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I’ve always been fascinated by early maps of countries where large areas have yet to be filled in. They feel like poignant snapshots of human potential waiting to be realised. In my mind, Wi-Fi is the closest computing comes to this tantalising glimpse of the unknown. If you’ve barely touched your router since first plugging it in, then – technologically speaking - you’re standing at the edge of an unexplored continent, compass, pencil and parchment in hand. Splitting your networks across devices is like crossing an unnamed river, filtering your MAC address like hacking your way through untrodden jungle. Hmm, OK, so perhaps I’ve stretched this metaphor as far as it can go without it snapping and hitting me in the face. Setting static IP addresses doesn’t make you David…

Social media is killing the public’s knowledge of folklore and superstitions, the National Trust has claimed. The organisation said that people are more interested in technology than mythology, warning that it will lead to many of the UK’s traditions dying out. It asked the public to share its love of folklore as Halloween approaches, in order to keep it alive for future generations. Jessica Monaghan, the National Trust’s Head of Experiences and Programming, said tales of “white harts, mirrors, water spirits or magpies” help to bring the country together, and allow us “appreciate the layers of history and symbolism in the places we live now”. However, Dee Dee Chainey, author of the National Trust’s A Treasury of British Folklore, said the internet was actually creating a new type of folklore.…

AMAZON LAUNCHES FIRST USB–C DEVICE Amazon has launched its first ever device to work with USB-C – the new Fire HD 10 tablet (below) – meaning it will charge faster and move data more quickly. Priced £149.99, it also has a picture-in-picture mode and improved battery life of 12 hours. It’s available from 30 October – pre-order it at www.snipca.com/32959. We’ll review it soon. BBC TAKES ON NETFLIX WITH NEW iPLAYER The BBC plans to revamp iPlayer next year to challenge the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime. Director-general Lord Hall said the service will contain more box sets and live events, and make shows available for 12 months rather than the current 30 days. It will be the fourth time the BBC has relaunched iPlayer since the service began…

Aberdeen, Derby and Swindon are among the next batch of 29 towns to receive Openreach’s Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband, which can hit speeds of 1Gbps (1,000Mbps). It takes the total of towns and cities due to receive FTTP broadband to 103, following several announcements since February 2018. Openreach, the BT subsidiary that maintains the UK’s telephone cables, ducts, cabinets and exchanges, claims 1.5 million homes and businesses can now get FTTP. It says 22,000 premises are being added every week, though this rate will have to increase for the company to hit its target of 4 million premises by March 2021, and 15 million in 2025. It has hinted that it could go beyond this target after 2025, but only if “the right investment conditions are in place”, which was seen…

WATCH OUT FOR… Hackers turning your PC into a zombie What’s the threat? Hackers have turned thousands of Windows computers into zombie machines (also called ‘bots’) so they can use them to carry out criminal activities. Confusingly, the attack has been given two names: Microsoft calls it Nodersok, while Cisco’s security researchers refer to it as Divergent. Regardless, both agree that it’s fileless malware, which is a type of threat that doesn’t install malware on the victim’s PC, making it hard for antivirus software to detect it. Typically, fileless malware takes over legitimate programs already installed on a PC, though this particular attack adds its own genuine tools to victim’s computers, then abuses them to create a network of zombie computers. This allows them to cover their tracks and evade…

Firm has cashed my cheque but not sent items. Can you help? LEAD CASE Q In July, I bought a number of items from Coopers of Stortford (www.coopersofstortford.co.uk), totalling £44.97. It has cashed my cheque, but none of the items have arrived. I was told it couldn’t find my account, then it gave me a wrong customer account number. Now it isn’t responding to emails and the phone’s always busy. Can you help? Douglas Malleappa A We did help, getting Douglas a refund, after discovering that Coopers had misread the postcode and delivered the items to the wrong address. We had trouble contacting Coopers, so we had to go through its parent company Damart (www.damart.co.uk). After we explained Douglas’s case, Damart phoned him the same day, offering to send the package…

