps. What’s more, the court ruled that it is not anti-competitive to prevent users from installing third-party app stores on their devices. “They really confirmed the idea that Apple is totally right to be able to protect its walled garden,” said Dr Kathryn McMahon, who specialises in digital markets and competition law at the University of Warwick. The war began back in 2020 when Epic took the…

Dick Pountain is editorial fellow of PC Pro. He likes to think that he’s more of a sticker than a stoner. Email dick@dickpountain.co.uk It’s no surprise to me that the film business is so poor at dealing with IT-related material in an adult fashion. The industry’s whole purpose is to entertain, and neither solid-state physics nor computational complexity theory is intrinsically entertaining (to put it mildly). Entertainment nowadays mostly means blowing things up. The tech for doing that is no different in principle from the spear or the bow and arrow, just with more oomph, more fins and more shiny bits: the Marvel Universe shares aesthetic principles with the funfair rather than the library. Movie people also tend to be from the artistic rather than the scientific world. They have neither…

A question of colour I heartily agree with Nicole Kobie’s column on bad websites (see issue 345, p21). The one mistake I have never understood is the poor use of different colour text on different backgrounds. It seems that they have never heard of, nor been taught about, Le Courier’s table. I learnt about this in systems analysis, early in 1968. It was not regarded as anything new, even then. For an example of failure to heed Le Courier, we need look no further than your own table of contents, and “Reviews this month”, where you print red text on a black background. Richard Larkin Editor-in-chief Tim Danton replies: Thanks, Richard. We plan to refresh the Contents page in the next couple of issues, so we’ll take that into account.…

On 26 October 2022, if you’d been inside the Twitter HQ on San Francisco’s Market Street, you might have witnessed the world’s richest man trying slightly too hard to be funny. “Let that sink in,” tweeted Elon Musk, as he posted a video of himself carrying a bathroom sink into the company’s reception area. His $44bn acquisition of the social media platform was complete. Musk was now CEO and his new mission was to remake the company in his own image. So began a tumultuous period for the company, one that’s still ongoing. Musk has earned himself a place as the platform’s “main character” as he upended many of its functions and features, leading to reports of a chaotic atmosphere behind the scenes. Yet the chaos that has been wreaked…

Looking for a particular past review? Visit our index at pcpro.link/index SCORE PRICE 128GB, £374 (£449 inc VAT) from oneplus.com/uk If you aren’t tempted by the thought of paying £599 for Google’s upcoming Pixel Tablet, the OnePlus Pad is a great alternative. It costs £150 less yet has many high-end features that make it a worthy rival to Google’s new tablet – and indeed to the iPad (see issue 340, p82). This is OnePlus’ first tablet, so the company has started with (if you’ll pardon the expression) a blank slate. It has come up with something very likeable: this slab of machined aluminium is thin and light, measuring 6.5mm thick and weighing a breezy 552g. It would have been nice to have a colour option other than Halo Green, but…

SCORE PRICE Combo kit, £11,183 (£13,419 inc VAT) from store.dji.com You’re probably familiar with DJI’s highly portable consumer drones, but the company also has a firm foothold in the professional arena. The new Inspire 3 is its most ambitious drone yet, aiming to satisfy the creative and technical needs of Hollywood’s demanding directors of photography. To that end, the DJI Inspire 3 promises broadcast-quality aerial video capture for movies and television. The image quality and features on offer – notably its highly precise Waypoint Pro system, which can position the drone in space to an accuracy of 10mm – mean that it might also suit other professional roles such as surveying and inspections, alongside the company’s industrial-focused Matrice family. The Inspire 3 is far from a cheap option, however. The…

SCORE PRICE £274 (£329 inc VAT) from poly.com Poly, now part of HP Inc, is rightly associated with headsets and meeting room systems. With the latest addition to its Voyager range, however, it’s broken free of its reputation to create a pair of wireless in-ear earbuds that users can pair simultaneously with their laptop and phone. You need a USB adapter for the former, Bluetooth for the latter. The target audience is clear: anyone who attends meetings on the go. However, Poly evidently hopes to tempt businesses to buy them as well as individuals, as IT teams can manage the buds through its Poly Lens software. The base model is the Voyager Free 60 for £230 inc VAT, but that doesn’t include Teams certification or a USB adapter. Adding both…

