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Last week, I came across a program that promised to speed up my PC, block all malware, obliterate hidden junk, fix Windows 10 problems, make me a coffee every morning, and run a lovely hot bath every evening. All it wanted in return was £29.95, and the opportunity to plaster my desktop with pop-ups. Now, call me a crusty old cynic, but it struck me as something of a rip off. Everything it claimed to be able to do on my PC I could do for free using other software. I admit that I was almost swayed by the coffee, but how could I know that it wouldn’t add stuff I didn’t want, like seven spoonfuls of sugar? I resisted the temptation to click ‘download’, as you should with the…

Confession: I hate the concept of tipping. Waiters, bar staff and hairdressers should be paid a decent wage rather than being treated like beggars. But Facebook sees tipping as inspiration, and it’s reportedly set to add a ‘Tip Jar’ to people’s posts (www.snipca.com/20424). Chuck ’em a few pence (presumably via PayPal or similar) instead of a ‘like’. Like traditional tipping it’s a moral minefield. Facebook is already a hive of envy and showing off – and pitting friends vs friends in a tip-tally competition will make that far worse. Companies are already adept at abusing Facebook’s ‘monetisation’ options, for example with ‘clickbait’ posts that link to advert-strewn junk pages. Tip Jar-bait is just a step away. The tool could also be used for bribery, money-laundering, dodgy deals and other scams…

Contact us so we can investigate your case Email: consumeractive@computeractive.co.uk Write: Consumeractive, Computeractive, 30 Cleveland Street, London W1T 4JD Please include both your phone number and address. Unfortunately, we can’t reply to all your letters. Can Orange shut my signal booster? Q I received a text message from Orange telling me that a signalboosting service it offered for my BlackBerry Torch phone was going to end soon. I don’t understand what this service is or why it’s ending. I’m not in a contract anymore, but does this mean my phone won’t work, and how can Orange shut this service? Hilary Donnelly A No it doesn’t mean Hilary’s phone won’t work, although her signal may become weaker inside her house. Legally, Orange is allowed to shut the service. It’s no longer…

Is my Apple ID expiring? No! I nearly fell for an iPhone scam recently. My defence is that I’ve only owned the phone for a few months, and so I’m still getting to grips with it. It came as a text message which told me my Apple ID account was expiring. It was from ‘AppleInc’ and told me to click the link http://appleexpired.co.uk. It seemed genuine, but I checked with my more tech-savvy brother first. He said it was a definite scam, and said that he had received similar messages on his Android phone. He found this online report about the scam: www.snipca.com/20308. Thanks bruv! Doreen Simons Warn your fellow readers about scams at letters@computeractive.co.uk…

SPEAKER ❘ £79 from Amazon www.snipca.com/20338 Multi-room audio, where speakers around your house link up electronically so you can control what plays where, has traditionally been the preserve of expensive systems from brands like Sonos and Bose. More recently, though, cheaper options have emerged, such as the Gramofon (£47 from www.snipca.com/20341, see our review, Issue 460), which lets you stream music to your existing sound system. Philips’ Izzy BM5 has the speaker built in. You can use it as a standalone wireless speaker, or use up to five units in tandem. Finished in black, white or sand-coloured cloth (not available yet), the Izzy BM5 is a rounded cuboid reminiscent of Sonos’ Play:1, albeit wider and flatter. It costs about half as much, and the big silver volume knob on top…

ACTION CAM ❘ £159 from Jessops www.snipca.com/20427 Cramming most of the essential parts of an action camera into half the size is quite an achievement. The point of these devices, after all, is to be as small and light as possible, to clip on to your equipment while you run, ride, sail or surf. In fact, GoPro were so pleased with themselves, they decided to charge the same price for the Hero4 Session as they do a full-size Hero4 camera (around £330). That didn’t go down well, because it does still lack a few full-size camera features, including an LCD screen. To be fair, you can’t usually stop to peer into your action camera and frame a shot as you snowboard down a black piste. Even so, this looked like…

