Table of contents for 575 in Computeractive

The Windows wars have been raging on our Letters page. Supporters of Windows 10 have urged Windows 7 users to upgrade pronto. Windows 7’s loyal army counter-attacked with advice on how to continue using it safely. Even XP users have entered the fray (see page 12). Amid the lively debate, it’s easy to overlook another category of users: those who want to use both operating systems. They’re keen to embrace the new features of Windows 10 without losing the familiarity of Windows 7. Nik Rawlinson explains how you can do this in our Cover Feature, giving expert advice on overcoming the obstacles you may face. One way you can get Windows 10 cheaply is through our Software Store, where we’re selling it as a download for £29.99 (visit www.snipca.com/33839). You…

Virgin Media has connected more than one million homes in the West Midlands to gigabit broadband, claiming it’s the UK’s biggest ever roll-out-of-ultra-fast broadband. The service, called Gig1Fibre, will be delivered to premises in Coventry, Birmingham and the surrounding areas, providing speeds of 1,104Mbps (1.1Gbps), more than 20 times faster than the UK average of 54Mbps. On average speeds, downloading a 4K film of20 gigabytes would take an hour. By contrast, downloading it on Virgin’s service would take just over three minutes. The company will send customers a new HUB 4.0 router (pictured) to cope with the faster speeds. However, the service is considerably more expensive than most other packages available, costing from £62a month, which is £744 a year. Gigabit broadband is defined as speeds of at least 1Gbps.…

Amazon ‘Gold’ account is for fools There seems to be a spate of scams in which fraudsters pretend to be calling from Amazon. The scams other readers have reported have involved automated phone callers. In my call, however, an actual real woman told me that my “gold Amazon Prime account” would commence from today and payment would be taken from my Amazon account. She then went on to say that if I didn’t want to go ahead with this account I should press 1 on my phone and a colleague would assist me to cancel the order. Guessing it was a scam, I hung up.Len Faulkner Warn your fellow readers about scams at letters@computeractive.co.uk…

Did Virgin Atlantic give me wrong flight prices online? LEAD CASE Q I had a bad experience with Virgin Atlantic when, after buying three tickets, I made changes to my flight online. I paid the amount Virgin asked, but arriving at the airport I was told £105 was still outstanding. Surely Virgin should’ve made it clear how much the cost was when I paid?Murvel Clarke A Yes, it should have made this clear, and Murvel might be entitled to receive the £105 back. It looks like there was an error on Virgin’s part. In its reply to Murvel, it said that three payments of £184 were initially payable, coming to £552. But it added that the correct amount was £219 per passenger, making a total of £657. The difference between…

Track down missing census records Genealogy is far more than just pushing your tree as far back as possible – it’s also about discovering the lives your ancestors led through the evidence that’s out there. One of the richest resources documenting those who lived between 1841 and 1939 are the official censuses, including the 1939 National Register taken just after the outbreak of World War II. These provide details of where a person lived, with whom and what profession they had. But it will sometimes be hard to find them in specific censuses for any number of reasons, such as a simple misspelling of their name or the fact they weren’t at home when the census was taken. Over time, gaps in your research can widen. Download FT Analyzer to…

What can I use to edit my PDFs? Q My local photography group emails a quarterly newsletter as a PDF. Although useful, it’s littered with blank pages and adverts. I’ve tried using PDFSam (which you have previously recommended), to remove these unwanted elements, but find it very confusing. Is there an easier alternative?Graeme Jackson A One of the easiest ways to do this is using Sedja’s Delete PDF Pages (www.snipca.com/34200). This online service lets you delete up to 200 PDF pages for free. Click the green ‘Upload PDF files’ button, then locate your PDF. You’ll now see all your PDF pages as thumbnails (use the slider, top right, to zoom in or out if needed). To delete a page, hover over it, then click the Delete button. As you do…

I’d like to honour no less than eight people this issue: Festus Emosivwe, Chloe Maylott, Charles Onwu, Victor Ngo, Pinelopi Chatzikonstantinou, Adel Qadir, Molade Fasuyi and Olukayode Adepoju. They formed a gang that scammed BT account holders out of financial details, which were then used to buy thousands of pounds’ worth of luxury goods. According to Hampshire police, this hateful eight used sophisticated phishing tricks to infiltrate around 2,000 BT customers’ accounts, diverting calls and emails in order to gain access to personal information, which was then used to set up fake PayPal accounts. The scam spanned more than two years and clocked up at least £358,345 in fraudulently obtained Rolex watches, designer clothes, jewellery, and TVs. The gang also clocked up an impressive combined sentence of 18 years and…