Total value this month £157 SafeErase 16 Professional When you delete a file – whether from a local drive or attached media – you can’t assume it’s gone for good. The contents can often be recovered, which is reassuring if you have inadequate backups, but a worry for anyone who deals with sensitive data. This is because the regular deletion process doesn’t actually remove the zeros and ones from your hard drive. In the interest of performance (and to save wear and tear on your hard drive), Windows removes deleted files from the index of files on the disk, and marks the space as available for reuse. But until the relevant part of the disk is overwritten by new data, the old content can be retrieved, even after you’ve emptied…

SCORE PRICE £125 (£150 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com Hold the Moto G13 in your hand and you’d never guess that it costs £150. It has the finish of a much more expensive phone, with gently rounded corners and a brushed aluminium-effect rear that you would swear was metal. (It’s actually plastic.) Motorola sent us the rose gold version for review, but we suspect it looks equally good in matte charcoal or blue lavender. There’s a protective case in the box, but the G13 feels well enough made that you don’t need it. If anything, you should be more cautious of the glass front as, unlike the Xiaomi Poco M5, Motorola doesn’t use Gorilla Glass 3 for extra protection. Surprisingly, however, it does include IP52 certification. That means “partial protection against…

SCORE PRICE £106 (£127 inc VAT) from mobile.asda.com On the surface, there are many things in the TCL 40 SE’s favour. A new phone, only going on sale in April, we found it on Asda’s website for a competitive £127 (10% less than its £140 list price), yet it includes 128GB of storage and a large 6.75in IPS screen. It’s a perfectly good screen, too, covering 82% of the sRGB gamut and peaking at a strong 560cd/m2 if you activate its “adaptive brightness” mode. However, the MediaTek Helio G37 processor is weak compared to the Moto G13 and Poco M5, and that’s reflected in lowly scores in Geekbench 6: 199 in the single-core test, 858 in the multicore section. Things get even worse when it comes to gaming, with the…

SCORE PRICE £666 (£799 inc VAT) from uk.seenebula.com Barely larger than a large can of beer, the Anker Nebula Capsule 3 Laser is a tiny portable projector. It weighs only 950g, making it ideal for slipping into a bag alongside your laptop. This model has a single HDMI 2.1 input on the back, which will take up to a 4K signal, although the projector is limited to a Full HD resolution. This port supports HDMI eARC, so you can send sound from the projector to a suitable speaker system if you don’t want to use the internal 8W speakers – although these are actually impressive, with a decent amount of boost and enough volume to easily fill a room. But you can always use the 3.5mm output or integrated Bluetooth.…

SCORE PRICE £333 (£399 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk It’s not a particularly well-known brand, but Emotn has done something with the N1 that few other manufacturers manage: included an officially certified Netflix app. The streaming service has even got its own button on the handy Bluetooth remote control. Although not big, the Emotn N1 is a chunky projector. It feels almost lighter than it should, as if the case isn’t quite full, and a little on the cheap side. Still, at this price, the build quality qualifies as “good enough”. Rather than using Android TV, the projector uses a customised version of Android. This is how Emotn can support Netflix natively. Emotn has done a decent job of making the interface smooth and easy to use with the bundled remote…

SCORE PRICE £416 (£499 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com Looking somewhat like a searchlight scanning the skies looking for enemy planes, the Samsung Freestyle is one of the smallest projectors around. Weighing a mere 800g, and with a body little bigger than a beer can, it’s an attractive and truly portable smart projector. There are some clever touches, too. As it’s mounted on a swivel stand with 180° of movement, you can point it wherever you want, even up at a ceiling. There are some nifty built-in auto-configuration routines, too. Plonk the projector down and it will not only auto focus and auto keystone, but also auto level: it rotates the screen to be flat, even if the projector is placed on an uneven surface. That’s a unique feature, although we…

SCORE PRICE £466 (£559 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk The XGIMI Elfin is like a flattened out XGIMI Halo+ (or a Mac mini) with the battery removed. Weighing 900g, it’s also easier to carry around than its brother. It’s all a matter of whether or not you need the battery. Aside from the design, the XGIMI Elfin is very similar to the Halo+. Its 800 ANSI lumens brightness is 100 short of its sibling, which makes a visible difference but not as much as you might think; the Elfin can still be used in a lit room at decent sizes (say, 60in to 80in) and even go as big as 150in when it’s really dark. This projector has the same intelligent setup routines as the other models in the company’s lineup,…

