Tabla de contenidos para July 2024 en PC Pro

I’m sometimes told by friends that I’m too much of a diplomat. That I try to resolve disputes without causing conflict or risking someone storming off in a great big strop. Well, this is the new me, and the next time I sit down for a little chat with Microsoft I’m going to be brutal. Because it seems that the good people of PC Pro-land have had enough. We want change! Turn to our big article about Windows 12 on p26 and you’ll see what I mean. I innocently punted out messages on Discord, Facebook and X to ask our readers what they wanted to see in the next version of Windows, only to be hit by a tidal wave of demands. Few of them will bring a smile to…

If you look up the definition of “rattled” in the dictionary, you might find a photo of Meta (née Facebook) CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Just days after Apple launched the Vision Pro headset, its $3,499 salvo into the “spatial computing” market, Zuckerberg posted a video to Instagram in which he looked down the barrel of the camera and explained why his company’s Quest headset was still the superior choice. Pointing to the price, weight and software library, Zuckerberg concluded: “I don’t just think that Quest is the better value, I think the Quest is the better product, period.” Of course, he would say that. But what really made the video interesting was a comment Zuckerberg made later in the video, implying how he saw Meta’s future in the spatial computing sector.…

In my back-room hardware morgue is a black cotton bag, about the size of Santa’s sack, containing nothing but cables. This unwholesome collection bears witness to a long career in personal computing: RS-232 serial, parallel printer, Cat3 and Cat5 Ethernet, BT telephone, USB, phono, Scart, HDMI, composite video cables and more. As a long-time fan of dub reggae, seeing it always prompts me to put on the Bag-O-Wire album. My home/office has been almost wireless for years, ever since the advent of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and while that’s generally a very good thing, it’s not quite problem free. I listen to a lot of music and am fussy about sound quality, so I route all my sources through a hi-fi system with vintage Castle speakers. But I don’t only listen…

Osborne career effect Adam Osborne (see issue 357, p123) was very influential in the direction my career took. I was a mechanical engineer in 1977, but also interested in electronics, and I wanted to get into microprocessors. I discovered some of his books on the shelves of the Modern Book Company near Paddington in London, for which he was joint author with Susanna Jacobson and Jerry Kane. His books gave brilliant explanations of how things worked, and were far superior to publications from Intel and Motorola. I borrowed an Intel Development kit with a Hex keyboard and 7-segment display from my employer, and proceeded to teach myself assembly language programming, which led me to get involved with what we now term mechatronics. Sybex was involved in the publishing, and some…

“An operating system that’s seen and controlled by the user, not by Microsoft.” Mike Henson @MikeHenson “Finally update all the old Control Panel/Device Manager/Drive Manager tools to the modern appearance.” Ryan Thomas @RyFish “Better security (perhaps a lockdown mode for home users)” Richard Hough @RikHough “No ads! Also make Windows Update less odious. I have no plans to change from macOS, iPadOS and Linux, but it would be nice to feel that Windows won’t be painful if I need it.” Henry @projiuk “A Win 7-style UI, no ads and telemetry.” Michael Dear, @maxsendq “Option for a clean, no-advert interface as Linux has been for 30-plus years. Sudo enabled by default with developer options. Stop pushing awful Edge.” mrg9999 @mrg9999 “VLC-like media player that actually plays everything. Scanner interface I can…

“Two editions – primarily a full fat one with the same CPU requirements as Win11, and then a second version that supports all the Intel CPUs that 11 doesn’t, with everything else that can be layered on top from the regular full fat version (purely to prevent a vast amount of e-waste).” NickL “I want a choice between AI and non-AI versions, because it seems constant pushing toward what companies want you to have has got so annoying that I now do many tasks by keeping old machines and operating systems offline to handle printing, scanning, video editing and image editing.” SouthendSites777 “Better app and folder management: while I can save apps to the Start menu and put them in folders, it’s a bit of a pain. In the ‘all…

SCORE PRICE £649 from lenovo.com Lenovo has put a lot of thought into the design of its gaming handheld, making it a hugely flexible device. For instance, it’s the only device here with detachable controllers. Not only does this mean you can (slightly awkwardly) use the controllers when you’ve got the device itself attached to an external display, it means that if a controller were to break you wouldn’t have to replace the entire unit. The device also has a Surface-style kickstand on the back, meaning you can prop it up on a plane tray or train table and smash through Netflix boxsets without having to hold the thing – something of a relief, given it weighs more than 850g with the controllers attached, making it by far the heaviest…

Short for “Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer”, it’s no exaggeration to say that ChatGPT has changed the world. In this feature, we explain how it can transform your life in some very specific and practical ways. To get the most out of ChatGPT you’ll have to pay. Developer OpenAI offers use of the GPT-3.5 engine for free, and limited access to GPT-40, but paying subscribers get full access to the more advanced model. Plans start at $20 per user per month for the personal tier, which also includes the DALL-E image creation tool. The simplest way to use ChatGPT is through a web browser, directly on the OpenAI website (chat.openai.com). But a huge number of third-party services have also been built on top of the platform, giving you convenient ways to…

SCORE PRICE £108 (£129 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk Were it not for the “Pencil Pro” branding printed on the end of it, you could easily mistake Apple’s new stylus for its predecessor, the Pencil 2. However, the Pencil Pro introduces four major new features. The first is a squeezable sensor near the Pencil Pro’s tip, which provides contextual functions in different apps. In Apple’s Notes app, for instance, it makes the radial pen and colour selection tool pop up next to the Pencil’s tip. This is superbly convenient, saving wasted hand movements and allowing artists to stay focused on their work. A new haptic feedback motor gently rumbles to confirm the squeeze gesture, and can also provide physical feedback in apps, such as vibrating when aligning a canvas element to…

Recommended This, quite simply, is a product we recommend you buy – if it meets your needs. A-List The best buy in its category right now. The product will also feature on our A-List, starting on p14. It’s updated each month. Labs Winner Each month we run a group test, or Labs. This product has managed to beat all others to top position. The pcpro.link Throughout the magazine you’ll see pcpro.link shortcuts. Enter these into the address bar of your browser and it will take you to a particular page, which will either be too long or awkward for us to publish or will take you to the precise shop from which to buy. If it’s Amazon, note that we have an affiliate deal in place so we will receive…

