PC Pro的February 2024目录

There comes a time when everyone hits an intellectual ceiling. For me, it happened at university. I adored Maths as a child, flying through early years, secondary school and A-levels. So it seemed a natural choice for university, only for me to discover that my brain fell far below those of my brightest colleagues when it came to this new, abstract world. I lost count of the times our Geometry professor scrawled a heap of symbols on the huge whiteboard before muttering “the proof is obvious” and wandering off stage right. Ever since, I’ve been determined to persevere even if the going gets tough. Especially when it comes to new technology: I want to embrace it, understand it, get under its skin. I’m not trying to be an industry expert,…

If you had asked any techie in 2007 what the single most important thing you could do to upgrade your browsing experience was, chances are they would have said “download Firefox”. Mozilla’s open-source web browser was a revelation back in the day. It loaded quickly, it didn’t consume your system memory, and its rendering engine obeyed commonly agreed web standards, making it easy to develop for. It was everything Internet Explorer wasn’t. Firefox was hugely successful, with around 31% of all web browser usage in 2009, according to StatCounter. But fast-forward to 2023, and into a mobile-first world dominated by Chrome, Edge and Safari, the future of Firefox is more uncertain than ever – the browser now accounts for only 2.2% of users. This puts Firefox in a precarious position.…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Apple MacBook Pro 16in (2023) M3 power from £1,699 from apple.com/uk The M3 chips give the already brilliant MacBook Pro series a boost in games with no sacrifices elsewhere, so power users who are happy with Apple must grapple with the big decisions: which M3 chip, which size of screen, and how much RAM and storage? REVIEW Issue 352, p46 ALTERNATIVES Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED (UX5304) The perfect 13in laptop? At 1kg, it packs power along with 1TB of storage, a top-quality OLED panel and superb battery life. £1,600 from uk.store.asus.com REVIEW Issue 348, p58 Samsung Galaxy Book3 Ultra Samsung packs everything into this 16in laptop, from a superb AMOLED panel and a slim 1.8kg chassis to a Core i9 CPU and RTX 4070 graphics. Expensive but…

Barry Collins is a former editor of PC Pro and a father of two. They pay no attention to him. @bazzacollins The best bit of parenting advice I ever received was “don’t make empty threats”. If the little tykes are redecorating the lounge walls a daring shade of Crayola, don’t threaten to withhold all their birthday presents, because you won’t do it – and the little baskets know you won’t. It feels like Microsoft could have benefited from watching this episode of Supernanny (or wherever I gleaned that gem from) because every time we near the end of a version of Windows, Microsoft’s threats are emptier than a branch of Wilko’s. “We’re going to end support on such-and-such a date,” warns Redmond. “No you’re not,” the world replies, continuing to…

ChatGPT is a splendid time sink, letting you plot out horror movies starring Michael Stipe and Liz Truss, or practically anything else you can dream up. But it’s a lot more than a plaything to pass a tea break with. OpenAI’s chatbot has a series of formidable features, most of them hidden from those who don’t subscribe to ChatGPT Plus. It’s worth doing, even if only for a month, so you can evaluate the sheer power that lurks here and work out if it could make a difference to your life. ChatGPT Plus can perform hugely sophisticated data analysis, saving you from having to spend time learning how to do it yourself in applications such as Excel. It can tidy up your computer code, your emails or your PowerPoint presentations.…

It’s a well-known maxim in the technology industry that if you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product. We get to use incredible services such as Gmail, Facebook and Twitter for free – and, in return, the big tech firms sell access to our eyeballs to advertisers. But this isn’t always the case. Sometimes, even when we pay for a service, we’re also the product being sold. For example, something that EE, O2 and Vodafone all do, but don’t really like to shout about, is sell anonymised, aggregated data about our physical movements to local authorities, transit agencies and any other companies prepared to sign large enough cheques. And that’s how I came to discover many of the really mad things that Transport for London (TfL) can…

SCORE PRICE £1,083 (£1,300 inc VAT) from hp.co.uk Some trivia to kick things off: did you know that Steve Wozniak only joined forces with Steve Jobs to form Apple after Wozniak’s pleas to his then employer, Hewlett Packard, to build a personal computer fell on deaf ears? This was in the late 1970s, when HP preferred to defend its lucrative calculator business. By 1980 it had changed its mind, producing its first PC, but this targeted engineers rather than the mass population. Even in those early days, so-called luggable computers were starting to emerge. Take the ground-breaking Osborne 1, which launched back in 1981 complete with a 5in CRT display. Admittedly, this weighed 11kg and didn’t include a battery, but squint and you can draw a line between the Osborne…

SCORE PRICE £14,167 (£17,000 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk (code: LN143291) Workstation technology is the pinnacle of desktop PC power, and this month we’re testing a computer that showcases some of the latest high-performance components. Not only is the Scan 3XS GWP TR Ada our first look at AMD’s latest Ryzen Threadripper, back after a hiatus, but also Nvidia’s Ada generation graphics, and it boasts a bevy of PCI-E 5 NVMe storage as well. First, that processor. The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7980X is top of the resurgent range, offering 64 cores running at a base 3.2GHz but with a boost up to 5.1GHz. Scan has chosen Corsair H150i Elite Capellix RGB liquid cooling to eke the most out of this processor. The 360mm version has been installed on the front of…

SCORE PRICE £2,749 (£3,299 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk Readers with perfect memories may remember my reviews of the Acer SpatialLabs View and View Pro monitors last year (see issue 344, p58). If so, you may recall how impressed I was by this pair of 15.6in portable monitors, which allowed you to view CAD-designed objects and games in 3D without any glasses. With the help of eye-tracking cameras, a lenticular lens and extremely clever software, it didn’t simply work – it worked brilliantly. The downside to this arrangement was twofold. One, the price, with even the cheaper View monitor costing £1,199. The second was the form factor: really, this technology either needs to be built into a big desktop monitor (Lenovo has already announced that it plans to sell one next…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £1,416 (£1,699 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk The Alienware m16 R1 isn’t an easy laptop to evaluate due to its customisability. Hurl enough money at Dell and you could build one of the world’s most powerful gaming laptops. Instead, our review unit is the entry-level offering, so while its frame rates are poor compared to the Acer Predator (see p56) and Lenovo Legion 9i (see p58), bear in mind it ships with an RTX 4060 chip. That’s matched with Intel’s Core i7-13700HX CPU, 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a 512GB SSD, and arguably it’s the last that will hold you back. Upgrading to a 1TB SSD costs £50, 2TB £180, and you can go all the way up to an 8TB RAID0 array for an extra £1,119.…

