Computeractive 601

from the editor

I know we don’t need yet another TV comedy panel show (surely 587 is enough?), but how’s this for an idea: ask people to imagine what their younger self would have made of tech phrases that have entered the language. There are lots of great examples – ‘block cookies’, ‘take a selfie’, ‘add Bluetooth’ and, as featured in our Cover Feature, ‘stream ripping’. You probably didn’t even realise that by downloading videos from YouTube you were, technically, ripping a stream. But knowing that doesn’t mean it’s easy. There are lots of settings to tweak, formats to select and dodgy tools to avoid. Robert Irvine explains your best options not just for YouTube but for BBC iPlayer and Netflix as well. ‘Sync your passwords’ is another phrase that would have baffled people last…

google ‘scaring’ people into paying for photo storage

Google has been accused of scaremongering people into paying for its premium Photos service by urging them to save their photos in the best quality it offers. You can choose either ‘High quality’, which is restricted to 16 megapixels for photos or 1080p resolution for video, or ‘Original quality’, which is whatever resolution your camera was set to – and therefore can be higher than the 16-megapixel/1080p limit. In an email sent to Photos users at the end of February, it said that images saved at ‘Original quality’ preserve “the most detail and let you zoom in, crop and print photos with less pixelation”. Google included in the email a photo of a bird that’s split in two to contrast Original with High quality. The former looks much sharper (see image), but some…

what we think

As misleading photos go, Google’s bird image is almost on a par with the Sunday Sport’s exclusive of a London bus half-buried at the South Pole. Anyone who has saved ‘High quality’ photos will know that the quality isn’t the pixelated mess Google suggests. Indeed, we’ve often found it impossible to tell the difference between Original and High quality, while Google itself claimed they were “near identical”. To say otherwise, just three months before it ends free unlimited storage, is breathtakingly cynical, and will further anger those who already feel betrayed.…

office 2021 to cost same as office 2019

Microsoft has announced that Office 2021 will launch later this year, and be priced the same as Office 2019 (£119.99 for the ‘Home & Student’ edition). It will be available as a one-off purchase for Windows and Mac users, and come in 32bit and 64bit editions. It will contain the note-taking app OneNote. Writing online (www.snipca.com/37512), Microsoft said it would support Office 2021 for five years. It added that it doesn’t “plan to change the price for these products at the time of the release”. The news ends speculation that Office 2019 would be the final edition available as a one-off purchase. Microsoft’s long-term strategy is to persuade users to subscribe to Microsoft 365 (Office 365), which costs from £59.99 a year for a one-person account with 1TB of storage. You’ll like this… Nasa’s website…

fly over british isles in more detail with flight sim update

Stonehenge (pictured right), Stirling Castle, Snowdonia and Killarney National Park are four of over 70 British and Irish landmarks captured in more detail in Microsoft’s latest update to Flight Simulator 2020. The new images appear in the World Update 3, released in February. Other locations improved include the White Cliffs of Dover, Salisbury Cathedral, Loch Leven and the Lake District National Park, as well as several sporting stadiums. There are also new high-resolution images for Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, London and Oxford, and five new “meticulously hand-crafted airports” (Barra, Liverpool, Land’s End, Manchester-Barton and Out Skerries in Shetland, pictured below left). The update fixes glitches in the game that saw some landmarks like Stonehenge and Edinburgh Castle appear flat or distorted. Visit Microsoft’s blog to read more and watch a video of the improved locations:…

uk phone users ‘due £5 to £30 compensation’ after ‘overpaying’

More than 29 million people in the UK with an iPhone or Samsung phone may each be entitled to between £5 and £30 compensation if a lawsuit from Which? is successful. The consumer group is suing US processor manufacturer firm Qualcomm for alleged anti-competitive policies that led to “inflated” prices of iPhones and Samsung devices. It claims that the company abused its position by refusing to license its patents to rival processor manufacturers, such as Apple and Samsung, unless they bought a separate licence and paid royalties to Qualcomm. Which? says this allowed Qualcomm to charge Apple and Samsung more than would have been the case had it “behaved lawfully”. This increased costs for phone manufacturers, Which? alleges, which “in turn led to consumers paying higher prices”. Qualcomm said the lawsuit had “no basis”…