Find out what other products we liked. Buy our new 2015 Back Issue CD: £15 fromwww.snipca.com/19124 LAPTOP Asus UX305 £550 from www.snipca.com/19439 Tested: Issue 447 13.3in is a practical size for a laptop, and this light but sturdy ‘ultrabook’ has a smart and slim design that does justice to its capable performance. Upgradeable to Windows 10, it’s limited mainly by its 128GB SSD, which makes it work fast but might leave you needing more space. ALTERNATIVE Toshiba Satellite C40-C This 14in Windows 10 laptop looks like it costs a lot more. It’s not the most amazing PC, but it’s fantastic for the price. £150 from www.snipca.com/20245 ANDROID TABLET Samsung Galaxy S2 9.7 £400 from www.snipca.com/20438 Tested: Issue 462 The Sony Xperia Z4 is too expensive and Google’s cheaper Nexus 9…

What you need: Diffractor; Any version of Windows (XP to 10) Time required: 30 minutes Organising all those photos on your PC can be incredibly time consuming, but the free program Diffractor makes it much easier. Using your photos’ metadata, it can automatically sort them into handy categories – including ratings, tags, cities, albums and years – helping you find what you’re looking for in seconds. Not all photos contain metadata, so we’ll show you how to quickly add this to your images. STEP 1 Go to www.diffractor.com, click the Download tile on the right, then run the downloaded setup file to open the program. Diffractor automatically starts importing folders from your PC – a process that can take several minutes. If it fails to import any folders, click the…

Email us your tips: letters@computeractive.co.uk TIP OF THE FORTNIGHT ✓ Update your drivers in one click I recently noticed that my external drives were not working properly and my speakers weren’t outputting any audio. I recalled reading about a new, free driverupdate program called SnailDriver in Computeractive (Issue 473, Best Free Software), so I decided to give it a go. Download and run the program from www.snailsuite.com, then click the large Scan button. The program lists all your broken and outdated drivers. Click the Update button to fix and update them. Your PC may turn off and on, and you’ll be asked to grant permission to download and install any new drivers you need. After that’s done, you’ll see a summary of how many drivers were updated/fixed. At this point…

AGES 0-5 Catch the Wally £2.29 www.snipca.com/20454 (iOS) This is a fun game where your child plays hide and seek with a mischievous spider. They need to tap the bricks on the wall to reveal which one the spider is hiding behind. In the process, they’ll discover other creatures living behind the wall. AGES 6-10 Quetzalcoatl* £1.49 www.snipca.com/20455 (iOS) In the indigenous folklore of Central America, Quetzalcoatl means ‘feathered snake’. In this puzzle game, your child will see coloured sections and lines (snakes). The objective is to tap and move the snake around (one block at a time) so that it is aligned with the section of the same colour. AGES 11-16 Vector* Free www.snipca.com/20456 (Android) Your child plays as a fugitive, who has escaped from a totalitarian regime and…

Open files and folders with a single click To open folders, documents and programs with one click instead of two (just like a link on a website), click Start, type folder options, press Enter then click the ‘Single-click to open an item (point to select)’ option. From here you can also choose whether all files and folders are permanently underlined (like website links) by selecting ‘Underline icon titles consistent with my browser’, or whether they are only underlined when you point at them with the mouse cursor by selecting ‘Underline icon titles only when I point at them’. See file-name extensions To simplify the names of your files, Windows will hide their extensions – so that a bitmap image with the full name of ‘image.bmp’, for example, will simply be…

Just when you thought you had a Windows 10 all worked out, Microsoft goes and announces plans for yet another update due this summer (probably in late July). The Windows 10 Anniversary Update – as it is currently being called –was given its first public airing in March, at this year’s Microsoft Build Conference. Although the event is for the benefit of app developers, most of the new features are aimed squarely at home users. But how significant, or indeed necessary will the changes to Windows 10 be? We run the rule over these changes (both confirmed and rumoured) and assess whether these new features are really worth getting excited about. Start menu refinements Any changes to the Start menu are likely to be tweaks rather than major modifications –…

Email us your problem and we’ll try to help: noproblem@computeractive.co.uk PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT Why am I getting IP address conflicts? Q Windows has recently started displaying a message on start-up saying that it has detected an IP address conflict. It also says: “Another computer on this network has the same IP address as this computer”. I don’t know what to do about this, as I have only one computer. I did recently change from Tesco to TalkTalk broadband. Could this be the cause? Hilary Carr A It’s more likely that the switch of internet service provider (ISP) — or more specifically, a switch to a different router — has revealed an existing hiccup in the way your Windows PC is set up. You told us that you don’t have…

