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I know we don’t need yet another TV comedy panel show (surely 587 is enough?), but how’s this for an idea: ask people to imagine what their younger self would have made of tech phrases that have entered the language. There are lots of great examples – ‘block cookies’, ‘take a selfie’, ‘add Bluetooth’ and, as featured in our Cover Feature, ‘stream ripping’. You probably didn’t even realise that by downloading videos from YouTube you were, technically, ripping a stream. But knowing that doesn’t mean it’s easy. There are lots of settings to tweak, formats to select and dodgy tools to avoid. Robert Irvine explains your best options not just for YouTube but for BBC iPlayer and Netflix as well. ‘Sync your passwords’ is another phrase that would have baffled…

Microsoft has announced that Office 2021 will launch later this year, and be priced the same as Office 2019 (£119.99 for the ‘Home & Student’ edition). It will be available as a one-off purchase for Windows and Mac users, and come in 32bit and 64bit editions. It will contain the note-taking app OneNote. Writing online (www.snipca.com/37512), Microsoft said it would support Office 2021 for five years. It added that it doesn’t “plan to change the price for these products at the time of the release”. The news ends speculation that Office 2019 would be the final edition available as a one-off purchase. Microsoft’s long-term strategy is to persuade users to subscribe to Microsoft 365 (Office 365), which costs from £59.99 a year for a one-person account with 1TB of storage.…

MAKE PHOTOS OF ANCESTORS ‘COME ALIVE’ Genealogy site MyHeritage has launched a tool that lets you turn photos of your ancestors into moving pictures. Called Deep Nostalgia, it uses deepfake technology to make static images smile, blink and turn their heads. Visit www.myheritage.com/deep-nostalgia then upload or drag and drop your photo. GET 500GB FREESAT BOX WITH TALKTALK TalkTalk is offering a Freesat 500GB recordable 4K TV box (pictured below) that’s normally priced £199.99 to new customers who sign up to one of its fibre-broadband packages (which start from £29.99 per month). The offer, running until 31 March, doesn’t include the satellite dish and cabling. Read more on TalkTalk’s site: www.snipca.com/37481.…

There are fears that more overseas Amazon and eBay sellers are getting away with dodging tax after HMRC investigated far fewer cases in 2020. A Freedom of Information request shows that between April and December last year it sent just 80 requests to sites for information about sellers, down from 2,684 in the 2019-20 tax year, and 2,317 in 2018-19. HMRC said it had to reallocate resources last year as the Covid pandemic took hold. It moved staff to work on implementing the furlough scheme, forcing it to cut the number of tax investigations. High-street retailers say that this will encourage overseas sellers into thinking they can avoid paying 20-per-cent VAT on items they list online. The National Audit Office estimates that HMRC lost £1.5bn in potential tax revenue in…

FOUR YEARS SUPPORT FOR SAMSUNG DEVICES Samsung has announced that it will provide security updates for its Galaxy phones and tablets for at least four years after release. This is double the previous period - and one year more than Google offers for its Pixel phones. It applies retrospectively to all devices released since 2019, as listed on Samsung’s site: www.snipca.com/37441. 4G COMING TO 579 RURAL AREAS IN UK BT’s mobile network EE is upgrading more than 500 remote locations to 4G as part of the Shared Rural Network scheme. The work will cover 579 areas by the end of 2021 – 333 in England, 132 in Scotland, 76 in Wales and 38 in Northern Ireland – including all 15 of the UK’s National Parks. Read more and see a…

https://duckduckgo.com/app Despite sounding like something from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Global Privacy Control (GPC, https://globalprivacycontrol.org) actually wants to help you avoid Big Brother. Set up by privacy-focused tech firms, it’s a tool that tells a website you’re visiting that you don’t want it to collect any of your data. It’s similar to the Do Not Track system that was popular among users over the past ten years, but was largely ignored by websites because it had little legal clout. DuckDuckGo and others, including Firefox’s developer Mozilla, are more optimistic that GPC will soon have legal backing, eventually forcing sites to stop tracking you. DuckDuckGo already prevents most sites from tracking you, but it believes GPC’s new technology will provide “additional legal protection” to stop sites sharing your data. It has…