SCORE PRICE £233 (£279 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk The Anycubic Kobra 2 Pro is a significant upgrade over the regular Kobra 2 (see issue 347, p68). The most notable improvement is to printing speed: the Kobra 2 was already fast, with a top speed of 300mm/sec, but the Pro raises this to a swift 500mm/sec. It also includes a faster 1.2GHz Cortex-A7 processor, plus a new tool head with a refined direct extruder and structure, intended to produce smoother prints. Like all Kobra 2 printers, it’s an open-frame Cartesian design, which makes it easy to access your models; it’s educational, too, as all its workings are on display. With a print area of 220 x 220 x 250mm you can make sizeable models. Once assembled (a ten-minute task), the printer…

SCORE PRICE £441 (£530 inc VAT) from storexppen.co.uk Like the Wacom One 13 Touch opposite, the Artist Pro 16 Gen 2 is a drawing tablet – and one with high-end features that will more than justify the price for serious artists. While the first model was a chunky grey affair with built-in buttons, this version has a sleeker, cleaner design, with the controls moved onto a compact wireless remote. This features ten customisable shortcut buttons, plus a programmable circular dial, and it allows you to be productive with both hands as you work. The only visible feature on the tablet is a wrist support beneath the screen. This doesn’t have much in the way of cushioning, though, and it only really helps when you’re drawing on the lower half of…

SCORE PRICE 128GB, £499 (£599 inc VAT) from samsung.com The Samsung Galaxy S23 FE is a real in-betweener. Above it sits the full-fat Galaxy S23 (see issue 343, p70), offering all the bells and whistles of a flagship phone for £849; beneath it the Galaxy A54, a great little handset starting at £449. Samsung obviously believes there’s a demand for a middle-ground option, but is this really a niche that needs filling? While the S23 FE looks a lot like the regular Galaxy S23, it doesn’t have the same premium feel. There’s no Gorilla Glass Victus 2 here – you get Gorilla Glass 5 instead. It’s taller and wider than the S23, which makes it harder to hold in smaller hands, and it’s 24% heavier. The camera lenses stick out…

At the time of writing, you can buy an HP DeskJet 2710e all-in-one colour printer for £27.50. It includes six months of ink subscriptions (HP calls this Instant Ink), looks perfectly attractive and its output is, well, acceptable for the price. But we don’t think you should buy it, and we didn’t include it in this test. You may wonder why. An antipathy towards HP, perhaps? Well, no: we could have easily selected similarly priced machines from Canon and Epson as our example. Or perhaps PC Pro is on a quest to make our readers buy expensive printers? Again, no. We love a bargain as much as the next world’s-best technology magazine. The reason we don’t include such printers is that they’re designed to hook buyers with a cheap price and…

SCORE PRICE £415 (£498 inc VAT) from printerland.co.uk It’s hard to get excited about a laser printer, but Brother’s HL-L9430CDN might just put a hop in an office manager’s step. It’s a big beast, designed for use in small businesses and workgroups, and it comes with a suitable specification. In the base there’s a fully enclosed 520-sheet paper cassette, while the large flap at the front hides a 50-sheet multipurpose feed. Printed pages emerge into a 250-sheet tray on the top. So far, so standard, but the HL-L9430CDN offers direct control through a large 8.8cm colour touchscreen. While many business printers run rather cryptic, unfriendly menus, Brother’s is simple, offering quick access to functions and settings. It’s enhanced with web features, allowing you to access and print from cloud services…

SCORE PRICE £173 (£208 inc VAT) from printerland.com HP’s OfficeJet Pro 9012e is almost indistinguishable from the 9010e we crowned inkjet Labs winner this time last year. It’s a chunky-looking, businessy MFP aimed squarely at home and small offices. While it’s clearly not an enterprise-class device, it’s built to take moderately high use, with a one-time maximum monthly duty cycle of up to 25,000 pages. In reality this MFP is unlikely to print anywhere near that volume, but it’s well set up for its recommended 1,500 pages a month. In its base you’ll find a 250-sheet paper cassette, while on top there’s a 35-sheet ADF. It can print, scan, copy and fax, with direct control coming via a 6.9cm colour touchscreen running a user-friendly menu. It’s hidden slightly on the…

SCORE PRICE £383 (£459 inc VAT) from printerbase.co.uk Canon’s Maxify GX5550 is a single-function refillable inkjet printer with a mission to combine laser-like performance with laser-beating running costs. It’s well specified, with two 250-sheet cassettes and a 100-page multipurpose feed, along with automatic duplex printing. Rummage around the back of the printer and you’ll find a USB and Ethernet port, although you can also connect it to a wireless network. This printer uses a near-identical control panel to the Maxify GX2050, combining a 6.7cm colour touchscreen with supplemental function buttons. It’s a decent system, made all the better here by a stiffer hinge that doesn’t slip backwards when you tap the screen. The GX5550 is bundled with a full set of Canon’s GI-56 series ink bottles. Replacement sets are rated…

SCORE PRICE £341 (£409 inc VAT) from printerland.co.uk HP’s LaserJet Pro MFP 4302fdw looks like the perfect colour laser MFP for a small office. It’s a four-in-one with fax, topped off by a 50-sheet ADF. Both this and the printer are duplex-capable, so you can start a multi-page double-sided copy and go off to put the kettle on. This MFP has virtually no packing to remove – you can just load up paper, join it to a network and install the drivers. Unfortunately, that didn’t go as smoothly as it should have. The touchscreen didn’t confirm whether the 4302fdw had joined our Labs network, and it didn’t respond when we repeatedly tried to print a network report. Shortly afterwards the printer sprang into life, delivering several unwanted copies. We still…