EARPHONES ❘ £120 from Amazon www.snipca.com/34191 Our minds boggled a bit when Google released wireless earphones under its Pixel brand (see our review, Issue 526, page 24) – pixels being things you see rather than hear. Amazon’s Echo brand is named more logically for this market. Mind you, nothing about the Echo Buds identifies their maker, or suggests anyone thought about making them attractive. They are nondescript black blobs attached to standard silicone tips, with optional ‘wings’ that discreetly lock into the larger part of your ear for a more secure fit. Noise reduction and decent bass for ears of every size Both are replaceable, with three sizes supplied, but we still had trouble finding a comfortable combination. An extra annoyance is that your choice affects how the earbuds fit…

With up to 100 hours of battery life, the wireless GSP 370 is the perfect gaming headset for everyone who wants fantastic gaming sound but needs wireless freedom. Compatible with Windows 10 PCs, Apple Macs, and the Sony PlayStation 4, the GPS 370 is based on the same closed acoustic technology as the award-winning GSP 300. Its integrated digital sound processing enhances the audio, delivering exceptional basss performance and acoustic clarity. Like all other gaming headsets in the EPOS product portfolio, the GSP 370 has a noise-cancelling microphone that minimizes background noise. It can be muted by simply lifting the boom arm. It also has ready-to-use presets that let you choose the right audio setting for different musical genres. To enter this competition, email your address to cacomp@dennis.co.uk with ‘GSP…

Webmail I was getting overwhelmed by all the online email accounts I had. Gmail and Outlook.com were my main two, but I had countless others that I no longer checked. And what I use instead… I decided to close all those long-forgotten accounts (those I could remember anyway) and moved Gmail and Outlook.com into the email client Mailspring (https://getmail-spring.com), pictured. It gives you a simple, easy-on-the-eye interface from which you can access multiple accounts. I don’t know whether it’s better than Thunderbird, because I’ve never used that program. It would be interesting to know what Thunderbird fans make of it. I think they’d be pleasantly surprised by how straightforward it is, not to mention impressed by tools like searching for emails within folders and by date. Tell us why you…

GroupCal Free Android www.snipca.com/34135 Make sure everyone in your family knows where they should be – and when. GroupCal works alongside regular calendar tools, like Google Calendar, to help you manage a shared calendar that mums, dads, kids and grandparents alike can view simultaneously, simplifying the task of working out when everyone’s free for a family event, or when they shouldn’t be disturbed. Opera iOS Free www.snipca.com/34137 Android Free www.snipca.com/34136 This significant update to one of the slickest mobile browsers introduces a new reader mode (see the screenshot) that identifies which pages would benefit from having the clutter stripped out to present you with a more pleasant, cleaner way of consuming information. There are also new tools for recovering tabs you previously closed, even if you’ve done a fair amount…

If you followed our recent three-part series on organising your photos (Issues 572-574), you’ll already know that the built-in Photos app in Windows 10 lets you create impressive video slideshows from a sequence of photos (see Issue 574). However, you can also build up a slideshow over time by adding your favourite photos as you view them. To do this, first make sure Photos is your default image viewer – click Start, type default apps, press Enter, then select Photos under ‘Photo viewer’. When you next open a photo that you’d like to add to a slideshow, click the ‘Add to’ button (top left), then ‘New video with music’ (see screenshot). Enter a name for your video, then select ‘Create a video’. From this point, you can add additional photos…

Add music to your club podcast Podcasts are a great way to engage with your club’s members and attract new ones. If you’ve already created one (we explained how in Issue 548’s In The Club – grab a copy of our 2019 Back Issue CD if you missed it: www.snipca.com/34146), why not spice it up with a bit of background music? There are many online resources that let you browse and download royalty-free music to use in your podcast, such as YouTube’s Audio Library (www.snipca.com/34147) – press the play icon next to a track to hear it, then click the download button to the far right of the one you want to use. Import your background music We’re going to use Audacity (download it free from www.snipca.com/34148) to apply music…

