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One of the laws of computing it’s vital to learn is that you can do many of the tasks (for free) that companies charge for. These firms, whether they’re high-street stores or software developers, rely on people’s fear of technology. “Don’t worry yourself with all that nasty jargon”, they imply, “let us take care of it all”. I suppose you can’t blame them for this tactic because computing still has a reputation for being intimidating. But I know that Computeractive readers prefer to teach themselves skills rather than pay someone else. The money saved is useful of course, but there’s also the satisfaction of mastering something yourself. I hope you get that ‘pat yourself on the back’ feeling reading this issue’s Cover Feature. Please let me know how you get…

TalkTalk is now warning customers of “rip-off” high costs when they phone 118 (Directory Enquiries) numbers, and has taken a swipe at Ofcom’s “inadequate” decision to cap such calls at £3.65 for 90 seconds. The ISP’s Call Whisper feature plays the following message when you ring a 118 number: “This is a message from TalkTalk. Calling 118 numbers such as this one may cost you as much as £19.98 per 90-second call. You may also incur further charges if you’re later connected to the number you need. We strongly recommend that you search for the number for free online. If you hang up now, you won’t be charged for this call”. TalkTalk will presumably have to change this message on 1 April, when Ofcom’s price cap comes into effect. The…

YouTube has banned videos showing dangerous stunts and pranks amid fears that users are risking their lives and traumatising children. The site, owned by Google, has extended its policy prohibiting “harmful and dangerous content” to include pranks that could lead to “serious physical injury”. The decision is seen as a response to recent videos inspired by Netflix’s new horror film Bird Box, which depicts a post-apocalyptic future where people have to wear blindfolds to avoid ‘seeing’ their worst fears. Fans of the film have uploaded videos of themselves performing risky actions while blindfolded, including walking across train tracks and driving cars. Stunts like these spread across the web as users encourage others to follow suit in a bid to become famous online. Other ‘viral’ challenges have included eating the detergent…

Apple scam heading to UK? I often share scam warnings with my brother, who lives near Chicago. He told me that he recently received an automated phone call on his mobile that claims to be from Apple, warning about a so-called security breach. As the screenshot shows, it’s very convincing. It’s apparently spreading across the US (as reported at www.snipca.com/30297), so it’s bound to hit the UK soon Warn your fellow readers about scams at letters@computeractive.co.uk…

Icompletely disagree with the British Army trying to attract ‘selfie addicts’ and ‘phone zombies’ in their latest advertising campaign (News, Issue 545, page 6). I appreciate that the Army always needs to recruit youngsters, and that may be harder than ever, but are things really so desperate that they need to appeal to self-obsessed narcissists? As a recently retired teacher, I’ve seen how the rise of technology, and particularly phones, have created a generation of youngsters wholly unsuited to the demands of military service. These wretched devices took over the school I taught in. Walking down the corridor meant dodging phone zombies tapping at the screens without caring what was going on around them. We should do what the French have done, and ban phones in schools. It’s absurd for…

✓ We’ve been BT customers for ever and never had a problem. However, last November we had problems with our landline, although the internet connection continued to work fine. I contacted BT on Thursday 29 November to seek help, and an engineer was booked for the following Monday. He turned up at 8am and quickly diagnosed a very old corroded cable. In pouring rain, it took him just 90 minutes to replace the connection from the telegraph pole to he outside of the house. It was a really neat job, and he was friendly too. As a bonus our internet speed has jumped from 18Mbps to over 60Mbps. Indeed, credit where it’s due! Pete Slinger Has a company impressed you with its customer service? Please let us know: editor@computeractive.co.uk Contact…

VIDEO EDITING VSDC 6.3.1 www.videosoftdev.com What you need: Windows 7, 8/8.1 or 10 VSDC joins a long line of video editors, such as open-source Shotcut (https://shotcut.org) and professional-grade DaVinci Resolve (www.snipca.com/30389). Since they’re all free, it’s a case of seeing which you’re most comfortable with. A common complaint among users of previous versions was that you couldn’t preview your videos within VSDC – instead, they launched in a separate Windows Media Player window. This version fixes that long-standing issue, allowing you to view them directly within VSDC. To reduce clutter, you can also now hide the timeline section at the bottom of the screen. Alternatively, you can detach the timeline completely and move it to a second monitor. Other new features include support for 120fps (frames per second) video and…

