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In all my years writing about computing, I’ve never known a period like the past six months. Every day seemed to bring a new emergency security update hurriedly released to fix the kind of flaws that make hackers drool. Just as overwhelming has been the wave of new privacy settings. After years of ignoring your privacy, during which time they became staggeringly rich, tech companies now realise they can’t get away with it anymore. Cowed by the threat of government regulation, they’re frantically adding tools that let you restrict what they know about you. There are two ways you can find all these updates and settings: 1) spend every second of every day searching online. Not recommended; 2) read Nik Rawlinson’s exhaustive Cover Feature (page 50). Treat it like an…

MICROSOFT’S FIRST UK STORE TO OPEN Microsoft will open its first UK store on 11 July in Oxford Circus, London. Covering 21,932 square feet over three floors, it will sell Windows computers from a range of manufacturers, as well as Microsoft’s own Surface devices. There will also be an ‘Answer Desk’ for technical support and a repairs service. Microsoft released an artist’s impression of the store (pictured), along with more details, at www.snipca.com/31788. TAXMAN BLOCKS PHONE ‘SPOOFING’ SCAMS HMRC has developed new technology to prevent scammers from displaying its phone numbers when calling victims. This will make it harder for criminals to trick people into thinking they work for HMRC. An official said that since the system was introduced in April there have been no reports of fraudsters ‘spoofing’ genuine…

Broadband and phone companies have promised to let you cancel your contract early without paying a fee if they can’t fix problems affecting your service. Under Ofcom’s new ‘Fairness for Customers commitments’, firms will have a “reasonable” period to put things right before you’re allowed to cancel. They will also pay compensation for breaking this promise. However, the pledge is a voluntary gesture by companies, not a new rule from telecoms regulator Ofcom, and so can’t be enforced. This means companies themselves will decide on a case-by-case basis what counts as a reasonable period during which to fix problems, and how much compensation they’ll pay. Ofcom hopes the pledge will create a culture of fairness to underpin the rules it has introduced this year. Since 1 March companies have had…

Giveaway error in DHL scam As a former English teacher, I know that ‘mondatory’ is not how you spell ‘mandatory’. This was why I didn’t fall for a scam email claiming to be from DHL. It said that due to “several cases of parcel misplacement”, it had become “mondatory” to check the recipient’s address before confirming delivery. It didn’t use the word ‘recipient’ though, using the clunky alternative ‘beneficiary’, as though I was due a stonking inheritance! In fact, every line of the email rang alarm bells, though sadly I’m sure some people fell for it. You can see what it looks like at www.snipca.com/31703. Warn your fellow readers about scams at letters@computeractive.co.uk…

Email: letters@computeractive.co.uk Facebook: www.facebook.com/computeractive Twitter: @ComputerActive www.twitter.com/computeractive I completely agree with Citizens Advice that broadband companies should do more to notify you when your contract is ending (News, Issue 555, page 8). The new rules are a step in the right direction, and at least companies now have to contact you. But doing so just once isn’t enough, because it would be so easy to miss these messages. We get so much junk mail these days, and marketing messages by text that it’s often difficult to spot the communications that are actually important. To give an example, I’m a Virgin Media customer. Every month, or so it seems, I receive a slickly worded letter urging me to pay more for some hi-tech service I simply don’t need (I’m not sure…

I bought a Ring doorbell-camera in 2016, but due to bad Wi-FiI had to send it back. Now that I have excellent Wi-Fi, I thought I’d try again. All went well setting up the Ring, but background noise was terrible. I sent it back, and Ring said they’d send another. But it was the wrong type, with most of the bits missing. They then promised to send an engineer to fit the Ring. A few days later Dave turned up and was very apologetic. Within 10 minutes it was up and running, and he added a solar panel to the Ring. I asked what I owed them and was told ‘no charge’. While here, Dave advised me as to which Ring camera would be most suitable for our back garden.…

PC CLEANER CCleaner 5.57 www.ccleaner.com What you need: Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 CCleaner hasn’t always covered itself in glory, particularly when it added an Active Monitoring tool last year that couldn’t be switched off – leading to accusations it was gathering data on the sly. This was swiftly removed, though, and we’re pleased to see CCleaner’s developer, Piriform, appears to have learnt its lesson. This new release aims to simplify the process of cleaning your hard drive, which makes a welcome break from previous versions, where the sheer number of cleaning options was daunting. The Cleaner tab in the main menu has been replaced by two new tabs: Easy Clean and Custom Clean. As its name suggests, Easy Clean is intended for those who simply want to declutter their…

WARNING: JUNK AHEAD Junk offender: iTunes As someone who uses both Apple devices and Windows computers, I’ve never been happy with the fact that I’m effectively forced to keep iTunes installed on my PC. So, when I heard that Apple was finally planning to kill off its sloppy, bloated mess of a music/video/podcast player/store/media-streaming program, I quietly leapt for joy. But, while Mac users will see iTunes replaced by a series of separate, more focused apps next year, when Apple’s recently announced macOS 10.15 Catalina update launches, it turns out that the Windows version of iTunes will continue in its current state, indefinitely. Back in 2003 when it launched for Windows, iTunes was a half-decent free music player. But then Apple tacked on its music store and, over the years,…