SCORE PRICE £1,750 (£2,100 inc VAT) from consumer.huawei.com We overuse the term “flagship”, but when I say that the MateBook X Pro is Huawei’s flagship laptop I do so with due care. When Huawei creates a new version each year, it goes to great lengths to pack the latest tech into the lightest possible chassis. And while that has always been true, this year’s offering is the best I’ve tested by some length. Take the speakers. Normally I grade these on whether they’re good enough for listening to music, but I was genuinely surprised by the sound emanating from this tiny machine. Somehow, Huawei has shaped the audio to make it sound like there’s a pair of high-quality standalone speakers to either side of you. Whichever genre I listened to,…

Total value this month £180 AntiTrack Premium 2024 If you use the internet – for anything – then you’re being tracked online. This isn’t because you’re special, or because companies have a particular interest in you; it’s happening to everyone. Tracking enables advertisers to deliver targeted ads, and lets marketing companies know what you’ve bought and the sorts of things you’re interested in. It also enables criminals to gather valuable information about you and your online habits, which could be exploited in a phishing attack. Avast AntiTrack offers you a line of defence, making it possible to stop online tracking and fingerprinting, block targeted advertising and more. The software is available for Windows, macOS and mobile platforms, and for Windows users it not only prevents online tracking but also lets you…

SCORE PRICE £360 (£432 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com Philips was one of the first monitor manufacturers to jump on the concept of USB docking monitors, and it’s doubled down on the idea ever since. Here, it not only provides up to 90W of power over USB-C to a laptop, but even a DC connection to power an Asus or Intel NUC mini PC. With a mounting kit, this means you can attach a NUC to the back of your monitor and effectively turn it into an all-in-one PC. Add a wireless keyboard and mouse, and only the monitor’s power cord will be visible. Even if you choose not to go down this route, some cable routing could make this a stylish addition to a home worker’s desk or in an…

SCORE PRICE 128GB, £241 (£289 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com Their launches lacked the razzmatazz of the S24 series, but Samsung has just released two affordable phones: the A35 on review here and the A55 opposite. The idea is to strip back in some areas, most notably speed and camera setups, while still delivering a stylish design and a stunning screen. Despite its low price, the A35 has a Gorilla Glass front and back, with a choice of four colours: ice blue, navy, lilac and lemon. It’s the latter and rather striking colour you see here. All four colours are relatively restrained given the vibrancy of previous Galaxy A series phones, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. At 209g and 8.2mm thick it’s on the hefty side, but in return…

How many bays do I need? We strongly advise you to steer clear of single-disk NAS systems. If a single disk holds the only copy of your irreplaceable data and it fails, you’re in trouble. It’s much safer to go for a two-bay system and configure it with two hard disks in a RAID1 array. In this configuration, your data is mirrored between both drives. If one fails, you’ll still have the copy on the other one. Just be sure to replace the broken disk promptly so the NAS can rebuild your array and restore your protection. Don’t be tempted by other two-disk configurations such as JBOD or RAID0: these offer more capacity and can be faster, but they lack the fault tolerance of RAID1. A four-bay NAS drive is…

SCORE PRICE £423 (£507 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk Many cheaper NAS enclosures must appeal to the crossover between home power users and the lower end of the business market. QNAP’s TS-253E has its sights set chiefly on the latter. It’s a two-bay NAS, capable of accepting 3.5in or 2.5in SATA disks, and packing a further two slots for NVMe SSDs. QNAP markets the TS-253E as a long-term model, which it says will be sold and supported up until 2029. That makes it ideal for businesses intending to roll it out in a standard, easily supported configuration across multiple workgroups, outlets or branch offices. The TS-253E has a similar spec to QNAP’s TS-264 (see p85), but it makes do with a less sprightly Intel Celeron J6412 processor. This is paired with…

SCORE PRICE £374 (£449 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk As its name suggests, the Flashstor 6 is an all-flash NAS enclosure, with space for up to six NVMe SSDs. It’s aimed mostly at enthusiast use in the home, so comes with useful multimedia features such as HDMI and S/PDIF audio outputs. It’s well specified elsewhere, too, with a pair of 2.5GbE network ports, two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports and two USB-A 2 ports. The supplied 4GB of memory is upgradable to 16GB. It doesn’t have any hard disk slots, but you could add bulk storage with up to two Asustor AS6004U expansion units, each accepting up to four 3.5in SATA drives. If six SSDs isn’t enough, for £744 inc VAT (from Amazon) you could choose the 12-slot Flashstor 12, which…

SCORE PRICE £204 (£244 inc VAT) from ballicom.co.uk The DS223 sits almost at the bottom of Synology’s huge NAS range, with only the single-slot DS124 and the more basic two-slot DS223j variant sitting below it. Accordingly, it’s not particularly well specified, with only two SATA drive bays and no NVMe slots. There’s 2GB of RAM onboard, which can’t be upgraded, while all the processing work is done by a lowly four-core Realtek CPU clocked at 1.7GHz. Perhaps just as significantly, this NAS has just a single 1GbE network port, immediately putting it at a disadvantage to 2.5GbE devices when it comes to fast file serving. Still, the DS223 is designed and built with Synology’s usual quality. Pull off the front panel and its two drive caddies slide in and out…

SCORE PRICE £142 (£170 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk TerraMaster’s F2-212 is an entry-level NAS enclosure offering two 3.5in SATA drive bays. It’s not especially well specified, pairing a lowly four-core Realtek processor with just one gigabyte of non-upgradable RAM. At the rear there’s a single gigabit Ethernet port, along with one USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 and one USB-A 2 port. Open the F2-212’s plain packaging, however, and you’re in for a pleasant surprise. This is a decent-looking NAS enclosure, with some nice finishing touches – we particularly appreciated the small TerraMaster tag near the connector end of the power supply cable, which helps you keep track of it among the cable spaghetti behind a typical desk. Its drive caddies are among the smoothest to remove and reinsert, and we managed…

Results with hard disks ATTO 4KB writes (MB/sec) ATTO 4KB reads (MB/sec) Real-world writes (MB/sec) ATTO 16KB writes (MB/sec) ATTO 16KB reads (MB/sec) Real-world reads (MB/sec) ATTO 2MB writes (MB/sec) ATTO 2MB reads (MB/sec) PCMark 10 Data Drive (MB/sec) Results with SSDs ATTO 4KB writes (MB/sec) ATTO 4KB reads (MB/sec) PCMark 10 Data Drive ATTO 16KB writes (MB/sec) ATTO 16KB reads (MB/sec) ATTO 16KB reads (MB/sec) ATTO 2MB writes (MB/sec) ATTO 2MB reads (MB/sec) Real-world reads (MB/sec)…

