PC Pro February 2016

LIKE ANY DOTING father, I don’t have a favourite article in this month’s PC Pro. That would be deeply unfair to, say, our brilliant group test of routers: if you’re with BT, TalkTalk, Sky or Virgin, turn to p74 and find out not only which router to switch to, and how to do it, but also how to get more from your existing router if you choose to stick with the model you’re supplied by your ISP. Likewise, the insight into contributing editor Davey Winder’s life as he details the fun he had converting a camper van into a truly mobile office (p42). That’s without even mentioning the exhausting hours Dave Stevenson put into road-testing the many different alternatives to Google Maps, as he tried to figure out whether you’re better…

Ivan Pope 3D printing has grabbed the mainstream media’s attention, but Ivan has spent years working out how to create a business based on 3D scanning. See p116 Nicole Kobie While Paul extols smart home benefits, Nicole interviews a security researcher who explains why internetconnected kettles aren’t such a good idea. See p126 Paul Ockenden Enough about smartwatches: Paul’s been spending time with automation gizmos that have convinced him smart homes are here to stay. See p113 Nik Rawlinson Got a webcam gathering dust? It might just be the vital ingredient of your own security camera setup. Nik explains how to make it work on p50…

SHOULD WE BE scared of ISIS when surfing the web? Chancellor George Osborne warned in a speech that ISIS terrorists are developing the hacking skills to attack hospitals, air-traffic control and other key infrastructure. He told parliament that “the stakes could hardly be higher” as he announced the government was doubling its online security crime- fighting fund to £1.9 billion over the next five years. “If our electricity supply, or our air-traffic control, or our hospitals were successfully attacked online, the impact could be measured not just in terms of economic damage but of lives lost,” Osborne warned. “They do not yet have that capability,” he said of the terrorist group. “But we know they want it, and are doing their best to build it.” Could cyberterrorism really be as dangerous as Osborne…

PC shipments Two of the top ten PC makers will close in the next two years. That’s the prediction from IDC analyst Tom Mainelli, and while we’ll have to wait and see if his forecast is accurate, there’s no question that the PC market is struggling. Windows 10 hasn’t helped much, as most users simply installed the free upgrade rather than shelling out for new hardware. While the top four manufacturers all saw their sales slide last year, Mainelli predicted that the two manufacturers to suffer would be further down the rankings – ominous for the likes of Acer, Toshiba and Samsung. Indeed, the latter has already stopped selling laptops in Europe, while in 2014 Toshiba said it would “withdraw from unprofitable markets” The future of Acer Acer will be feeling the slight from Mainelli’s…

Live in a rural area or in a solidly built house in the middle of the city? Then you probably know the pain of mobile not-spots – when lack of coverage means dropped calls and no mobile broadband. However, there’s a secret that mobile operators don’t want you to know: they could easily allow you to hop onto a rival’s network to get coverage. That’s called national roaming, and the government last year attempted (and failed) to force the big operators to allow that on 2G networks. Thankfully, a new player has stepped in with its own solution. Here’s how the Anywhere SIM could help solve your coverage woes. Anywhere SIM? Sounds a bit like Everything Everywhere. The 4G tie-up between T-Mobile and Orange was indeed known as Everything Everywhere before…

IT’S BACK: the so-called Snoopers’ Charter has returned, this time in the form of the Investigatory Powers Bill, giving security services the power to force backdoors into tech companies’ encryption, sift through our webbrowsing logs and hack targets. The bill is only a draft and could be subject to many amendments before it becomes law, but this time the Liberal Democrats no longer have the requisite number of MPs to block the bill’s progress, as they did last time in coalition. Here’s the lowdown on the potential impact of the legislation as it stands. What does the bill include? If passed, these laws would require internet service providers (ISPs) to log every website Britons visit, as well as collecting communications metadata (such as who you Direct Message on Twitter), but not the…