Can I get the price difference for cheaper phone? LEAD CASE Q In early January I bought an iPhone SE (2020) from the Currys Clearance eBay store (www.ebaystores.co.uk/currysclearance, pictured). I bought the £290 128GB model, but Currys sent me the £246 64GB phone instead. I decided to keep it because there were no more 128GB phones in stock, and asked for the difference in price to be refunded. However, Currys have asked me to return the phone for a full refund. What are my rights? Mike Beasley A We contacted Currys about Mike’s case and it has now refunded him the £44 difference in price, and apologised for the problems he had getting it resolved. By offering only a full refund, Currys wasn’t ignoring the Consumer Rights Act (CRA). However,…

Find fathers of illegitimate children Reader Roger Hudson has run into an obstacle that many – myself included – have come across. He’s found an illegitimate ancestor, with no obvious biological father to research. While chances of identifying this person may be slim, they’re not impossible. Discover whether your ancestor was illegitimate Sometimes it’s not obvious that your ancestor was illegitimate. Signs include their presumed parents marrying after the child’s birth (the child may be theirs, or the father may have simply adopted the child as his own), or your ancestor apparently failing to appear in the birth records when searching using the father’s surname. This was my experience with my great-great grandfather Frank Howell. The trick is to search for your ancestor under the mother’s surname – Frank Martin…

What can I use for basic video editing? Q I have been using the Photos app in Windows to edit my videos, but it often fails to save my edits. Could you suggest a suitable replacement? Robin Crosher A There are plenty of free video editors, but most involve a steep learning curve. If you’ve become familiar with the Photos app, try something like VSDC (www.snipca.com/37490) – it doesn’t doesn’t offer a huge range of features, but it is very easy to use. Once installed, drag your clips into the main VSDC window, then arrange them using the timeline at the bottom. When you’ve finished, you can export your video by selecting the Projects tab, then clicking Export Project twice. VSDC will prompt you to upgrade to the Premium version…

The whole point of signing up to the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is to send a clear message to marketing firms that you don’t want them hassling you over the phone. Unfortunately, the message seems to have fallen on deaf ears where two particular cold-calling companies are concerned. The two offenders in question are Call Centre Ops, based in Nottingham, and House Guard, from Bournemouth. This pair of persistent pests managed to rack up more than 860,000 unsolicited calls to registered TPS users over a period of several months in 2018 and 2019. In doing so, they blatantly contravened the UK’s Privacy and Electronics Communication Regulations (PECR). Hopefully, the six-figure fines issued to both firms last month by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) will serve to refresh their knowledge of…

LAPTOP | £1,031 from HP www.snipca.com/37388 Chrome truths Although Chromebooks have long been regarded as cheap and simple alternatives to Windows laptops, Google has also sought to carve out a space for more expensive models. This HP Chromebook is one of these, combining a top-of-the-range Intel Core i7 processor with 16GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD and a 1080p touchscreen, as well as an impressive range of connection options (pictured below). The design is sturdy and businesslike, with a silver-coated aluminium exterior. Its expansive keyboard sits between two speaker grilles, all positioned above a spacious glass-coated trackpad. The two sections are joined by a 180-degree hinge that means it can lie flat, though it doesn’t go all the way around to convert into a tablet. At 1.5kg, it’s heavier than…

PHONE | £200 from Amazon www.snipca.com/37412 Best of three The Moto G9 Plus is the best of the trio of G9 smartphones that Motorola has treated us to. First there was the Moto G9 Play (£155 from www.snipca.com/37413), followed by the Moto G9 Power (£200 from www.snipca.com/37414 – see our review, Issue 599) with its whopping 6,000mAh battery. Despite its name, the Plus is only slightly larger than the Power. However, everything else except the battery has been beefed up, so we get a faster processor and superior screen. The screen takes up most of the phone, with a bezel that’s around a millimetre thick all the way around, except for the bottom where it doubles to 2mm. The fingerprint reader is combined with the side power button and the…