SCORE PRICE £146 (£175 inc VAT) from printerbase.co.uk Lexmark’s B3340DW is a compact mono laser printer, aimed at small and home offices. Its basic and rather clumsy looks are somewhat deceptive, as they disguise a printer that’s a rung or two up from entry level. The B3340DW has a claimed 38ppm top speed and is covered by a three-year warranty once you register it with Lexmark. As the DW suffix suggests, this printer supports Wi-Fi, and can make automatic duplex prints. Its paper handling features aren’t bad either, as there’s a 250-sheet cassette and 100-sheet multipurpose feed. Lexmark even says this printer can handle a 50,000-page one-off monthly maximum, although it recommends a more prosaic duty of 500 to 5,000 pages. The B3340DW has a two-line mono display fixed flat…

SMBs that want their workforce to access data anytime, anywhere and on any type of device should take a “wireless first” approach to their network design. As smartphones, laptops and tablets become their preferred mode of working, staff expect wireless connectivity to be always available, with the majority demanding workplace mobility. Designing a network that assumes most users and end devices will connect wirelessly doesn’t need to be challenging: the technology to handle increased client densities, more demanding applications and greater traffic throughput is already here. Wi-Fi 6 was introduced over two years ago and is very mature, while Wi-Fi 6E – which extends wireless operations into the pristine 6GHz band – has been on the market for over a year. This month, we look at both Wi-Fi 6 and…

SCORE PRICE £598 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com Best known for its excellent security appliances and endpoint protection services, Sophos makes its first foray into Wi-Fi 6E territory with the AP6 420E access point. It teams up the 2.4GHz, 5GHz and Wi-Fi 6E 6GHz bands, supports 5GHz and 6GHz high-speed 160MHz channels and can be standalone or cloud managed. The AP6 420E presents six spatial streams – two each for 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz, with claimed top speeds for each radio of 600Mbits/sec, 2,400Mbits/sec and 2,400Mbits/sec respectively. For a tri-band AP it’s pleasingly compact and yet manages to squeeze in two omnidirectional aerials for each radio and a 2.5GbE multi-gig network port that requires a PoE+ power source. Small businesses that only want one AP will find it easy to deploy…

SCORE PRICE £385 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com Zyxel has been steadily building up an extensive range of 5G NR mobile routers, and the FWA510 is one of its most versatile yet. This desktop unit takes everything we liked in Zyxel’s NR5101 (see issue 338, p103) and claims a doubling in Wi-Fi 6 performance, adds essential 2.5GbE multi-gigabit network ports and teams up its four embedded omnidirectional antennas with an option to add four TS9 external aerials for improved reception. The FWA510 is slightly larger than the NR5101, and the status LEDs have been moved from the front of the unit to the sloping upper surface. These will prove useful as they alert you if an SMS message has been received, use a multicoloured LED to show cellular signal strength and…

I wanted to test the accuracy of ChatGPT, so I asked it a question about something I know a lot about. No, not the law, but the best TV programme ever: Quantum Leap. The show follows formidable physicist Dr Sam Beckett, leaping through time and putting right what once went wrong. I posed a question to ChatGPT about Ziggy, Quantum Leap’s AI with an ego, and ChatGPT informed me: “Ziggy is the AI system created by Dr Beckett’s friend and colleague, Admiral Al Calavicci.” No, she isn’t! I corrected ChatGPT: in fact, Sam created Ziggy. I worry greatly about Quantum Leap misinformation, but I realise the consequences for society of this error are minimal. How about if I were relying on AI to conduct legal research, review contracts or to…

Quantum computers are only just edging into useful existence, but the world isn’t willing to wait for the technology to mature. They’re already being put to good use in finance, energy production and manufacturing – and soon, if all goes well, quantum systems will predict potential flood damage across the UK to help plan mitigations against the impacts of climate change. Multiverse Computing is leading one of 30 projects backed by the UK government as part of efforts to develop quantum technologies for public sector applications. Alongside its partners, Oxford Quantum Circuits and Moody’s Analytics, Multiverse is developing an algorithm to optimise neural network outputs for more detailed flood modelling. This is part of the government’s Quantum Catalyst Fund, a £15 million pot of cash to encourage quantum technologies to…

James Morris On finishing his review of the latest Scan workstation, James emailed us to say, “This system is insane. My own 32-core system is now cowering with insecurity in its presence.” Find out why on p52. James O’Malley Through a handful of freedom of information requests, James managed to find out exactly how Transport for London is using our mobile phone data. Be impressed, if a little scared, by turning to p34. Olivia Whitcroft We know what you’re thinking: there isn’t enough Quantum Leap in this magazine. Fortunately, Olivia sets out to right this wrong as she explains the legal ramifications of using AI on p116. Simon Handby If there’s one person that knows about printers, it’s Simon. This month, he puts 14 inkjets and lasers to the test,…

When it comes to upgrading a phone, it’s not always easy to switch camps. Sure, the new Samsung or Google Pixel may be tempting, but if you’re already an iPhone owner, sticking with Apple is the path of least resistance. That’s not only because Apple makes migration between its own devices easier, but because it has worked hard over the years to lock users into its ecosystem. For example, if you make the switch you may need to pay again to download on Android the premium apps and games you bought long ago on iPhone. And what about the Apple Watch? If you break up with Apple, you’ve got yourself an expensive paperweight wrapped around your wrist. But perhaps Apple’s most powerful lock-in trick is something less tangible: that blue…

