Table of contents for Vol. 450 in Computeractive

I’ve been warning people about the threat hackers pose from the moment I started writing about technology. They are a shadowy, permanent danger, a remorseless blob of villainy eager to prey on the vulnerable. Their entire reason for existing is to devise new ways to defeat security defences and trick victims. Just think what good they could do if they channelled all that energy into something positive. Protecting yourself goes beyond installing an antivirus and hoping it keeps you safe. As hackers learn new tricks, you have to respond by learning new methods of selfdefence. Let Jane Hoskyn be your teacher – in our Cover Feature (p50) she reveals the 14 new rules you should follow. On another note, I should mention that our 2014 Back Issue CD is selling…

Soon you’ll be able to buy a computer and get change from a tenner. Californian company Next Thing is seeking investment for its C.H.I.P. micro-computer, a rival to the phenomenally successful Raspberry Pi. In its most basic form C.H.I.P. will cost only $9 (around £6). C.H.I.P. is a single-board computer, measuring just 2.3 inches by 1.5 inches, and comes with a 1GHz processor, 512MB RAM and 4GB of storage. It has Wi-Fi built in, plus Bluetooth 4, USB and microUSB ports and a 3.5mm audio output. Like the Raspberry Pi, it runs Linux and connects to a PC monitor, mouse and keyboard for basic computing tasks. You can use it to browse the internet, learn coding skills, watch videos, play basic games and work on spreadsheets or word documents with…

I tend to disagree with Frank McFadden (Readers’ Tips, Issue 448) who said: “It doesn’t seem many people use Flickr nowadays”. Although he uses it, he ought to take a proper look. He might be surprised. Flickr (www.flickr.com) has many, many thousands (if not millions) of members worldwide, both amateur and professional. There are groups and categories covering every possible subject imaginable, which one can join and submit pictures to. I have been a member of Flickr (for free) for years, and have 1TB of storage, which I will never ever use up. My photos draw comments from all over the world. These lead to contact and the exchange of info and tips. One can make friends all over the world, too. It is quite encouraging to know that someone…

Q: I bought an Apple MacBook from PC World in August 2014. At the time I also took PC World’s Care Plan, which cost £300. The MacBook has been trouble free, but the charger unit has failed. PC World told me it would be replaced within three to five days, but I need my Mac for work so I can’t wait this long. I went to PC World to ask for a free replacement which I believe the care package untitled me to, but the sales assistant refused. In the end I had to buy one. I believe the cost of the Care Plan is totally unjustified. What do you think? David Southworth A: It’s hard for us to say whether the £300 David paid for the Care Plan represents…

Confident of mass refunds for Vodafone TopUp customers We would like to thank all the Vodafone ‘TopUp and Go’ customers who got in touch with us following the company’s refusal to refund outstanding credit on its 180-day dongle. After first examining Vodafone’s decision in Issue 432 when reader Brian Patterson complained to us about the company, we asked other disgruntled customers to get in touch. We’ve now passed on all those claims to Vodafone, who said in February that they would refund customers. Therefore we’ll revisit this case only if they refuse. If that does happen, we shall refer the case to Ofcom, the communications regulator, though customers who have got in touch with us will need to give us further permission to pass on their details. Ofcom has said…

Call-blocking scam In April, I got a call from an Asiansounding woman who said she was from the Telephone Preference Service (TPS). She confirmed my name and address and said I qualified for a new piece of kit that fits between my wall socket and phone to help block nuisance calls. It would cost £1.99 a month. I told her in all the years I’ve been registered with the TPS it had never prevented a nuisance call, so I don’t intend paying them for not doing their job. The line went dead. Initially, it sounded plausible until she said the kit blocked all nuisance calls. Ted Chiverton Warn your fellow readers about scams at letters@computeractive.co.uk…

Which printer should my daughter buy? Q: My daughter is a student teacher and is looking for a colour printer that will be able to cope with reasonably heavy use, but doesn’t cost the earth in terms of ink. It would preferably be AirPrintcompatible so she could print from her iPhone and iPad. Any ideas? Eliot Jordan A: If your daughter wants to scan as well as print, the Canon Maxify MB5050 is a good choice (£146 from www.snipca.com/16489). This AirPrint-compatible MFP is fast, printing our text test at 21.4 pages per minute (ppm) and our graphics test at 6.3ppm. Running costs are low with a page of text and graphics costing 4.1p to print; a plain text page costs just 0.9p. Colour print quality was a little drab, though.…