SCORE PRICE £1,374 (£1,649 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk Place the XGIMI Horizon Pro next to the Horizon and you’d be hard pushed to spot any difference: both projectors are the same size and weight. Peer a little more closely at the Horizon Pro, however, and you’ll see the 4K badge on it. The Horizon Pro has the same 0.47in DMD chip inside as its non-Pro sibling, but here XPR is used to increase the resolution to 4K (3,860 x 2,160). As with any upscaling tech, XPR doesn’t quite deliver the clarity of a native 4K device. Plug a Fire TV Stick in and set it to 4K, for example, and the interface isn’t quite as sharp on this projector as it is on a 4K TV. It is close, though.…

Driven by streaming media, we’ve seen the smart TV and smart display markets take off, integrating the apps that most of us use daily into a single box. Projectors, it seems, have been stuck in the dark ages: either bog-standard meeting-room types, or super-expensive home-cinema projectors. Both are fiddly to install, and even trickier to configure and set up. In the case of office projectors, how many meetings are spent with people hunting around for the right cable, standing on tables trying to work out which button changes to the correct input? No wonder smart projectors are on the rise. Thanks to an increase in power in mobile chipsets, smart projectors have the power to deliver proper streaming 4K video, running slick and smooth operating systems that are far easier…

SCORE PRICE £368 exc VAT from printerbase.co.uk Sitting on the rung below Brother’s flagship ADS-4900W scanner, the ADS-4700W offers a more affordable alternative to SMBs on tight budgets. It may cost over £200 less than its bigger brother but still delivers an impressive package with a top scan speed of 40ppm, a hefty 6,000-page daily duty cycle and a slightly smaller 80-page ADF. It’s well connected, too, offering USB 3, wired or wireless access, though for the latter it supports only 2.4GHz networks (not 802.11a/n 5GHz like the ADS-4900W). There are no compromises with the user interface, though: the same slick 10.9cm colour LCD touchscreen offers a wealth of user-friendly scan features. Installation takes around 30 minutes per PC, with Brother’s downloadable utility getting you started by loading the drivers,…

SCORE PRICE £765 exc VAT from ballicom.co.uk Businesses with big document digitising plans will love Xerox’s D70n, as this desktop scanner offers a blistering top scan speed of 90ppm. An equally huge 15,000-page daily duty cycle means it can handle high demands, while the capacious 100-sheet automatic document feeder is ready for bulk batch scans. The D70n is primarily designed to provide network scanning services over its gigabit port, but you can use the USB 3 port for local connection to a host PC. All scan management is handled by the Visioneer OneTouch app, which links up with the scanner’s colour LCD display and buttons to present a range of custom menus. Installation is deftly handled by a single downloadable utility that loads the Windows drivers along with a Network…

Connectors are a very important part of our computing world. We need to join up accessories to computers. Screens to laptops. Networks to devices. We need to get power in and sometimes out. Most of the time this works well: if the plug physically fits, then there will normally be some sort of logical connection, too. Of course, the exceptions are the ones that really cause the blood to boil. There’s a special place in hell for the designers of USB standards, of course. And that’s just for the endless renaming of pre-existing standards, let alone the specification changes as time rolls on. Then we come to power. It’s a great idea to allow a charger to negotiate with a device so that it can adapt the voltage and current…

James O’Malley Elon Musk is a divisive figure within the tech industry and beyond, but what do those who have worked with him have to say about their former boss? James reveals all from p32. David Ludlow We wanted to take a fresh look at the projector market, so who better to provide a rundown – including 13 reviews – than David, a man obsessed by such devices? See which earns his praise from p76. Davey Winder What’s in a name? Sometimes accusations of crime, explains Davey, who makes a compelling argument for the role of ethical hackers and why they should not be bundled in with criminals. See p118. Rois Ni Thuama Our expert in risk mitigation reveals the time it all went wrong for her – the story…

When King Charles and Queen Camilla were crowned in May, it may have seemed like a strange relic from the distant past – the ceremony’s origins trace back nearly a thousand years to William the Conqueror in 1066. But behind the scenes, something much more futuristic was taking place. Just outside Westminster Abbey, ITN’s news cameras were rolling, capturing footage that would be broadcast live on ITV News’ special coverage. For several of the key shots, instead of relying on a satellite truck, the cameras were beaming back their images using Vodafone’s “standalone” 5G network, on its own dedicated network “slice” of protected bandwidth, in the highest-profile test yet of the technology. 5G standalone – or “5G SA” – is arguably 5G in its true form. It’s only this version…