Junk offender: ‘Smart’ assistants It’s hard to get away from so-called ‘smart’ assistants these days. These voiceactivated tools are on your PC, your smartphone, your home speaker system and, sometimes, even your TV. I can see the potential for voice commands – it’s a more natural way of interacting with devices and can offer benefits to people with disabilities. The trouble is that the technology just isn’t there yet. At best, it’s gimmicky. At worst, it’s exasperating, intrusive and mostly pointless. Siri, Apple’s smart assistant, is built into my HomePod speaker. The problem is it’s not very smart. In fact, it’s unable to do much more than retrieve a few news headlines and repeatedly misinterpret what I say. A good example is the fact that Siri just can’t seem to…

PC|£800 from Game www.snipca.com/30246 According to the dictionary, ‘warbird’ is a term for a vintage military aircraft. Fans of vintage military aircraft will be disappointed with the Yoyotech Warbird i3, as indeed will fans of yoyos. But if you’re interested in a reasonably priced desktop PC with a daft name, read on. “Not a bad desktop PC – it’s just that rivals do things better for the same price” This is one of a few computers currently stocked in Game stores – a very welcome development. It’s rare to find desktop PCs in the shops, and the ones you do see tend to be from big international brands, whose specs often lag behind what you can get online. The Warbird i3 is by no means a high-end configuration, but its…

Huawei’s 13.9in MateBook Pro X is even more compact than the Swift 7, though slightly heavier, and is available with a top-end i7-8550U processor and GeForce MX150 graphics card (£1,390 from Amazon www.snipca.com/30260), putting it in a different league of performance. There’s also a slightly cheaper i5-8250U model that’ll still be much faster than the i7-7Y75, and its screen has a sharper 3000x2000-pixel resolution (we’ll be reviewing it in our next issue). Although it’s much bigger, accommodating a 15.6in screen, the LG Gram 15 (£1,249 from www.snipca.com/30270, see our review, Issue 540) is even lighter than the Swift 7 and uses the much faster i7-8550 chip. Dell’s XPS 13 2-in-1 (see Issue 500) uses Intel low-power processors but has now been updated to eighthgeneration, with a comparable i7-8500Y configuration costing…

PHONE|£210 from Amazon www.snipca.com/30292 When a product name gets cut to a single word, and that word is ‘One’, expectations will be tough to live up to. That goes double for the Moto One, successor to the Moto G line that led the budget smartphone field for years. Like last year’s Moto G6 Plus, the One has a 5.9in screen. But its resolution is a less-than-Full HD 720x1520 pixels and colours aren’t very accurate, although it’s bright. The 19:9 aspect ratio is even more stretched than the fashionable 18:9, but the large notch at the top is still annoying, and there’s a border at the bottom as well. The glass back (in black or white) gets grubby quickly and doesn’t feel quite integrated with the metal frame. The rear dual…

LAPTOP HP Envy 13 £850 from www.snipca.com/29555 Tested Issue 539 The combination of an eighthgeneration 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. £1,700 from www.snipca.com/26796 ANDROID TABLET PRICE DROP Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 9.7 £390 from www.snipca.com/Tested Issue 501 Samsung’s new mid-sized tablet has a wonderful HDR screen and comes with a pen, unlike Apple’s iPad Pro. But its processor isn’t the fastest and it’s disappointingly expensive, especially compared to the £319 iPad 9.7in. ALTERNATIVE Asus ZenPad 3S…

I work across several computers and share a single broadband connection with other people, so it’s vital that each of my PCs – and theirs – don’t hog limited online resources. This is easily done using a download manager. It would be even more important if we also shared that connection with an online gamer for whom super-fast broadband can make the difference between topping the leaderboard and public humiliation. Hefty real-time downloads certainly wouldn’t make us popular in that instance. How do you schedule your downloads? Let us know: letters@computeractive.co.uk…

TouchPal ✓ When I told my teenage nephew I was having trouble tapping messages on my iPhone screen, he told me to try TouchPal (www.touchpal.com), which apparently all his mates use. “It’s awesome,” he claimed. I beg to differ. Yes, you can swipe across letters to write, rather than tap. And yes, it predicts words as you swipe. But it’s not easy on the eye, and it seems obsessed with emojis, which is probably why it’s popular with teenagers! And what I use instead… Microsoft’s SwiftKey (www.swiftkey.com, Android and iOS) does most of what TouchPal does, but much better. Swiping across letters is smoother (see screenshot) and it predicts words much more accurately, almost on a par with mind reading. It even seems to know what I meant to type…