Decipher census reference numbers Reader George J Smith emailed us to ask us to clarify a subject that must baffle many amateur genealogists: census reference numbers. He had the number 20647 265 from the 1911 census, and knew 265 was in a box at the top-right of the page, but didn’t know what 20647 referred to. He hoped we could shed light on his research into censuses conducted between 1841 and 1911. The 1841-1911 records are widely accessible: you can search them and view detailed transcripts for free at FamilySearch.org. To view digital scans of the original pages for England and Wales, you’ll need to subscribe to the likes of Ancestry, Find My Past and The Genealogist (visit www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk for Scottish census information). Learn what the reference numbers mean Census…

I recently spent an entire weekend clearing out my garage. The aim was to create one of those showroom DIY environments. Screwdrivers neatly in ascending order on the wall, nails in appropriate boxes, that kind of thing. But try as I might, I’m just not a tidy person. Within a few weeks, the garage had reverted to a pile of nuts, bolts, wires and general chaos. My digital world is just as disorganised, with my personal files scattered in oddly named folders. But unlike when searching my garage, I can often find whatever I need in a few seconds. I stopped using Windows Search to hunt down files a long time ago: it’s slow and ineffective. Worse still, its index (the database designed to speed up searches) can balloon to…

Q After four years, the keyboard and camera on my Linx 10 are failing, so I need to look for another budget Windows tablet. But all the models I’ve been shown have Windows 10 S installed. I need to access software, such as genealogy programs, which aren’t available in the Microsoft Store, so think I need Windows 10 Home. What can you recommend? Roger Wood A If you’re happy with the Intel Atom processor and limited storage on your 10in Linx tablet, which are basic but should be adequate for simple software, you could upgrade to the Linx 12X64 (see our review, Issue 516, pictured). This is quite similar but with a larger 12.5in screen, runs Windows 10 Home, and can be found for as little as £180 (www.snipca.com/32907) including…

IBM PCjr What was it? Pronounced ‘PC junior’, it was IBM’s answer to home computers. Launched in 1984, two years after the PC on which today’s Windows systems are still based, the simplified desktop aimed to tempt families away from the likes of the Apple IIe and Commodore 64. Why did it die? Pricing, without a monitor, started at $669 (then £475, about £1,500 today), cheaper than Apple but pricier than Commodore. For this, you only got 64K of memory, which was inadequate for many PC programs and limited the display to 160x200 pixels. More memory and a 360K 5.25in floppy-disk drive doubled the price, and full PC compatibility still wasn’t assured. The unique ‘chiclet’ keyboard had square keys with no labels on top, only printed beside them on an…

Email In his Ed’s Letter for Issue 564, Daniel Booth mentioned that he used to email work to himself. I did a similar thing for tasks I needed to do the next day. I would write a reminder, such as ‘Pay tax bill’, in the subject line. It took me ages to find a better way. And what I use instead… Now I use an app called Microsoft To Do (previously Wunderlist). I use the Android version but it’s also available for iOS and Windows. Simply add a task, then tick it off when it’s done. You can also set deadlines and prioritise tasks. To get started, sign in at www.snipca.com/32796 using your Microsoft account, or log in using the Android or iOS app, then click ‘+ New To-do’ (see…

SMS Organizer Free Android www.snipca.com/32974 Microsoft’s text app reinvents messaging by splitting your incoming texts. Personal messages are separated from promotions and transactions; you can hide messages you’ve already read; and reply with a single tap using responses that the app deems most appropriate. Although this is a work in progress, we found it stable and very handy. Adobe Fresco Free (£9.99 upgrade for extra brushes, online storage and high-resolution export) iPadOS www.snipca.com/32960 Adobe has applied everything it’s learned developing image editor Photoshop and brought it to the iPad. Fresco is a natural painting and drawing tool with startlingly realistic paper, paint and tools. Inks really feel like they’re mixing on screen, they degrade as brushes run dry, and smudge if wet, all without getting your fingers grubby. Reverse Image…

Create PDF forms for members to fill in When you want club members to fill a form out, using a PDF is the best choice, not least because it lets you keep control of how it looks. Send a form as a Word document, for example, and it often looks very different depending on the program used to view it. However, standard PDFs aren’t editable, which is an obvious problem for forms that need filling in. Your members will be forced to print it, write their details using a pen, then either send it back via post or scan and email it. To spare your members this rigmarole, instead send them a PDF form with fillable fields. They can type their responses into the PDF, save it then email it…