Once you’ve installed either Windows 7 or 10, Microsoft will prompt you to activate it. With Windows 7, you have 30 days in which to do this, after which it will stop working and need reinstalling. Microsoft no longer sells Windows 7 product keys, but you may be able to activate your version using a product key from an old Windows 7 computer you no longer use. However, product keys from PCs that came with Windows 7 pre-installed often can’t be transferred to a new PC. The only way to find out is to try it. If your product key can’t be transferred, you can use a Command Prompt trick to reset the 30-day grace period three times, letting you run Windows 7 for up to 120 days without a…

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I’ve just spent the past few weeks downloading all 5,232 of my photos from Flickr. I know I should have the hi-res originals safely stored somewhere, but I don’t. It’s one of about 400 things in my life I know I should have done, but haven’t got round to. Typing daddy looking silly brings up photos of me gurning in Greece, pouting in Prague and frowning in France I started downloading after reading Flickr’s blog post in December (www.snipca.com/33671), in which it said it needed financial help because it’s “still losing money”. I’d already done my bit to help in early 2019 by upgrading my account to Pro for £5.99 a month. I’d only done this because I hadn’t previously got round to downloading my pics. I fear Flickr’s blog…

Microsoft has released a Windows 10 update that fixes problems with the Search box that have lingered for weeks. The KB4535996 update addresses a bug that saw the Search box appear blank and grey, or just black (see screenshot), making it impossible to type searches. Microsoft said the problems stemmed from it using Windows Search to implement changes to File Explorer, so that suggestions appear as you type text into the box. Thousands of frustrated users first reported problems with the Search box on5 February. Some posted online temporary solutions, including editing the registry to stop Microsoft’s Bing searching the internet using words you’ve typed into the Start menu. Others suggested it could be fixed in Task Manager by clicking the Details tab and disabling then restarting the ‘SearchUI.exe’ or…

The online version of Google Earth finally works on browsers other than Chrome, including Firefox, Opera and Microsoft’s revamped Edge, with support for Apple’s Safari coming soon. Google launched Earth back in 2017, at the same time as closing the downloadable desktop version. It said at the time that Earth was “almost ready” to work on other browsers, but it has taken three years for this to become reality. The reason Earth was previously available only on Chrome (on computers and Android devices) was because it was built using Google’s own Native Client code, which doesn’t work on other browsers. Google has now rebuilt Earth using WebAssembly, a modern code that works in Firefox, Opera and Edge. It’s expected to eventually replace CSS, HTML and JavaScript. At the time it…

WATCH OUT FOR… Android Bluetooth flaw What’s the threat? Acritical vulnerability has been discovered in the Android operating system that could allow anyone within your device’s Bluetooth range to launch a remote attack in order to run malware or take control of your device. Disturbingly, the attack doesn’t require the victim to do anything. All the hacker needs is the device’s Bluetooth MAC address, which can often be worked out through the device’s Wi-Fi MAC address. Those most vulnerable to attack are users with phones running Android 8 or 9, which account for more than half of Android devices worldwide. Android 10.0 isn’t affected in the same way, but attackers can still stop the device’s Bluetooth working. Devices running iOS aren’t at risk. How can you stay safe? The good…

Install Open Shell to add Windows 7 Start menu to W10 I’ve been following the ongoing discussion about the end of Windows 7 and the constant gripes about Windows 10. I repair, service and upgrade computers as a hobby. I’m beginning to wonder if the only people who write to Computeractive are those with concerns about Windows 10. I currently have about 10 computers in stock that I’ve refurbished and upgraded. Each one has Windows 10 installed and been regularly updated without a problem. Perhaps I’ve been fortunate, but I wouldn’t go back to Windows 7. If you want to know why, the answer is quite simple. While I’ve never liked the so-called Start menu that comes with Windows 10, I have installed a free program called Open Shell (www.snipca.com/34157,…

Shopping online and on the high street will soon become safer, but not all customers will like the reason why. From 14 March, banks will have to abide by the EU’s Payment Services Directive 2, commonly known as Strong Customer Authentication (SCA). This requires them to text or email you a code which you must enter to verify a purchase made by a contactless card that’s above 50 euros; or five purchases in one day that in total exceed 150 euros. In one sense, this will prove convenient for shoppers because it lifts the current £30 limit for contactless payments. But many shoppers will find it frustrating to always have to enter a texted code to confirm purchases above 50 euros. The reason we say euros is that, until 31…