Winner of a Recommended award in Issue 598 (page 26), Lindy’s BNX-100XT headphones have advanced noise-cancelling technology for a superior listening experience. They have noise-detection microphones on the earpieces (Feedforward) and inside the speaker driver assembly (Feedback). This hybrid system lets the headphones suppress noise over a wider range of frequencies regardless of the direction of the sound. They’ve also been built to deliver superb quality hi-fi sound using advanced aptX technology, providing deep bass, perfect clarity and crystal-clear treble. Its brilliant Auto Pause feature turns off the audio when you remove the headphones, then resumes when you put them back on. Equally clever is Audio Pass-Through, which you can set to reduce playback volume when you need to hear something important, such as a train announcement. To enter this…

ANDROID Improve your videos using automated tools Filmed something in the wrong orientation? Is your video shaky? You can now solve these problems and more using the video-editing tools built into Android – and the best news is, it’s almost completely automated. Open the video you want to tweak and tap the edit icon (three adjustment sliders) at the bottom of the screen. This opens the frames of your video as a timeline. Swiping towards the centre of the timeline from the left or right will trim off the beginning or end of your video clip. The more interesting buttons are the two that appear just above the timeline. Tapping the curved arrow on the far right (see screenshot below right) rotates the entire video by 90 degrees anti-clockwise. Tap…

WINDOWS 7, 8.1 & 10 Find files in a crowded folder File Explorer may not be as versatile as alternatives such as Q-Dir that let you view files in multiple tabs (www.snipca.com/37513 – see Issue 600, page 19), but it still has plenty of features hidden away. For example, when viewing a folder containing multiple files, you can use filters to show only those that you’re interested in. To access the filters, hover over the column header you want to filter with, then double-click the small down arrow. The filter options available depend on the header. In the ‘Name’ column, for example, you can filter files by the first letter of their name (such as ‘0-9’, ‘A-H’ and so on). Double-click the arrow on the ‘Date modified’ header and you’ll…

Send emails using Google Groups In Issue 600 we explained how to set up a free Google Group account for your club. Now it’s time to use your new group to communicate with club members and organise events. Although some features are reserved for paid-for Google accounts, everything we cover here is available with the free account. Make your email notifications stand out from the crowd When you (or any member) posts a message to your club’s Google Group, everyone else in the group will receive an email notification. To make your club emails stand out, it’s worth adding a club-identifying prefix to their subject line (this will also help members to filter club emails into specific folders). First, log into your Google Groups account with the email address you…

1 Download and install Get_iplayer from www.snipca.com/37404 (click the top EXE file listed). If you see a SmartScreen warning, click ‘More info’ then ‘Run anyway’. Once installed, click the Start button, scroll down and click the arrow next to get_iplayer, and choose Web PVR Manager 1. Get_iplayer’s web interface will then open in a new browser tab 2. 2 Type the name of the show you want to download in the search box in the top-left corner 1 and click Search below. Matching results will appear in the list below 2. To grab videos at their maximum quality, click the Recording tab 3 and enter best in the Recording Modes field 4. You can also choose to download subtitles 5. Click Apply Settings or Save As Default. 3 Tick the…

PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT Why won’t my Bluetooth mouse connect? Q I have a PC, self-built with great help from your magazine, with an MSI 970 Gaming motherboard and an AMD FX-8350 processor. It runs 64bit Windows 10 Pro. Recently I bought a Jelly Comb MS040 mouse with a Bluetooth USB module. It didn’t include a driver, and I cannot install it on my computer. Apparently, my PC does not have a Bluetooth driver. The Bluetooth logo should be in Action Centre and Device Manager but it isn’t. I tried to get a driver from Microsoft, MSI and Jelly Comb, all to no avail. How can I get a driver that works and resolve my problem of getting the mouse to pair? And a keyboard, for that matter? Sidney Butt…