Problems during the upgrade Make sure you’ve got enough free hard-drive space You’ll need at least 16GB of free hard-drive space when upgrading to the 32bit version of Windows 10 (32GB for 64bit). If you don’t have enough, the upgrade will probably refuse to start, but if you’ve only just got enough it may fail part way through. Check your free space by clicking Start, Computer, then right-clicking the C: drive and selecting Properties. Click Disk Cleanup in the drive’s Properties window to remove junk, then try moving large files (such as videos) to another drive or USB stick while upgrading. Run Windows Update several times Before carrying out the upgrade, make sure that Windows 7 is fully up to date. Click Start, type update and press Enter, then click…

If your iPad is less than four years old, there’s a good chance it will run the new iPadOS. If you haven’t already installed the update, check for it by going to Settings, General, Software Update. Older iPads, including the original iPad Air and the iPad Mini 3 (both launched in 2013), won’t receive the update. This doesn’t mean older iPads are about to suddenly die, but you may find new apps refuse to run on them. Similarly, if updates are released for your existing apps, they may only be available for newer iPads. More importantly, because it’s no longer supported, your iPad won’t receive any further updates from Apple - and that includes security patches. If you plan to continue using your unsupported iPad, we recommend you don’t use…

Q It would be nice to find out where the beautiful images that appear on the Windows 10 login screen were taken. Is this information available and, if so, where can I find it? Doreen Howes A You can see this information by hovering the mouse over the camera icon that appears at the top-right of the login or lock screen when you move the mouse pointer (to activate the lock screen, press Windows key+L). As soon as you click anywhere on the screen, the icon disappears to let you sign in, which may be why you haven’t seen it. However, a bug in Windows can stop the icon appearing. If that’s the case for you, click Start followed by the Settings cog, then Personalization (see screenshot 1). Now, on…

Q I’ve been catching up with my back issues of Computeractive recently, and I would like some advice regarding a tip from one of your readers, Brian Jamieson, that appeared in Issue 548, page 42: “Why I stopped using…. satnav”. In the tip, Brian says that he uses Google Maps for directions while driving, and that his version provides speed limit alerts and verbal warnings of speed cameras. I have Apple Car Play in my vehicle and use Google Maps on my iPhone SE, but I can’t work out how to activate these features. Can you help? Dave Brown A This is still very much an experimental feature, and Google has made no official announcement about it. The upshot is that while some users can see and enjoy speed alerts,…

9 inches Screen size of Microsoft’s new two-screen Surface Neo device - p10 38 Average words per minute people type on a phone - p9 £439 Refund offered to a reader in a British Gas scam - p11 HOW TO USE SNIPCA URLs We use snipcas to turn long URLs that are hard to type into ones that are short and simple. They aren’t websites themselves, which means they won’t be recognised if you type them into Google. Instead, you need to type them into your browser address bar, then press Enter. Doing this will take you to the correct website.…

The NHS is to open a clinic to treat the growing problem of young people addicted to computer games. From November, its Centre for Internet and Gaming Disorders (CIGD) will offer counselling for people aged between 13 and 25. Mental-health professionals will talk to patients via Skype or in person, while GPs in England can now refer addicts to the service. NHS England boss Simon Stevens said the service is in response to “an emerging problem, part of the increasing pressures that children and young people are exposed to these days”. Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones, director of CIGD, said that gaming disorders can have a “hugely debilitating effect” on victims, leaving their families feeling “utterly helpless”. She added: “We are talking about instances where someone may spend up to 12 hours…

Internet use in the UK peaks at 9pm on Wednesday evenings, while 4.45am on weekdays is the quietest time, according to a new survey of how Brits spend their time online. Analysts from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said internet use begins to fall every day at about 4.30pm, as workers get ready to leave the office, before picking up again in the evening when they arrive home. The drop in internet traffic comes earlier on Friday, as workers prepare for the weekend. People also log off earlier during the summer to take advantage of longer evenings. Peak time during weekends is 1pm, while people log off earlier on Sunday evenings in order to get ready for the week ahead. Tom Smith, head of the Data Science Campus at…