I’m struggling to find a family-tree website where I can print a tree that shows everybody on it in chronological order. Can you help? Stuart Baker We’re not aware of any website that does this, but you can create a similar tree using the Family Historian program (£35.99, www.family-historian.co.uk). It lets you pull out both grandparents from their individual trees so they sit next each other. Choose the All Relatives Diagram button to do this. Have a genealogy question for Nick? Email letters@computeractive.co.uk with ‘Grow Your Family Tree’ in the subject line.…

I’m a sucker for logs. Not the wooden type you chop up for firewood, but the ‘tell you what’s been happening with your PC’ type. And particularly the type that helps me spot ways to make my computer better when it’s not quite itself. Recently it’s been experiencing more than its fair share of crashes, so I turned to an oft-overlooked log tool in the form of Reliability Monitor. It’s built into Windows, so you can load it by clicking Start, typing reliability monitor, then clicking ‘View reliability history’ in the results. The blue line on the chart gives you a quick indication of how stable your PC is (10 is perfect, 1 abysmal). Each time a problem occurs (such as a program crashing), your PC’s score will get knocked…

PC ❘ £999 from Cyberpower www.snipca.com/34113 Like a humble suburban house with 3,000 watts of Christmas lights, the Ultra 5 RTX is determined to make something basic feel like fun. In this case the illumination is via low-power LEDs, encircling the three big fans at the front and another at the rear. As well as the conventional glass left side, the front panel is glazed to show off the effect, with air pulled in through full-height vents at the edges. The included remote control lets you pick your mood. A complete and well-balanced PC, with a graphics edge over its nearest rivals An optional liquid-cooling kit would add even more glitter, but the four fans were sufficient to keep the six-core AMD Ryzen Ryzen 5 3600X processor running at full…

TV-STREAMING DEVICE ❘ £199 from Currys PC World www.snipca.com/34173 Nvidia being best known for its powerful gaming graphics processors, it’s logical that it makes a TV-streaming box distinguished from the likes of Amazon’s Fire TV by extra processing power for gaming. This latest model is based on a Tegra X1+ chip, which not only has hardware built in to transcode video formats up to 4K as fast as they play back (up to 60 frames per second), but can also use AI-enhanced upscaling to make ordinary HD content look as if it’s taking full advantage of your sharper 4K screen. Basically, it guesses what the fine detail would look like that’s missing and fills it back in, with generally convincing results. Offers plenty of choice for gamers and TV addicts…

Can you recommend speakers for my TV? Q I have a Bush 40in 1080p TV. Although the sound is reasonably good, we all know the audio on modern sets is not the best. I would like to try improving it, but don’t really want a soundbar. Could I add a set of PC speakers?Neil Howells A You’re right that external speakers will give better results than those built into most TVs. Soundbars do an efficient job of presenting a stereo sound stage without drawing attention to themselves, and you should consider the Creative Stage 2.1 (£80 from Amazon www.snipca.com/34123), a compact bar plus subwoofer, or the Vizio SB362An-F6E (£149 from Amazon www.snipca.com/34124), a larger all-in-one bar with clear and adjustable sound. Both come with remote controls. But a set of…

What was it? Launchedin Japan in 2000, the Airboard was a 10.4in portable LCD touchscreen. Users could watch video from the internet, check their email and browse the web. The 1.5kg device incorporated 802.11b Wi-Fi. Seven years before the iPhone and a decade before the iPad, it was strikingly modern. Why did it die? The Airboard could only connect to its own base station, which in turn accessed the internet using a dial-up modem plugged into a phone line. The 56Kbps connection speed – about 50 times slower than the bare minimum for streaming now – meant video had to be heavily compressed. Although users could select items and enter text on the screen, it wasn’t the kind of responsive multi-touch display we take for granted today. At about £750…

What you’ll need: USB input device; editing software Time required: Two hours Times move on and formats change. Who would have believed, just a decade ago, that video tapes would be obsolete today? The last company manufacturing video players (Japanese firm Funai Electric) shut down its production line in 2016. Fortunately, if you still rely on a video recorder to play back old home movies, you’ll be able to buy replacements for years to come on eBay. However, the same can’t be said for the tapes themselves. A videotape’s expected lifespan tops out at around 25 years, after which it will probably still play, but the contents will be markedly degraded. Worse, tapes produced towards the end of the format’s existence were, in many cases, of lower quality than their…