LAPTOP | £999 from Amazon www.snipca.com/31761 Keep calm and carry this The ZenBook UX433FA-A6076T, to give it its full title, feels much more expensive than it is. It comes with the latest i7-8565 processor and a 512GB SSD. The UX433FN model adds an Nvidia MX 150 GPU, enabling 3D gaming, but there’s no sign of it yet in the UK. This model is priced at £1,200, which wouldn’t be excessive for the spec, but is selling online for £999, which is very reasonable indeed. If you don’t need so much processing power, the UX433FAA6061T, with an i5-8265 and 256GB SSD, can be found for just £799, which seems almost unreasonably reasonable. “Fast and powerful performance in an attractive design, but screen is average” The aluminium case, in dark blue (or…

MINI PC | £234 from mini-itx.com www.snipca.com/31789 Cool runnings The general idea of a mini PC is that you get the processing power and versatility of a low-end desktop PC in the space of a box of chocolates. Jetway’s is no exception, although it does take the ‘low-end’ part further than average, featuring a Celeron N3160 processor that was released by Intel in 2016 for budget laptops. By default, the JBC420 is sold ‘barebones’, for you to add memory and storage yourself. But both require unusual formats – DDR3L for the RAM, mSATA for the SSD – so you probably won’t be able to re-use components you may have hanging around. Fortunately, mini-itx.com can supply and install what you need to complete a working system. “Basic, but a proper PC…

Q I’ve gradually realised the basic 24in monitor I bought with my PC doesn’t display colours accurately. I thought flat screens were more reliable than the old monitors, but apparently not! I’d also prefer a bigger screen. Is there something I could get for around £200 that would make a significant improvement? 4K screens seem too expensive. Gerry Harbutt A LCD screens are more stable, but may not be accurate to start with. Each model has a ‘gamut’, or range of colours, it can produce; our testing focuses on the sRGB colour space, a general-purpose standard. A budget monitor or laptop screen might cover 80 per cent or so of sRGB. Accuracy is a separate issue, measured as Delta E, the degree by which colours vary from those intended. An…

SMART WATCH | £149 from Amazon www.snipca.com/31815 Circle of life Smart watches are increasingly clever, but they don’t look much like proper watches, and fitness bands even less so. The Vivomove HR, by contrast, not only has a traditional round face, but real hands; the smart part is squeezed into a small OLED panel, seamlessly inset into the bottom half, that only lights up when you lift your wrist or double-tap the screen. The hands then rotate temporarily to the ten-to-two position to get out of the way while you use the screen, which is the coolest feature we’ve seen in a mobile device for a while. “Walking, running, cardio, sleep, weight activities are monitored – but not swimming” The readout is still no smaller than on some bands, and…

If you’re leading a walk but don’t want to spend an hour or more at your computer plotting a path, head out and do it on foot instead. It’s not only Windows software that can write GPX files: your phone can do it, too. GPSLogger for Android (www.snipca.com/31666) and myTracks for iOS (www.snipca.com/31667) will plot waypoints as you walk with your phone. You can either follow a printed map, digitising the route as you go, or wander about as the mood takes you. When you complete your journey, save and export the track for use with BikeGPX, Google Maps or another GPX-friendly tool.…

BT Broadband As you can see from our photo, we live in an isolated area in the Yorkshire Dales. With BT, we could never get more than 10Mbps broadband, and it kept dropping out too. And what I use instead… Earlier this year we switched to B4RN (https://b4rn.org.uk), which is a non-profit organisation aiming to provide fast broadband to rural areas in the north of England. We had Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) connected, and now get download speeds in excess of 950Mbps. We use it for our phone service too, and pay considerably less than we did with BT. All the cabling was laid underground with the help of lots of enthusiastic local volunteers. Digging a channel through the fields (with permission of the landowners, of course) has been comparatively easy. Since…

Zoho Show Free Android, iOS www.zoho.com/show The best new app of the fortnight is a brilliant presentations tool. If you’ve been on holiday or welcomed a new grandchild, use this easy editor to create an annotated, animated slideshow of the event using your own photos, video and notes, then post it online or share with friends. A superb app with no adverts or in-app purchases. Asda Scan & Go Free Android www.snipca.com/31712 iOS www.snipca.com/31713 Asda’s in-store shopping app now works at around 30 of the retailer’s major UK branches, from Balby to Wallsend, with many more to be added. It effectively turns your device into a self-scanner. Use it to scan items as you fill your trolley, then pay via a barcode at the self-checkouts-without having to load everything on…

In Issue 555’s Make Windows Better, we showed you a quick way to restart a frozen Windows taskbar. These freezes are often caused by a File Explorer window crashing-File Explorer and the taskbar share the same Windows process, so if one crashes, it also brings down the other. To stop this happening, the recent May Update separates the two, so that your File Explorer windows run independently of your taskbar. If you haven’t yet installed the update-or are running Windows 8.1 or earlier-you can still enable this feature, but you need to switch it on yourself. To do this, open a new File Explorer window (Windows key+E), then click File, ‘Change folder and search options’ (Windows 10 and 8.1) or File, Tools, ‘Folder options’ (Windows 7). Next, select the View…