Facebook shouldn’t ‘referee’ political debate They say that in an infinite universe everything that can happen does happen. I suppose that explains why for the first time I agree with something Nick Clegg has said. He’s right that Facebook shouldn’t remove so-called ‘fake news’ posted by politicians (News, Issue 564, page 9). As he rightly says, it’s not Facebook’s duty to act as a social-media “referee”. It mustn’t protect us from views that the mainstream media might deem controversial or inconvenient. Here’s a shock announcement to the internet generation who can’t remember a time before Facebook: politicians have always lied. They’ve also always exaggerated, concealed information and made impossible promises. Newspapers in the past reported all this, then let the public make up their own mind. I’m pleasantly surprised that…

Reader Robert Pratt emailed us to point out that Section 75 doesn’t apply to all credit-card purchases. He was responding to Steve Haynes’ case (Issue 563), in which we said that finance companies have to refund customers under the law, just as credit-card firms do. He rightly pointed out that Section 75 doesn’t cover credit issued by a finance company as a loan. For customers to be covered, purchases must be ‘linked’ - ie there has to be a direct link between the buyer, retailer and credit-card or finance company. Providing this exists, most purchases are covered, even loans agreed when you buy an item. You are also covered even if you only pay a minimum amount via credit card or finance. Let’s say you hire a car for £250…

EBOOK MANAGER Calibre 4.1 www.snipca.com/32967 What you need: Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 Calibre is a free, open-source tool for managing your library of ebooks. It lets you download, convert and read ebooks, as well as share your entire library across all your devices. The most striking change in this update is the redesigned ebook reader. In the previous version, it had a sidebar containing navigation tools. We were never fans of this design, so we’re pleased to see the toolbar ditched, reducing distractions and making the whole thing look more like an actual book. You can still access the tools from the old sidebar (for example, to view the contents page, access bookmarks or change the text size) by right-clicking your mouse anywhere within your ebook. As well as…

WARNING: JUNK AHEAD Junk offender: HP Just in time for Halloween, the horrific face of junk once again reared its big, ugly head this fortnight. It’s emerged that HP’s appropriately named Spectre x360 13 laptop (pictured) will come with ExpressVPN software not just preinstalled, but fully integrated into the device – to the extent that the service will appear on the laptop’s taskbar when you boot it for the first time (as explained at www.snipca.com/32986). It also comes with a 30-day free trial of ExpressVPN, after which you’ll need to pay if you want to continue using it. Don’t get me wrong – in this day and age, I think it’s very sensible to have a VPN installed, especially on a laptop that may well end up being connected to…

Computeractive is owned by Dennis Publishing, which employs a team of specialist technical reviewers. You’ll often read references to our benchmark testing, which is a method of assessing products using the same criteria. For example, we test the speed of every PC and the battery life of every phone and tablet in exactly the same way. This makes our reviews authoritative, rigorous and accurate. Dennis Publishing also owns the magazines PC Pro, Computer Shopper and Web User and the websites Expert Reviews (www.expertreviews.co.uk) and IT Pro (www.itpro.com). This means we can test thousands of products before choosing the most relevant for Computeractive. FAIR AND IMPARTIAL Our writers follow strict guidelines to ensure the reviews are fair and impartial. The manufacturer has no involvement in our tests. OUR AWARDS We award…

What is it? By now just about everyone’s familiar with products like Amazon Echo, Google Home and Apple HomePod. With one of these devices sitting in your living room, you don’t even have to think about using a product, it’s just always there, ready to answer questions, set music playing or even turn smart lights on and off. Amazon’s Echo Loop (pictured) does away with the speaker and puts the voice assistant in a ring on your finger. What does it do? Like an Echo speaker, the Echo Loop listens for you saying ‘Alexa’ and then responds. It’s designed to be discreet, so you raise the ring to your mouth and press it to talk, and the reply comes in a quiet electronic voice. What’s the catch? The Echo Loop…

PHONE | £729 from Apple www.snipca.com/32938 Apple’s combination of quality hardware and elegant software makes its smartphones arguably the best to own, but their prices keep rising. Here’s a nice change: the iPhone 11, which replaces the iPhone XR at the bottom of this year’s three-model range, is 20 quid cheaper than its predecessor. “High-quality specs and finish at a starting price that may tempt more to switch” This is an all-glass phone, seamlessly joined by an aluminium frame, and the screen fills the whole front except for the distinctive ‘notch’ containing the selfie camera and facial-recognition sensors. The glass seems very tough. The iPhone 11 Pro (from £1,049), slightly smaller at 5.8in but also available in a 6.5in Max version, looks similar except that its steel frame is shiny…

