PC Pro June 2022

As the saying goes, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. In truth, you don’t even think about it. This time last year, with Covid rightly dominating the headlines, the electricity supply was on few people’s minds. Now phrases such as “energy security” are everyday terms, as we belatedly realise how much of Europe has sleepwalked into dependency on Russia’s cheap oil and gas. The inflationary pressure on electricity was already strong before Russia invaded Ukraine, prompting Ofgem to implement a huge price cap increase from the start of April. To quote another saying (or is it a song?), the only way is up. Even the wealthiest of households must now be looking at ways to cut their consumption, and may I humbly suggest we all tweak our computers’ power…

Lee Grant If your PC or laptop needs a boost, repair shop owner Lee has the answer. Many tips are free, some are low cost, and others involve doing nothing at all. Discover his secrets from p26 Dave Mitchell Many businesses still need fast local storage to complement the cloud, and there’s no better choice than a NAS. Dave reveals how to pick between appliances and puts four to the test from p92 Nicole Kobie Could Smell-O-Vision be making a comeback? Nicole talks to researchers from Japan, America and London who are all hoping to bring smell and taste to a screen near you. See p126 Dr Rois Ni Thuama If you think DORA is just an explorer then you could be in for a rude awakening, says this month’s guest columnist. To find out why DORA…

The European Union has announced plans to launch its own constellation of broadband satellites, just as the UK-backed OneWeb system is trapped in a political deadlock. The EU Space-Based Security Connectivity System will likely see thousands of satellites launched into Low Earth orbit, in a similar vein to Elon Musk’s Starlink. The system will “ensure the long-term availability of worldwide uninterrupted access to secure and cost-effective satellite communication,” as well as provide broadband services. And it will use the “latest quantum communication technologies for secure encryption”. “This satellite connectivity will [enable] the command and control of smart grids in the energy sector, it will allow for the secure management of infrastructure, [and] air, rail, road traffic management,” said Sonya Gospodinova, European Commission spokesperson for the Internal Market, Defence Industry and Space. It will…

With the silicon shortage still leaving warehouses empty, what are you supposed to do if you need a decent computer at short notice? According to Google, the answer is to grab that old, knackered laptop from the back of the cupboard and bring it back to life with Chrome OS. Google has launched Chrome OS Flex, the first official standalone version of the operating system that can be installed on Windows PCs and Macs. It follows in the footsteps of Neverware’s CloudReady, which was a self-installable version of the open-source Chromium OS from which Chrome OS is derived. Google bought Neverware in 2021. To install Flex, all you need is a USB stick formatted with the installer software, and then you can boot into it – running Chrome OS either directly from…

The idea behind economic sanctions is that they make it legally, possibly even logistically, impossible to trade with the sanctioned country. And for most of the 20th century they have prevented trade with places such as Cuba or Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In 2022, there could be another force that makes sanctions harder to enforce: crypto. “There’s been a bit of chatter about using Bitcoin to get round the sanctions… and it could,” said Frances Coppola. “Russia’s imposing soft capital controls, but people being what they are, they’re going to find ways around them. And we’ve seen crypto used before for capital flight in places like Venezuela.” Because cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin don’t use the traditional financial system or require governments or banks to function, it makes it much more difficult for authorities…

From electrical grids to the global positioning system, it’s easy to forget the dizzying array of complex systems that make the modern world function – at least, right up until the point when something stops working. This is something that Russia learned the hard way in early March when, in response to the invasion of Ukraine, the United States and Europe quickly agreed to cut Russia off from one of these critical systems: the Swift network that banks use to send money across borders. In just a few keystrokes, it suddenly became significantly more difficult for money to transfer in and out of Russia and, at the time of writing, the hope is that it will frustrate Vladimir Putin to the point where he calls a halt to the aggression. But what exactly…