Dick Pountain is editorial fellow of PC Pro. He finds the ads on Facebook more hilarious than most of the content. Email dick@dickpountain.co.uk My ideas for this column often come from newspaper stories, and this one was about Meta. Also known as The Corporation That Used To Be Called Facebook, or TCTUTBCF for short. TCTUTBCF has just launched ad-free, subscription-only versions of Facebook and Instagram to comply with a new EU privacy law. That law, first deployed in Norway, prohibits tech companies from forcing users to agree to targeted advertising to use their products. The user must be free “to individually refuse consent to certain data processing operations… without being forced to completely waive the use of the service”. Meta responded by offering paid subscription versions of Instagram and Facebook…

Regulation for R2R As a reader since issue one (nearly 30 years ago!), I read issue 352’s star letter and felt I had to jump to the defence of Tim and Lee. As someone who has been involved with the procurement of computing devices for large enterprises for over 20 years, I would side with Lee on the issue of “right to repair” as an example where regulation (or the threat of) was needed to steer the self-regulating free market in a different direction. I can think of many examples where hardware manufacturers put form or technical aspirations over repairability or environmental considerations or even common sense for the general consumer – Apple and Microsoft being two culprits who only recently have had to change some of their design decisions…

There can’t be a PC Pro reader out there who hasn’t spent at least ten minutes noodling with ChatGPT – or one of its many derivatives, such as the Bing Copilot. While there’s plenty of AI power and much to explore with the free version of ChatGPT, the real power is unlocked when you subscribe to ChatGPT Plus. Not only does that (largely) ensure you can get access to the chatbot during the regular periods of peak demand where the free version is switched off, it also opens up extra features such as plugins and advanced data analysis. Let’s look into those two features in greater detail. Plugins Plugins allow you to combine the intelligence of ChatGPT with third-party sites or services, such as Wikipedia, WolframAlpha or OpenTable. For example,…

Here we’re going to show you how to create a GPT that acts as a virtual assistant for Adobe Photoshop, providing step-by-step instructions on how to perform complicated tasks. It’s just one of many different types of GPT you can create, and the guide below is not intended to be definitive – you’ll need to mould your own GPTs to your particular needs. However, our guide will give you tips on how to create GPTs, how to test they’re working properly, how to provide feedback when they’re not, and how to tweak their performance as you go along. 1 CREATE A NEW GPT To create a GPT you’ll need to be a GPT Plus subscriber ($20 per month at the time of writing). Once you’re in the ChatGPT Plus interface,…

There are countless backup suites for Windows, and we certainly wouldn’t advise against using them. But if you don’t have a proper backup system in place, an occasional drag-and-drop copy provides some quick and easy peace of mind. Naturally, you shouldn’t keep your backups on the same drive as the originals. Consider investing in an external drive: at the time of writing, you can pick up a Crucial X6 1TB portable SSD for £46, or a 1TB Kingston DataTraveler Max USB flash drive for £75. Indeed, once you’ve got your backup drive, there’s no need to restrict yourself to manual copies. Windows 10 and 11 include the underappreciated File History feature (introduced in Windows 8), which runs in the background and automatically backs up your personal data to an external…

So far we’ve concentrated on PCs and laptops, but we’re increasingly using our phones – and, to a lesser extent, tablets – both to capture our lives and keep it safe. But is it really safe if you’re sending data to a cloud service, which you hope will last your lifetime but may not? We don’t think so, which is why we show how to take back control of the data on your mobile devices, no matter what the OS. BACKING UP ANDROID DEVICES Android devices automatically back up your data in Google Drive and Google Photos. To check your backup settings, open Settings and tap Google, followed by Backup. Make sure Backup by Google One is switched on; optionally, tap “Back up now” if you want to perform an…

SCORE PRICE RTX 4080, £2,083 (£2,500 inc VAT) from lenovo.com My first reaction on seeing the Yoga AIO was simple: awe. The metal bar that connects the display to the base makes it look as if the display is floating in mid-air. The 31.5in, 4K IPS panel is just as eye-catching. I couldn’t look away from the trailer for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, with vivid colours matched with detail: I could even see the fake film grain. It backed this up with an excellent performance in our technical tests, reproducing 100% of the DCI-P3 gamut and hitting 503cd/m2 brightness. There’s speed galore here, too, with our review model including an Intel Core i9-13900H processor, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. A multicore score of 13,123 in Geekbench 6.2 hammers…

SCORE PRICE RTX 4090, £3,483 (£4,180 inc VAT) from lenovo.com The Lenovo Legion 9i Gen 8 pulls out all the stops. Its high-end specification would make it a powerful workstation, but as the showy design and a premium GPU indicate, it’s aimed at gamers willing to pay top dollar for a unique set of features. When we say top dollar, we mean it. Our review model, with an Intel Core i9-13980HX processor, 32GB of RAM and 16GB Nvidia RTX 4090 graphics, comes to more than £4,000 including VAT. Lenovo also offers a variant with a 12GB RTX 4080 GPU – UK pricing on that model isn’t yet confirmed, but it will still be well over £3,000. That money buys you both a great laptop but also bragging rights: this is…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £835 (£1,002 inc VAT) from lenovo.com Despite its competitive price – the range starts at £649 inc VAT for a Core i3-1315U/8GB/256GB spec with Windows 11 Home – the E14 Gen 5 is everything a ThinkPad is expected to be. This graphite black laptop has the chrome ThinkPad logo on its aluminium lid, complete with the red-lit dotted “i” that gives it a hint of business elegance. I tested the version with a polycarbonate/ABS cover, but you can choose aluminium. This adds nothing to the price and only 20g to the weight, and the latter is one of this laptop’s most attractive features: 1.4kg with the 47Wh battery, 1.5kg with the 57Wh option. However, with the bigger battery in place, the laptop only survived 7hrs 48mins…