ANTIVIRUS Turn off ‘Self-Defense’ to uninstall Avast Thank you Computeractive for telling us about Avast collecting users’ data (News, Issue 573, page 9). I’d been having problems with the program, so this was all the excuse I needed to uninstall it and switch (I’ll try Norton next – it always gets great reviews). Uninstalling Avast isn’t easy, as I found out. It turns out the software has a ‘Self-Defense’ mode that prevents malware from uninstalling it. I had to turn this off before I could remove Avast. To do this, click the top-right Menu icon, select Settings, then General on the left followed by Troubleshooting. You then need to untick Enable Self-Defense (see screenshot above) and confirm by clicking OK. That’s the tricky part. It’s then simply a case of…

Creative Pebble Plus £45 from Amazon www.snipca.com/32247 I had always thought PC speakers were a waste of money. The sound from every laptop and PC I’ve owned has been pretty good. But then someone bought me a pair of Creative Pebble Plus speakers as a 70th birthday present. I wasn’t expecting to be impressed, but they have transformed how I listen to music. Thanks to these speakers, I’m much more likely to listen to music online (from classical to rock to jazz) than play my old vinyl. It was only while searching your 2019 Back Issue CD that I realised you’d given the speakers a five-star Buy It review (Issue 559, page 24). As you say, it has a powerful subwoofer that makes music sound fantastic. The speakers were £30…

Moovit iOS Free www.snipca.com/34142 Android Free www.snipca.com/34143 Moovit offers perhaps the most flexible journey-planning tools anywhere, letting you plot complex, long-distance journeys. Alongside train routes, Moovit covers buses, trams and just about any kind of transport you care to name, including ferries, to show you the easiest way to get from A to B using public transport. Best for Complex journeys Citymapper* iOS Free www.snipca.com/34140 Android Free www.snipca.com/34141 If you’re using a mixture of trains, buses and trams to complete your journey on public transport, keep Citymapper handy. It gives you live departure times (including delays) for every part of the journey to take the stress out of wondering whether the current leg will get you where you need to be in time to meet your connection. Best for Multi-transport…

MICROSOFT EXCEL & LIBREOFFICE CALC Quickly resize your rows and columns If our main tip above doesn’t provide the results you want, try resizing your spreadsheet’s cells instead. Select the columns you want to resize by clicking, then dragging your cursor along the relevant column headers. If you want to select only certain columns, hold Ctrl then click the column header of each in turn. Next, move your cursor to the right edge of one of the selected columns so that it changes into a double-headed arrow (see screenshot below), then drag it left or right to reduce or increase the column sizes. All your selected cells will now be resized to match the one you changed. Alternatively, double-click when your mouse turns into a double-headed arrow. The columns will…

What is it? Desktop wallpaper being developed by Microsoft that changes in appearance during the course of the day, so it’s lighter in the morning, darker in the evening. That’s what makes them ‘dynamic’, you see. Microsoft clearly thinks this is an improvement on plain old ‘static’ wallpaper. How will they know what time it is? By knowing your location (if you grant it permission), and adapting to a different time zone if you travel to another part of the world. What kind of images will they show? Many different types, ranging from urban scenes to natural landscapes, with the default apparently being a mountain view. From time to time clouds, stars and birds will appear in the wallpaper, making your desktop feel even more dynamic. The level of detail…

If you’re loading Windows 7 on to a PC built in the last couple of years, you may find it stalls very early in the installation process. This is probably caused by your PC being set up to work only with more recent operating systems, such as Windows 10. To fix this, you need to enable what’s called ‘legacy support’. To access this, restart your PC using the UEFI method explained above. When it restarts, select Troubleshoot, ‘Advanced options’, then UEFI Firmware Settings. Your PC will display several settings. Work your way through the setup screens until you find an option for ‘Legacy Support’ or similar. Read through any help notes that appear on screen and, if one describes a setting that loads a compatibility support module, enable it, then…