What is it? Google’s new translation software that translates not just what you say, but also how you say it, capturing the tone and inflection of your voice. Google’s aim is to add more nuance to translated speech so it sounds “more natural and less jarring”. This is impressive, but what makes Google particularly proud is that Translatotron is the world’s first ‘end-to-end’ translation system. Is that a security feature? No, it’s not related to end-to-end encryption, which messaging tools use to prevent anyone from hacking them. Instead, it’s cutting-edge technology that translates speech directly from what’s spoken to what’s being heard, without first having to convert it into text. Or, as Google says, it is “based on a single attentive sequence-to-sequence model for direct speech-to-speech translation without relying on…

HARD DRIVES If you use WD hard drives and SSDs, update the company’s Drive Utilities and SSD Dashboard programs to fix flaws. The patch for Drive Utilities (www.snipca.com/31745), released in February, provides “miscellaneous bug fixes”. The SSD Dashboard patch (www.snipca.com/31746), released in April, fixes problems with recognition of older drives. WHATSAPP WhatsApp is urging all users to update their apps to avoid a vulnerability that can be used to inject spyware on to your phone. The latest releases are available for iOS at www.snipca.com/31755 and Android at www.snipca.com/31756. ADOBE ACROBAT In April Adobe updated its Acrobat PDF software to strengthen it against malware and introduce a sandbox, which opens PDFs in an isolated environment from which they can’t harm your PC. Update it at www.snipca.com/31730. FIREFOX Versions of Firefox released…

Health is a devolved matter across all four regions of Britain, so Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland each have their own systems. None of them have developed an app as advanced as NHS England’s. In Northern Ireland and Scotland, patients can use Patient Access (www.patientaccess.com, see screenshot), run by private company EMIS Health in conjunction with the NHS. Available online and through an app, it lets you book GP appointments, order repeat prescriptions and access your medical records. EMIS says Patient Access is supported by around half the GP surgeries in England – look for yours at https://app.patientaccess.com/registration. GPs in Northern Ireland also offer their services online through NI Direct (part of the NHS). Search for yours at www.nidirect.gov.uk/gp. Patients in Wales can use the NHS’s My Health Access to…

PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT How do I shift from Windows 10 Mobile to Android? Q You probably know that some Lumia phones running Windows 10 Mobile are losing all support from Microsoft. I believe this means no more security updates, so thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of people must switch to Android or iOS. I’m one of those people, as I have a Microsoft Lumia 640. I know that Windows 10 Mobile phones are like Marmite, but I love mine and would prefer to keep it. My wife recently purchased the Moto G6 (Android) and finds it first class. So, I’m thinking to go the same way. What’s the best way of transferring my Lumia stuff to Android? I was raised on the Commodore Vic 20 (yes, I am…

Q My Sony KDL-42W705B TV lets me pause shows, saving recordings to USB storage. To make the most of this I bought a 2TB USB memory stick, but the TV doesn’t recognise it. Smaller USB sticks work. The built-in USB viewer supports FAT16, FAT32, exFAT and NTFS file systems, so I’m guessing it’s because it does not support the 2TB stick – regardless of the file system. I cannot find a specification that states the memory limits so I don’t know what the maximum is. Martin Beecher A Sadly, we fear that you’ve bought a fake product. While 2TB USB sticks do exist, they’re extremely expensive. The 2TB Kingston DataTraveler model, for example, costs around £1,245 from Amazon (www.snipca.com/31641, see screenshot). You might be a person of means who was…

A router and a switch Q My router has four network ports, into which I have cables to connect my Sony TV, an Xbox games console and a digital video recorder. Recently, I’ve drilled a hole through the ceiling to string another cable to my desktop computer upstairs, because the Wi-Fi reception is patchy up there. This all works fine but all the network ports on my router are now in use. This isn’t a problem currently, but I wonder what would happen if I needed more. Would I need to buy a new router with more ports? A friend suggested I could extend it using something called a network switch. Is he right? And what’s the difference between a switch and a router? Lee Tyler A For your circumstances…

Nearly 50 per cent of people aged 75 and over are regular internet users, more than double the figure in 2011. New figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show that 47 per cent of over-75s have been online in the past three months. The figure was just 20 per cent eight years ago. The ‘Internet users in the UK’ survey for 2019 (www.snipca.com/31750) reveals that those aged 65-74 are also using the internet more-82 per cent, up from 53 per cent in 2011. Internet use among young people remains almost universal, with 99 per cent of 16-to-44 year olds having used it recently. This drops a little to 93 per cent for those aged 55 to 64. London and the South East has the highest proportion of internet…

You’ll soon be able to control your iPad with a mouse and upload files using a USB stick or SD card, after Apple unveiled a new operating system (OS) for the device that makes it work more like a traditional computer. The system, called iPadOS (www.apple.com/ipados), is the first that’s been specifically built for the iPad. It lets you work on two windows side by side, so you could place two documents next to each other, for example. You can also shrink the keyboard to make it easier to type on screen with one hand, while a redesigned Home screen shows you more apps, and lets you pin widgets showing information such as the current weather (pictured). iPadOS will be released this autumn for the 2017 and 2018 editions of…

You may soon be able to book a parking space online from your home after the Government opened up parking data to software developers. The Department of Transport is standardising the data across the UK, encouraging local councils and private companies to share the information. Once given access to the data, tech companies will be able to build new parking programs. As well as reserving spaces, possibilities include tools to help you find a space while you’re driving, show the size of spaces, and rank the prices in different car parks. Tests will be run in Manchester, Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and parts of Essex, where councils will be given a share of a £1m pot to fund projects. Local government minister Rishi Sunak called the new system “intelligent parking”. He claimed…