Nicole Kobie is PC Pro’s futures editor. She’d argue AI is already smarter than a lot of people, but that says more about people than the success of OpenAI or Google. @njkobie When Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather” of neural networks, quit what must have been a pretty sweet gig at Google, he did so to openly warn about the pace of AI development. He’s not alone: 1,000 industry players signed a letter demanding a six-month developmental moratorium; Sam Altman, CEO of GPT-maker OpenAI, admitted that his own company is “a little bit scared of this”; controversial academic Eliezer Yudkowsky suggested we should preemptively bomb data centres to counteract the AI threat. Unlike the others, Hinton has considered in some detail how AI could hurt us. In the short term, he…

Operating systems should just get out of the way. Increasingly, however, Windows 11 appears intent on getting in your face. Perhaps emboldened by a decade of largely being left to its own devices by the competition authorities, Microsoft is increasingly testing consumers’ patience by injecting more and more unwanted extras into Windows 11. Widget sidebars full of tabloid news stories, apps appearing on the Start menu, AI services being shoved into the limelight. It’s a frustrating battle for control of your own hardware. Microsoft sees Windows 11 as its territory; many consumers think otherwise. If you’re among them, read on, because we’re going to show you how to get a grip on Windows 11, how to curb Microsoft’s worst excesses and how to run Windows as you’d like it. We’ll…

Windows is by far the most popular operating system in the world – but for developers and power users, it’s often helpful to be able to switch into a Linux environment. In the past, this meant dual-booting, or installing your chosen distribution in a virtual machine. But since 2016 there’s been a better way: the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is an optional OS component that provides a fully working, officially supported Linux environment right inside Windows. The major limitation of WSL when it was first introduced was that it was a text-only interface. You could run scripts and command-line programs, but graphical applications were off the menu. That’s no longer the case. All desktop editions of Windows 10 and 11 now support WSLg – an updated version of WSL,…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £2,166 (£2,599 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk The Dell XPS Desktop 8960 – called simply the New XPS Desktop on dell.co.uk – looks like a nondescript office computer, but in truth it’s a gaming PC. Beneath the unassuming exterior you’ll find the latest Intel 13th Gen chips and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4000 series GPUs. To be specific, an RTX 4080, as that’s the only option that Dell currently offers: the base spec with integrated graphics costs £1,299 inc VAT, jumping up by £1,040 if you select the RTX 4080 (this includes a 20% “limited time offer” saving, but we suspect the offer will stick around). The £2,599 price of our reviewed machine reflects three more upgrades: 32GB rather than 16GB of DDR5 RAM, a 1TB rather than…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £2,582 (£3,099 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk The new Dell XPS 15 is a refresh of the phenomenal version from 2022 (see issue 337, p54), which scored a perfect five stars. Sadly, we can’t say the same of this year’s model. Prices start at £1,499, for which you receive a Core i7-13700H, Intel Arc A370M graphics, 16GB of DDR5-4800 RAM, a 512GB SSD and the basic 1,920 x 1,200 non-touch IPS display. For us, Dell upgraded to GeForce RTX 4070 graphics, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and the 3.5K 15.6in AMOLED touchscreen. As it happens, you can’t buy that spec in the UK: upgrading to this top-end graphics option automatically switches you to the Core i9-13900H, and suddenly you’re looking at a price of £3,099. Essentially,…

SCORE PRICE £667 (£800 inc VAT) from consumer.huawei.com Huawei clearly has the Apple Watch Ultra (see issue 339, p76) in its sights with the Watch Ultimate, with design cues taken from that device and premium outdoor watches by Polar and Garmin. It has a large face and super-tough case that uses a zirconium “liquid metal” alloy that’s said to be harder than titanium. It’s finished in dark grey for the Expedition Black model and shiny silver for the Voyage Blue, which comes with a matching titanium strap. The Voyage Blue model especially is a thing of beauty, resembling a premium dive watch such as a Seamaster. The Expedition Black is sportier, with a black silicone strap and more demure case, but both look fantastic – providing you choose the right…