Total value this month £128 O&O Defrag 25 Professional ■ Full product worth £30 ■ oo-software.com REQUIRES Windows 10 or later; 120MB hard drive space; online registration O&O Defrag 25 is a powerful and highly configurable hard drive defragmentation package. At launch it presents a list of all the drives attached to your PC; selecting one displays the usual mosaic-style map of its file layout. Now, click Start, and watch as O&O Defrag reorganises the data to achieve maximum possible performance. This is just the start, though. If you have multiple hard disks, select as many as you like and the program can defragment them all, simultaneously. Optimising your drive not only helps your PC to run more quickly, it can also extend the life of the drive. By restructuring your files…

SCORE PRICE $390 from amazon.com After the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses last month (see issue 352, p71), it’s Amazon’s turn to lure people to wear smart glasses. But only in America. Our cousins are now on their third generation of Amazon Echo Frames, with a collection of colours and frame styles that make the Alexa-equipped glasses far more approachable than before. Prices start at $270, a $20 jump from the previous-gen pair, and there are also premiums for lens and frame styles. The most basic sunglasses cost $330, for example. There are also two separate sunglasses styles designed with Carrera, as I test here, with an accompanying jump in price. Whichever version you choose, the Echo Frames look like a normal pair of glasses. In fact, nobody I met seemed…

SCORE PRICE £667 (£800 inc VAT) from netgear.com Last month we reviewed Amazon’s Eero Max 7, the first mesh system to support the new Wi-Fi 7 standard (see issue 352, p68). Now comes the first standalone Wi-Fi 7 router, a simpler solution for average-sized homes, but that doesn’t mean it’s cheap. At £800 the Nighthawk RS700S is easily the most expensive router we’ve ever tested, and £200 more than a single Eero Max 7 unit. The price difference is partly explained by a much more ambitious hardware specification. Where the Eero advertises peak wireless speeds of 4.3Gbits/sec, the Nighthawk RS700S can connect at up to 5.8Gbits/sec on the 5GHz band, and an enormous 11.5Gbits/sec on the 6GHz band – more than twice as fast as any Wi-Fi 6 or 6E…

Nobody buys a printer or multifunction peripheral thinking it’s going to change their life, but pick the right one and it will certainly make things better. And if you pick the wrong one… let’s just say that it makes sense to cut your losses sooner rather than later. That’s why it’s worth putting in the legwork now. Research, research, research, to paraphrase a former Prime Minister. But with such a huge range of options for almost any size of budget, how do you know what’s right for you? STEP 1 Key features Start by looking at what you’ll use it for. In many cases, buying a multifunction peripheral (MFP) costs little more than a standard printer, and adds the ability to scan and make copies. And if you’re doing business…

SCORE PRICE £208 (£250 inc VAT) from epson.co.uk If Epson’s EcoTank ET-2830 was a normal inkjet we’d be bemoaning its high price and taking aim at a relatively basic specification. We’ll come back to the latter, but the first is explained by this MFP’s refillable ink tanks. The ET-2830 arrives with about 6,000 pages’ worth of bottled ink – enough to see out a year or two of light use in the home. It’s better value out of the box than a comparable entry-level, cartridge-based device. And entry-level the ET-2830 is. It’s a three-in-one, able to print, scan and copy, yet there’s no display, no USB port and no memory card slot. Instead, you get a few buttons and LEDs, and a reasonably appealing and uncluttered design. It offers just…

SCORE PRICE £133 (£160 inc VAT) from viking-direct.co.uk If you’ve ever wished your printer could guillotine paper for you, the DCP-J1800DW might be a revelation. From the outside it’s a typically squat Brother inkjet MFP, but inside there’s a cutting blade, capable of carving each innocent A4 page into two A5 sheets. It may be niche, but it’s brilliantly executed and apparently safe – we couldn’t even spot where the blade is hidden, let alone reach it. Slasher tendencies aside, this is an ordinary three-in-one MFP aimed at home office use. Despite the 20-page ADF on top, it doesn’t support faxing, but it’s reasonably well kitted out. It will turn out automatic double-sided (duplex) prints, and you can share it via a wired or wireless network. Everything is controlled via…

SCORE PRICE £497 (£596 inc VAT) from ballicom.co.uk Epson’s ET-14100 slots in below the ET-18100 in the EcoTank range. It’s a refillable, four-colour inkjet capable of printing up to A3+ media. We’re used to high asking prices for refillable printers, but even so the ET-14100’s price seems steep. At the time of writing, it was only £25 or so cheaper than the ET-18100, a similarly specified six-ink printer that’s focused more sharply on photo printing. It’s hard to work out exactly who the ET-14100 is for. Epson says it’s aimed at small and home offices, but it’s thin on office-orientated features. There’s no automatic duplexing, for example, and it uses dye-based inks rather than the pigmented ones. The ET-14100 arrives with enough ink to print a claimed 6,400 black or…

SCORE PRICE £612 (£735 inc VAT) from printerland.co.uk HP’s LaserJet Enterprise 5700dn ought to have walked this group test. As the name suggests, it’s a large, enterprise-ready colour laser, full of power features such as HP Wolf Security, cloud-connected HP Workpath apps, and compatibility with HP’s Open Extensibility Platform. In the base it has a 550-sheet paper tray, while on top there’s a 250-sheet output bin. It’s built to work, with an 80,000-page one-time monthly maximum, and a recommended duty cycle of up to 10,000 sheets a month. The 5700dn is arranged sideways, with paper loaded and ejected with a landscape orientation relative to the user. That means its 100-sheet multipurpose feed is at the side, placing limits on where you can position it. You can choose from nine colours…

SCORE PRICE £221 (£265 inc VAT) from printerbase.co.uk We’re quite used to Xerox printers winning laser shootouts, but in recent months its form seems to have deserted it. Witness the C230DN, a colour laser printer aimed at small offices and workgroups. It’s not especially fast, with a claimed 22ppm top speed in black or colour, but it still comes with duplex printing, plus wired and wireless networking. The C230DN sits a class below the C310DN we reviewed in last year’s printers group test, but it shares its slightly disappointing paper tray configuration. There’s a 250-sheet cassette in the base, but only a single-page bypass slot for headed or special media. Behind the front flap you’ll find a set of four consumables, each combining toner and an imaging drum. You get…