WATCH OUT FOR… Dangerous USB ports in public What’s the threat? Security experts have warned about the risk of hackers modifying USB ports in public places in order to infect devices that are plugged into them, or steal personal data they contain. The threat, which is called ‘juice jacking’ after the slang term for battery power, is particularly severe at airports. Talking to the Forbes website, IBM security specialist Caleb Barlow said that plugging into a public USB port “is kind of like finding a toothbrush on the side of the road and deciding to stick it in your mouth”. Earlier this year, IBM’s security team said hackers backed by rogue states are increasingly targeting travellers. How can you stay safe? There haven’t been many reports of juice jacking, but…

Crush phones to punish ‘antisocial’ drivers With reference to Julian Davies’ Star Letter in Issue 555, suggesting that phones should switch themselves off when they’re in a car, my wife (a nondriver) would be somewhat put out when travelling as a passenger if she were unable to use her phone. I also suspect that those children and young adults who seem pathologically attached to their phones would, when driven as passengers in cars, suffer from serious withdrawal symptoms. I can imagine the familiar cry of “Are we there yet?” every few minutes would be replaced by “Quick, stop, I need to check my messages/Facebook/Instagram/emails”. I occasionally use Waze and even Google Maps on my phone for navigation, but this would no longer be possible if my phone wouldn’t work in…

Contact us so we can investigate your case Email: consumeractive@computeractive.co.uk Please include your name, phone number and address. LEAD CASE Can I sue Apple for degraded iPad battery? Q The battery of an iPad Pro I bought from Apple two years ago hasn’t worked properly since the last iOS upgrade to 12.2. Although the iPad’s not used for data-intensive work, the battery life has now been hugely degraded, and therefore doesn’t last as long as it should. I read Apple’s doing this deliberately. If so, would I have a claim against it? Could I even sue it? David Spens A It’s true that Apple has admitted slowing down older iPhones, but denies doing so to other devices. Without evidence to the contrary, David would have to prove the iPad’s battery…

It’s important to acknowledge the sources for your research because they provide the evidence you need to back up all the information in your tree. But these are easily overlooked when you’re busily filling in the gaps of a person’s life. That’s risky, because what we think of as concrete facts and events are better described as ‘claims’ that may not be true. As the second item in the Genealogical Proof Standard checklist (www.snipca.com/31620) makes clear: “Each statement of fact has a complete and accurate source citation”. In genealogy terms, a source is any piece of evidence, such as a document, certificate, audio recording or photo, that provides information. A repository is where that source is kept, whether physical or digital. Sources aren’t directly attached to facts but are linked…

How can I get MS Word 2003 to open DOCX files? Q I’ve used Office 2003 for years and don’t want to upgrade to a newer version. However, I’m increasingly sent DOCX files that Word refuses to open. Is there any free software that will convert these files? Tony Barnes A The Compatibility Pack update for Office 2003, which enabled it to open DOCX files (as well as other newer Office formats, such as XLSX), would have solved your problem, but just over a year ago Microsoft stopped making it available for download. But don’t panic, there are other ways to open DOCX files without paying for a new version of Office. The first is to upgrade to a free office suite that can handle DOCX files. LibreOffice is our…

Kanghua Ren Kanghua Ren, better known to his 1.2 million followers as ReSet, is one of Spain’s biggest YouTube ‘stars’. Most of the videos he posts online are, predictably, of him playing online games like Fortnite. But it turns out he also likes filming sick jokes, including tricking a homeless man into eating an Oreo biscuit filled with toothpaste, causing the man to vomit. The ‘joke’ backfired when a Spanish judge sentenced Ren to 15 months in prison and ordered him to pay his victim €20,000 (£18,000) in “moral damages”. Ren probably won’t spend any time behind bars because Spain tends to suspend sentences for young first-time offenders. But the judge ordered the closure of his YouTube channel, and banned him from social media for five years, so hopefully we’ve…

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

What is it? Last year, Asus demoed ‘Project Precog’, a prototype laptop with a screen in place of the keyboard. Thanks to a built-in camera system, artificial intelligence and so forth, a virtual keyboard would magically appear when you needed it, but otherwise you could use both screens, which would fold flat to sit side by side. And now they’ve actually made it? No. But they are making a laptop with two screens, expected later this year. Perhaps wisely, the ZenBook Pro Duo’s secondary touchscreen (pictured) only occupies the top part of the keyboard section, like a bigger version of Apple’s MacBook Touch Bar. Below it is a proper keyboard. Wait, where’s the touchpad? At the right of the keyboard, where it also acts as a numeric keypad, much like…

Microsoft Bob What was it? Designed to make Windows 3.1 easier to use, Bob was an interface that took the form of a cartoon house in which each room contained applications and animated ‘Assistants’, including a dog called Rover (see screenshot). Why did it die? Bob appeared in 1995 with enormous hype, but instead of cutting the need for a software manual, it came with a 29-page guide and an optional 210-page instruction book. It demanded a high-spec PC, yet its features were limited and inconsistent, and the novelty of the characters wore off as they repeated the same unfunny chat. Bob soon died, but left two legacies. During development, its project manager, Melinda French, became Mrs Bill Gates; and although the font created for Bob by designer Vincent Connare…