SCORE PRICE £295 exc VAT from printerbase.co.uk Brother’s extended family of desktop scanners offers SMBs plenty of options so they can find the right balance of scan speeds, features and value. The ADS-4500W represents the centre ground and delivers a lot for its modest sub-£300 price tag, with a top claimed scan speed of 35ppm, a good 5,250-page daily duty cycle and a capacious 60-page automatic document feeder. Connection choices abound, with the ADS-4500W supporting USB, 10/100 wired Ethernet and 2.4GHz 802.11n wireless access. It comes with a generous software bundle that includes Brother’s iPrint&Scan and ScanEssentials scan management apps, Nuance’s Paperport 14 SE digital file cabinet, Kofax’s Power PDF 3 OCR and document conversion tool, and the Presto Image Folio graphic and photo-editing utility. There are two notable compromises:…

SCORE PRICE £766 exc VAT from tradescanners.com Businesses with heavy scan demands that don’t want the added expense of a host PC will find the Xerox N60w Pro Scanner is almost certainly the answer. This wired and wireless networked scanner delivers everything you need for easy walk-up scanning and claims a fast 65ppm scan speed. The N60w Pro presents a generous 20.3cm colour touchscreen that can be customised with multiple soft buttons for quick access to scan jobs. Users simply load their documents in the large 100-page automatic document feeder, tap a job button and Xerox does the rest. The touchscreen makes light work of scan operations, with icons in its left pane for sending documents directly to the cloud, email, network shares, FTP and SharePoint servers or the scanner’s…

Few technologies in the past few decades have created as much excitement as ChatGPT. The idea of an ethereal electronic brain that can synthesise the world’s online knowledge and information to create something new and perfectly adapted to your purpose seems like the stuff of magical science fiction. This image inspires unrealistic aspirations and expectations. A friend of mine posted on social media that he was looking forward to trying ChatGPT on a multi-million-pound commercial property valuation, prompting a lengthy thread about the pros and cons of generative AI. To be fair, his experiments produced plausible documents. But every time he ran the request it generated a different plausible document. Normally a commercial property offer is the settled conclusion of lots of time spent trudging round a physical location and…

Machine customers? I’m busy enough dealing with real customers, thank you very much. I get the instinct, but machine customers are very real – in fact, you should probably consider setting up one of your own. Simply put, a machine customer is an autonomous service that can make purchases without human involvement. A good example is printer supplies: modern printers can monitor their own ink or toner levels, and automatically order more when supplies run low. Well, that sounds mundane. I was picturing machines making complex purchasing decisions. That’s certainly where some futurists imagine we’re heading: not just restocking the stationery cupboard but making significant decisions about which products to buy and when to switch suppliers. This, incidentally, is a bit of a nightmare for the CRM industry, whose existence…

What can you do to protect your data? Every day, along comes another nasty piece of malware, aimed at ruining your life. It could be an attack on a cloud service where you have an account; only yesterday, Bitwarden told me that someone was trying to log into my account there. Fortunately, it’s protected with a hardware 2FA key. There’s a wave of ransomware going around that gets you to download some malware, often pretending to be an update. It then starts its devious work, scrambling your precious files and demanding a fee, often paid in Bitcoin, to reverse the process. Despite calls for people to not pay, it is often the only route to getting your data back if you’ve been attacked and had insufficient processes in place to…

Regular readers will know that I’ve been something of a Gmail evangelist for a long time. With almost 2 billion users worldwide, it is the largest email provider, easily surpassing Proton Mail’s notunimpressive 100 million users. The reason behind this popularity is its ease of use, its configuration, and the fact that it’s free. Well, kind of free. There’s always a cost involved, and this cost is related to privacy. While using Gmail, you might have to compromise on your privacy to gain the full benefits of the service. But if you’re willing to trade off privacy concerns with the benefits of using Gmail, then there’s no doubt you’ll enjoy the productivity and convenience that it provides. Gmail is also an excellent choice if you’re looking for an email client…

@njkobie When I open up Twitter, aka X, it’s mostly people I don’t remember following shouting about an issue I don’t care about – and that they won’t care about tomorrow. So I heave a deep sigh, log out and try Instagram; but that’s all brands and influencers these days, with real people posting less and less. I attempted to get into Threads, back when it started, but it was mostly chat about why Threads was better than Twitter, so I quickly gave up. LinkedIn, though, always has notifications for me. And everyone loves a notification. There’s only one problem: I’m pretty sure it’s turned into ChatGPT talking to itself. I’ve never used LinkedIn much, mostly to keep up with who works where, but with a book to promote, I…

Smart grid, silly investment? Your smart home grid article (see issue 357, p26) was fascinating and an excellent example of the enjoyment of technology for its own sake. But the “savings” reported don’t consider the upfront investment and the risks. I recently had a £9K quote for a solar and battery system on my east/west-facing roof. It was estimated to save £15.5K energy, a net of £6.5K, after 25 years, which is the predicted life of the panels. This quote didn’t include the cost of buying and fitting a new inverter and battery after 12 years, which would be £3K at today’s prices. That leaves me with a net gain of £3.5K after 25 years. This quote assumed I used their solar+battery tariff for 25 years and that this offered…

We’ve all done it. Justified a lavish piece of tech spending by telling ourselves that the expensive treat we’re buying will come in handy for all manner of purposes. That expensive digital camera that was going to be essential for your YouTube channel, but now only comes out for summer holidays; the Apple Pencil that was going to kickstart your digital drawing side hustle, but does little more than sign the occasional PDF; the monstrously pricy headphones you’d need for mixing tracks for your long-forgotten band that now only serve to make Spotify sound a fraction less scratchy. Is the same true of handheld PCs? Of course, we’d all love a poky handheld that lets us play Cyberpunk 2077 in bed, but can we really justify the expense? Well, what…

SCORE PRICE £549 from amazon.co.uk Right up front I have to say that both joysticks had failed on the ROG Ally review unit I was sent by Asus, with neither responding to movements on the X-axis. Initially, I put this down to a firmware glitch, but a spot of Googling revealed many Ally owners with similarly failed hardware. Given the controllers aren’t detachable, that either means sending the whole unit back or attempting a hairy DIY repair. There’s another reason to swerve this first iteration, too. As we went to press, Asus announced a revamped ROG Ally X, which will have the same chipset and screen, but much better battery life, according to Asus. That’s a relief, as our review model flagged after less than two hours in even undemanding…