SCORE PRICE 2-pack, £540 exc VAT from amazon.co.uk Asus’ main focus has traditionally been on consumer networking and wireless products, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t interested in businesses. Far from it, as its ExpertWiFi EBM68 and AiMesh system is aimed squarely at SMBs that want secure Wi-Fi 6 networks that can be swiftly expanded on demand. This AX7800 tri-band access point (AP) claims speeds of 600Mbits/sec on its 2.4GHz radio, 2,402Mbits/sec on the first 5GHz radio and a whopping 4,804Mbits/sec on the second 5GHz radio. The latter provides a dedicated 4x4 MU-MIMO backhaul connection for meshed APs, while users get 2x2 MU-MIMO services on the other two radios. Individual EBM68 units cost £290, and we reviewed the two-pack version which is priced at £540. This is only slightly less…

SCORE PRICE £369 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com The WAX640S-6E is Zyxel’s premium wireless access point (AP) and targets dense environments such as large offices, campuses and convention centres. This solidly built AXE7800-rated AP has a lot to offer as it combines the 2.4GHz, 5GHz and Wi-Fi 6E 6GHz bands, supports 5GHz and 6GHz high-speed 160MHz channels and employs Zyxel’s smart antenna array that automatically detects whether it’s wall- or ceiling-mounted. The WAX640S-6E presents eight spatial streams – two each for 2.4GHz and 5GHz, while the 6GHz radio gets the lion’s share of four streams. The AP’s main 2.5GbE port requires an 802.3bt PoE++ power source and there’s an extra gigabit LAN port for networking other wired devices. Three management choices are available. The WAX640S-6E can be run in standalone mode…

IT managers have to deal with all sorts of issues, from hardware provisioning to remote security, but sometimes the biggest challenge is working with your own senior leadership. The idea of the “C-suite” is that its inhabitants aren’t just good at your business – they’re good at business in the general sense, with wisdom to enrich any company they choose to work with. This explains why relatively small, fairly similar groups of people across many diverse business types and sizes get to command far more decision-making power and budget authority than their experience or job history might seem to justify. They’re not all the same, though. The CEO, or chief executive officer, is the real boss. He or she may also be called the MD in the UK, or the…

It was one of those conversations that started going down the rabbit hole remarkably quickly. While propping up the bar with a pint, my friend was asking me why his new Wi-Fi installation wasn’t any faster than the previous one. I probably should have downed my pint and run, but he’s a good mate and it would have been rude. After all, he was in the process of buying me another beer. What, I asked, had happened? He had decided that he wasn’t happy with the speed of his ISP-supplied router, which had built in Wi-Fi, and so had gone and bought a shiny new Wi-Fi unit. It’s a mesh design from a well-known vendor, but he had bought one unit to get started with. He could always add more…

As I write these words, Black Friday (soup maker and a pair of Superdry vegan hi-tops, if you must know) and Cyber Monday are fast approaching. I mention this because, while cybercriminals don’t need an excuse to be cybercriming, the holiday season is correctly regarded as a prime-time threat. Think about it: people are looking for bargains and stores are marketing them. Most of us are looking forward to some time off and winding down for just that. And delivery activity is ramping up, together with the number of missed parcel alerts. You’ve probably already started joining the threat dots here. Fraud shoots through the roof during such a time, especially when talking about an extended period from mid-November until the New Year. The most immediate threat you think of…

Hybrid quantum computing could have a particularly big impact on healthcare, with Professor Katherine Royse stating at an IBM event that drug discovery, diagnosis and vaccine creation can all be made quicker through techniques available today. Professor Royse, who is director of the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s Hartree Centre, says this isn’t theory. “For drug discovery, for example, we are finding that it is picking molecules better than a classic system would do,” she said, referring to a mix of IBM’s quantum computers, classical high-performance computing and AI. Although she emphasised that all this work was still at the proof-of-concept stage, she added that hybrid quantum computing was also producing results in cancer diagnosis – detecting not only that cancer was present but what type of cancer it was,…

Features CES 2024 The team select their highlights from the world’s biggest tech show, giving a taster of the technological treats in store this year. Features Secure your house with a Pi We reveal how, with a variety of Raspberry Pis, some inexpensive add-ons and your wireless home network, you can design a security system that exactly meets your needs. Features Deep dive: Windows Defender We dig into the power-user features that let you take full control of your protection, and ask if there’s still a place for third-party security. Labs Linux distros The untimely demise of Windows 10 is pushing many people to try Linux, and we say: don’t be afraid. There are some fantastic distros to choose from, and our Labs tests reveals their strengths and weaknesses. Retro…

Here’s a scenario that may sound familiar. An industry in turmoil due to a Big Change, with the market rapidly switching to new technology. Small, nippy companies native to this new tech are emerging while the big players are acting like dinosaurs in their slow, clumsy attempts to adapt to a new business reality. For once, I’m not talking about IT. I’m talking about cars. The shift to electric is happening in real-time, and the vendors are struggling. Things are so bad that, a few months ago, Volkswagen started a three-year cost-cutting programme designed to save €10bn. CEO Thomas Schäfer told managers that “the roof is on fire”. Just before Christmas, HR board member Gunnar Kilian said: “We need to finally be brave and honest enough to throw things overboard…

In parallel with Google’s lobbying efforts, developers and hackers have long been attempting to reverse-engineer Apple’s proprietary iMessage software so messages could be sent and received on Android devices. So far, the story has been a mixed success. The highest-profile example of a workaround has been Sunbird, a company that last year partnered with Nothing, a new phone company owned by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, to launch a messaging app called Nothing Chats. The launch got a huge amount of attention, because the developers promised it would give Android users the all-important blue bubble when messaging iPhone-owning friends. On a technical level, it involved a convoluted workaround. Sunbird was thought to be using Mac computers in the cloud to bridge the connection between iMessage and the Android messaging app –…