USBFlashCopy is a brilliant, free portable tool that, with just one click, copies files from any USB stick, hard drive or memory card you connect to your PC. In this Workshop, we’ll show you how to tweak its Default ‘profile’ (setting) to save the copied files to a folder of your choice. You can also choose to move the files (rather than copy them), and filter the files you copy according to their format or the date they were last modified. STEP 1 Go to www.usbflashcopy.com and click the ‘Download (No installer)’ link below the main image. Click the downloaded setup file, Run, then double-click the USBFlashCopy icon in your notification area 1 to open it. First, click the ‘Run on Windows startup’ dropdown menu and select ‘Just for this…

BBC News Free Android: www.snipca.com/16464 iOS: www.snipca.com/16465 The BBC News app’s new ‘compact mode’ lets you reduce the size of its tiles so you can see more news items. Another new feature lets you see items you’ve added to the ‘My News’ category as ‘carousels’ that you can quickly swipe across. To activate these features, go to Settings and tick the first two boxes. FotoFox Free Android: www.snipca.com/16468 iOS: www.snipca.com/16469 If you’re running out of space on your device, then you should install this brilliant new app, which compresses your photos and videos to only 10 per cent of their size. The original files are stored on FotoFox’s secure servers and accessible within the app, from where you can download them with one tap. Flickr Free Android: www.snipca.com/16466 iOS: www.snipca.com/16467…

Microsoft is rolling out updates to the Windows 10 Technical Preview thick and fast. One feature in the latest Build (10074) lets you make the Start menu and Taskbar transparent. This effect, called Aero Glass, is in the Windows 7 Start menu and Taskbar, but not in Windows 8. First, check your Windows 10 Technical Preview Build number at the bottom-right corner of your screen. If it isn’t Build 10074, you need to update your version. To do that, click the Start menu, Settings, ‘Update & security’ at the bottom, then click the ‘Advanced options’ link at the bottom right. Select ‘Automatic (recommended)’ from the dropdown menu at the top, tick the box below, then scroll to the bottom and select Fast in the dropdown menu below. Now click the…

Make Google Maps load faster Until recently, those who didn’t like last year’s changes to Google Maps (maps. google.co.uk) were able to revert to the old-style interface by clicking the question-mark icon at the bottom right and selecting ‘Return to classic Google Maps’. That option has now been removed. But you can switch to a new hidden Lite mode by going to https://www.google.co.uk/maps/lite, which disables some of Google Maps’ features, notably 3D views, Google Earth, distance measuring and My Maps. The benefit is that maps themselves load much faster. To switch between Lite and normal mode, click the lightning bolt icon and select ‘Switch to Lite mode’ or ‘Switch back to full Maps’. If you remain unconvinced by the new Google Maps – or its Lite version – it’s still…

Antivirus suites and firewalls are designed to run constantly in the background, blocking threats. If there’s more than one AV or more than one firewall running on your PC, they will conflict and prevent each other working – which is a gift for hackers. ONLY USE ONE FIREWALL Disable Windows Firewall if you’ve got a third-party firewall installed and enabled. Type firewall into Start and press Enter. Click Windows Firewall Properties and choose Off from the ‘Firewall state’ dropdown box if you have another firewall running. If you don’t have another firewall, make sure ‘Firewall state’ is set to On. Many AV suites automatically switch off Windows Firewall if they have their own firewall (see screenshot). BEWARE WINDOWS DEFENDER This built-in tool describes itself as antispyware and claims not to…

The quickest way to silence Windows is to mute the volume. Go to the Volume icon in the notification area and drag its slider right down. You’ll never hear another peep. But some peeps are useful. Take a selective approach to silencing your PC, and keep only those sounds you want to hear above the din – error messages and low-battery alerts, for example. Go to the Sounds tab and select a program event, then choose ‘(None)’ from the Sounds dropdown menu (you may have to scroll to the top). Click Apply each time, then OK. Your muted events will still be listed in the box, but minus their speaker icon.…