LAPTOP HP Envy 13 £999 from www.snipca.com/29555 Tested Issue 539 The combination of an eighth-generation quad-core i5 chip and MX 150 graphics makes this an excellent all-round laptop, let down only by the poor colour reproduction of its Full HD touchscreen. Seven-hour battery life is adequate, and it’s nicely made. ALTERNATIVE Dell XPS 13 This premium laptop starts at £1,200, but the best deal is with the brand new quad-core i7-8550 and QHD touchscreen. £1,280 from www.snipca.com/26796 ANDROID TABLET Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 9.7 £350 from www.snipca.com/30707 Tested Issue 501 Now discounted and with a stylus included, this full-size HDR tablet is a better deal than the new Tab S4 (see Issue 540). Apple’s faster £319 iPad with optional £89 Pencil is superior, but lacks microSD expansion. ALTERNATIVE Amazon Fire…

Use DuckDuckGo to create passwords I’ve emailed Computeractive a couple of times asking for more information on DuckDuckGo, so I was delighted to see the Workshop on it in Issue 563 (page 38). It was an excellent introduction to a superb search engine. I’d like to share this tip with fellow DuckDuckGo converts. Just type password 8 into the search box and it’ll give you a unique 8-character password to use (for 16 characters type 16, rather than 8). These contain numbers and letters, both upper and lower case. It can also give you a randomly generated passphrase, which many security experts say are stronger than passwords. Type random passphrase to do this (see screenshot below left). I recently tried it and got ‘walmart bovine dumping cilantro’, which sounds like…

Acer Aspire C24-865 £599 from PC World www.snipca.com/31856 I was interested to read about the mini PCs you recommended in your recent Cover Feature (Issue 561), because I wanted to swap my chunky tower PC for something slimmer. At first I was tempted by the Jetway JBC420 (www.snipca.com/32455), which won your Gold Award, but I was worried that buying all the accessories it needed would be too much hassle. Instead I decided that an all-in-one PC would be better, and found your four-star review of the Acer Aspire C24-865 in Issue 557 (page 23, pictured). At £599 it was just within my budget. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now, and it’s great. The monitor is thin and lightweight, with all the components cleverly housed in a…

Lumi News Free iOS www.snipca.com/32972 Android www.snipca.com/32973 The more you read, the better Lumi understands your interests, letting it serve up only the most relevant content from sources like The Telegraph, The Guardian, BBC and more. Log in using Twitter or Facebook and it will use your interactions there to further refine your news profile. Best For Social-media users InYourArea Free iOS www.snipca.com/32970 Android www.snipca.com/32971 From Reach PLC, the publishers of more than 150 local newspapers, this app should be right up your street. Enter your postcode and it pulls in news from all of the company’s local papers serving your area. Coverage is comprehensive and impressively detailed. Best For Local news Microsoft News Free iOS www.snipca.com/32968 Android www.snipca.com/32969 Log in using the same account you use on Windows, and…

MICROSOFT WORD & LIBREOFFICE WRITER Change font size quicker Getting the right font size in documents isn’t always easy, and having to reach for your mouse to change this in the toolbar can interrupt your work. Using keyboard shortcuts can be much less disruptive. In LibreOffice Writer, highlight the text you want to adjust (hold down the Shift key, use the arrow keys to select the appropriate text and hold Ctrl to select entire words - see screenshot below). Once you’ve made your selection, use Ctrl+square brackets to adjust the size; so Ctrl+[ to decrease, Ctrl+] to increase. In Word, highlight the text as in LibreOffice, but then use Ctrl+Shift and either the comma or full stop key to decrease or increase the text. LIBREOFFICE DRAW Re-order pages in PDFs…

What is it? It’s the point at which quantum computers overtake traditional computers, ushering in a new age of almost unimaginably powerful machines. It may be upon us soon. How exciting. What’s happened? Google published a paper on Nasa’s website saying it has built a processor called Sycamore (pictured) that performed a calculation that can only be carried out on a quantum computer. Surely it could be performed by a normal computer? Technically yes, but it would take even the most powerful super-computers around 10,000 years, by which time most people would get bored of waiting. By contrast, it took Google a mere three minutes, 20 seconds. What exactly are quantum computers? They’re powered by the central theory of quantum physics, which is that an object can exist in two…