WiFile Explorer 69p Android www.snipca.com/30362 This app lets you manage all the files on your device from your PC’s browser. Move, cut and copy files between folders on your device – or from and to your PC. You can also move files to your device’s SD card if you use one. NHS App Free Android www.snipca.com/30387 iOS www.snipca.com/30388 The new NHS app lets you access your medical records, book and reschedule appointments, order repeat prescriptions and choose how the NHS uses your data. Not all GP surgeries are served by the app at the moment, but the rollout is expected to be complete by July. Typing Hero Text Expander Free Android www.snipca.com/30364 This app speeds up typing by letting you use abbreviations for longer words or entire passages of text.…

What you need: LibreOffice Calc (free download from libreoffice.org) Time required: 30 minutes Keeping membership records updated is vital, and while a dedicated address-book program can help, it’s often easier to use a spreadsheet. By listing everyone on a spreadsheet you can sort them by any parameter you choose and use a feature called conditional formatting to highlight records that need attention. We’ll be using Calc, the spreadsheet component of the newly updated LibreOffice 6.1.4, but the same instructions will work with Microsoft’s Excel. STEP 1 Set up your spreadsheet This kind of spreadsheet works best if you put each member on their own row, with the columns used to display personal details. Decide which details you need, and list them in row 1. As you can see from our…

If you search online for a solution to your PC problem, watch out for scammers trying to profit from your misfortune. We’ve seen many Google adverts (those links with a green ‘Ad’ box at the top of search results) that direct you to dubious websites and sometimes outright scams. Some are more obvious than others. When we searched for ‘virus removal’, the top Google ad looked very suspicious (see screenshot) - particularly with its unconventional spelling of ‘Norton’. In a blog post (www.snipca.com/30300) late last year, Google acknowledged the problem and announced a new verification system to weed out fake tech-support adverts. However, it went on to admit that this alone wouldn’t stop all Google ad scams. Our advice is to simply ignore the Google ads at the top of…

Why switch to Android? In two words: cost and customisation. Android devices are cheaper than their Apple counterparts. Samsung’s S9 phone, for example, costs £739 (discounted at time of writing to £599), while its rival the iPhone XS is £999. But it’s also the flexibility of Android that appeals. Don’t like how the menus look? Install a new theme. Want to dig into the file system? No problem. You can get your Android device running just as you want. Why switch to iOS? While Android is now much easier to use than it used to be, iPhones and iPads still have the edge. Apps tend to run more smoothly, and menus all have a uniform design. Apple also has tighter controls on apps in its App Store, so you’re less…

FIREFOX TO DISABLE FLASH BY DEFAULT Mozilla has said Firefox will stop supporting Adobe’s Flash plug-in by default in September, with the release of the 69th version of the browser. This means you’ll have to activate it to load websites that still rely on Flash. Firefox will stop supporting Flash completely early next year, before Adobe stops making it available to download at the end of December 2020. BT’S PRICE RISES TO MATCH INFLATION BT broadband customers may be hit with smaller price increases every year following the company’s decision to raise prices in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rate of inflation. It said from next year it will increase prices every March based on what the CPI was in January. With the current rate at 2.3 per…

I’ll use password manager to avoid ‘lowlife’ hackers Thanks for the warning about Microsoft’s plan to ditch passwords (‘Question of the Fortnight’, Issue 545). I have no intention of signing in with my face or fingerprint because, no matter how secure Microsoft says it is, there will always be lowlifes trying to hack the system. Instead I’m using this news as an excuse to finally sign up to a password manager, rather than rely on my father’s middle name backwards, followed by his date of birth. Phil Jackson Bank didn’t refund my stolen £750 in scam I’m pleased there will soon be stronger laws to protect victims of bank-transfer fraud (News, Issue 545, page 9), but it will come too late for me. A couple of years ago, while buying…

Is Amazon responsible for ‘stolen’ goods? LEAD CASE Q I ordered a PNY GeForce RTX 2080 8GB XLR8 graphics card (pictured) costing £738.83, and a Linx 12X64 Windows tablet, both from Amazon for evening delivery. The order was left outside my door. The tablet was there, the box containing the graphics card was empty. Amazon has refused to accept responsibility. Can you help me? Phil Duscovitch-Davis A We’ll do our best to help Phil because again we’re having to battle a retailer that’s ignoring responsibility to ensure goods are safely delivered to the buyer. In this scenario, the retailer can ask the buyer to contact the police for a crime reference number, which Phil has done. But Amazon still officially owns the graphics card because Phil never received the item,…

Identify unknown people in photos Very little in genealogy can beat the thrill of uncovering a cache of old family photos. These more than anything else help connect us to our ancestors, but while you may find familiar relatives lurking in them, you’re also likely to come across people you struggle to identify. In this issue’s column, we’ll examine some tips to help you put names to faces. Look for clues in the photo When you see a photo of someone you don’t recognise, turn it over to see if there’s any writing on the back – diligent ancestors may have recorded names, dates and places. Next, ask around your family – particularly older members – who should be able to fill in some of the gaps. If you received…