1080p High-definition video, this is the best quality: 1920x1080 pixels.   32bit A measure of how much data a PC can process at once. 64bit A technology that processes information in larger chunks. 802.11ac A standard for wireless networks that allows for higher transfer speeds than 802.11n. Add-on See Extensions. ADSL Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. A technology that converts a standard phone line into a broadband internet connection. Aspect ratio A measurement of the shape of a display. Bookmarklet A small, very simple program stored as a bookmark in your web browser. Cache A temporary space for storing information. Coaxial A type of cable where one wire is surrounded by insulation, which is then surrounded by another wire. Codec Short for Compressor/Decompressor. A file that tells a PC how to…

USE SKYPE TRANSLATOR WITHOUT SIGNING UP You can now use the Skype Translator preview without signing up. Until now, it had only been open to people agreeing to test it. The service translates between English, Italian, Spanish and Mandarin in real time as you speak with someone, displaying a transcript of your conversation on screen. Download it from www.skype.com/translator (for Windows 8.1 and 10 only). Read more on the Skype blog: www.snipca.com/16492. WEBSITE FIGHTS COUNTRYSIDE CRIME A website has launched to help fight crime and anti-social behaviour in the countryside. The National Rural Crime Network (www.nationalruralcrimenetwork.net), run by 20 police forces across England and Wales, is encouraging communities to report their experiences of crime. It says that rural crime is “underestimated, under-reported and not fully understood” and that preventing it…

Picture the scene. Joe Soap goes into his local car dealership and buys a new car. It gives him many years of trouble-free motoring. Then out of the blue, he’s contacted by the dealership and told that in a few months he won’t be able to drive it any longer because the manufacturer has brought out a new model. He’ll be expected to buy it, and just to make sure he can’t use his present one he won’t be able to buy any spare parts for it or insure it. Obviously, such a scenario just wouldn’t happen, not in the motoring fraternity at least, but it happens all the time in the computer world. People who are happy using an operating system they’ve been accustomed to are forced to dump…

Q: I bought Roxio’s ‘Easy VHS to DVD 3’ software for £49 because I saw an online advert that claimed I could record to a PC in several ways, including from any type of camcorder. However, the adapter that came with the software doesn’t fit any camcorder I have. I was also charged import tax, although when I paid, the order said all import costs were covered. Roxio won’t reply to my emails, so can you help? David Lee A: We think we can, but it may be difficult because it’s David’s word against Roxio’s. It’s crucial that he is able to prove that the information in Roxio’s advert was misleading. However, this will be tricky because David claims that Roxio has since changed the advert to state that it…

MEDIA CENTRE MediaPortal 1.11.0 www.snipca.com/16417 What you need: Windows Vista, 7 or 8 Things had been looking pretty shaky for Windows Media Center (WMC) for some time now. The brilliant tool came built into Windows 7 and let users watch DVDs, record TV, pause live broadcasts, stream media and more. But, despite attracting a fiercely loyal following, Microsoft demoted WMC to paid-for, add-on status in Windows 8 – the Pro Pack upgrade (which includes WMC) currently costs £100 at the Microsoft Store. Worse still, Microsoft recently admitted that Windows 10 wouldn’t come with WMC. The good news, however, is you can get a great alternative to WMC for free. MediaPortal is an open-source media-centre program that can do everything WMC did and more besides. It’ll play video files, DVDs and…

HARD DRIVE ❘ £148 from www.snipca.com/16526 As its name suggests, the Canvio Basics 2.5in is Toshiba’s no-frills portable hard drive. It comes in a plain black plastic casing with no extras, such as backup software. What it lacks in looks and accessories, it more than makes up for in storage capacity – at 3TB, it’s easily the largest-capacity portable hard drive we’ve ever tested. Because this drive has a USB 3.0 connection, it performed well in our benchmark tests. Large files were copied at an average speed of 116MB/s, while small files were copied at a speed of 43.1MB/s. While the small-files speed is a little slower than we expected, these are both nonetheless very fast scores. Although there are cheaper, lower-capacity versions of the Canvio Basics – 500GB, 750GB,…