AI can do remarkable things, but it’s not always spot on in its answers. Most services will openly acknowledge this, and warn that you should check your AI-generated answers before relying on them. However, the speed at which the technology is improving is remarkable. Nobody yet knows where AI will ultimately take us, but it’s only going to get more powerful – and this will probably result in fundamental changes in the ways we live and work. Speaking on CBS last year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai called AI “the most profound technology humanity is working on. More profound than fire, electricity, or anything that we have done in the past.” You can start harnessing its power today.…

SCORE PRICE 13in/256GB, £1,083 (£1,299 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk The iPad Pro has long been the best tablet on the market, but Apple isn’t resting on its past success. This year’s models introduce a new processor, a striking ultra-slim design and the best ever tablet display. Visually, the new 11in and 13in tablets aren’t a radical departure from their M2-powered predecessors, released in 2022. Each one is still a solid slab of aluminium with a large display and a thin profile. However, the mini-LED panel has been replaced by an OLED display – or “Ultra Retina XDR”, as Apple dubs it – and it could be enough to justify the upgrade by itself thanks to its deep blacks, scorching whites and beautiful, dazzling colours. The sharp 264ppi resolution means everything…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £1,420 (£1,704 inc VAT) from chillblast.com There are some chassis that hide fans discreetly away. Not so the Hyte Y40, which places them front, centre, top and side. As these are all addressable RGB fans, you can create quite the light show to show them off. And tempered glass panels at both the side and the front mean they can be admired from all angles. Hyte describes the Y40 as “S-Tier”, suggesting that it’s right at the top of the quality pyramid. It’s certainly different, with the graphics card sitting parallel to the motherboard thanks to a riser card. This is meant to help with airflow, with a hidden fan sitting underneath the card for extra cooling, but also means the graphics card sits proudly at…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £3,715 (£4,458 inc VAT) from ultima-computers.co.uk Last year I put the fully rugged Toughbook 40 (see issue 348, p54) through its paces, and in many ways it’s the closest rival to the rugged Toughbook 55 MK3. There’s a reason I didn’t put “fully”: while the Toughbook 40 has an IP66 rating, the 55 makes do with mere IP53. The “5” means dust can still get inside but shouldn’t interfere with its workings. The “6” of its sibling means it’s fully protected, with no way for dust to get in. Arguably more telling is the water ingress rating of “3” versus “6”, which translates into protection against water spray (up to 60° from the vertical) as opposed to protection against high-pressure water jets. So while the Toughbook…

SCORE PRICE £1,000 (£1,200 inc VAT) from consumer.huawei.com If your budget can’t stretch to £2,100 for the MateBook X 14 Pro (see p60), there are many reasons to be tempted by its cheaper sibling. It’s still sleek at 14.5mm, it still includes one of Intel’s most recent Core Ultra chips, and it still packs a high-quality 14.2in OLED touchscreen. It just lacks luxury by comparison: the metal chassis looks and feels less expensive, for example, although the new pastel green finish ensures it stands out from the grey crowd. At 1.3kg the MateBook 14 is much heftier than the X Pro but remains a great choice for mobile workers thanks to a 70Wh battery, which kept it going for 16hrs 55mins in PCMark’s idle tests. That dropped to 14hrs 50mins…

1 Visit pcprodownload.co.uk. First, enter the issue number (358 this month). Next, enter your email address and the coupon code printed on the cover’s spine (or directly on the front cover of digital issues of the magazine). We’ll then send an email to confirm that your code has been registered. Follow the instructions in the email to access the download area. 2 Once you’re in the download area, you can access this month’s bonus software by navigating to the relevant product page and clicking the red Install button. For trial software, freeware and other downloads, click the Install button below the product description, or follow the onscreen instructions (please make sure to read these carefully). 3 If the software needs registering, click the purple Register button, or follow the instructions on…

SCORE PRICE £46 (£55 inc VAT) from logitech.com This is a trojan mouse. I’m not referring to the Logi Bolt USB receiver and AA battery that live within, but for the excuse it gives us to review its accompanying software: Logi Options+, and in particular the AI Prompt Builder now baked into it, could prove a huge time-saver for anyone who currently owns a Logitech mouse or keyboard. What marks out the Signature AI Edition M750 from the standard M750 (and all its brethren) is the green button that sits behind the scroll wheel. Pressing this button – once you’ve downloaded Logi Options+ and connected your OpenAI account – will give you instant access to ChatGPT services. You don’t even need to pay for ChatGPT Plus, with the free option…

SCORE PRICE 128GB, £303 (£364 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com The A55 almost acts as a bridge phone from Samsung’s true budget range – including the A35 opposite – to the premium Galaxy S24 series. At first glance, you might even think the A55 is part of that more expensive family, with the trio of cameras on the glass rear almost identical to those found on the Galaxy S24 and S24+ (see issue 355, p72). One unique element to Samsung’s latest Galaxy A models is a raised portion of the side rail, which contains the volume and power buttons. It’s a subtle effect you can see in the main photo, and I found my thumb resting naturally on the slope up towards the power button. There’s even a pleasant brushed texture…

SCORE PRICE £441 (£529 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk Asustor’s Nimbustor 4 AS5404T is a four-drive NAS enclosure aimed at demanding home users or small offices. It’s a performance-focused NAS thanks to the fairly muscular Intel Celeron N5105 processor and 4GB of RAM. At the back you’ll find two 2.5GbE ports, along with two of the NAS’s three USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 sockets – the other one is easily accessed at the front. The NAS can mount up to four 3.5in or 2.5in SATA disks in various RAID configurations including RAID5, 6 and 10. Unusually, it also has four NVMe slots. You could configure the AS5404T with a four-SSD RAID5 volume, alongside a slower disk-based storage pool. Alternatively, you could use an SSD cache to accelerate disk performance, or compromise with…

SCORE PRICE £396 (£475 inc VAT) from ballicom.co.uk Synology’s DiskStation DS423+ is a home and small office NAS, offering four SATA drive bays, and supporting up to a whopping 72TB of storage. With a Celeron J4125 processor and 2GB of RAM, it’s similarly specified to the two-bay DS224+ (see p92). Unfortunately, that extends to its dual gigabit Ethernet ports, which look like a mis-step when many competitors now offer 2.5GbE. Synology hasn’t been overly generous when it comes to other ports, either. You won’t find HDMI here, and there are only two USB-A 3.2 ports – and they’re the slower, 5Gbits/sec Gen 1. The DS423+ does have a trick up its sleeve in the shape of two NVMe SSD slots. Drives in these can be configured as a cache for…