New external drive not recognised When you connect an external hard drive to your PC, Windows creates a partition (an area of the hard drive it can use to save files to). If this process doesn’t run properly then Windows will fail to recognise the new drive, meaning it won’t show up in File Explorer (Windows Explorer in Windows 7). If this happens, you need to use Window’s Disk Management (DM) tool to create a partition. Click start, type diskmgmt and press Enter. The Disk Management window will open, listing all of the drives that Windows can currently see on your PC. The C: drive will usually be your main system drive (the hard drive with Windows installed on it), and any external drives will be listed below it. If…

32bit A measure of how much information a computer can process at once. Most older computers are 32bit. 4K Video with a resolution of at least 3840x2160 pixels. 64bit A technology that processes information in larger chunks. Most modern computers are 64bit. 802.11ac A standard for wireless networks that allows for higher transfer speeds than 802.11n. Accordion menu A vertically stacked list of items on a web page, such as labels or thumbnails. Each item can be ‘expanded’ or ‘stretched’ to reveal the content associated with that item. ADSL2 A newer, faster type of ADSL broadband. AMOLED Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode. An alternative technology to LCD. Beta A version of software that’s being tested. BIOS Basic Input-Output System. Bluetooth A technology that allows devices to communicate wirelessly over short distances.…

HOME SERVER Younity 1.12 http://getyounity.com What you need: Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 If your household has amassed a load of computers, laptops, phones and tablets, you’re probably fed up with juggling Windows Explorer files, iTunes libraries and Android Gallery photos. To manage and access all these files and libraries from one place, you’ve got a couple of options. One option is to fork out for an expensive NAS (networkattached storage) drive. The second is to install Younity, a free program that’s now been updated to support Windows 10 and external hard drives, and to let you log in via Google. You need to install the PC program and create an account before downloading one or both apps (Android www.snipca.com/20264; iOS www.snipca.com/20265). Click ‘Download younity’ and run the installer, which…

SMARTPHONE ❘ £138 from Amazon www.snipca.com/20425 Launched last year in China and India, the Galaxy J5 is now officially available in the UK, and it’s rather a good budget phone. The case looks slightly old-fashioned, with its rounded chrome rim and matt black, white or gold plastic back, but it’s well made and easy to hold. While other budget phones expect you to put up with a dull screen, the J5’s display uses Samsung’s AMOLED technology – the cheapest model yet to do so – for a stunningly vivid image covering the whole sRGB colour range. Battery life is another strong point: our video-playback test took nearly 18 hours to wear out the J5, narrowly beating Samsung’s top-of-the-range S7. That’s amazing for a lowcost phone. We found Samsung’s TouchWiz version…

Can I still buy a basic Windows 7 desktop PC? Q Can you suggest a Windows 7 desktop PC, please? Windows 10 won’t give me control over updates. I don’t need a high-end gaming machine. Kate Corwyn A It’s years since Windows 7 disappeared from the shops, and Microsoft no longer fully supports it, although security updates will continue until 14 January 2020. In theory, you could downgrade a Windows 10 system, but it’s much easier to order your new PC from a ‘system builder’ rather than buying an off-theshelf Windows 10 model. These companies give you a choice of Windows versions, although older ones will cost extra. For example, if you order Palicomp’s chunky Carbon Intel Skylake desktop PC (www.snipca.com/20433, pictured) with a capable i5-6400 processor, 8GB of memory,…

PRINTER ❘ £295 Ballicom www.snipca.com/20378 Besides being white, the MF724Cdw is smaller and more stylishly rounded than Dell’s printer, but at 31kg it’s only a fraction lighter. Don’t plan to unpack either of these machines and haul them to a desk without some help. Again you get a 50-sheet document feeder, duplex scanning and printing, USB, Ethernet and Wi-Fi connectivity. As well as the usual supported devices, Canon offers the Mopria system for direct output from compatible Android apps. Neither of these models print right up to the edge of the paper, with the MF724Cdw leaving 5mm all round; the H825cdw leaves slightly less. Canon quotes speeds of up to 20 pages per minute (ppm), compared to Dell’s 28, and the MF724Cdw was definitely slower in all aspects of our…