Find out what other products we liked in 2014. Buy our Back Issue CD now: www.snipca.com/14981 LAPTOP Asus X555LA-XX290H £300 from www.snipca.com/16158 Tested: Issue 446 Asus has made all the right choices with this budget Windows 8.1 laptop. Its comfortable keyboard, fast performance, respectably lengthy battery life and bright screen are all the more impressive given its low price. ALTERNATIVE Asus Chromebook C200 A cheap Chrome OS ultra-portable laptop with a bright screen, lengthy battery life and a great keyboard. £200 from www.snipca.com/16353 DESKTOP PC Palicomp AMD Kaveri Evolution £500 from www.snipca.com/16354 Tested: Issue 422 A budget PC with a fast overclocked processor. It also has good upgrade potential and comes with a surprisingly good 24in monitor, as well as a quality USB keyboard and mouse. ALTERNATIVE: Chillblast Fusion Rhino…

Not everyone has a scanner but with Microsoft’s new free app, Office Lens, you don’t even need one. This brilliant app lets you take a photo of any document with your phone and then converts it into a scanned file. Because the image quality is so good, you can even use it to make a digital copy of your receipts and printed photos. You can install and use the iOS app immediately, though the Android app needs a little setting up before using. STEP 1 Install the iOS app from www.snipca.com/16516, then open it and swipe across the introductory screens. On the third screen ensure the box is ticked 1 , then tap Allow Access 2 . iOS users should now skip to Step 4. At the time of writing,…

Email us your tips: letters@computeractive.co.uk TIP OF THE FORTNIGHT Compare multiple shopping sites in the same window Thanks to your Workshop on Vivaldi (see the ‘Browse the web faster than ever Workshop in Issue 446), it’s now my default browser. The other day I was prompted to install the latest version of the Vivaldi Technical Preview (www.snipca.com/15345). Version 3 improves on many of the features mentioned in the Workshop, but its standout feature is the new option to see multiple websites within the same window. Vivaldi refers to this as File Tab Stacking. Where this feature really shines is when you want to compare prices for shopping or holiday deals, because it saves you having to switch between tabs or browsers. First, open the websites you want to compare in…

AGES 0-5 The Joy of Reading £2.99 www.snipca.com/16471 (Android) £2.99 www.snipca.com/16472 (iOS) This app features nine games designed to help your kids learn to read and write. Our favourites involve tracing letters on screen with your finger and completing a word by tapping letters in a list. You can create a profile for each child to track their progress. AGES 6􀀆10 Endless Wordplay: School Edition £4.49 www.snipca.com/16473 (iOS) The interactive lessons in this app will make spelling fun for your kids. The app uses sequences of similar-sounding and rhyming words to help your kids learn and memorise spellings. After correctly spelling a word, the app’s characters will then describe its meaning in an animation. AGES 11-16 Sky Sports Soccer Quiz Free www.snipca.com/16474 (Android) Free www.snipca.com/16475 (iOS) Challenge your teenager’s knowledge…

EXCEL Search for a word by rows or by columns All Office programs have powerful search options, and Excel’s is no exception. For example, did you know you can search for a specific word within every sheet of your file and arrange your word searches by row or by column? Open the Excel file you’d like to search, press Ctrl+F on your keyboard to bring up the ‘Find and Replace’ window, then click the Options button at the bottom. Type the word you want to search for in the field at the top. Now set the Within dropdown menu to Workbook (it’s set to Sheets by default). Similarly, you can specify whether you want to carry out the search column by column, or row by row, by setting the Search…

What is it? A free iOS app (www.periscope.tv) that lets anyone, anywhere broadcast (‘stream’) live video on the web, and lets anyone, anywhere watch it. Its creators (getting carried away as tech entrepreneurs tend to) said they wanted to build “the closest thing to teleportation”. Despite this daft hyperbole, many web experts are predicting a live-streaming “revolution”. Will that happen? Probably, because the app’s potential is huge. Twitter, who bought Periscope for a reported $100m earlier this year, says that over one million people signed up within 10 days of Periscope launching in late March. Every one of these could be streaming their lives as we speak. But what if I don’t want to stream my life online? We wouldn’t blame you. There are too many annoying exhibitionists online as…