If W10 is still refusing to install on your PC, then there’s one more thing you can try – a clean install. This involves wiping your hard drive – including files and programs – so be sure to back up everything (see Issue 564, page 60, for more). Installation is different to an upgrade. Download and run Microsoft’s Media Creation Tool (www.snipca.com/32933), but this time select ‘Create installation media’. You can download W10 to a USB stick (at least 8GB) or an ISO file, which you can burn to a blank DVD. Then continue through the remaining steps. Leave your W10 USB stick or DVD in your PC and restart – the W10 setup should begin automatically. If not, you’ll need to configure your computer’s BIOS to boot from USB…

Email us your problem and we’ll try to help: noproblem@computeractive.co.uk PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT How do I clear out my Gmail inbox? Q I’ve been a casual Gmail user for many years. Recently, I received a warning email – purportedly from Google – telling me that my Gmail storage was almost full. The message included a button that I could click to buy more storage (see screenshot right). Needless to say, I didn’t click it! This has prompted a couple of questions. First, is this message legitimate? When I signed up for Gmail, I’m sure Google said the storage would never run out. Second, if it is genuine, I have no desire to pay for extra storage – so is there an easy way to erase old messages? I know…

Q I use Google Calendar to keep all my appointments in one place. Some time ago, I created a goal by mistake and now it appears on my calendar every day, with no end date. I want to delete it, but I can’t find any option that relates to goals. I can delete individual entries, but because there is no end date, it’s a job that would literally take me forever. I’ve searched online for an answer but can’t find anything that helps – and it seems that I’m not alone! Any ideas? Bob McGechan A We’re not sure what answers you’ve seen online but we can tell you that, once set, the only way to create or delete an entire goal – rather than individual goal entries – is…

Command Prompt and PowerShell? Q I discovered your magazine just a few months ago and now read every issue avidly. I’ve learned a lot already, but one thing I have yet to understand is the difference between Command Prompt and PowerShell. You regularly offer tips that use one or the other, and I’ve never had any problem following either, but I’ve noticed that sometimes in one issue you’ll suggest executing an instruction in Command Prompt and then, in a later issue, I read that the same or similar instruction should be followed in PowerShell. What’s the difference between these two, and when or why should I use one over the other? Robert Stanley A One of the main reasons for this is that old habits die hard! The Command Prompt…

Why won’t PowerToys work? Q I’m having trouble opening PowerToys, as recommended on page 18 of Issue 563. Downloading and installing the program via Microsoft Edge went fine, but when I try to open the program nothing happens. Am I missing some hidden way of accessing the program? My laptop runs Windows 10 Home, incidentally. Stan Plumtree A Well, we suppose it depends what you were expecting. The tools themselves are effectively invisible, so nothing obvious will appear or happen after installation or launch. Instead, you activate particular features by using the keyboard shortcuts we described. For FancyZones, that means holding down the Shift key while dragging and dropping windows; and for Shortcut Guide, you simply hold down the Windows key for a few seconds. However, you can edit how…

10bit HDR 10bit high-dynamic range. HDR means better contrast, greater brightness and more colours. 10bit can store more images than 8bit. 1080p Of the common types of high-definition video, this is the best quality: 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. 720p/1080p/1440p Common types of high-definition video of 1280x720, 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 pixels respectively. 802.11ac A standard for wireless networks that allows for much higher transfer speeds than 802.11n. 802.11ax Wi-Fi standard with speeds up to 10 times faster than 802.11ac. Also called Wi-Fi 6. Add-in Microsoft’s name for tools that can be added to…

Removing backgrounds from photos Wimpy in Guildford or Disneyland in California? Ask a little girl obsessed with fairytale princesses where she’d like to spend her fourth birthday, and you’ll only get one answer. But ask her skinflint father and he’ll say that Disneyland can wait until she’s older (and saved up half the airfare in pocket money). Before I’m accused of being the world’s worst father, I should point out that we visited Wimpy after the main event of the day: two hours in a water park. Amid all the smiles and splashing, the park’s official photographer took pictures of us, saying they’d be available for £20 in reception. “Twenty quid!!”, I gurgled under my breath. I could take better photos for free, I thought, and then proved I couldn’t…