What you’ll need: Java, GPSMaster and BikeGPX (all free) Time required: An hour, plus the length of your walk As spring becomes summer, we’re bound to spend more time outdoors. It’s the perfect season for walking off the extra pounds we put on over winter, not to mention exploring the countryside, both local and far from home. There’s no shortage of books and websites filled with routes you could follow, but leafing through a book in the middle of a windy field, or dragging a map on your phone, are far from convenient options. Fortunately, there’s a better way. Here, we’ll show you how to plot a route on your PC and transfer it to your phone. Then, once you’ve pulled on your hiking boots, your phone will track your…

PASSWORDS Ask LastPass to send a password ‘hint’ Thanks for suggesting LastPass’s new tool for recovering your master password via the phone app (Protect Your Tech, Issue 555, page 11). It gives me the opportunity to recommend another way to recover your password, this time on the PC version of LastPass. What you need to do is set up a password ‘hint’. You’re given this option when you first set up your master password. So, for example, if your master password is ‘sale of the century’, your hint could be ‘Nicholas Parsons’ (older readers will get this!). If you forget your password, visit https://lastpass.com/forgot.php, enter your email address, then click Send Hint (see screenshot below left). LastPass will then send you the hint, which hopefully will be enough to jog…

Epson Eco-Tank ET-4750 £328 from Amazon www.snipca.com/27743 For years I’d been promising to splash out on a top-end printer to avoid the false economy of a cheaper printer with expensive running costs. I finally got round to it last year, encouraged by your positive review of the Epson Eco-Tank ET-4750 (reviewed Issue 528, page 22). What clinched it for me was your reviewer saying that it’ll work out as value for money if you print around 5,000 documents. As treasurer of various societies, and head of a small business, I knew I’d easily hit that number over a few years. You said the printer is fast, at 16 pages per minute. I’ve managed 17, sometimes 18. The colour touchscreen is easy to operate, it works well over Wi-Fi. But my…

Secret Notes AES-256 £3.39 Android www.snipca.com/31748 Finally, an app we trust enough to store bank details, passport number and insurance info when travelling. Everything is stored on your device alone and locked using top-level AES-256 encryption. The app doesn’t send any data to a server, including your password, so you must remember it. Best For Storing vital personal info AppLock* Free Android www.snipca.com/31711 If you share your device with family members and want to keep their hands and eyes off certain apps and settings, secure them with AppLock. Launch the app, set a security pattern, then tap the switches to choose which apps and settings to protect. The list includes services such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and even incoming calls. Best For Protecting important settings GalleryVault* Free Android, iOS www.snipca.com/31758 Stash…

LIBREOFFICE CALC & MICROSOFT EXCEL Fill cells based on a series Excel and Calc both have useful tools that will fill a series of cells for you based on the initial sequence you enter and the pattern that’s detected. You simply select the cells you’ve already entered values into, hover your mouse over the bottom-right corner of the selection until a small ‘+’ appears, then click and drag the selection to cover the cells you want filled. For example, if your first two cells contain ‘2’ and ‘4’, the rest will be filled with ‘6’, ‘8’, ‘10’ and so on. This also works with days of the week, months, and dates. You can even choose to fill a series of cells only with weekdays-useful if you’re creating a spreadsheet to…

BLUR BACKGROUND IN SKYPE Hover your mouse over the Video icon at the bottom of the screen then turn on the ‘Blur my background’ slider. It works in the online and downloadable versions of Skype. CHECK WHETHER YOUR PASSWORDS HAVE BEEN STOLEN Install Google’s Password Checkup extension for Chrome (www.snipca.com/31794) and it’ll warn you whenever you type a username or password that’s been stolen. BLOCK COOKIES IN FIREFOX Click the small ‘i’ icon in Firefox’s address bar, then the cog icon to the right of Content Blocking. Choose from three levels of blocking: Standard, Strict, or Custom. DELETE GOOGLE’S TRACKING AUTOMATICALLY Visit www.snipca.com/31795, click ‘Choose to delete automatically’, then select three or 18 months, or keep the default option to delete tracking manually.…

1 Why have my Search options changed? Because Windows thinks it will produce more accurate results. After you click Search you’ll see options including All, Apps, Documents, Email and Web (see screenshot below), letting you narrow your results. This is different from (and better than) previous versions of Windows 10, which showed Cortana then waited for you to type a search term. Search and Cortana used to share a single taskbar icon, but now they have a magnifying-glass and circle icon respectively. Searching with Cortana returns a single result, suggestion or action (Microsoft decides what’s most relevant for you). The Search tool delivers more options, from which you can choose exactly what you need. By default, Windows only produces search results from your libraries – Pictures, Documents, Music and so…

Q I’ve lost some photos I thought were safely stored on CDs. These were put away several years ago, but now I can’t seem to see anything on them. Is there an explanation for this, and any way to retrieve them? I don’t have a lot of computer knowledge, so any help in plain English would be great. Arthur Hayes A First, can we ask whether you created (burned) these discs yourself or did you perhaps use a professional service? Because of your stated inexperience we have an inkling that the latter might be the case. However, first, let’s check to see what, if anything, is stored on the discs. Press Windows key+E to launch File Explorer and then, on the left, click to select This PC. Now pop a…