SCORE PRICE £158 (£190 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk QNAP’s TS-233 is an entry-level two-bay NAS, aimed squarely at home users who want the extra reassurance of data redundancy. It’s probably the most compact two-drive enclosure we’ve seen; a diminutive box you could easily slip on to a bookshelf or tuck behind a desk. While it’s a little taller than the norm, it’s at least a couple of centimetres narrower than many of its rivals. The spec here is typical for an entry-level device. At the back there’s a single gigabit Ethernet port, with a lone USB-A 3.2 at the front socket – a button sits just above for triggering one-touch backups of inserted drives. Inside there’s a quad-core ARM Cortex processor running at 2GHz, paired with 2GB of non-expandable memory.…

SCORE PRICE £261 (£313 inc VAT) from ballicom.co.uk At first glance Synology’s DiskStation DS224+ looks much like the cheaper DS223 (see p91). It’s the same colour and dimensions, and has the same button, port and LED layout on the front panel. Snoop around a bit and you’ll spot a significant improvement, though: this NAS has dual 1GbE ports, which can be used to offer faster throughput and failover support. There’s a bigger upgrade inside, where the DS224+ has an Intel Celeron J4125 processor rather than the limp Realtek in the DS223. Its 2GB of memory is also upgradable to 6GB via a spare slot, accessible without tools if you remove the drive caddies. Synology talks up the enhanced performance of the DS224+ when compared to previous-generation devices, and this processor…

SCORE PRICE 4TB, £262 (£315 inc VAT) from megamac.com Every group test should have an odd one out, and in this case it’s OWC’s Mercury Elite Pro Dual. This desktop dual drive enclosure connects via USB-C, and supports two SATA disks in RAID0, RAID1 and JBOD configurations. We tested the version with an integrated, fully powered three-port USB hub, which could be ideal if you’re looking for a simple way to dock a laptop or gain more storage. The host interface, the single USB-C and dual USB-A ports all support 10Gbits/sec speeds, theoretically allowing for 1,250MB/sec transfers. You can buy the Mercury Elite Pro Dual as an empty enclosure, which will set you back around £130 exc VAT. OWC supplied us with the 4TB model, configured with two 2TB disks,…

Sometimes specifications paint a very accurate picture. Take the Asustor Nimbustor 4 Gen2: it sounds fast on paper, and it proved so in practice. Sometimes, however, specifications create the wrong impression. In theory, the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Dual can chuck data around at 1,250MB/sec. But connected to our computer, configured in a RAID1 array, it barely managed a sixth of that. In this test, though, it became abundantly clear that one specification really does count. On every benchmark, almost without exception, devices with 2.5GbE network interfaces were significantly faster than those with plain old gigabit. On large files the difference is massive, with gigabit devices strangled to a maximum of around 113MB/sec while 2.5GbE NASes merrily went to 283MB/sec. So how much does that matter? If you’re buying for…

SCORE PRICE £525 exc VAT from ballicom.co.uk Canon’s imageFormula DR-M140II could be the perfect fit for small businesses with equally small spaces. This low-profile desktop scanner is a standalone USB-only device with no network capabilities but it teams up a good 40ppm speed and duplex single-pass scanning with a mighty 8,500-page maximum daily duty cycle. Its small stature means it will easily fit underneath a reception desk, and it uses a U-turn paper path where documents are placed in the front 80-page feeder and deposited in an upper tray with a flip-up paper support. This mode can handle paper weights up to 128g, but for bulkier documents and business cards up to 255g you can drop the rear flap down to create a straight-through path. A big advantage of USB…

SCORE PRICE £357 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com Netgear has one of the largest portfolios of network switches on the planet, and its MS108TUP targets SMBs seeking a versatile, low-cost Power over Ethernet (PoE) solution. Aimed at applications such as VoIP, surveillance and high-performance wireless deployments, this pocket-sized switch offers eight 2.5GbE multigigabit ports, with the first four delivering 60W PoE++ services and the remainder providing 30W PoE+. The switch uses its chassis as a heatsink, and the fanless design means it’s completely silent. The device may be small, but its 230W power budget is very big and it’s delivered by a hefty 253W external power supply that’s around half the size of the switch. The MS108TUP looks identical to Netgear’s slightly cheaper MS108EUP but offers a lot more features. They…

It’s remarkable how a single product can occupy the collective mind of the IT industry – and its customers – for years. A while ago it was Alexa; a little before that we were all chafing at the limitations of Google Glass. Obviously I don’t need to tell you what the current obsession is. But the discourse over ChatGPT isn’t entirely new. We’ve been through a lot of these discussions before with Alexa, which has become both a portal for customers into businesses and an aid for workers inside them. Like ChatGPT, it involves lots of processing power hidden in the cloud, deciphering what you’re saying and throwing back a plausible answer, in the form of natural language rather than a digital array or a statistical table. Amazon offers tools…

As always in IT, new ideas bring new risks. Here, the major concern isn’t a new virus, but the everyday hazard of items getting damaged or lost in transit. Because while ERP systems are clever, they operate wholly in the digital world. They can confirm that money has been paid and goods have been logged as shipped, but they can’t tell you that your items have been squashed beneath an airport cargo truck or sent to a bemused grandma in New Jersey. This means you still need humans to handle negotiations when something goes wrong. That may seem inefficient, but it’s worth it when one purchase may represent a sizeable chunk of monthly turnover. And backtracking a purchase isn’t as simple as you might imagine. Bundling the purchase, payment, shipping…

Talking about Windows Update’s deficiencies feels somewhat cheap and predictable. Windows Update-bashing bobs around the cliché-mire along with shooting fish in barrels and stealing candy from babies, but sometimes nonsense needs to be called out. Over the course of a month, I’ll get my hands on machines of wildly different configurations, and I’m always impressed that Microsoft’s much maligned updates don’t cause many more problems than they do. However, when Microsoft pushes an update that doesn’t fit like a velvet glove, it’s only a matter of time before the phone rings with customers reporting similar issues. Recently, this has happened twice. Will the real USB 4 please stand up? In February, Microsoft released KB503484, which included a few tweaks to improve networking, mobile connectivity, backup and an issue with long-edge…