Nicole Kobie is PC Pro’s futures editor. She really, really needs a nap, okay? @njkobie I will pay anything for technology that will help me sleep. Not that I have difficulty sleeping – I can doze off standing in a crowd. Instead, what I have is obstacles in the way of rest, usually in the form of day-to-day life – a job with tasks, a home with chores and demanding loved ones. Here I’m talking less of my young child and more of my dog, who both at times require middle-of-the-night attention because they’ve peed. When my toddler was a newborn, I bought her a sheep that glows red and plays soothing sounds when squeezed or when it detects motion or noise, which supposedly helps infants back to sleep. Does…

OpenAI, ChatGPT, GPT-4, GPT… you almost need an AI assistant to stay on top of the many confusing terms that the AI industry generates. Just to clear things up: OpenAI is the company that created ChatGPT, the infamous chatbot that’s generated more column inches than Elon Musk over the past year. (Heck, it’s probably written a fair few of those column inches itself.) ChatGPT is partly based on the GPT-4 large language model (LLM), which OpenAI released in 2023. And a GPT is effectively a mini-version of ChatGPT, dedicated to a specific task, such as helping you plan a gap year or how to use a piece of software (see our step-by-step guide on p30). You don’t need any coding skills to create a GPT. They can be created using…

Regular PC Pro podcast listeners might know that Barry sometimes produces AI-generated images of that week’s podcast guests ahead of the show. We’ve had Jon Honeyball as a GTA V character, editor Tim as a Lego figure, and Lee Grant as a wonderfully oddball Pixar character, among many other themes. Readers have occasionally pinged us on social media and asked how they’re created (thanks, mum), so here’s a quick guide on how to get AI images of people you might know. To create these images, Barry uses the Midjourney AI service. Midjourney allows you to upload your own images and use them as reference images. ChatGPT Plus/DALLE 3 also allows you to do this now, but we seem to get consistently better results from Midjourney. The key to success is…

No doubt you’re already aware of two-factor authentication, or 2FA for short. It’s an idea that arose in the 1990s, in recognition of the fact that simple password-based protection wasn’t always sufficient for the growing number of online services. Today, that’s truer than ever. In the 21st century, almost every aspect of your personal life, from relationships to medical and financial records, is accessible over the internet – yet at the same time, passwords are being stolen left, right and centre. Try putting your details into haveibeenpwned.com and see how many times your own credentials have been stolen or leaked online. It’s such a widespread issue that many security suites now include a tool that warns you when your passwords show up on the dark web. Well, you might be…

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

SCORE PRICE 32GB/1TB, £541 (£649 inc VAT) from store.minisforum.uk This mini PC packs a powerful punch thanks to an AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS. Having such power in a compact PC isn’t a surprise, with the Geekom Mini IT 13 (see issue 350, p46) showing a similar turn of pace thanks to its Core i9-13900H, but there’s one extra that marks the Minisforum UM780 XTX out from the crowd: you can upgrade from integrated graphics to an external GPU using its OCuLink interface. Using OCuLink fills one of the two available M.2 slots, but in return you get even more bandwidth than USB 4 or Thunderbolt 4. As such, eGPUs (while likely costing more than this mini PC itself once you factor in the cost of the graphics card) become a…

Adobe Photoshop Elements 2024 for just £59.99 (2 devices, perpetual licence) tinyurl.com/elements2024 Photoshop Elements 2024 is the latest edition of Adobe’s popular consumer version of Photoshop, and we have a deal that will save you £27 from its normal £86.99 price and give you two licences. And don’t worry if you’re a Mac user: simply select the Mac version of the software for the same price. The program is built around Sensei AI technology, which takes the hassle out of editing by providing a series of “guided edits” to simplify popular tasks. That could be automatically colourising old black and white photos, replacing backgrounds to add more vibrancy, or making one-click selections of awkwardly shaped objects. Throw in tools for removing unwanted objects and combining two shots into a single…

SCORE PRICE £483 (£580 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk The Wacom One 13 Touch is the latest drawing tablet from one of the best-known names in the business. It’s a follow-up to the 2020 Wacom One, and is positioned as the new flagship model of Wacom’s affordable drawing tablet range. As a result, aspects of the design feel quite luxurious, while others smack of cost-cutting – for example, the glass screen feels premium, while the rest of the white casing is plastic. However, it looks tasteful, and is less prone to fingerprints than a pricier metal model would be. In fact, the tablet as a whole looks and feels great to hold. It weighs a mere 900g and measures only 12mm thick, with generous bezels ensuring your mitts don’t intrude on the…

SCORE PRICE 32GB with ads, £125 (£150 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk The 13th generation Amazon Fire HD 10 was released too late to be considered in our group test last month (see issue 352, p76), but even if it had landed in time it’s arguable whether it would have made the cut. That’s not because this is a terrible tablet, merely that we were looking for “luxury” devices – and luxury isn’t a word I’d apply to the Fire HD 10. It doesn’t feel or look cheap, but a plastic rear and relatively thick 8.6mm chassis betray its budget leanings. While Amazon may list the full price as £160 for the 32GB version (£190 for 64GB), ever since launch it’s been selling for around £105 with ads. I certainly wouldn’t…

SCORE PRICE 8TB, £471 (£566 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk With rated read and write speeds of only 460MB/sec, the Samsung Portable SSD T5 Evo was never aiming for speed awards. Instead, it’s about capacity: with 2TB, 4TB and 8TB versions, it’s even roomier than most portable hard drives. It has the advantage of being more durable and drop-resistant than such drives, too. Where it falls far behind is value for money. A 4TB external hard disk such as the WD Elements costs around £110, while the 4TB version of the T5 Evo currently stands at £310 (both prices from scan.co.uk). Naturally, the solid-state drive holds a size advantage over its spinning-disk rival. Sticking to the WD Elements as our example, that measures 21mm thick (4mm more than the T5 Evo)…