What can I use to remove blemishes from photos? Q In my 75 years, I’ve taken many photos and now find that many need scratches and other blemishes removing. I’ve downloaded several ‘free’ image editors, but most are just a hook to buy the full version. Others, like Photoshop, are costly and too involved for me. Can you recommend what I could use? Ian E Mitchell A There’s certainly no need to spend money on expensive software to repair your photos. Instead, download Paint.NET (www.getpaint.net) - it’s free, easy to use and won’t prompt you to upgrade. Open the photo you want to edit, then select Clone Stamp from the Tool menu (top left). This tool lets you select another similar section of the image that you replicate to cover…

Mike Fortin and Mete Goktepe, Microsoft (www.snipca.com/30355) “We leverage automation heavily today and will continue to invest in additional automation. But we also rely on manual verification to ensure there are no end-user experience regressions. The automated solutions often find functional regressions. But, to validate the experience we often need to experience the application as our end users would.” WHAT THEY MEAN We need to use humans to make sure software works in Windows.…

TABLET|from £799 from Microsoft www.snipca.com/30247 The last version of Microsoft’s Windows 10 tablet, following the Surface Pro 4, was called just Surface Pro. We thought subsequent editions might come with alternative tech-style labels: Roman numerals, letters of the alphabet, or names of snacks (like Android). Yet what could have been the Surface Pro Greggs Vegan Sausage Roll has arrived as the Surface Pro 6. Not only is this frankly boring, but it also implies that last year’s model was the Surface Pro 5 all the time. You might almost think the Surface Pro 6 was the Surface Pro 5, too. The chassis, with its fold-out rear stand, is identical, and although the 12.3in touchscreen scored fractionally lower in our brightness and colour-accuracy tests, it’s essentially similar. The only external change…

PC MONITOR|£215 from CCL www.snipca.com/30304 In case you’ve been wondering, it’s nothing to do with llamas. Iiyama, spelled with a double ‘i’, is pronounced by its Japanese employees something like ‘ee-YAMma’, although Brits are permitted to make it rhyme with ‘karma’. The company has been in business since 1973, and always specialised in monitors, having started out making components for TV sets. So it’s not surprising that they’ve got pretty good at it, and the discreet logo, with an infinity symbol linking those two i’s, is found on many of the best affordable screens. “A well connected monitor with a wide range of height, swivel and tilt adjustment” The XUB2495WSU-B1 is a 24in monitor, smaller than the popular 27in size, but has a resolution of 1920x1200 pixels, giving Full HD…

Which all-in-one PC would you recommend? Q I have a desktop PC with a separate monitor, which takes up a lot of room that I now really don’t have. What are the options to replace it with an all-in-one unit? Diane Pole A There are three ways. A typical all-in-one (AIO) PC squeezes everything into the monitor case. Examples include Lenovo’s IdeaCentre AIO (from £330, see www.snipca.com/30313, pictured), Dell’s Inspiron All-in-One (from £449, see www.snipca.com/ 30315), Acer’s Aspire C24 (£700 from www.snipca.com/30318) and HP’s ProOne 440 (£835 from www.snipca.com/30317). Other systems have a small base unit in the foot, such as Acer’s Aspire S24 (£867 from Amazon www.snipca.com/30319, see our review, Issue 532) and HP’s more ambitious Envy All-in-One (£1,799 from www.snipca.com/30320). Except for that last one, these all use…

MESH ROUTER|£200 from Amazon www.snipca.com/30337 After BT’s Whole Home Wi-Fi started the ball rolling (at least in the UK), there are now quite a few different mesh router products that promise to spread a strong Wi-Fi signal all round your house. We’ve reviewed a dozen or so, and tested some of the best last year (see Issue 523) to help you choose. TP-Link may not be the biggest name in this field, but it wins on the amount of options, adding the P7 to the Deco M5 (see Issue 508) and M9, each available in packs of two or three units. Delivered decent signal over distances, through walls and a couple of floors Why the ‘P’ instead of ‘M’? Well, this system has something different from all the others: Powerline.…

Downloaded over 1 billion times, WinZip lets you zip, protect, share and manage files across your computer, network and cloud accounts, and supports a wide selection of compressed file types. It connects to all the major online-storage services, including Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive. There are plenty of advanced new features in WinZip 23 Pro such as Set Expiration Dates for Files and Folders and the ability to rename files much faster using the new Group Rename tool. You can also now sort your photos by date taken, or date modified – letting you distinguish between the date the files were copied and the date the photo was taken. To enter this competition, email your address to cacomp@dennis.co.uk with ‘WinZip’ in the subject line by Tuesday 12 February. You can…