Where is my Chrome Omnibox? Q In Issue 570’s Problems Solved (page 65) you answered David Bickell’s question about editing web addresses in the Android version of Chrome. You directed David to type chrome://flags into the Omnibox (address bar). I tried this on my Samsung S10 phone, which is running Android 10 and Chrome version 79.0.3945.93, but I can find no trace of the Search Ready Omnibox option you described. Is your answer out of date or have I misunderstood your instructions?I M Williams A Yes, we’ve been caught out by the vagaries of Google. For whatever reason, the company has now removed this useful flag, rendering our tip redundant. We had quite a few readers write to query this. Of course, we have no control over how, when and…

Microsoft has unveiled a desktop for Windows 10X, its forthcoming operating system for two-screen devices, that removes the Live tiles in the Start menu. The move may be a sign that Microsoft is considering also removing Live tiles from the main version of Windows 10. Live tiles were introduced in Windows 8 to transform the Start screen from a basic program launcher into an interactive ‘dashboard’ of information, showing weather updates, emails, news headlines, and details about aspects of your computer. However, many users find Live tiles distracting, and disable them by editing the registry. The Windows 10X desktop revealed by Microsoft (see screenshot) shows a simplified list of your programs in a grid with icons, rather than tiles. Windows 10X is expected to arrive late this year on the…

You’ll now be told by your broadband and mobile provider when your contract is coming to an end under new Ofcom rules that came into force on 15 February. Companies will have to send you end-of-contract notifications between 10 to 40 days before your contract ends. These can be sent as a letter, an email, or text message (see Ofcom’s example, pictured), and must state when your contract ends, what you’re currently paying, and how much you’ll continue to pay if you stay on the same package. Crucially, the messages will also show the best deals offered by your provider. These must be available for at least 30 days after notification to give customers a chance to consider switching. For mobile customers, these offers must include at least one SIM-only…

Google is urging users to switch to its Chrome browser for safety reasons when people visit the Chrome Web Store in Microsoft’s revamped Edge browser. It’s a sign that Google may be worried about people switching from Chrome to Edge following the positive reception the latter has received since being relaunched in January. Microsoft spent 2019 rebuilding Edge using the Chromium source code that Chrome is based on. It means that you can now install Chrome browser extensions on Edge, making it capable of more online tasks than before. However, if you visit the Chrome Web Store in Edge, you’ll see this message at the top: “Google recommends switching to Chrome to use extensions securely” (see screenshot). The warning suggests there are safety risks in downloading extensions using Edge, though…

Facebook is working hard to shake off its reputation as a serial privacy abuser by launching tools to help you control how your data is used. In Issue 573, we recommended its improved Privacy Checkup tool, which lets you see what information you share while using the site. It followed this with the Off-Facebook Activity tool, which reveals the personal data other websites share with Facebook. The site uses this to tailor adverts to your tastes and interests (Facebook explains how this works at www.snipca.com/34115). To access the tool, log into Facebook, click the down arrow at the top right and select Settings. Click ‘Your Facebook Information’ on the left, followed by View next to ‘Off-Facebook activity’ then click the row of circular icons at the top representing which sites…

Alf King’s letter in Issue 573 (‘Stop comparing Android devices to Apple’) has prompted me to write in favour of Android. In the 1970s, before the age of personal computers, my wife and I went to northern Ghana. We were asked to start literacy for a previously unwritten language and to translate the New Testament. We did this and found that unschooled young people could learn to read and write their own language in about a month. The people were mostly subsistence farmers and therefore any books we produced had to be substantially subsidised. Twenty-seven years after we left, they invited us to come back, because they wanted more translation. I went, but this time it was with PC equipment. However, small books are still too expensive - about £1,000…

For several years I had used some of the cheaper ISPs as, being on a low income, I could no longer afford the ever-increasing prices of Sky or BT. The Post Office Home Broadband and Telephone package worked well for a while, but the connection became increasingly unreliable, and my speeds kept dropping. I then went to First Utility (Now Shell). They were even worse. I was lucky if I went more than a few hours without a dropout. In your News pages I read of an ISP called Zen Internet. I ordered their Unlimited Fibre package, and I’m so glad I did. My speeds have now increased from a pitiful 11Mbps to a whopping 64Mbps with an upload speed of 18Mbps (previously 0.8Mbps). We no longer suffer from dropouts,…