Microsoft has confirmed that the next Windows Update will be called the November 2019 Update, despite being initially scheduled for October. It has yet to announce a release date for the update, but the final version has been released to Windows Insiders for testing. The update is numbered 1909, referring to the year and month (September) when Microsoft hoped it would be finished, before an October release. It will be the smallest update to Windows 10 since the operating system launched in 2015, as Microsoft begins its new annual timetable of a major Feature Update in the spring followed in the autumn by an update mostly containing fixes and performance improvements. These minor updates will be similar to the Service Packs Microsoft released for previous editions of Windows, such as…

BT is recruiting 900 Home Tech Experts to visit customers to sort out problems with their TV and broadband services or set up a new product. Customers won’t have to pay for the visits, which are part of BT’s ambition to “reinvent what it means to provide great customer service”. The service is also available for non-customers, but they’ll have pay £30 an hour. BT also said it will bring all its call centres back to the UK and Ireland by January 2020, a year earlier than originally planned. It plans to introduce regional route calling, putting you through to the nearest available call centre. BT’s scheme appears to be similar to Team Knowhow, the service Currys and PC World set up in 2010 to replace TechGuys. BT boss Philip…

Vodafone has agreed to share some of its network to provide mobile broadband in remote areas that can’t get fixed-line connections from an ISP. In what it calls an “industry first”, Vodafone will share some parts of its unused 2600MHz (2.6GHz) radio spectrum with UK company StrattoOpencell to offer 4G speeds “up to 120Mbps”. However, 2.6GHz is one of the higher frequency 4G bands, which means its signal doesn’t travel as far as lower frequencies, and it struggles to penetrate buildings. It’s likely StrattoOpencell will use the service in specific locations, rather than over a wide area. It will start by delivering broadband at a holiday site in Devon via small 4G outdoor cells. Ofcom welcomed the three-year agreement, saying it “looks forward to seeing how others use our new…

In the recent debate about why many people still avoid the internet, one reason is that the media is addicted to scare stories about the web. On any given day flicking through the papers brings up headlines about dating scams, cyberbullying, hate speech on Twitter, knives being sold on Amazon and lord knows what else. Even people who may be confident about technology can’t be blamed for feeling a little fearful. It’s asking them a lot to suppress all their anxieties in order to join the ‘modern world’. What we need is a more measured debate on the pros and cons of the web. We should treat the dangers in the same way we treat the threats of life offline. We all know that we could be hit by a…

I purchased a Vax Air Stretch Max Pet upright vacuum cleaner from Argos just over a year ago. It came with a two-year warranty if you registered it with Vax. Last week, it developed an electrical fault. It kept losing power intermittently. On investigation it was obvious that the power cord had broken internally at the point of entry to the body of the vacuum. I contacted Vax customer service and spoke to a very pleasant young lady. I had expected to have to arrange an appointment for an engineer to come and replace the power cord. To my great delight she said they would order me a replacement vacuum. I was so surprised I asked her to repeat this. The replacement was ordered immediately and arrived, tracked delivery by…

What can I use to tune my guitar? Q My grandson recently took a little time showing me how he uses his new Amazon Echo smart speaker to tune his guitar. I don’t want to buy an Echo and have it hear everything I say, so could you recommend some tuning software for my PC instead? Paul Brand A Fender, the iconic guitar manufacturer, has a simple online tool that you can use to tune your instrument (www.snipca.com/32978). Select the type of guitar you have, then click the tuning keys on the image of the guitar to hear each note. If you want something that’s a bit more scientific, try the open-source Free Music Instrument Tuner (FMIT - www.snipca.com/32979). Load the program, then pluck a string on your guitar. Assuming…

PC | £500 from Palicomp www.snipca.com/32913 This budget desktop PC comes in a medium-sized case that’s plain and simple except for some decorative cut-outs and a ‘GameMax’ logo down the front. Weak illumination from the rear fan LEDs does little to showcase the components behind the glass left panel, but when you peer closely at what you’re getting for half the price of the classic thousand-pound PC, you might feel a little more excited. “Its plain appearance hides an exciting array of specs for a budget desktop PC” Palicomp has started with AMD’s Ryzen 5 2600 processor – not the more capable 2600X that we saw in the AMD Abyss RYZ6 (see our review, Issue 549, page 22), although if you’d prefer that, Palicomp’s online configurator lets you substitute it…