If you have two or more PCs on your home network, you can further reduce the amount of data you need to download by letting them update each other. That way one will download the whole bundle and share it with the others, or they’ll each download part of it and spread the parts across the network. This feature isn’t available when you’ve told Windows you’re using a metered connection. 1 Go to the Settings screen (or click the cog in the Windows menu), click ‘Update & Security’, make sure Windows Update is selected in the sidebar, then click ‘Advanced options’. Click Delivery Optimization 1, then switch on ‘Allow downloads from other PCs’. Now make sure the upper of the two buttons below is selected, so that ‘PCs on my…

WINDOWS 10 Turn off ‘Tablet mode’ to stop full-screen Start menu ✓ True to form, Microsoft’s October 2018 Update threw a spanner in the works. I was annoyed to see that after installing it my desktop PC was displaying by default the Start menu full screen, obscuring a nice photo I’d added as my background. None of the advice I read online helped, so I had to figure a solution out for myself. Microsoft advises going to Settings, then Personalisation, but this doesn’t work. Instead, click the notifications icon at the bottom right of the taskbar - you’ll see ‘Tablet mode’ at the top left of the pop-up (see screenshot left). Click this to turn it off. Microsoft obviously assumes we should know that ‘Tablet mode’ and ‘Start screen’ are…

Various prices from www.snipca.com/30268 ✓ I bought my first MiFi device from Three in April 2010 - a Huawei E5830 for use at home in Suffolk (I’d had too many problems with line-based broadband providers). I soon cancelled my landline and haven’t had one since. I later bought two Huawei MiFis - the E586 followed by the E5573. Then I discovered the mains-powered B310 (pictured, £75 from Amazon www.snipca.com/30269) and bought one when the E5573’s contract had reached the minimum term. I later bought my fifth MiFi product, another B310, though this remains unboxed because the earlier one is still working. In fact, none has ever failed to work. I keep the E5573 for use while travelling in a motorhome or any other trip, removing the SIM from the B310.…

Expensify * Free Android www.snipca.com/30365 iOS www.snipca.com/30366 Expensify uses OCR to scan your receipts and generate detailed monthly reports. You can also import your credit-card details to keep more control over your spending. Best for: Generating reports from OCR receipts Smart Receipts* Free Android www.snipca.com/30367 iOS www.snipca.com/30368 Like Expensify, Smart Receipts generates detailed reports of all the receipts you save. However, this app takes it one step further by letting you save these reports as PDFs, CSV files or ZIP files. You can then back up these to Google Drive. Best for: Exporting reports as PDFs Evernote Free Android www.snipca.com/30369 iOS www.snipca.com/30370 Both Expensify and Smart Receipts need you to open the app and take photos of receipts, but if you already have photos of receipts on your phone that…

LIBREOFFICE CALC Highlight dates within a specific range There’s an easy way to format all cells within specific date ranges (the past year, for example) in any column. First ensure that all your dates are in the DD/MM/YY format. If they’re in another format, say ‘Jan 14, 2019’, you’ll need to change them. Select the relevant cells, press Ctrl+1 to open the Format Cells window. Here, click Date in the left-hand column, select the first option in the centre column, then click OK. Now select the cells you want to format, click the Format tab, move your cursor to Conditional, then click Date. In the window that opens, click the Today dropdown menu and select the date range you want to format (see screenshot below). Next, click the Apply Style…

What is it? Microsoft’s attempt to make sure it doesn’t end up losing public trust like Facebook. It’s a “personal data bank” letting you see and control how much information Microsoft holds on you. And how much info is that? A lot more than you’d think. Depending on your privacy settings, it knows where you are, which programs you use, what you’ve searched for on its browser Edge, what you’ve told Cortana to do, and more. Why does it need this data? Two main reasons: to predict what you want to search for in order to provide recommendations (and a more “personalised” Windows); and to show adverts “that you’re more likely to be interested in”. So it comes down to money? Partly, yes. Microsoft doesn’t rely on advertising to the…