Win 1 of 5 Serif PagePlus X9 software Winner of a five-star ‘Buy It!’ Award in Issue 473, Serif’s PagePlus X9 is the best affordable desktoppublishing program you can buy. It’s very easy to use: simply open a template, type over the default text with your own and replace the pictures – it takes very little effort at all. New features include the ability to format a table from plain text, and a calendar-building tool. To enter this competition, email your address to cacomp@dennis.co.uk with ‘pageplus’ in the subject line by midnight 24 May. PagePlus X9 is available to buy now priced £90 from Serif at www.snipca.com/19964 For more information ‘like’ Serif’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/SerifSoftware) and visit Serif’s YouTube page (www.youtube.com/SerifSoftware).…

ANDROID & iOS See taxi fare estimates within GoogleMaps Google Maps has added a new tab that tells you how long your journey will take using three UK taxi services -Uber, Hailo and Gett. It also tells you approximately how long your car will take to arrive and an estimate of how much the journey will cost. First, ensure you’ve installed the app for one of the three taxi services and logged into your account. Now open Google Maps (built-in app on Android; iOS www.snipca.com/20443), tap the right-pointing arrow at the bottom right, type the postcode (or address) of your destination and select the correct autosuggest option. Alongside the existing four tabs at the top (showing how long your journey would take if you were driving, using public transport, walking…

WINDOWS 7, 8, 10 Access items in desktop folders quickly If you keep lots of folders on your desktop, you should add an icon for your desktop to your toolbar. This lets you access any items inside your desktop-based folders with just two clicks. It’s slightly faster than opening individual folders and searching for what you want. To do this, right-click the small arrow in your Taskbar (see screenshot above), move your cursor to Toolbars, then click Desktop. Next, click the right-pointing arrow beside Desktop on your taskbar to see all the items on your desktop in a list. Any desktop folders will have an arrow next to them. Move your cursor to a folder in the list to reveal its contents. If a folder contains sub-folders, these will also…

If you have private documents on your PC – bank statements or medical records, for example – you might want to make the folders that hold them invisible so that anyone else who uses your computer won’t easily come across them. To hide any folder, right-click it, click Properties, tick the box next to Hidden and click Apply. When the Confirm Attribute Changes window pops up, choose ‘Apply changes to this folder, subfolders and files’ to make sure that everything within that folder is hidden, then click OK. As if by magic, the folder will disappear from view on your PC. Don’t worry though, as you can easily reveal the folder using the Folder Options menu. Click Start, type folder options, press Enter, click the View tab, select ‘Show hidden…

ALMOST SOLD OUT! THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO WINDOWS 10 This 148-page book is the only guide you need on Microsoft’s new operating system. You’ll learn how to master all the new tools, lock Microsoft’s weak privacy settings and prevent future updates from wrecking your PC. It includes fixes for all the problems and bugs that have appeared in Windows 10 since it launched. Plus, you’ll discover how to make Cortana understand you, remove the apps you hate, fix the dreaded Reboot Loop problem, master the new Edge browser, and stop Microsoft sharing your personal info. BUY IT NOW FROM AMAZON at www.snipca.com/17716 THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO ANDROID If you use an Android tablet or phone, this book will tell you how to get the most out of your device. It…

Confession time. I don’t care if you read this column. Whether or not you appreciate my words makes no difference to me because, as long as I keep supplying the words, Computeractive’s financial bigwigs will keep paying my invoices. In fact, by this stage the company accountants have probably forgotten even what it is they’re paying for: mine is just another regular bill and, because it’s unlikely to be the biggest one on their books, I’m guessing they pay it without much thought. Of course there are alternatives. The bean-counters could tighten the purse strings, and that might prompt the editor to find a cheaper columnist. But most of us charge similar amounts, so it’d just be shuffling small change. It’s not worth the hassle. Or, I suppose, the boss…

WARNING: Junk ahead Junk offender: Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ I love a good, free security tool. And Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ is definitely not one of them. It is free, I’ll give it that. But banging your head repeatedly against a brick wall is also free, and I wouldn’t call that safe. Everything else about Ad-Aware Free Antivirus+ is dangerous bunkum. This self-proclaimed “world’s most downloaded antivirus (AV) software” infects your PC with unwanted stuff while you install it. Bad-Aware Ad-Aware’s setup wizard contains an all-in-one browser hijacker that turns your browser into a giant advert for Microsoft’s search engine Bing. Once it’s there, you’ll have a job getting rid of it. What baffles me is that Ad-Aware doesn’t try to hide this. Its installer states openly that it’s going to…