Did you print an incorrect website address? Q I refer to page 69 of Issue 598’s Problems Solved page and the question from Maurice Seamons, about his Lenovo laptop that’s still running Windows 10 1909 (the November 2019 update). My laptop, with Windows 10 Home, is also still on 1909. Your reply to Maurice suggested checking for unresolved problems with 1909 via the Microsoft website at www.snipca.com/36913. However, while that link does show a Microsoft page in my browser, it comes with a ‘404 – Page not found’ error. So, was this a misprint or are there now no known issues with 1909? Derek Saffell A It wasn’t a misprint but it was certainly a misdirection. In other words, while www.snipca.com/36913 was the correct shortcut address, we messed up with…

My family is notorious for hanging on to old junk for long past its usefulness date: household appliances, clothes, magazines, ornaments and much more. My Dad still owns a vacuum cleaner that’s older than I am, my Mum has kept every birthday and Christmas card she’s ever received, and I have stubbornly clung on to hundreds of music tapes, despite having had no cassette player since 2001. “Some people regard using a Yahoo email address like wearing Garfield pyjamas” My hoarding tendencies extend to email accounts, having opened my oldest one – with Yahoo Mail – over 22 years ago. Some people regard using a Yahoo email address in 2021 like admitting to wearing Garfield pyjamas, but I’m not embarrassed about hanging on to the account for old times’ sake.…

SKY HIKES PRICES BY £6 MAX FROM APRIL Sky is increasing its prices for broadband and TV (from 1 April) and phone (from 1 May) by a maximum of £6 a month, though the company says the average rise will be £3. It’s contacting customers between 17 February and 27 March to tell them about the increase. Because this rise is above inflation, you can cancel your contract without paying a fee as long as you do so within 30 days of being contacted. MICROSOFT RELEASES OFFICE APP FOR iPAD Microsoft has finally released an Office app designed specifically for the iPad, containing Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Previously, to use Office on an iPad you had to use the iPhone app, which opened in a separate window. It’s free for…

WhatsApp will prevent users who don’t approve its new privacy rules from sending and receiving messages. If users don’t agree by 15 May their account will be listed as inactive, although they’ll still be allowed to make calls “for a short while”. WhatsApp can delete inactive accounts after 120 days, meaning affected users could be removed in mid September. WhatsApp’s announcement of its new terms in January sparked a backlash as users interpreted them to mean that it would share their messages with its parent company Facebook (as explained in Issue 599, pages 60-61). Millions of worried users switched to rival messaging apps, such as Telegram and Signal. WhatsApp responded by delaying the introduction of the rules, saying it had fallen victim to “misinformation” spread online. It then published adverts…

Narrowly avoided Lloyds scam I got a text purporting to be from my bank (Lloyds) saying that a new recipient had been added to my account, and prompting me to click the link to block this. It was similar to messages I receive when setting up a new payee in online banking, so I clicked it without thinking. This took me to a form asking for my bank details. I decided it would be quicker instead to phone Lloyds, but they told me there had been no such activity, and that the text was a scam. I’m always on the look-out for scams, but was nearly caught out by this one. Stephen Foster Warn your fellow readers about scams at letters@computeractive.co.uk…

We live in a world of ‘computer says no’ bureaucracy, so it was encouraging that John Lewis Finance (JLF) refunded reader John Taylor when it didn’t have to. As we explained in Issue 599, John bought a dinosaur-dragon toy from Magoloft (www.magoloft.com) that turned out to be faulty. The website, which has an Essex address but is owned by a Chinese-based businessman, said that because of the pandemic it wasn’t accepting returns of faulty items. If this really is it’s policy, then it’s breaking the law. It did offer John a half-price refund, but he rightly refused this, and then contacted us when the company stopped replying to his emails. We didn’t have any better luck contacting the firm. There was a glimmer of hope because John had paid for…