SCORE PRICE £132 (£159 inc VAT) from printerbase.co.uk While Canon’s Maxify printers are aimed at home and small offices, the Pixma series is unapologetically focused on creative and home use. The Pixma TS8750 sits near the top of the current lineup; a six-ink MFP offering high-quality photo prints and detailed scanning. What it lacks in office features it makes up for with photo-friendly touches such as the memory card slot and a huge colour touchscreen display. The TS8750 is a striking MFP, made from a mix of textured, shiny and translucent black plastics. Its squat stance makes it look as much like AV equipment as it does a printer. But although it looks as if you could sit the TS8750 on a bookshelf, you’d risk losing access to its scanner…

SCORE PRICE £301 (£361 inc VAT) from printerbase.co.uk Canon’s Maxify GX2050 is an inkjet multifunction with refillable ink tanks. While that’s no longer a novelty, it’s worth reiterating the ink tank truism that you pay more up front, then save in the long term through much lower ink pricing. There are other benefits, too: chiefly that the GX2050 can go for several thousand pages between top-ups – that’s a big time and hassle saving over a comparable cartridge-based inkjet. The GX2050 can print, scan, copy and fax. It’s equipped with a duplex printer, but its 35-sheet ADF is single-sided only – a shame if you want to make double-sided scans, faxes or copies. You can connect and share it via wired or wireless networking, and control the MFP’s direct functions…

SCORE PRICE £525 (£630 inc VAT) from printerbase.co.uk If you want to print lots of photos without breaking the bank, Epson’s EcoTank ET-18100 printer will oblige. It’s a six-ink A3+ photo printer with refillable ink tanks, giving it far lower running costs than its cartridge-based competitors. Otherwise, this single-function printer isn’t particularly well specified. There’s no memory card slot or display, for example, and no support for automatic duplex printing. On the plus side, the ET-18100 is remarkably compact for an A3+ printer with six ink tanks. Epson’s six-ink system combines the standard black, cyan, magenta and yellow inks with light cyan and light magenta. These allow this printer to create skin tones, blue skies and other mid and light shades using more dots of lighter colour, rather than fewer…

SCORE PRICE £165 (£199 inc VAT) from printerbase.co.uk Kyocera’s EcoSys P2235dn is a compact mono laser printer, designed for moderate use in small groups or businesses. It’s well specified for the price, with a 250-sheet cassette and 100-sheet multipurpose feed, plus duplex printing as standard. It’s also equipped with a gigabit Ethernet port, but there’s no Wi-Fi support; you’ll need the P2235dw for that. Most laser manufacturers regard photoconductor drums as a consumable, typically good for 10,000 to 40,000 pages, but Kyocera fits a ceramic drum designed to last the life of the printer; in this case, 100,000 pages. The drum is guaranteed to reach that, or to last for three years, but in the UK the printer itself gets a stingy one-year RTB warranty. The P2235dn has a basic…

Working out the running costs for a printer group test is always a marathon effort. Every test promises several hours of researching the cheapest toners, inks and other consumables for each device, adding prices up and dividing by page yields to get indicative page costs for a batch of printers. I’ve been crunching these numbers for 20 years, but I doubt the typical consumer ever bothers – which is one reason why ink and toner subscriptions are really appealing. For a fixed monthly fee, you get a set number of pages, and a clear rate for extras should you need them. It’s easier to understand, and easier to compare between printers – but is it as appealing as it looks? Sign up to a plan, print the number of monthly…

SCORE PRICE £224 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com Netgear’s WAX625 could be the answer for SMBs that want a wireless performance boost but aren’t keen on investing in Wi-Fi 6E hardware. This dual-band Wi-Fi 6 access point supports 5GHz 160MHz channels and its AX5400 rating promises a speedy 4,800Mbits/sec on its 5GHz radio and 600Mbits/sec on the 2.4GHz band. It delivers four spatial streams for 5GHz plus two for 2.4GHz, and unleashes their speed potential with a 2.5GbE multi-gig LAN port which only requires a PoE+ power source. If you don’t have a suitable PoE switch, Netgear offers an optional PAV12V UK power adapter that only costs a tenner. Small sites can deploy the WAX625 in standalone mode and use its local web console for all management. Choose this method from…

SCORE PRICE Studio X52 with TC10, £3,161 exc VAT from meetingstore.co.uk As the latest member of the HP Poly Studio family, the X52 video bar delivers an advanced all-in-one solution for medium-sized meeting rooms. Taking over from the Studio X50, it features an uprated 20MP 4K UHD camera, a more powerful Qualcomm 865 CPU, improved dynamic framing algorithms, advanced microphones and Wi-Fi 6 support. Apart from the larger camera there’s little to tell the two models apart but at 95°, the X52 has a narrower FoV (field of view) than the X50. This is because the X52 is designed to deliver a higher resolution when zooming in to participants at the far end of the meeting table. Its mic array claims a six-metre pick-up range, while sound output is handled…

We put the loose-cannon company officer on a plane to Monaco. This gave us a 24-hour period when we knew he would be in the air, or watching the F1 race, or drunk in his hotel room. We then arranged for him to be arrested at 6am, and frog-marched to another plane, still in his dressing gown and hotel slippers. While that plane was in the air, a retired Swiss policeman was combing through the hard disk in his company laptop. All of this James Bond nonsense was because this guy had recently been told he was going to be fired – and was then caught on CCTV surreptitiously swapping out the hard disk in his work PC. He alone held the passwords to the domain registrar accounts, containing some…

I’m not wishing our time away, but let’s fast forward through time and re-emerge on 1 July 2024. This is the date when California’s Right to Repair (R2R) bill (known as SB244) will become enforceable law, and I’m very keen to see how it will affect my repair business. I’ll save the finer points of SB244 for another time, but the bits that are important to us all as consumers and/or tinkerers is that the bill mandates that elements that manufacturers use to facilitate their own in-house repairs – such as parts, tools, documentation and software – must be made available. This is broadly what New York’s R2R law promised, but SB244 adds timescales stating that products costing $50 to $99.99 must have repair elements available for three years after…