SYSTEM TOOL Open Hardware Monitor 0.9 www.snipca.com/34201 What you need: Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 Knowing what’s going on inside your PC can help you spot problems early and take action before they cause irreparable damage - and with Open Hardware Monitor you can do just that. This small, open-source tool lets you monitor the temperature of each individual core in your processor, as well as the temperature of your hard drive. It also provides a range of other real-time information, including how fast your processor is running, how close to capacity it is and how much memory your PC is using. This version is the first update in nearly four years, adding much-needed support for the latest Intel, AMD and Nvidia hardware, as well as improving the accuracy of…

WARNING: JUNK AHEAD Junk offender: Nvidia I’ve pointed the finger of shame at Nvidia before. The graphics-card manufacturer has a habit of issuing driver updates with monotonous regularity. This in itself isn’t a bad thing, of course. Driver updates can fix security problems and boost performance. But more often than not, new drivers are released to improve support for new PC games. And, worst of all, they’re chock-full of junk. Nvidia updates are usually large and can cause a fair amount of disruption. The latest driver I’m being hassled to install is 530MB and its main function appears to be fixing a bug in the delightfully named Zombie Army: Dead War 4 – a game I don’t (and will never) own. I’m put off downloading it because the installation process…

What is it? Online-based gadgets relyona‘back end’ provided by the manufacturer’s remote server. From time to time, like any other system, this will need planned maintenance or upgrades. If all goes well, that shouldn’t cause any problems. I sense a ‘but’ coming… Your instincts are correct. In February, Google, which owns Nest, tried to update its servers and knocked video storage offline for up to 17 hours. Owners of Nest home-security cameras (like the Nest Cam, pictured), who pay a subscription to record video to online storage whenever motion is detected, found that hadn’t happened. What did happen? With large numbers of users around the world, it was inevitable that for some, the outage would come at exactly the wrong time. “Pls don’t tell me today video history is gone.…

PHONE ❘ €450 (about £377) from Fairphone www.snipca.com/34154 Making smartphones isn’t kind to people or the planet. The electronics use rare materials obtained by often unethical mining operations, and the finished products are assembled in factories in east Asia with pay and conditions we wouldn’t accept here. The devices are hard to repair, and typically replaced every couple of years, creating waste. To address all this, Fairphone, founded in Amsterdam in 2013, aims to “make a positive impact” on the supply chain. This is its latest offering. Its environmental intentions are admirable, but it’s just not a great phone Made in Taiwan, the Fairphone 3 sells at a mid-range price but has specifications lower than budget rivals such as Lenovo’s Moto G8 Plus (£230 from Appliances Direct www.snipca.com/34156, see our…

Find out what other products we liked. Buy our new 2019 Back Issue CD: £15 from www.snipca.com/33711 2019 CD ON SALE NOW! PRICE DROP LAPTOP HP Envy 13 (2019) £1,049 from www.snipca.com/33308 Tested Issue 568 Thanks to eighth-gen Intel processors and dedicated Nvidia MX250 graphics, this sleek aluminium laptop offers a practical combination of all-round processing power and portability, topped off by 8 hours 30 minutes battery life – and the touchscreen is now excellent too. ALTERNATIVE  Dell XPS 13 Gets the most out of Intel CPUs, now tenthgen, but there’s no GPU option and the cheapest sensible configuration is £1,049 from www.snipca.com/33309 PRICE DROP ANDROID TABLET Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 9.7  £319 from www.snipca.com/30707 Tested Issue 501 Now discounted and with a stylus included, this full-size HDR tablet is…

Although I mostly use my laptop, I still have a more powerful desktop PC hiding under my desk that I use when editing videos or doing other tasks that require extra processing power. As you’d expect, the PC is faster than the laptop, but it’s far from perfect. What’s most annoying is that the DVD drive is frustratingly difficult to open (it’s so far under my desk I’m often left fumbling in the dark for the eject button). To solve this, I created a clickable desktop shortcut using the NirSoft tool NirCmd (www.snipca.com/33982), inspired by Will Stapley’s instructions (Issue 574, page 20). When you run the tool, you should type nircmd.execdrom open e: (see screenshot). In this command, ‘e:’ is the drive letter for my DVD drive – use the…

iOS Get unlimited iPhone and iPad storage Capacity is one of the key factors used by smartphone retailers to persuade us to buy a more expensive device. So, wouldn’t it be great if you could use external storage – especially if you didn’t need to pay an online storage service for the privilege? Well, the good news is, you can. iOS 13’s new Files app lets you connect to a NAS drive attached to your router or wireless network as easily as to Dropbox or iCloud. Open it and tap Browse at the bottom of the screen to open your list of configured devices and storage services. Tap the three dots at the top of the screen, followed by ‘Connect to Server’ (see screenshot below left), then enter the address…