PC World offers a range of repair services (www.snipca.com/30333) you don’t need to pay for… System Reset & Restore (£60) Resetting Windows is easy (see ‘Unlock Windows’, page 52). PC World says they will also create installation discs, but you don’t need these. If you do want one, create your own for free at www.snipca.com/30332. Data Wipe (£35) Using the Format tool built into Windows is quicker than taking your drive in for a ‘professional’ to do it. See ‘Wipe personal data from old hard drives’, page 56. Data recovery (£90) PC World may recover files that free software can’t, but follow our advice and you’ll never need to use any undelete software. See ‘Retrieve deleted files’, page 53. Data Transfer (£35) Avoid the hassle of taking two PCs into…

Q I’m a PC novice but like to explore. You regularly refer to Task Manager, but what’s the difference between the stuff listed in the Processes, Details and Services tabs? When I launch Chrome, for example, it appears under Processes, but there are also entries under Details. Marc Breton A Let’s start by taking a step back to look at desktop applications. By that we mean the kinds of programs you use every day: your Chrome web browser; an email program such as Mail; and office tools like LibreOffice Writer. Each of these is launched via an executable (EXE) file, which have.exe file extensions. A process represents one ‘instance’ of an EXE file. Launch two instances of Chrome or Writer, say, and the same number of entries will appear in…

32bit/64bit A measure of how much data a PC can process at once. Most older computers are 32bit, modern ones are 64bit. 4K Video with a resolution of at least 3840x2160 pixels. 802.11ac A standard for wireless networks that allows for much higher transfer speeds than 802.11n. Action camera A digital camera for recording action while attached to a person’s body or equipment. Add-in Microsoft’s name for tools that can be added to Office software. Add-on A program that adds extra features to your browser. AMOLED Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode. An alternative technology to LCD for creating flat-panel screens. Aspect ratio A measurement of the shape of a display. Bandwidth A measure of how much data can be transferred through a connection at one time. Batch file A computer file…

Landline numbers may soon be a thing of the past, as new figures show that much fewer people are using them. According to an Ofcom study, time spent on landline calls in the UK fell from 103 billion minutes to 54 billion minutes between 2012 and 2017. This coincided with a rise in the amount of time people spent making calls on mobile phones - 132.1 billion to 148.6 billion minutes. However, the most significant change in the period has been the increasing use of messaging apps like WhatsApp, which many younger people prefer to mobile phones. This has led to a tenfold increase in the average amount of mobile data used by people per month, from 0.2GB to 2GB. The rise of messaging apps has been so dramatic that…

What new technology gives with one hand, it often takes with the other. So it is with Windows 10’s clipboard, revamped in the October Update. Yes, it’s great that it now has a ‘history’ option, saving multiple items you’ve pasted to it. But that also means someone using your PC can see what’s stored there. It’s a danger KeePass addresses in version 2.41, released in early January. The free password manager now has an option to stop the clipboard storing what you’ve saved, and to stop it being shared across different PCs (this is the ‘cloud’ function that Microsoft also introduced in the October Update). KeePass turns on this protection by default (see screenshot). To disable it, click Tools, then Options, Security, and untick the ‘Do not store data in…

In Issue 545 (News, page 7) you say that some Firefox users were angry that the browser experimented with showing adverts. I worry for people who get angry about such trivial things. Adverts are an annoyance, sure, but Firefox is one of the few services online that doesn’t rely on abusing our personal data for profit. I don’t think a tiny ‘Find a Hotel’ link (see screenshot) is the equivalent of the intrusive personalised adverts you see on Google and Farcebook. If Firefox needs to make a little bit of money through adverts to compete with the big boys, that’s fine. I’m confident it’ll never treat loyal users (I count myself as one) as contemptuously as Farcebook has.…

Here’s a rare update: a customer being happy to pay nearly twice the amount they originally did. After buying a GoPro Hero action camera priced £199.99 from an Argos store, Steve Laird opened the box then realised he didn’t want it (see Issue 545). Argos has a 30-day moneyback guarantee, but Steve invalidated this by opening the box, so the store he bought it from refused to take it back. There was nothing Steve could do. Because he bought the camera in person, not online, he wasn’t covered by the Consumer Contract Regulations, which give you 14 days to examine then return an item, for whatever reason (ie, it doesn’t have to be faulty). It meant we had to ask Sainsbury’s (which owns Argos) for the goodwill gesture of accepting…

Following on from your recent article on repairing old photos (Issue 542), do you have any advice for scanning certificates and other documents for sharing with my grandchildren? Pat Molloy When scanning any kind of image, whether a document or photo, the benchmark is to scan at 300dpi (dots per inch, see screenshot). This will ensure it will print at the same size as the original – for example, A4 with certificates. If you have smaller items such as passportsized photos, try increasing the dpi to 600 or even 1,200 to make them bigger. Finally, save in PNG format for printing, or a high-quality JPEG to share via email. Have a genealogy question for Nick? Email letters@computeractive.co.uk with ‘Grow Your Family Tree’ in the subject line.…