Using the internet is changing our brains, leading to shorter attention spans and memory loss, a major study has suggested. Academics from Oxford University, King’s College London, Harvard, and Western Sydney University found that the internet has replaced our ability to recall facts, tricking us into thinking we’re cleverer than we are. They reviewed dozens of studies and experiments conducted over the past 30 years on how the internet has influenced our brains. One experiment showed that people searching online found information faster than others flicking through encyclopedias, but were less able to recall the information accurately. People most distracted by streams of notifications online were found to have less grey matter in the areas that govern concentration. They also struggled to devote their attention to tasks after a period…

WANNACRY ‘ART’ LAPTOP SOLD FOR $1.3M A Windows XP laptop infected with six of the deadliest strains of malware ever made has sold at auction for $1.3m (£1m). One of the viruses is WannaCry, which wrecked PCs worldwide in 2017, including thousands in the NHS. The laptop is an artwork by Chinese artist Guo O Dong, who created it to highlight the dangers posed by the web. However, the laptop isn’t dangerous because it has been ‘air-gapped’, meaning it can’t connect to the internet or other networks. GOVT TO SCRAP FEE FOR PHONING 101 The Government is scrapping the 15p fee for calling 101, the non-emergency phone number. From next April it will be free to call the number, which is used to report crimes that don’t require an urgent…

Google Maps now warns you about speed cameras if you use it as a sat-nav on your phone while driving. After testing the tool since January in the US, Google has made it available in over 40 other countries, including the UK, Spain and Australia. Speed-camera icons will appear at the bottom of the screen, along with the speed limit for the road you’re driving on. Google Maps will also play an audio warning as you approach a camera, and when you enter a road with a different limit. The tool already exists in the Waze sat-nav app (www.waze.com), which Google bought in 2013. Waze is a ‘crowdsourced’ app, meaning drivers can add the location of speed cameras to update the maps that all motorists use. Google says some crowdsourced…

INSTALL THUNDERBIRD APP FOR WINDOWS 10 You can now install a Thunderbird desktop app for Windows 10 from the Microsoft Store. However, it’s not an official release from Mozilla, which makes Thunderbird. Instead it’s been made by independent developers Store Ports, who specialise in converting open-source programs like Thunderbird into apps for the Microsoft Store. Install the app from www.snipca.com/31818. LEGAL RIGHT TO 10Mbps FROM MARCH 2020 Ofcom has set 20 March 2020 as the date everyone in the UK has the legal right to request 10Mbps download speed and 1Mbps upload. This right, known as the Universal Service Obligation (USO), was announced by then-Prime Minister David Cameron in 2015. Only two companies have been chosen to fulfil the USO-BT and KCOM (in Hull only). When you issue a request,…

Firefox Lockwise https://lockwise.firefox.com When sharing passwords across devices, which digital tool would make you feel more secure-using a lockbox or a lockwise? We prefer the former, as would most people we reckon, so it’s odd that Mozilla has switched to the latter for its new password manager. You can lock boxes; you can’t lock ‘wises’. Still, it looks like a useful tool, automatically filling in online forms as you browse the web. To use it, you’ll first need to create a Firefox Account (https://accounts.firefox.com). Next, visit the URL above and install the add-on for Firefox and the Android or iOS app on your phone. Once that’s done, you’ll need to turn on the syncing and auto-fill options on your phone or tablet (we don’t have room to explain these here,…

In Issue 555’s Cover Feature Will Stapley asked whether any readers had a PC whose ‘power on’ hours beat his of 12,719 hours. Well, according to CrystalDiskInfo (www.snipca.com/31595), the Hitachi drive in my homebuilt PC has been on for 69,300 hours (see screenshot). The PC has a Gigabyte motherboard, an AMD processor, a 4GB GTX1050 graphics card and 16GB memory. It runs Windows 10 Pro. The specific drive was purchased from PC World in the Noughties. My system runs 24/7 primarily for games and genealogy these days, a hangover from my role as an IT manager when instant access was sometimes required. Ross Ludgate CA SAYS Congratulations are due to Ross-no other reader could beat 69,300 hours. Tim Mallinson came close with 60,777 hours, while Rod Martins was a bit…

Several readers who own Huawei phones have asked us to clarify their legal rights following Google’s decision to restrict Android updates on devices made by the Chinese manufacturer. It announced the decision after President Trump signed an executive order forbidding US companies from working with companies deemed to be “foreign adversaries”, such as Huawei. As it stands, we think it’s unlikely customers are entitled to a refund. UK law does give you a refund if a phone is inherently faulty, but this doesn’t cover not being able to update it with new software. Even if it were covered, who would be responsible for refunding customers? They don’t have a contract with Huawei (the manufacturer), while retailers can legitimately claim the problem was triggered by President Trump and therefore lies outside…

I’ve been given a subscription to FindMyPast for my birthday and would like to pair it with a program that lets me find matches and record them in a family tree stored on my computer. Does such a tool exist? Jay Duncan You could use Family Tree Maker’s web-clipping feature to manually copy information across, but a better option is Family Historian (£35.99, free 30-day trial available). Visit www.family-historian.co.uk/aidm for a complete guide on how its Automatic Internet Data Matching feature works, including how to copy and paste or drag-and-drop record matches into your own tree. Have a genealogy question for Nick? Email letters@computeractive.co.uk with ‘Grow Your Family Tree’ in the subject line.…