Ihave just discovered the greatest leap forward in personal security since the taming of the pit bull terrier: there’s absolutely no chance of someone scoping out your password when your keyboard grabs and throws away the first key after power-on. Especially when the device in question gives no indication that the first keystroke from “asleep” has been discarded; instead, it devotes more of its attention to a rolling lightshow of LEDs peeking out from the keycaps than it does explaining that you might want to start over with your password. I only spotted something was up when I plugged it into my Mac Pro. OS X shows you little blobs in the password-entry dialog box, which then shake hilariously side to side to let you know you got it wrong…

Britain has a new unicorn! Sadly the term doesn’t in this case refer to the pointy horse, but something that the British government hopes is just as magical: a tech firm with a valuation of more than a billion dollars. Autonomous driving startup Wayve recently announced that it has secured more than $1bn of investment from companies such as Microsoft, Nvidia and Japanese investment fund SoftBank. It was so significant that a press release from the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology heralded the news as a “vote of confidence in [the] UK economy”, and included a quote from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak saying: “I’m incredibly proud that the UK is the home for pioneers like Wayve who are breaking ground as they develop the next generation of AI models…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Apple MacBook Pro 16in (2023) M3 power from £1,699 from apple.com/uk The M3 chips give the already brilliant MacBook Pro series a boost in games with no sacrifices elsewhere, so power users who are happy with Apple must grapple with the big decisions: which M3 chip, which size of screen, and how much RAM and storage? REVIEW Issue 352, p46 ALTERNATIVES NEW ENTRY Apple Mac Book Air 13in (M3) Both the 13in and 15in MacBook Airs impress for speed, styling and battery life, but the 1.2kg 13in Air wins out of the two for its sheer portability. From £1,299 from apple.com/uk REVIEW Issue 356, p54 Huawei MateBook X Pro (2024) Despite weighing just 980g, this laptop packs a 14.2in OLED panel, 2TB of storage and an 11-hour battery life,…

@bazzacollins What races through your mind when the phone rings at 3am in the morning? Well, forget that. What’s keeping me awake at night is what’s happening when the phone’s not ringing. I’ve reached that age where I have worries at both ends of the spectrum. I’ve got elderly parents, including a dad with his own parking space at the local A&E. And I’ve got a teenage daughter who’s out clubbing until the early hours of the morning. If either of them is in a tight spot at 3am, I want to know about it. Until about a year ago, they would have called the landline in an emergency. In fact, for the final few years of existence, the landline became known as the “nan phone”, because the only (genuine)…

We live in hope. Hope that Microsoft commits to a full new operating system this autumn rather than yet another feature update, as some predict. But most of all we hope that Microsoft creates an operating system that solves our frustrations, stops hitting us with ads and opens up new possibilities. To find out what people wanted from the next iteration of Windows, we asked around. Lee Grant asked his customers. We put out messages on Facebook, Discord and X to discover what our readers desired, and have scattered those suggestions throughout this feature. And we asked our own contributors to share their thoughts. We’ve broken the suggestions into a loose collection of headings to make them easier to navigate – easy navigation, who’d have thought people wanted that? –…

“To quote Steve Jobs from Macworld 2001: ‘Performance, performance, performance.’ Currently on Windows 11 23H2, and it feels/acts slower than Windows 10.” Michael Oglesby “Keep it free.” Duncan Wakefield “Remove the artificial restriction on perfectly good hardware that stopped Win11 upgrades to try to force new hardware purchases… oh, did I say that out loud? An app store that app devs actually want to put their apps in and make it the one-stop shop for apps (not going to happen, I know). Stop asking me if I want an Office 365 subscription or if I want to change browser settings to Edge after every update.” Mike Webster “More of the same – continuing improvements to stability and performance (quiet at the back!) as we’ve seen going through 10 into 11. More of…

SCORE PRICE £569 from store.steampowered.com The Steam Deck offers the best outright gaming experience of the three models on test here. Valve’s SteamOS is much better adapted to handhelds than Windows 11. There’s no fiddling with tiny icons and desktop start menus; everything is slick and well designed for touch/controller operation. Valve has also done a great job of optimising a huge number of games for the Steam Deck, with little or no need to fiddle with controller settings, graphic detail or resolution in most cases. The Steam Deck offers the best battery life of any of the three on test here, too. I was sent the top-end OLED model with the 50Wh battery, which has a claimed battery life of three to 12 hours, depending on the game being…

Norton 360 Premium pcpro.link/norton360 We’ve negotiated a killer deal with Norton. No subscriptions, just a one-off bargain price of £19.99 compared to the regular £179.99 charge. That buys you two years of cover from the powerful Norton Security suite across ten devices. And because it’s the Premium version, you get a host of extra tools. There’s 75GB of cloud storage for secure backups, plus the full version of Norton Secure VPN, both to protect your identity and provide a way of watching British TV while abroad. Norton Parental Control provides tools to see exactly what your kids are up to on their various devices, and you also get GPS location monitoring for Android and iOS. To round things off, Norton Password Manager generates and stores passwords across all your devices,…

Charging up your devices used to be simple: you’d just plug in the right cable, wait an hour or two, then unplug and go. And today, with almost every portable device supporting USB charging, things ought to be even easier. Unfortunately, there’s still considerable confusion. Although the USB Type-C connector has become ubiquitous, the amount of power it actually conveys can vary considerably, depending on which devices and chargers you’re using, and even which cables you’re using. If you want to charge up your devices quickly and reliably, here’s what you need to know. The bad old days The original USB 1.0 standard, as published in 1996, was designed to provide up to 500mA of power at 5V – equivalent to 2.5W. This was enough to drive peripherals such as…

SCORE PRICE 13in/128GB, £666 (£799 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk While Apple’s M4-toting iPad Pro models have been grabbing the headlines, the iPad Air has also seen a major update, including the introduction of a 13in model. At £799, it’s far cheaper than the 13in iPad Pro, while the new 11in iPad Air costs £599. In both cases the price includes 128GB of storage, with 256GB, 512GB and 1TB versions costing an extra £100, £300 and £500 respectively. Picking up the new 13in iPad Air I felt instantly at home. It’s strikingly light for its size at 617g, and is basically a blown-up version of the last-gen 11in Air, with a larger frame but the same 6.1mm thickness. The 12MP rear camera is in the same spot, as are the volume…