SOLID-STATE DRIVE | £102 from Amazon www.snipca.com/32924 As SSD speeds zoom beyond the old SATA interface and the 2.5in hard-drive format that went along with it, the new way to fit solid-state storage in your PC is on a little bare circuit board that uses the NVMe standard to connect to the motherboard through an M.2 socket. Some of these drives are already incredibly fast, shifting more than 3GB of data per second – equivalent to copying a terabyte of data (1000GB) in five minutes, or, often more importantly, handling heavy data streams in real time without stuttering. Not all SSDs are that fast, and most aren’t that big: 256GB (a quarter of a gigabyte) is common, because higher capacities haven’t been affordable. This 1TB NVMe drive from Crucial, the…

FITNESS TRACKER | £60 from Amazon www.snipca.com/32965 At two or three hundred quid, a smart watch is quite a big investment. If you just want something that tells the time and takes measurements to track your exercise, and aren’t bothered about adding apps and taking phone calls on your wrist, you can spend a lot less. Fitbit’s Inspire HR brought down the price tag for a fitness band with heart-rate monitoring, and it’s now being discounted from the original £90 (now £74 from Amazon www.snipca.com/31562, see our review, Issue 554, page 29). This tracker from Huawei isn’t quite as elegant, but is even cheaper – as little as £45 from Amazon sellers if you can wait three weeks for it to arrive from overseas – and adds built-in GPS. “An…

Computeractive has recommended several cataloguing programs recently, including LibraryThing (www.librarything.com). I haven’t tried it, but I’d be surprised if it’s better than my favourite program, Metatogger, which has been designed specifically for cataloguing music. It’s completely free, too. When I first downloaded the software, its layout reminded me of Office. That suited me fine, because I like Microsoft Excel and use it regularly. Adding music is easy – just drag and drop a track into the program’s main screen. If it recognises the track, it adds the appropriate information to the Filename, Artist, Title and Album columns. You can edit this if you like. Right-click a column heading to reveal lots of useful options, such as the ability to list the tracks in alphabetical order (see screenshot) and group tracks…

iOS Use the new features in iOS 13 The big news in iOS 13 is Dark Mode, which is quickly gaining support from software developers who are adding dark themes to their apps. Dark Mode inverts the display so that text is primarily white and backgrounds black (see screenshot below), which should be easier on the eyes if you’re using your phone at night. You can enable Dark Mode as part of the setup process and, if you later want to change your mind, open Settings, then tap ‘Display & Brightness’. Tap Light or Dark as appropriate, or use the slider beside Automatic and your phone will switch itself to Dark Mode every day at sunset. However, we’re just as interested in the improved photo tools, which make the triple-lens…

WINDOWS 7, 8.1 & 10 Select multiple items faster To copy, move or delete a number of files in a folder, most people will hold down the Ctrl key and select them using the left mouse button. However, it’s all too easy to accidentally click the wrong files, especially if you’re viewing them as file names rather than large icons. There’s an easier way that involves using your keyboard instead of your mouse. To do this, hold the Ctrl key and select the first file with your mouse in the normal way. But instead of using the mouse to highlight the other files, keep the Ctrl key held down, use the arrow keys to move to the next file, then press Space to select it (see screenshot below). If you…

When you’re entering a lot of text into an Excel spreadsheet, the occasional double space may slip in, especially if you’re pasting text from another source. To remove these spaces, use the TRIM function. Create a new column, then type =TRIM(XX), where ‘XX’ is the first cell containing text you want to tidy up. In our screenshot, we’ve applied the formula to cell B2 and the original text is in A2, so our formula is =TRIM(A2). Now, copy this formula for the other cells containing text. Although this method usually works well, some double spaces may remain. If so, you can then use a longer version of the TRIM formula: =TRIM(SUBSTITUTE(A2,CHAR(160),C HAR(32))) - see screenshot and copy it from our Pastebin account at www.snipca.com/32987. Don’t forget to change ‘A2’ to…