I pay for genealogy services like Ancestry and the British Newspaper Archive. Are any paid-for services offering free access during the current lockdown? Kit Shorten The National Archives (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) has waived charges for downloading digital records. Many libraries are continuing to offer the same free online access as before lockdown, letting you access Find My Past and/or Ancestry without payment. Visit www.gov.uk/local-library-services to locate your local online library, then log in with your membership details and search for genealogy services. Have a genealogy question for Nick? Email letters@computeractive.co.uk with ‘Grow Your Family Tree’ in the subject line.…

Revelling in the success of converting Harry Potter audiobook CDs into MP3 files (see Issue 600), I wanted to take things a step further. Having my kids listen to audiobooks via a PC isn’t ideal, not least because when the computer’s on, Minecraft tends to take over. Instead, I wanted to let them stream their audiobooks through our Amazon Alexa smart speaker. Alexa won’t link up with my PC by itself, so I needed to enlist the help of the media-streaming software Plex (www.plex.tv). If you’re new to Plex, Issue 590’s Cover Feature explains how to get it up and running (grab our 2020 Back Issue CD if you missed it – www.snipca.com/37458). I already have the Plex Media Server running on my PC, so adding my freshly ripped Harry…

Q Can you suggest a reasonably priced laptop with a numeric keypad? My daughter works from home, but her work involves inputting numbers, and using the keys across the top slows her down. She doesn’t want a separate keypad as she tends to work on a small area or her lap. Les Owen A You don’t get numeric keypads on laptops with screens smaller than 15in because there simply isn’t enough space in the chassis to incorporate them. However, there are plenty of affordable 15in models available. At the cheaper end of the scale, the HP 15s-eq1540na costs £319 (www.snipca.com/37409), though it only runs Windows 10 S and will be quite slow. Dell has a similarly priced laptop – the Inspiron 15 3000 – with Windows 10 Home but a…

What is it? A video of what appears to be a forthcoming Xiaomi smartphone shows a second screen on the back (pictured), nestled among the usual bank of cameras. See it for yourself at www.snipca.com/37448. What does it do? The screen, which appears to be no bigger than one inch across the diagonal, replicates what’s being shown on the main screen on the front. It’s probably designed to make it easier to take selfies with the phone’s best camera (on the back), rather than inferior front camera. What’s the catch? We’ve seen secondary screens on smartphones before, but they haven’t been very useful since the clamshell days, when a second screen could alert you to an incoming message even if the phone is closed. So can I do without it?…

What you need: Windows 10 Pro Time required: Up to a day Microsoft is putting the finishing touches to Windows 10X, which looks set to be the most interesting new version of the operating system since it launched in 2015. It announced the system in late 2019, initially saying it would be built for foldable devices with two screens. However, it has changed course and now says the system will first launch on single-screen devices. The idea is to give users a simpler version of the operating system, with fewer tools and a more streamlined design (including a new-look Start menu – pictured above right), rivalling Google’s Chrome OS, which runs on Chromebooks. Microsoft has recently released a preview edition of Windows 10X, mainly for developers so they can build…

Bird ID £3.99 iOS www.snipca.com/37422 With spring on the way, many of Britain’s migrating birds will be returning and, if you’d like to know more about what’s feasting on your feeders, Bird ID could be just what you need. Choose an outline shape and Bird ID will list matching species so you can identify them from their plumage. It includes images, call sounds and stats, and is tailored to UK species. Smart Tools Free* Android www.snipca.com/37424 This is a multi-function app that provides everything from clothes-size converters (including for hats), cooking measurement equivalents, fuel-cost tools and QR code-generators, to a flashlight, compass, screen light and bubble level. It’s a useful app to tuck away in a folder, and dig out when you need it. Kneady Free* iOS www.snipca.com/37421 Baking came…