Tell us what’s on your mind Email: letters@computeractive.co.uk Facebook: www.facebook.com/computeractive Twitter: @ComputerActive www.twitter.com/computeractive £270 for a Kindle? My £100 Kindle still works well In Issue 474, you asked for our opinion on the new Kindle Oasis. My take on it is simple - why would I spend £270 on it when the Kindle I bought for £100 a few years ago still works well. I’m not sure what would make me spend £270 on a Kindle. Perhaps I’d consider it if it came with thousands of free ebooks, which would help to justify the cost. But as far as I can see, you’re paying for a slightly longer battery, and a new design which makes it easier to hold. That seems like a rip-off to me. The battery of my…

What should I use to download YouTube videos? Q Please could you advise on the best software for downloading YouTube videos to my computer? I’d also like a program for editing family video clips. Ideally it will be free, but I don’t mind paying for software that’s safe and does the job well. Julian King A Tools designed specially for downloading YouTube clips are a minefield of unwanted junk (see Named & Shamed, Issue 454). None are worth the risk. Instead, use a screen-recording program that captures whatever is happening on your screen. At the top of the tree is Camtasia Studio, a recording and editing suite that’s as pricey as it is powerful (£251, www.snipca.com/20237). But you can get decent tools for free. We like ShareX (https://getsharex.com), which is…

Amazon Fire 7in (2015) £50 from www.snipca.com/20420) The screen is dull, the camera is poor, and Amazon’s version of Android not only runs jerkily but omits apps like Gmail and YouTube (you’re even stuck with a weird web browser). The Fire works best for movies and music with a Prime subscription (£79 a year). But it’s a sturdy little tablet for 50 quid, and even better if you pay £10 extra to double the storage to 16GB, avoiding the fuss of managing a separate microSD card. Asus ZenPad Z170C £80 from Currys www.snipca.com/20423 Launched last year at £80, this 7in tablet hasn’t left much room for discounting. It’s slow, the cameras are bad and the screen is only OK, but with 16GB built in plus a microSD slot it’s usable,…

Cuvva Free iOS: www.snipca.com/ 20450 Cuvva could help you in an emergency. It lets you instantly take out comprehensive insurance cover and drive someone else’s car for a specific time (from one hour to a day). Simply enter your drivinglicence details, and information about the car you’re using, then pay the amount for the time you want it. Boost+ Free Android: www.snipca.com/20451 This app, made by HTC, can be used on any Android device. It gives you an easy-tounderstand, graphic breakdown of all the storagehogging items on your device. You can then clear your cache and temporary files, and uninstall apps you no longer need to recover valuable storage space. UEFA Euro 2016 Free Android: www.snipca.com/20452 iOS: www.snipca.com/20453 Come June, the continent will be gripped by the European football championships.…

OFFICE Use cloud storage to recover files after a crash Word, Excel and PowerPoint have a useful AutoRecover feature that automatically saves versions of the files you’re working on at regular intervals. If your PC crashes unexpectedly or you accidentally shut down your PC without saving your work, the programs will give you the option – when you next boot up – to recover the latest version of your file that it managed to save. By default, AutoRecover is located in a folder on your PC. However, if you use a cloud-storage service (such as Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive), it’s a good idea to set this as your default AutoRecover location instead. Aside from recovering your files after a crash, this will ensure that you have a copy of…

If you take our advice, you can save hundreds of pounds by avoiding software you don’t need. But it’s also possible to save on hardware. Here’s our list of upgrades and add-ons you don’t need to pay for. A NEW PC If your current PC has started to slow down, it’s easy to assume the time has come to invest in a replacement. Junk files, updates, applications and more can accumulate over time, causing an otherwise healthy PC to grind to a halt. A good spring clean can often restore your computer to its former glory. Try using tools like CCleaner (see below) to clear out clutter. Better still, consider reinstalling Windows from scratch and limiting the programs you reinstall afterwards, remembering to back up your documents, music, photos and…