SCORE PRICE £150 (£180 inc VAT) from hp.com HP is a latecomer to refillable inkjets, with both Epson and Canon getting in first with their respective EcoTank and Megatank ranges. But first doesn’t always equal best, and HP’s Smart Tank 5105 hits all the right notes. It’s a basic multifunction peripheral (MFP). There’s no fax modem, no automatic double-sided printing and no colour touchscreen: all you get is a simple mono LCD, a basic 100-sheet paper input slot and an even more basic 30-sheet output tray. Installation involves fitting a pair of print heads then using the supplied ink bottles to fill the four tanks. While the EcoTank and Megatank systems use physical keying to prevent you mis-fuelling with, say, cyan instead of magenta ink, HP’s system doesn’t, so pay…

SCORE PRICE £374 (£449 inc VAT) from store.google.com The Google Pixel 7a is not your usual budget phone. Rather than cutting features from the Pixel 7 (see issue 339, p74) to keep the price low, Google has packed in as many capabilities as possible, to the point where there isn’t a huge difference between the Pixel 7a and the fully featured original. That’s reflected, somewhat unfortunately, in the price. Where last year’s Pixel 6a (see issue 336, p70) came in at a tempting £399, the 7a launches at £449. It’s not a huge leap, but it’s a harder sell: the regular Pixel 7 can be found online for around £500, while the iPhone SE (see issue 332, p70) and Samsung Galaxy A54 offer persuasive alternatives to the 7a at the…

SCORE PRICE £133 (£159 inc VAT) from mi.com/uk The Xiaomi Poco M5 is arguably the most striking phone on test. Where all the others opt for a smooth finish on the rear, the M5 has a faux leather effect. It’s a shame that Xiaomi only sells the black version in the UK; the green and yellow editions look even more distinctive. Be careful before you buy, though, as Xiaomi also sells a phone called the Poco M5s. That tiny “s” suffix belies many differences between the phones, with the biggest being the screen: the Poco M5 uses IPS technology, the M5s uses AMOLED. Both phones have a high-resolution panel, with 1,080 x 2,408 pixels translating into a 401ppi pixel density – much higher than the 260ppi or 270ppi of the…

SCORE PRICE £999 (£1,199 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk Packing a laser light source, the Anker Nebula Cosmos Laser 1080P promises brighter colours and deeper blacks than LED-based projectors. And this is one of the few portable projectors that supports Netflix out of the box, although getting there has meant some compromises that make this projector fiddly to use. Rather than having Android TV built in, the Anker Nebula Cosmos Laser 1080P uses a plug-in dongle that clips into a compartment at the back of the projector instead. According to our router, this is a SDMC device. The reason is clear: Netflix has to certify any installation, and only works with certain manufacturers, of which SDMC is one because of its set-top boxes. All of the other major streaming platforms are…

SCORE PRICE £1,500 (£1,800 inc VAT) from n1-ultra.jmgo.com Launched on Kickstarter, the JMGO N1 Ultra demonstrates what can be done in a small form factor smart projector. For starters, its rated brightness is 4,000 ANSI lumens. That’s far higher than the competition and means that this model can be used in a well-lit room at big-screen sizes; there’s no need to shut the curtains and dim the lights. And, with a throw ratio of 1.2:1, the JMGO N1 Ultra doesn’t have to be placed too far from a screen to get that big picture. A built-in gimbal stand makes it easy to position the projector, complete with full 360° rotation and 135° vertical adjustment, so you can point it up at the ceiling if you need to. It’s a shame…

SCORE PRICE £624 (£749 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk The 1.6kg XGIMI Halo+ sits at the border of what can be considered a portable projector. Measuring 172 x 145 x 114mm, it’s just about small enough to take in a bag, or even on longer trips on a flight, but it doesn’t have the ultra-small dimensions of the Anker Nebula Capsule 3 Laser. What you do get is a good balance of features, and performance that, overall, make this one of the most useful smart projectors. At the back there’s a single HDMI input for external devices, which also supports HDMI ARC for sending audio to a compatible sound system (3.5mm audio outputs and Bluetooth can also be used for this purpose). There’s a single USB port, which can be used…

SCORE PRICE £441 (£529 inc VAT) from uk.xgimi.com Like a smaller XGIMI Halo+ (or perhaps one at a distance for fans of Father Ted), the XGIMI Mogo 2 Pro is an ultraportable smart projector. Weighing just 1.1kg, it’s small and light enough to throw into a kit bag and carry everywhere. We’d recommend some kind of soft pouch to protect the glass in front of the lens from scratches, though. This model includes XGIMI’s smart ISA 2 auto configuration. The main difference that this provides is that the projector can adjust keystone and focus without the use of an onscreen pattern. That’s extremely handy, as it means that in a busy meeting room the projector can be moved without losing the picture. That aside, there’s also the same excellent obstacle…