What is it? It’s an internet prank that tricks people into clicking a link that unexpectedly plays a YouTube video of the 1987 number one single Never Gonna Give You Up by British popster Rick Astley. Typically the link would be emailed or posted in an online forum. Hasn’t it been around for years? Yes, ages. It started in 2007 on obscure internet forums before peaking a year later when YouTube put links to the video on its homepage as part of an April Fools’ joke. It was estimated that around 18 million people in the US alone were ‘rickrolled’ that year. Like most web pranks though, it didn’t take long for the joke to wear thin. So why the interest now? Because there’s a new video of the song…

As misleading photos go, Google’s bird image is almost on a par with the Sunday Sport’s exclusive of a London bus half-buried at the South Pole. Anyone who has saved ‘High quality’ photos will know that the quality isn’t the pixelated mess Google suggests. Indeed, we’ve often found it impossible to tell the difference between Original and High quality, while Google itself claimed they were “near identical”. To say otherwise, just three months before it ends free unlimited storage, is breathtakingly cynical, and will further anger those who already feel betrayed.…

More than 29 million people in the UK with an iPhone or Samsung phone may each be entitled to between £5 and £30 compensation if a lawsuit from Which? is successful. The consumer group is suing US processor manufacturer firm Qualcomm for alleged anti-competitive policies that led to “inflated” prices of iPhones and Samsung devices. It claims that the company abused its position by refusing to license its patents to rival processor manufacturers, such as Apple and Samsung, unless they bought a separate licence and paid royalties to Qualcomm. Which? says this allowed Qualcomm to charge Apple and Samsung more than would have been the case had it “behaved lawfully”. This increased costs for phone manufacturers, Which? alleges, which “in turn led to consumers paying higher prices”. Qualcomm said the…

The number of older people gambling online has increased sharply during the coronavirus lockdowns, the Gambing Commission has revealed. New research from the watchdog shows that 17.4 per cent of over-65s gambled online during 2020, up from 12.7 per cent in 2019. There was also a rise among those aged 55-64, from 19.6 to 27 per cent. Overall, one in five adults gambled online in 2020, leading the Gambling Commission to warn of people becoming addicted to sites that make it easy to repeatedly place bets. Nuno Albuquerque, Head of Treatment at UK Addiction Treatment Centres (UKAT), said many people turned to online gambling “as a form of escapism” during the lockdowns. He added: “These sites are not built to encourage gambling once or twice; they offer ‘free’ money or…

I get just 1.9Mbps in Shetland I’m writing after reading about a David Attenborough hologram being used to promote 5G in the home (News, Issue 598, page 9). I’ve lived in Shetland for 25 years and in that time have gone from dial-up to ADSL internet. The difference in speed has been minimal - I can now get 1.5 to 1.9Mbps per second. I pay £38 a month for broadband and phone, which is the biggest bill I have, apart from council tax and food. I feel totally abandoned by service providers and the Government who keep telling me that 95 per cent of all homes are getting super-fast speeds and can stream TV. I can send and receive emails, but it takes some time if they have attachments. I…

I bought Motorola’s One Hyper phone (pictured) on pre-order in May 2020 as part of an offer to get a free pair of the company’s SH012 Bluetooth headphones, which are worth £40. However, the headphones band snapped off at one side when I was pulling them apart to fit over my head. I emailed Motorola and they replied saying they’ll send me a brand new pair. I consider this to be fantastic service because they trusted my word about the fault. I didn’t have to upload any photos as evidence, nor did they ask me to send the headphones back for inspection. Incidentally, the One Hyper (www.snipca.com/37297) is an excellent phone. It has two SIM slots and has 120 fps video for slow motion, making it great for recording and…