Giving your home a fresh new look by rearranging your furniture can seem like a good idea, but after a day spent shifting heavy items you may end up thinking it looked much better the way it was. My solution? Create a virtual version of your home in Sweet Home 3D (free from www.snipca.com/31805). It lets you move furniture (and even walls for those intending more radical changes) until you hit on a layout that works. You can then attempt to recreate it in the real world more confident that it won’t look a mess. The program’s basics are easy to master for expert and novice alike, and you should be creating impressive 3D designs in no time. The menu buttons are, however, small and fiddly, so I use keyboard…

PC | £665 from Overclockers UK www.snipca.com/31749 Sweet sixteen As befits a computer made for gaming, this chunky desktop PC is reminiscent of the ugly spaceships invading aliens always land in 3D-rendered cityscapes in any number of apocalyptic video games. Indeed, those with more refined interior decor tastes might prefer to tuck the XVI Essential into a Chippendale secretaire, but the rest of us can admire the twin LED-lit fans through the front grille and side window (pictured below) of the Kolink Aviator M case. “Great for video editing and fast at opening your files” Inside is a notably uncompromising set of components for a PC in this price bracket, pairing AMD’s six-core Ryzen 5 2600 processor with a 6GB GeForce GTX 1660 graphics card. The latter is from Nvidia’s…

PC | £1,370 from Chillblast www.snipca.com/31773 Joined-up thinking You can get a PC with a decent processor, graphics card, SSD and hard drive for under 700 quid (there’s one on page 22). So why pay twice as much? Chillblast has some answers, starting with AMD’s Ryzen 7 2700 processor, which has eight cores, each capable of handling two threads. Being able to do 16 things at once won’t help your typing speed in Word, but it can make a huge difference when you’re using advanced software for heavyweight tasks – or just doing lots of things at once. “All round, this is a seriously capable PC for advanced apps or heavy tasks” It’s not the very fastest processor you can buy. The overclockable 2700X can go quicker, and Intel’s rival…

ROUTER | £125 from Ballicom www.snipca.com/31801 There’s always a‘but’ This affordable Wi-Fi router is packed with promising features. Firstly, although it’s a single box designed to replace any other router that isn’t built into an ADSL or VDSL modem, it has built-in software that lets you add more units in a mesh Wi-Fi network (see Issue 523, page 24). At £250 for two nodes, it would be among the pricier mesh options, but it’s attractively flexible to get a fully featured router with the option of adding another if you find you need better coverage. Secondly, it supports WPA3, the new security standard that will make future Wi-Fi networks even less susceptible to nearby hackers. Thirdly, there’s a USB 3.0 socket that you can use to attach external storage, which…

PHONE | £155 from Amazon www.snipca.com/31811 Fading star You’d never guess this budget phone was made by the same company as the top-end Galaxy models. It may have dropped the home button, moving the Samsung Pay fingerprint reader to the side, but there’s still a large black border above and below the screen, and the plastic back panel – in grey, black or red – is pretty dull. Charging is via microUSB, not USB-C, which is fiddly and limits how fast you can charge or transfer data, and the three-year-old Snapdragon 425 processor means Android 8, not the latest version 9, only runs smoothly if you don’t try to do too much at once; serious 3D gaming is out. Although the big screen has good brightness and contrast, colour is…

Find out what other products we liked. Buy our new 2018 Back Issue CD: £15 from www.snipca.com/30307 2018 CD ON SALE NOW! LAPTOP HP Envy 13 £799 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. £1,450 from www.snipca.com/26796 ANDROID TABLET PRICE DROP Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 9.7 £349 from www.snipca.com/30707 Tested Issue 501 Now discounted and with a stylus included, this full-size HDR tablet is a better deal than…

I’m a member of a local walking group that has long relied on paper maps and a compass. However, a switch to GPS tracking, and planning routes in advance, greatly simplifies publicising what’s coming up, not to mention attracting interest from other members by sharing an accurate route map in advance. It also means that, with everyone now carrying a smartphone, each walker can have a copy of the map. In that respect, it’s a good safety measure should we ever get split up. Which map-making tools do you recommend? Please let us know: letters@computeractive.co.uk…

As someone who’s been using VinylStudio (www.alpinesoft.co.uk) for several years, I was delighted to see Nik Rawlinson choose it for his excellent How To on digitising vinyl and cassettes (Issue 554, page 35). I thought I was an expert on the program, but Nik’s advice taught me new tricks. I guess he didn’t have space to mention one of its best features, which is converting multiple recordings from one format to another in one go (often called ‘batch’ converting). I always convert mine to the FLAC format because it uses up less storage space than others. To do this, you just select the albums you want to convert, click More, then choose ‘Convert Recording Format of Selected Albums’. Make sure you choose FLAC in the dropdown menu (see screenshot). There…