If you already own a projector that you’re happy with, then it’s possible to make it “smart”, to a degree, by plugging a streaming media device into it. There are lots of choices out there, but the two common ones are the Apple TV 4K and the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max. Both are designed to be plugged into an existing display and deliver a smart platform for adding extra apps. As Apple and Amazon are big names in technology, both boxes are extremely well supported by apps, with every major streaming service supported, plus all the local catch-up apps, such as iPlayer. In this regard, both devices are actually better than many smart projectors, offering a wider selection of apps to choose from. Connecting one of these devices…

SCORE PRICE £395 exc VAT from tradescanners.com Canon’s imageFormula RS40 is aimed at home workers that want to digitise their old photo collection as well as business documents. It takes everything from Canon’s standard R40 desktop model (see issue 334, p94) and adds extra image-processing functions that enhance photos as they’re scanned. The RS40 is a USB-only device with no network capabilities and claimed speeds of 40ppm for mono scans at 300dpi and 30ppm for colour scans. It works for us as a business document scanner as it sports a 60-page automatic document feeder and claims a 4,000-page daily duty cycle. Installation is a swift affair. We ran the single setup utility on a Windows 11 desktop to load Canon’s CaptureOnTouch 4 Standard software and TWAIN drivers. Unlike the R40,…

SCORE PRICE £386 exc VAT from solwise.co.uk EnGenius has a fine reputation in the managed wireless network arena and it now wants to extend these capabilities to small businesses with limited IT expertise. The FIT range of network products comprises PoE switches, Wi-Fi 6 access points (APs) and an optional on-site controller, with a key feature being their extremely simple deployment. All FIT switches and APs can be run in standalone mode, looked after by the little on-premises FitController appliance or moved completely into the cloud courtesy of the FitXpress web portal and mobile apps. Costing £134, the FitController targets IT-savvy users, while FitXpress is for those that want it all done for them and is completely free. In this review, we’ll focus on the company’s flagship EWS377-FIT, a dual-band…

Driverless cars, AI, robots and other technologies that are starting to impact our lives are already having climate consequences. Training a single large language model creates the same carbon emissions of five cars over their lifetime, according to one study (pcpro.link/346cars). And it’s not just energy use: the shift to robotics and automated cars is driving demand for rare-earth metals, while efficiencies in manufacturing can spark an increase in consumption – bad news for pollution, landfills and emissions. And we’re just at the beginning of the AI boom, if Big Tech is to be believed. On the other hand, some of these technologies can slash emissions and other pollution. By sharing driverless cars, fewer vehicles need to be made; AI can analyse and optimise energy use, perhaps even helping to…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Apple MacBook Pro 16in M2 Pro power from £2,699 from apple.com/uk All the upgrades to this 2023 model are within, as Apple’s M2 Pro and M2 Max processors take charge. Combine this power with the 16.2in mini-LED screen, superb sound system and phenomenal battery life, and you have the world’s premier workstation laptop. REVIEW Issue 342, p48 ALTERNATIVES Apple MacBook Pro 14in If you prefer your power in a more compact package than the Pro 16in, then the 14in is an excellent alternative – and it weighs 1.6kg rather than 2.2kg. From £2,149 from apple.com/uk REVIEW Issue 343, p44 Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra Samsung packs everything into this 16in laptop, from a superb AMOLED panel and a slim 1.8kg chassis to a Core i9 CPU and RTX 4070…

Barry Collins is a former editor of PC Pro. He’s spent decades diligently avoiding the competition authorities by failing to dominate anything. @bazzacollins I qualified as a football referee 30 years ago, and one phrase the tutor used on the training course has stuck with me ever since: “Be proud of your double zeros,” he said, referring to the score out of ten both teams give the referee. “That means you’ve upset every f***** on the pitch.” If Microsoft and Activision were scoring the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) after its decision to thwart Microsoft’s proposed buyout of the games company, it would be guaranteed two big fat zeros. In my view, however, it’s a solid eight or nine for Britain’s increasingly combative competition watchdog. The CMA took the bold…