FILE VIEWER CSVFileView 2.50 www.snipca.com/37500 What you need: Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 CSVFileView is a brilliant tool from NirSoft that lets you open and monitor CSV (comma separated values) files. If you’re new to CSV files, think of them like spreadsheets, but instead of the data being separated into cells, each value is separated by what’s called a ‘delimiter character’, such as a comma. Many programs output data to CSV files, including several NirSoft tools and programs such as OpenHardwareMonitor (https://openhardwaremonitor.org – see our Workshop in Issue 600, page 40). Once you’ve opened a CSV file, you can set it to automatically refresh (select Auto Refresh from the Options menu). When this feature is switched on, CSVFileView will constantly scan the CSV file you’ve loaded, updating the view whenever…

WARNING: JUNK AHEAD Junk offender: AOMEI Backupper I’m always saddened when a tool I’ve previously recommended starts trying to trick you into installing junk. And so I regret to report that my recent experience with AOMEI Backupper has significantly dampened my enthusiasm for the Singapore-based company and its products. Things started to go wrong soon after downloading the free version of Backupper from www.snipca.com/37437. Run the installer and you’ll almost immediately find yourself having to navigate a screen offering you the “Better Choice” of the Pro Edition. Nudging someone to buy a premium edition isn’t the worst crime in the world, but you’ll need your wits about you to click the Skip button if you want to stick with the free version. Less defensible is the pre-ticked box towards the…

LAPTOP | £270 from eBay www.snipca.com/37375 Low price, high resolution There are a number of laptop vendors who sell directly from south-east Asia. Hong Kong-based Chuwi is one of the most prominent. If you are on the hunt for a bargain, willing to stray from big-name laptop makers, and prepared to buy direct from eBay or AliExpress (www.snipca.com/37376), you can find a reasonable laptop for an incredibly low price. “For the price, it has an astonishing screen, but it runs Windows slowly” Chuwi’s HeroBook Pro+ is a great case in point. It seems extraordinary that you can get a new laptop for less than £270, but while it inevitably falls behind more expensive rivals in terms of specification and performance, it has a great 3K (3200x1800 pixels) IPS screen and…

What do they do? The processor or CPU (central processing unit) is the brain of your PC or mobile device. As processor technology has developed, manufacturers have worked out how to make these smaller, so they can install more than one processor on a silicon chip. When a chip has more than one processor, each one is called a ‘core’. The more you have, the more tasks your PC can carry out at the same time without slowing down. How does it work? The only magic here is miniaturisation. A multi-core processor has two or more processors built on to the same chip. It’s effectively providing your PC with extra brain power, without you having to buy and install more than one processor. What’s more, the cores can communicate with…

TABLET | £509 from Amazon www.snipca.com/37399 Hard case If you avoid having a tablet around the house because you or perhaps younger members of the household are accident-prone, or you just want a tablet you aren’t afraid to carry with you wherever you go, the Samsung Galaxy Tab Active 3 may just fit the bill. It isn’t a cheap, cut-back tablet designed for clumsy kids, but a fully-featured device that should survive being flung in the car, taken on holiday (that’d be nice) and absorbing a knock or three. Samsung claims it can survive a 1.5m drop and being immersed in 1.5m of water for up to 30 minutes. “A rugged device that’ll withstand hard knocks inside and outside the home” While the tablet itself feels strong, it also comes…

LAPTOP Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 £849 from www.snipca.com/37348 Tested Issue 601 Weighing just 1.16kg, this is an excellent lightweight laptop with a great screen and an AMD processor faster than many Intel rivals. It has two USB-C ports, two USB 3.0 ports and a microSD card reader. Battery lasts nearly 16 hours. ALTERNATIVE Dell XPS 13 New Intel CPUs and a taller screen make this a more powerful, all-round slim laptop. Prices start at £1,199 from www.snipca.com/36642 ANDROID TABLET Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 Lite £329 from www.snipca.com/35795 Tested Issue 582 Competing with Apple’s cheapest 10.2in iPad, this slim aluminium tablet comes with an S Pen stylus and a generous 64GB of storage at a reasonable price. It’s less powerful, but a great buy if you prefer Android. ALTERNATIVE Amazon Fire…