Laptops and PCs We run a selection of benchmarks on all the PCs and laptops we test. Where possible, we use a cross-platform test so we can compare Windows and macOS machines, which is where both Geekbench and Cinebench R23 come into play. Both push the CPU to its limit, exposing how well cooled a system is. We run extra tests for Windows systems. We use PCMark 10 to benchmark systems in office tasks, content creation and basic tasks such as web browsing and video calls. We also run 3DMark Time Spy and Shadow of the Tomb Raider as a minimum. We test laptops and PCs that include discrete graphics with a range of games, such as Metro Exodus Enhanced and Dirt 5. For laptops, we test battery life with…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £1,583 (£1,899 inc VAT) from lenovo.com/uk When you reach the 12th generation of any product, you can’t expect revolutionary changes. Nor did I want any, with the 11th gen Lenovo X1 Carbon (see issue 350, p85) winning our most recent business laptops Labs due to its mix of light design, build quality and brilliant ergonomics. By which I primarily mean a keyboard that still beats all-comers. The biggest change as the X1 Carbon turns 12 comes via Intel’s Core Ultra processors. Lenovo offers a range of six, from the Core Ultra 5 125U to the Ultra 7 155H, and two of those six are vPro chips. My test system included the relatively modest Core Ultra 5 135U vPro, and with 12 cores (only two of which…

SCORE PRICE No subscription, £135 (£162 inc VAT) from rabbit.tech What if you could search the web, book a taxi, order a meal or even generate AI images just by saying a command out loud? That’s the promise of the Rabbit R1, a retro chic device that literally puts AI in the palm of your hand. It’s an eye-catching gadget, with a square, neon orange design that suggests the hybrid offspring of an iPod and a Tamagotchi. It’s made of cheap plastic, but what do you expect for £162? On the right side there’s a push-to-talk button for addressing the Rabbit, while the front has a 2.8in touch display, a scroll wheel and a rotating camera for visual searches. There’s also a small loudspeaker on the bottom left side, while…

SCORE PRICE Estimated, £2,166 (£2,599 inc VAT) from acer.com Hot on the heels of the Lenovo ThinkVision 27 3D (see issue 357, p48) I reviewed last month comes Acer’s spin on the same concept. Both are 27in 4K screens that can jump between 2D and 3D modes, allowing developers to view creations on demand. No need for special glasses or VR goggles; just render and go. It’s a marriage of hardware and software, and I’ll tackle the hardware first. One pivotal inclusion is a pair of eye-tracking cameras; here, they sit in the top bezel rather than the bottom (Lenovo’s choice), and they work equally well. The second hardware component is a 3D lens that sits above the panel and projects pixels to the left and right eyes as needed.…

SCORE PRICE 128GB, £416 (£499 inc VAT) from store.google.com If all you want is a cuter, more curvaceous version of the Pixel 8 (see issue 351, p72), the Pixel 8a delivers. Sure, it looks like every other Pixel phone since the Pixel 6, and that means the camera bar so many people hate, but I prefer its symmetry to the camera bump on most other phones. The Pixel 8a also includes two flashy colour options to accompany the standard white and black. I loved the brighter than expected aloe green of my review sample – though some will prefer the more subdued mint green Pixel 8 – and there’s bright “blue bay” on offer, too. The back is plastic, not glass, but the matte finish gives it a premium look.…

Network-attached storage (NAS) may be one of the dullest sounding technologies, but in practice it’s one of the most brilliant. Sure, buying a NAS drive can be an important part of any backup strategy – see Jon Honeyball’s advice this month from p110 – but thanks to the range of apps found on modern NAS devices they now serve a range of uses. For a start, they can save you a lot of money in the long term by replacing subscription services. They can act as your own gigantic Dropbox, allowing you to share files with friends, family and colleagues in a way that you control. That’s particularly useful for photos and videos that you’ve captured over the years. Then there’s the other type of video: films. Load up Plex,…

SCORE PRICE £333 (£400 inc VAT) from morecoco.co.uk QNAP makes so many NAS enclosures that it can be hard to place specific models within the range. The TS-264 comes under the “Mid-range First Choice” bracket, which is QNAP’s way of saying it’s intended for small offices, homes and micro businesses. The “2” tells you this is a two-bay device, accepting up to two 3.5in or 2.5in drives. Inside there are NVMe slots capable of accepting up to two 2TB SSDs, which can be used as storage or an SSD cache for the hard disks. QNAP pairs an Intel Celeron N5095 processor with 8MB of onboard RAM, which can’t be further upgraded. At the back you’ll find an HDMI socket, two 2.5GbE connectors, two USB-A 2 ports and a USB-A 3.2…

SCORE PRICE £400 (£480 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk TerraMaster’s F4-424 looks exactly like a four-bay version of the disappointing F2-212 (see p93), but don’t be fooled. It’s a thoroughly upgraded device, featuring an Intel N95 processor – one of the more powerful CPUs that you’ll find in a NAS at this level. It’s paired with 8GB of DDR5 RAM, which is handy enough, but you can upgrade to a maximum 32GB, though doing so means binning the 8GB SODIMM already fitted. Despite keen pricing, the F4-424 is a nicely designed product. Its four tool-less drive caddies slide in and out smoothly, while at the rear there’s a single 12cm fan – quieter and more effective than two smaller fans. Here you’ll also find an HDMI port, along with USB-C and…

SCORE PRICE £484 (£581 inc VAT) from ebuyer.com The QNAP TS-464 is a mid-range, four-bay NAS enclosure that supports 3.5in and 2.5in SATA drives. It’s otherwise essentially identical to the two-bay TS-264 (see p85), which is no bad thing: it means a strong specification that includes two 2.5GbE network ports, an Intel Celeron N5095 processor and 8GB of RAM. Open it up and you’ll also find NVMe slots for up to two 2TB SSDs. There’s scope for upgrades, too, in the shape of a dual-port PCI-E 10GbE network card and multiple expansion drive options. The TS-464 supports the full range of disk configurations you’d expect in a four-bay NAS, including RAID5, 6 and 10. You can also migrate from a two-disk RAID1 array to three- or four-disk RAID5, giving you…