Linux Mint No, 2023 is probably not going to be the year of Linux on the desktop either. But if you’re sick of using operating systems that see you as the product, Linux Mint is worth considering. It comes in three Minty flavours: Cinnamon is the best-looking and most fully featured; MATE Edition has the more classic-looking desktop from the noughties era; and the most lightweight of all is the Xfce Edition, which is designed to go easy on system resources and high on stability. It’s still a 2.5GB download, mind, and it comes pre-installed with a large library of familiar Linux staples that will give you most of the apps you need for day-to-day computing: Firefox, Thunderbird, LibreOffice and Rhythmbox are all on board. It ran perfectly happily from…

STORE.PCPRO.CO.UK For years, Norton has been synonymous with security. Norton 360 Deluxe is its comprehensive “do it all” suite that continues its fine tradition of offering protection for all your devices (PC, Mac, iOS or Android). And now you can protect three devices for two years, all for just £14.99 rather than the standard cost of £149.99. JUST £14.99 Three devices. Two years. REAL-TIME THREAT PROTECTION Norton’s advanced security helps protect against existing and emerging online threats to your device, and helps protect your private and financial data online. PASSWORD MANAGER Tools to easily generate, store and manage your passwords, credit card details and other online credentials more securely. SMART FIREWALL FOR PC OR MAC Monitors communications between your computer and other computers and helps block any unauthorised traffic. PC…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £1,724 (£2,069 inc VAT) from frame.work I’ve been following Framework since the company launched its first Laptop 13 in 2021 (see issue 329, p50), and I’m still convinced this is one of the best Windows laptops you can buy — especially if you care about your right to repair. Especially as the Framework Laptop 13 has been updated for 2023 with new chips and other timely upgrades. This successor offers the same unparalleled level of accessibility and repairability. Its Expansion Card system continues to be one of the coolest things to happen to laptop ports in decades, and now you can order one with the latest Intel or AMD chips inside. Prices start at £849, but that’s for the DIY Edition. That means you have to…

SCORE PRICE £75 (£90 inc VAT) from shop.pimoroni.com Sheffield-based Pimoroni offers a range of displays for the Raspberry Pi, and its latest is a striking colour screen designed specifically for the Raspberry Pi Pico W – in fact, there’s a Pico W board soldered directly onto it. It comes in three sizes: I tried the 7.3in model, which has a resolution of 800 x 480 and costs a tempting £90, but there’s also a 5.7in version with a resolution of 600 x 448 for £80, and a 4in, 640 x 400 variant for £70. All models use e-paper technology, which looks far more solid and substantial than a glowing LED display. I’ve previously enjoyed Pimoroni’s monochrome Badger 2040, but the Inky Frame raises the bar with its seven-colour display, mixing…

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SCORE PRICE £100 (£120 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk There’s a reason you won’t find reviews of the Samsung A04s on mainstream websites: Samsung doesn’t send out units for review. It would rather people talk about its more expensive siblings. So we bought one ourselves from Amazon and, largely, we have good news: if you’re a fan of Samsung phones and on a tight budget there’s much to like. First, it isn’t as sluggish as you might expect. Yes, it falls a long way behind the Moto G13 and Poco M5 in benchmarks, and there are times when it judders. But if all you want to do is browse the web, check email and watch Netflix then it’s as capable as those two rivals. It struggles in rich interfaces such as…

SCORE PRICE £608 (£729 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk The big problem with most portable smart projectors is that they don’t have any protection when they’re on the move. The BenQ GS50 stands out, as it’s built to be taken anywhere and sturdy enough to withstand life’s bumps. It ships with a fabric carry case, adding some extra protection while on the move, and this doubles up as storage for the Bluetooth voice remote and the power brick. The projector itself is built to be tough: it’s drop-proof (from a reasonable height) and IPX2 rated. That means it’s splash-proof, so you can use it outside. When it comes to physical setups, you have plenty of choice. There’s an adjustable foot at the front, to angle the GS50 at a screen, plus…

SCORE PRICE £791 (£949 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk Sitting somewhere between the XGIMI Halo+ and XGIMI Horizon, the Philips PicoPix MaxTV is a true Full HD smart projector with some neat features. First of all, it looks nicer than the competition, with a smooth, glossy body. Looks aren’t everything, but if you want a more stylish projector, this is the one to buy. It’s also one of the few smart projectors to think about lens protection, with a slide-up lens cover for when you want to take this 2kg projector on the move. Philips also provides a more advanced set of ports at the rear than much of the competition, with both HDMI and USB-C inputs. In addition, there are optical and 3.5mm audio outputs, and a USB-A port for…