Install Microsoft Store apps Windows 10X isn’t built to work with older software, and is designed to run everything full screen, but you can install apps from the Microsoft Store. Work across multiple devices OneDrive, which is at the heart of the system, will synchronise your files to online storage, making it much easier to stop working on one device and pick up again on another. Find things faster The Start menu has been simplified, so there are no ‘Live’ tiles updating in real time. Recently installed programs or recently used files have their own space on the Start menu and there’s a search box at the top. The new Action Centre, to the far right of the taskbar, lets you control many settings, including playing audio.…

TIP OF THE FORTNIGHT Block adverts for Edge in Windows I’m an admirer of Windows 10, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved, so I enjoyed Issue 599’s Cover Feature (‘Remove All Windows Junk’). I like the Edge browser, but I also use Firefox, Chrome and Opera (they all have their strengths). What I dislike though is Microsoft showing me full-screen adverts after updates urging me to use Edge. I already do, Microsoft, you don’t need to nag me! To stop seeing this ad, choose ‘Don’t update your browser settings’. If you select ‘Skip now’ instead it’ll keep coming back to haunt you. You can also get rid of the ‘Recommended - Microsoft Edge’ ad in Windows Search, though it requires a registry tweak. Open the Registry Editor (press…

PanoramaCrop Free* Android www.snipca.com/37425 If you want to create panoramic swiping galleries on social media but only have one photo, this app lets you select the most important part and create a multi-frame panorama. Alternatively, if you have a tall or wide picture that you don’t want to be cropped, you can embed it in a squarer frame that’s better suited to social media. Best For Converting non-panoramic photos Photaf Free Android www.snipca.com/37429 Rather than panning across the landscape, Photaf prompts you to take individual shots. Each one is rendered semi-transparent and moved to the side so you can use it as a guide to line up the next frame. It’s easy to do and very effective. Results can be scrolled in the app and exported to your photos library…

LIBREOFFICE CALC & MICROSOFT EXCEL Prevent random numbers from changing Calc and Excel both let you generate random numbers. The RAND() formula returns a random number between 0 and 1, while RANDBETWEEN(x, y) lets you specify a range for the random numbers (replace the ‘x’ with the lower number and ‘y’ with the upper). What you might not realise is that any cell with one of these formulas will update to display a new random number whenever you re-open your spreadsheet or even just edit a cell within it. LibreOffice Calc includes two additional formulas that let you set cells to have permanent random numbers: RAND.NV() and RANDBETWEEN.NV(x, y) – the ‘NV’ at the end of each stands for non-volatile. To have a cell generate a permanent random number between…

Before starting, sign up for a free Bitwarden account (go to www.bitwarden.com and click Get Started). This process will download your LastPass passwords in an encrypted text file, so it’s vital you permanently delete this when you’ve finished (see Step 4). 1Open your browser, click the LastPass extension 1 in your browser and log in if prompted. Select ‘Account Options’, Advanced, Export, then LastPass CSV File 2. After you enter your LastPass password, a ‘lastpass_export.csv’ file will be downloaded. 2Open the Bitwarden extension 1 (if you haven’t got this, download it for your browser from www.snipca.com/37452). Next, click Settings, then scroll down to the Tools section and select ‘Bitwarden web vault’ 2. 3Log into your vault using your Bitwarden username and password, then click Tools. Select ‘Import data’ 1, then click…

SMS and RCS? Q I’ve heard that RCS is overtaking SMS as a mobile texting app. Can you explain how it works? I understand there is an Android version, and an Apple version for the iPhone. I find it confusing so I would appreciate your explanation – particularly how it works with Wi-Fi. Rob Barnes A SMS, or the Short Message Service, was invented for the earliest mobile phones, allowing users to exchange 160-character text messages. Later, this evolved to become the Multimedia Messaging Service – or MMS – for the sending and receiving of photos and videos. Both SMS and MMS are more or less ‘universal’: it doesn’t matter if you send a text, photo or video from an ancient Nokia phone to a fancy new iPhone or vice…