Many people use VPNs for the purposes of anonymity, but not me. The internet (Google in particular) knows far too much about me already, and if some secret government agency wants to keep tabs on me, I doubt a VPN will thwart their efforts. No, I use a VPN for other reasons, such as security and unblocking content restrictions. At the moment, TunnelBear (www.tunnelbear.com) is my VPN of choice. It’s easy to use and gives me 500MB of free data each month, which I can boost to 1.5GB if I tweet about TunnelBear (www.snipca.com/30359). As well as my PCs, I’ve installed it on my iPad and Samsung S8 phone, meaning I can make use of it while out and about. For example, I frequently use TunnelBear on the Gatwick Express…

Some people just never learn. In 2015, serial fraudster Amir Tofangsazan was jailed for seven years after conning women out of thousands of pounds via online dating sites. He contacted his victims using numerous false identities and persuaded them to ‘loan’ him cash, which he never paid back. You might assume being banged up would be enough to make Mr Tofangsazan change his ways. But he somehow managed to obtain a phone behind bars and used it to con even more victims out of their cash via online dating apps. The good news is he was caught out a second time and sentenced to a further three years in jail. There have been calls recently to give prisoners phones in their cells so they can stay in touch with family.…

What does it do? Popular a decade ago, 17in laptops offered screen space approaching that of a desktop monitor. But as users grew accustomed to compact computers that they could carry everywhere, the practical benefit of fitting more work into the display was outweighed by the inconvenience of a bigger and heavier device. Although a few models remained, the end of the 17in era was marked when Apple discontinued its 17in MacBook Pro in 2012, to the chagrin of graphic designers. At January’s CES 2019 tech show in Las Vegas, however, a 17in comeback was in evidence. Why would I want it? With a 17in gaming colossus like the Acer Predator Triton 900, Dell’s Alienware Area-51m or Asus’s ROG Mothership, all announced at CES, you can get full desktop specs…

PHONE|£289 from Samsung www.snipca.com/30295 Despite its traditional notchless screen, the A7 could easily be mistaken for a top-end phone. You can’t miss the three cameras on the shimmering glass back panel: standard, wide-angle and depth-sensing, which provide excellent results, even if they lack optical stabilisation. And the 6in display, protected by curved Gorilla Glass, is one of Samsung’s AMOLED masterpieces, with crisp better-than-Full HD resolution and excellent colour, covering the full sRGB range. The side-mounted Samsung Pay fingerprint reader is convenient, and the only sign of compromise is a traditional MicroUSB port at the bottom where you might have expected USB Type-C. That means charging isn’t particularly quick, but with battery life that stretched to 17 hours 43 minutes in our video-playback test, you won’t often need to top it…

What was it? Announced on 9 February 2011, just under a year after the iPad, the TouchPad (pictured) was a touchscreen tablet running HP’s webOS operating system, previously seen in Palm Pre smartphones. Selling for the same price as Apple’s tablet (£400), it added a Skype-ready webcam and support for Flash websites. How did it die? Very fast. Having unveiled the TouchPad as a competitor to the original iPad, HP was gazumped by the launch of the iPad 2 in March, featuring a dramatically slimmer and lighter format and cameras on both the front and back. When the TouchPad finally went on sale on 1 July, first reactions were positive, but it had no killer advantage. And while the iPad could run hundreds of thousands of iPhone apps, webOS had…

What you need: Windows 10 PC Time required: 60 mins Downloading large files is an intensive process. Unless you live close to a telephone exchange or kerbside broadband cabinet, it can slow your browsing to a crawl and, on older PCs, consume so many resources that anything else you’re trying to do grinds to a halt. Thankfully, overcoming such problems is fairly straightforward if you use a download manager to schedule your downloads to a more convenient time. Setting them to only occur when you know you won’t be using your PC means all of its resources can be devoted to whatever you’re using it for right now. Better still, for anyone signed up to a metered broadband deal with uncapped overnight browsing, using a download manager means you can…

My compliments on Issue 542’s ‘How To’ article on digitising old photos and slides. You asked readers to share some of their experiences, so here’s mine. For many years I’ve considered digitising my late father’s RAF pilot log books, wanting to share it with my brother and his family. There are 600 pages across eight books, covering 1941-1966, totalling in excess of 8,000 flying hours. Despite owning several flatbed scanners and tons of computing kit, it was looking like a Herculean task. After some thought I opted for an overhead iPhone photography solution (pictured). I considered many scanning apps, including Scanbot (https://scanbot.io/en), but went with a straight photo. In total, I spent £25 on this one-off project, using: a Utebit Camera Copy Stand (www.snipca.com/30259); a Zacro 360 Camera Clamp (www.snipca.com/30261);…