WINDOWS 7, 8.1 & 10 Make desktop icons bigger by scrolling Remember the PC and laptop monitors from yesteryear? With relatively low resolutions, desktop icons were nice and big. Not so with most modern computers. Their high-resolution screens result in smaller icons than ever, making it harder to click the right one if your eyesight isn’t what it was. If you want to increase the size of your desktop icons, this simple trick will do it in an instant. Hover your mouse over your desktop, then hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard and scroll the wheel on your mouse. Moving the wheel upwards makes the icons larger (you might be surprised just how large you can go, see screenshot below), while moving the wheel down shrinks them. WINDOWS…

By default, the size of the cells in Excel and Calc spreadsheets are relatively small. While this is fine for numbers with few digits, longer numbers – or chunks of text – may end up being partially hidden. You can double-click a specific cell to view its full contents, but clicking away from the cell will mean the contents return to being partially hidden. By using the word wrap tool, however, you can see the full contents of a cell (or group of cells) at all times. Select the relevant cells (if you want to apply this to all cells in your spreadsheet, press Ctrl+A), right-click the selection, select ‘Format Cells…’, then select the Alignment tab. The next steps vary depending on which spreadsheet program you’re using. In Excel, tick…

If you find your virtual PC is running slowly, you can change the resources allocated to it within VirtualBox. First, turn off your virtual PC, then select it within the VirtualBox window. Next, click Settings (yellow cog icon, top right). You can now use the tabs down the left-hand side of the window to view and change your virtual PC’s resources. For example, click System and drag the slider to change the amount of memory allocated to it (see screenshot). The Processor tab within this section lets you adjust the number of cores your virtual PC can use. Once you’ve made your changes, click OK, then run your virtual PC to see what effect they’ve had. Don’t be afraid to play around with these settings (or those within your virtual…

As we explained in Issue 574’s Cover Feature (page 50), smart TVs have some great hidden features. However, even relatively recent models often drop support for certain streaming services without warning. While this doesn’t make your TV unsafe, it’s frustrating when you discover your TV has lost a feature you previously used. For example, last month a raft of Sony TVs made between 2012 and 2013 stopped providing access to the BBC iPlayer app (see the full list at www.snipca.com/34183), while Samsung TVs built as recently as 2015 (including the JU6400, pictured) have lost support for Netflix (www.snipca.com/34184). We suspect more TVs will follow suit this year. The only way to get these services back is to buy a streaming device for your TV. Google’s Chromecast (£30 from www.snipca.com/34185) lets…

PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT How do I link dashcam to the cloud? Q I’ve purchased a Black Vue DR750S-2CH dashcam. The manufacturer says this can be connected to Black Vue Cloud, which lets one see where the car is situated and the dashcam’s live video feed. It requires Wi-Fi, in-car Wi-Fi or a mobile hotspot. I'm not sure what any of this means. My iPhone 6s does know what the dashcam is seeing but I'm not sure if this is through ‘the cloud’ or Wi-Fi between the camera and phone. Can you help with these terms, as my knowledge is limited. Also, I’m thinking of changing to an iPhone XR, if that’s relevant. John Bell A Let’s start with ‘the cloud’, which is another name for the internet. If we…

1080p Common type of high-definition video: 1920x1080 pixels. 32bit/64bit A measure of how much data a PC can process at once. Most older computers are 32bit, more modern ones are 64bit. 3G/4G/5G Technologies that deliver faster mobile broadband. 4K Video with a resolution of at least 3840x2160 pixels. 802.11ac A standard for wireless networks that allows for much higher transfer speeds than 802.11b and 802.11n. aptX A codec used to compress audio so it can be transmitted over Bluetooth with minimal loss in quality. Bandwidth A measure of how much data can be transferred through a connection at one time. Bloatware Unwanted software built into a new device. Client A program that acts as an interface between PC and server. Codec Short for Compressor/Decompressor. A file that tells a computer…