SCORE PRICE £450 (£540 inc VAT) from printerland.co.uk Synology’s DS923+ is the only NAS in this group that we’ve reviewed before. It won our last external storage group test (see issue 345, p76), so we wanted to see how it compared to a new crop of rivals. Those familiar with NAS terminology might be thrown by the “9” in the model name. In fact, this is a four-bay device, which you can expand with a five-bay enclosure for a nine-disk maximum. Although it looks identical to the DS423+, it’s significantly better specified. For a start, there’s a powerful AMD Ryzen 1600 processor, paired with 4GB of RAM that you can upgrade to a hefty 32GB. This NAS has two NVMe slots. At its back you’ll find one of the two…

This Labs focuses on home and small office NAS enclosures, so it was important to test them with a realistic setup. We chose a mid-spec Intel Core i5-1135G7 Windows 11 laptop with 16GB of RAM. We upgraded it with a USB-C to 2.5GbE adapter, and used a QSW-1108-8T switch kindly provided by QNAP. We tested each NAS with the maximum number of disks fitted. For two-bay devices, we used two 4TB Synology Plus disks, and where possible tested again with a mismatched set comprising 12TB WD Red Plus and 14TB Red Pro NAS hard drives. On four-bay devices, we used four 1TB Seagate Barracuda disks, then re-tested using one of the two-disk pairings. Where a NAS had NVMe slots, we added two WD Black 1TB SSDs and repeated our tests…

If a large proportion of your offices are occupied by ranks of filing cabinets then the move to digitisation is long overdue. The totally paperless office may be a myth, but businesses that significantly reduce their reliance on paper records can realise huge benefits such as increased productivity and big reductions in operating costs. Offices are expensive to rent, so businesses can save hard cash by scanning documents and sending them to a secure storage facility instead of occupying valuable office floor space. Workflow efficiencies and customer experiences can be improved markedly because staff won’t need to waste valuable time searching through filing cabinets looking for crucial invoices or sales records. Scanning offers plenty of other benefits, too. A digital document management system will allow office staff and remote workers…

SCORE PRICE £180 exc VAT from printerland.co.uk Epson’s WorkForce ES-C320W is aimed at small businesses that demand convenience over capacity. As a member of Epson’s family of ultra-compact U-turn desktop scanners, it requires minimal desktop space as it doesn’t need a front paper output tray. In U-turn mode, the scanner sits almost vertically with documents placed in the rear 20-page automatic document feeder (ADF) and ejected into a front stacker. For bulkier documents up to 5mm thick, you pull the release lever out from the side and the body leans back so they pass out of the front slot. Costing less than £200, the ES-C320W is great value. It offers USB 2 and 2.4GHz 11n wireless connection options and claims a speedy 30ppm for colour scans at 300dpi. Unlike the…

SCORE PRICE £162 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com TP-Link’s dual-band EAP683 LR offers SMBs an affordable dual-band Wi-Fi 6 solution with an extra reach. An AX6000 rating makes this currently the fastest of TP-Link’s Wi-Fi 6 APs, with claimed speeds of up to 1,148Mbits/sec on the 2.4GHz radio and 4,804Mbits/sec on the 5GHz radio, which supports high-speed Wi-Fi-6 160MHz channels. The EAP683 LR has four internal aerials for each radio and boasts a maximum coverage of 185m2 – a 32% increase over the cheaper EAP670 (see issue 341, p96). TP-Link doesn’t provide any enlightenment on the reasons for this extra spread, but we can see from the datasheets that the EAP683 LR has a higher transmission power rating on its 5GHz band. It’s also one of TP-Link’s new range of slimmed…

I’d not heard from one of my oldest friends in a long time, but we were recently brought together by our “third musketeer”, and all reconnected over a quality cafe breakfast and some gossip. The reunion went swimmingly – right up to the point where we each described our current projects. It turns out that our eldest member has lately reinvented himself as a bit of a pitch-maker, and for him the new world of ChatGPT has been transformational. What specifically appeals to him is its speed. Previously he would pass briefs onto professional writers, who would then take days or even weeks to produce final copy, during which time his potential investors were receiving a blizzard of other offers. With ChatGPT he can just plug in a few keywords and…

SAVE 33%* ORDER SECURELY ONLINE magazinesdirect.com/PDV/D42Q 0330 333 1113 QUOTE OFFER CODE: D42Q Please allow 28 days for delivery, UK only. Future Publishing Limited reserves the right to limit offers of this kind to one per household. Other great reasons to subscribe… • Benefits of subscribing to the world’s handiest technology magazine include.• Every issue of PC Pro delivered direct to your door.• Get all the tips, product reviews and security updates early. PRINT EDITION £25.99 for 6 months DIGITAL EDITION £21.80 for 6 months Offer closes 4th July 2024. Offer open to new UK subscribers only. Pricing is guaranteed for the first 6 months and we will notify you in advance of any price changes. Please allow up to six weeks for delivery of your first subscription issue (up to…

A few months ago, on a sunny afternoon in the middle of the week, I sat parked up at the supermarket finishing a call with my friend and associate. By some coincidence it was the same friend who introduced me to PC Pro some years ago. The conversation was rudely interrupted by an unmerciful smash and me and my car heading sideways. Not forward. Not backward. Not by much. But sideways. I looked over my right shoulder to see a driver reversing out of the side door. As she reversed, presumably to remove herself from the scene, I hopped out, shaken but not stirred. There I stood, phone in hand attempting to record what can only be described as a slow-speed escape. Startled that there was anyone in the car,…

ON SALE Thursday 4 July Features Photoshop’s AI secrets Adobe has quietly been adding sensational AI features into its professional imaging software, but how do you actually use it? Barry Collins reveals all. Features Build your own Dropbox Stop paying for cloud storage! We show you how to set up your own personal cloud for free, with easy file syncing, secure sharing – and no limits on how much you can store. Features Keep Windows 10 forever Not won over by Windows 11? We explain how to move Windows 10 into a secure virtual machine that you can keep using after an upgrade. Labs High-quality laptops for the right price You no longer need to spend four figures to buy a high-quality laptop with luxury features such as OLED screens…

The right to protest is a very important part of modern society. Amid the various checks and balances that tend to keep everyone moving in the same direction, protesting has always been a vital avenue of expression. One memorable example was John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s week-long “bed-in” at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel in 1969. Each day reporters would come to visit the couple, and report their views on the Vietnam War (among other things). This is exactly the sort of protest that appeals to me, especially if the press can be kept outside while room service remains available at all times. Other protests have taken more sombre forms. In 1963, the Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk Thích Quang Đúc burned himself to death on the street in Saigon, protesting against…