ANDROID Set a text notification sound for specific contacts Wouldn’t it be nice to know who’s messaged you without having to look at your phone? To do this, set up unique notification sounds for messages from specific people. We’ll show you how to do this using Google’s free Messages app. Install the app from www.snipca.com/30360. If you use a phone that isn’t made by Google (Samsung, Huawei, etc), you’ll be prompted to set this as your default messaging app. Open the app and select a text message from a contact you want to set a unique notification sound for. Next, tap the three dots at the top right, Details, Notifications, then tap the Advanced dropdown menu. Now tap Sound (see screenshot below left) to see a range of options you…

WINDOWS 10 Speed up a sluggish touchscreen If your PC monitor’s touchscreen has become slow to respond to your gestures, there are a few ways to diagnose and rectify the problem. The first thing you should do is update your monitor’s driver. To do that, search for device manager and open the top result. In the window that opens, expand the Human Interface Devices dropdown menu, right-click ‘HID-compliant touch screen’, click ‘Update driver’ (see screenshot below), ‘Search automatically for updated driver software’, then follow the onscreen prompts to update your driver. If doing this doesn’t resolve the problem, you should try calibrating your monitor. To do this, press the Windows key, type calibrate, click ‘Calibrate the screen for pen or touch input’, then the Calibrate button in the window that…

If you require elements for your presentation that aren’t included in PowerPoint’s default libraries, download the new free iSlide add-in, which offers a range of free themes, photos and icons that you can download and use. First, go to https://en.islide.cc and click the red Download Now button. Open the downloaded setup file, click Next twice, Install. Once that’s done, click Finish. PowerPoint will now open and you’ll see an iSlide pop-up window. Click Skip to avoid the tutorial, then create your iSlide account when prompted. You’ll now see a new iSlide tab on your ribbon. Click this to see the various options available. For example, click the Theme Library option to see a range of themes. Some options are paid-for, so click the dropdown menu at the top right and…

Getting your faulty PC fixed can be a costly undertaking – in more ways than one. Perhaps your first thought is to take it in to your local computer repair shop. Alternatively, you might consider one of any number of programs that promise to sort every problem on your PC with the click of a button - as long as you pay for their premium version, of course. Worst of all are the scams that surface when you search for a solution to your problem online. These often take the form of sponsored ads pushed to the top of search results to snare the unwary. These ‘services’ – usually extortionate – probably won’t fix your PC woes, but they are quite likely to plant malware. Avoid at all costs! With…

Announced last year, Wi-Fi 6 is the latest wireless standard and uses 802.11ax technology, which promises faster speeds and greater coverage - particularly in areas with multiple competing Wi-Fi networks. At present, however, only a handful of Wi-Fi 6 routers are available and they’re not cheap. The Asus RT-AX88U, for example, costs £314 (www.snipca.com/30347). What’s more, to reap the benefits of Wi-Fi 6, your laptop, phone and other wireless devices will also need to support the new standard - at the moment, none do. Wi-Fi 6 devices won’t be widely available for at least another year, so there’s no point paying over the odds now for a router that has benefits you can’t take advantage of.…

Why can’t I hide my number? Q I followed Nik Rawlinson’s advice in Issue 544 (page 37), to withhold my phone number when making calls. However, it doesn’t work for me. When I dial 1471 before the number I want to call I hear a long tone, as though the person on the other end has hung up. However, the call never connected or rang. Could you tell me where I’m going wrong? Alice Manford A We’re afraid that a momentary lapse of concentration manifested itself on the page as an error. Can we blame our New Year hangovers? No? Okay… well, instead we’ll just apologise and tell you that the correct code to dial to hide your outgoing number is 141. As other readers emailed in to point out,…

Someone broke into my Amazon account, and it’s made me a bit paranoid. A mystery shopper changed my address, upgraded my account to Prime, and used my payment details to buy make-up brushes. I don’t wear make-up (it makes me look like Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane), but my hacker clearly wanted the very best face-caking tools for 2019. At my expense. I promptly locked down my account, and the lipstick larcenist has not resurfaced. But I was nervous about shopping again without an additional layer of security. VPNs (virtual private networks) are an option, but whenever I’ve tried them they’ve slowed down my connection and demanded payment to continue using them. So I thought I’d give the open-source alternative Tor (‘the onion router’) a go instead.…