ANDROID Browse without being traced on your phone or tablet Anonymous browser Tor has finally launched on Android. Like its desktop cousin, the new Tor Browser app (www.snipca.com/31706) is a free, open-source, Firefox-based browser that blocks all trackers and cookies, encrypts your data, and bounces your activity around the world so no one can tell where or who you are. There’s no VPN-style account setup, but you do have to connect to the private network each time you run the app. Tap Connect, then wait for the purple Explore Privately screen (see screenshot below). Type your search term at the top, then tap the DuckDuckGo icon to run the search in a private search engine. You’re offered a few alternative search options for convenience (Google and Wikipedia, for example), and…

WINDOWS 7, 8.1 & 10 Disable unwanted ‘Low disk space’ warnings When one of your hard drives runs low on space, Windows shows a warning. All very helpful. What is annoying, however, is that the warning will continue to pop up intermittently (complete with irritating sound effect) until you free up space. If the drive in question isn’t your main one (ie, a drive that stores only your music, photo and video collection, rather than your Windows installation), there’s no threat to your system if it happens to be almost full. So if these warnings are driving you to distraction, you can disable them. This requires you to tweak the registry, so back up your personal files and create a system restore point first. It’s not possible to disable the…

Create a private photo-sharing group for your members Whatever type of club you run, your members will appreciate having a secure online space to view, upload and comment on club-related photos. Google Photos and Facebook both offer decent group-sharing options, but we recommend Flickr because it provides the best combination of privacy and group-management tools. Create your group If you don’t have a Flickr account, sign up for a free at www.flickr.com/signup, then log in. By default, Flickr marks all your photos as public, so change this by going to www.snipca.com/31718 and setting ‘Who can see your photostream?’ to ‘Only you’-don’t worry, you’ll still be able to share private photos with your group. Next, add some photos to test with your group, so click the cloud button (top right) and…

Microsoft knows that improved security is one of the main reasons people choose to pay £100 extra for the Pro version of Windows 10. It comes as no surprise then that it’s added a new sandboxing tool to Pro, creating a safe virtual version of Windows within the main operating system, letting you run potentially dangerous programs without risk. To use it, open the Windows menu, search for Windows Features, then click the first result and tick the box beside Windows Sandbox (see screenshot). Launch a Sandbox session by rightclicking it on the Windows menu and choosing ‘Run as Administrator’. Next, right-click the program you want to run in the Sandbox, select copy, and paste it into the Sandbox window. You can then launch it from there in the usual…

How do you get it? The NHS app is being rolled out across England (see box for other regions) and is available to users of phones or tablets running Android 5.0 (download from www.snipca.com/31774) or iOS 9.0 (download from www.snipca.com/31775). You must be aged 13 or over to use the app and you’ll need to sign up for an NHS account (which it calls a ‘login’), if you don’t already have one. This can be done from within the app itself – tap ‘Log in or create account’ on the main screen, then select ‘No – I need to set one up’ (see screenshot below) and tap Continue. Enter your email address and a strong password, then tap ‘Agree and continue’. You’ll be sent an email to the address you…

Syncing messages Previously you could sync Windows Mobile with the messaging app in Windows 10, letting you see on your desktop texts sent to your phone. Microsoft has now turned off this feature. Windows To Go This has been ‘deprecated’-Microsoft’s term for tools it’s no longer developing. It lets Windows 10 Pro users boot and run from certain USB sticks and external hard drives (see screenshot). It requires a type of USB that is becoming obsolete. Taskbar settings roaming Also deprecated, this tool lets you keep the same taskbar settings across multiple computers. Not for much longer. Visit www.snipca.com/31803 to see Microsoft’s full list of what’s been axed.…

Q My son bought me a newfangled Kindle book reader, which I like more than I expected. However, some page lines or even whole paragraphs are underlined, with a little legend that says something like “12 highlighters” (the number is always different). I have no idea why this happens or what it means, but it appears to be entirely random. Whatever it is, I don’t like it and would prefer these lines not to appear when I’m reading. Can you help me to get rid of them? Marjorie Johns A We sure can. This feature is called Popular Highlights, and it shows you passages that other readers of the book have marked as interesting. If you have a touchscreen Kindle, you can tap, hold and drag on the screen to…

Why does my PDFsam lack features? Q I’ve installed PDFsam Basic, as per Issue 554’s Workshop (‘Split and merge PDFs using free software’, page 40). It seems to lack what I consider some essentials, such as the ability to just view PDFs. Some of the actions require you to have at least viewed the document before they can be used, such as extracting pages – because you need to know page numbers. Am I missing something? Ray Barwick A We’ve doubled-checked every step of our Workshop and it all works as described. So, we think that you may have missed a small but important part of Step 1 – which was to untick the box labelled ‘Install PDFsam Enhanced, includes FREE reader, Creator and advanced features’. This is the paidfor…

32bit/64bit A measure of how much data a PC can process at once. Most older computers are 32bit, more modern ones are 64bit. 3G/4G/5G A set of technologies that delivers faster mobile broadband. 4K Video with a resolution of at least 3840x2160 pixels. 720p/1080p/1440p Common types of high-definition video of 1280x720, 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 pixels respectively. 802.11ac A standard for wireless networks that allows for much higher transfer speeds than 802.11n. Add-on A program that adds extra features to your browser. Adobe RGB A wider colour space than sRGB, extending into richer cyans and greens. ADSL Converts a standard phone line into a broadband connection. AES-256 A form of encryption based on a key length of 256 bits. Antivirus engine Component of an antivirus that detects malware. Bandwidth A measure…