SCORE PRICE £383 (£459 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk The Yaber Ace K1 is a little different to the other projectors here, as it doesn’t run Android TV and it doesn’t use a DMD chip, opting for LCD instead. It still just about fits into the smart projector category, as there are some smart features available from the home screen when it first starts. To get the projector set up, you’ll need a fair amount of room, as the throw ratio of 1.54:1 is higher here than on rival models. To reach a 60in screen size, for example, the projector must be placed 2m from the screen. We also found that the Ace K1 tended to point down a little, so we had to use the foot at the front to…

As these are all smart projectors, largely designed to be carried around and used in different situations, we put them all through a set of tests designed specifically for the type. First, we tested how easy the projectors were to set up, testing their automatic configuration routines. This involved placing the projectors at different distances and angles to a projector screen to see how well and how quickly the picture was adapted. For those models with obstacle avoidance, we pointed them at a white wall with a fire alarm switch, to see if they could recognise and avoid the problem. For image quality testing, we used all our projectors with an 80in fold-up projector screen. We used a tripod where possible, to project an image straight-on, avoiding the need for…

Businesses still relying entirely on paper records need to ditch their filing cabinets and go digital. It’s rarely possible to be completely paperless, but a “paper-light” office offers many undeniable benefits, not least in terms of operating cost reductions and increased productivity. Digitisation improves efficiency by creating a single source for all information so staff won’t need to waste time rummaging through filing cabinets looking for that crucial invoice or sales record. With office rental costs rising all the time, businesses can also save hard cash: once paper records have been digitised, they can be sent to a secure storage facility instead of occupying expensive office floor space. Storing paper records in the office is a potential security risk, too, as short of locking the filing cabinets, there’s no easy…

SCORE PRICE £457 exc VAT from printerbase.co.uk If your business has a need for speedy scanning, Epson’s WorkForce DS-870 is a worthy contender, with this compact desktop model claiming fast performance of 65ppm. It can do this for greyscale and colour scans at 300dpi, while the 7,000-page daily duty cycle and 100-page ADF are geared up for high-volume scanning. It only has a USB 3 connection so you’ll need a Windows PC to host it. Networking isn’t entirely off the agenda, though: you can connect Epson’s optional network interface unit to the USB port, although this will set you back over £200. The scanner can handle paper weights from 27gsm to 413gsm so embossed cards won’t be a problem, and its long paper mode can scan documents over six metres…

SCORE PRICE Diskless, £1,494 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com Synology’s eight-bay desktop NAS appliances have always been popular with SMBs as they offer a high storage capacity in a desk-friendly format together with plenty of features. The DS1823xs+ is the latest member of Synology’s eight-bay club but, rather than replacing any existing models, it goes to the top of the desktop performance class and joins hands with the DS3622xs+ (see issue 332, p96) and DS1621xs+. There’s a lot to like here: the DS1823xs+ is powered by a fast quad-core 3.35GHz AMD Ryzen V1780B CPU and its base 8GB of DDR4 ECC memory can be boosted to 32GB. The two gigabit data ports are partnered by an embedded 10GBase-T port, management can be isolated on a separate gigabit port and the spare…

Google’s Authenticator app has had a somewhat rocky history. I used it some time ago as the tool by which I could generate two-factor authentication (2FA) codes for various platforms that I use. The process is the standard one for 2FA – the platform generates a QR code, you scan this with your authenticator app, and it sets up the necessary 2FA account settings within the app. All seemingly very straightforward. The problem comes with ensuring that this store of 2FA configurations is kept appropriately backed up. My experience with the early version of Google’s Authenticator wasn’t good. That’s because it didn’t back up the configurations: not locally on the phone, not to my Google account. There was no method to replicate this to a Google Authenticator app running on…

Features Complete guide to GPT-4 GPT-4 is the powerhouse behind most of the headline-grabbing AI tools. We explain how to get hands on yourself and which apps and services could genuinely improve your life. Best way to print your photos in 2023 Nothing beats a high-quality print (for backup if nothing else). Find out the most practical and cost-effective ways to turn your snaps into physical pics to frame, display and treasure. Getting away with e-crime E-crime is rife, but convictions are rare. We investigate why e-crimes are rarely prosecuted and how victims are being left exposed by industry, the police and the banks. Labs Affordable laptops Don’t want to spend a fortune on a new laptop? Then look out for our test of a dozen machines, with a mix…