We regularly read stories about the death of the password. It’s going to be replaced by pictures of your face, fingerprint scanners, brain waves or whatever. But we bet you a fiver you’ll still be using passwords a decade from now. Two-factor verification tools and password managers such as PassBox (www.snipca.com/16543) are no excuse for sloppy passwords. Don’t let these extra layers of safety lull you into a false sense of security. Your passwords must still include a mix of capital and lower-case letters, numbers and, if allowed, special characters. Free online tool Passwords Generator (http://passwordsgenerator.net) will help. To test its strength, type it into free online tool How Secure Is My Password? (https://howsecureismypassword.net). The page is encrypted (hence the ‘s’ in ‘https’) so no-one, including the site’s developer, can…

STUART ANDREWS is Computeractive’s Mr Angry In the good, old-fashioned world of high-street shopping, I can be pretty sure that I’ve bought a hedge trimmer, a cinema ticket or groceries without having given the retailer permission to hound me on the phone or post a brochure through my door on a daily basis. But is the same true in the world of digital sales and goods? Sadly not, and it all comes down to the tricky tickbox. You’ll find it lurking somewhere on the checkout page. Sometimes it says something simple: ‘tick here if you want to receive further offers by email’. At other times, though, it says ‘tick here to opt out of’ the same. To make it worse, you might get one box saying ‘tick here to opt…

Tell us what’s on your mind Email: letters@computeractive.co.uk Facebook: www.facebook.com/computeractive Twitter: @ComputerActive www.twitter.com/computeractive We got it wrong – plane and simple In your write-up of FlightGear (www.flightgear.org) in Best Free Software, Issue 448, you referred to the P-51 Mustang Jet. It was in fact a pistonengined aircraft. During my National Service (1953-55) in the Fleet Air Arm I flew in the Sea Prince, Firefly, Fairey Gannet and the Grumman Avenger. In 1964, I joined the RAF as an air-traffic controller. Your magazine is still excellent value for money – keep up the good work. H R Morris Sqn Ldr RAF (Retd) CA says Mr Morris is absolutely right, as are several other readers who emailed us to highlight the same error. We clearly need to swot up on our aviation…

I’ve been a Virgin Media customer for a while, but I’m moving to an area which doesn’t have the company’s services. I signed up to a new 12-month contract in December 2014 and because I am ending the contract early, Virgin is charging me a termination fee of £240. I feel this fee is disproportionate. Do I have to pay it? Trevor Gibbs A: Yes, Trevor will have to pay this fee because he’s broken his contract with Virgin. The only way he wouldn’t have to pay is if Virgin hadn’t been providing an acceptable service at his old address. Although we dislike early termination fees, the amount Virgin is charging doesn’t appear to be disproportionately expensive compared with other ISPs. Virgin would have calculated it based on how much…

Contact us so we can investigate your case Email: consumeractive@computeractive.co.uk Write: Consumeractive, Computeractive, 30 Cleveland Street, London W1T 4JD Please include both your phone number and address. Unfortunately, we can’t reply to all your letters. Q: My Canon iP4850 printer, which I bought in September 2011, has stopped working. The only thing Canon suggests is taking it to my repair centre, which would be expensive. This is the third Canon printer I’ve owned and all have died within three to four years. Apart from voting with my feet and never buying another Canon printer, what rights do I have? John Kenny A:John should use the Sale of Goods Act to pursue a refund, which gives him up to six years in which to seek redress for inherently faulty goods. But…

One of the most effective ways of ensuring you stay safe online is to only type your passwords and credit-card details into websites whose URL begins with the prefix ‘https’. The addition of that ‘s’ is crucial. It means that the website uses a form of encryption called ‘Secure Sockets Layer’, which keeps your data safe from hackers. To make sure your browser always sends you to the ‘https’ version of a website, install the free HTTPS Everywhere add-on, which has just been updated to cover thousands more sites. It works in Chrome, Firefox and Opera, but not Internet Explorer (whose users have once again been overlooked). The add-on runs in the background, quietly keeping you safe. You can tweak it so it blocks web pages that don’t use ‘https’…

How can I open MS Access files on a Mac? Q: I built an accounts database in Microsoft Access on my old laptop, but the Apple MacBook Pro I’ve just bought won’t run MS Access. Do you know of a compatible database program that will run on OS X? And do you know if MS Office 2016 for Mac will include Access? Arthur Morgan A: As far as we know, Microsoft has no plans to make a Mac version of Access. There are, however, ways to view and export Access databases to Mac-friendly formats. For older MDB files (Access 2003 and earlier), you could use MDB Explorer (£7.99, www.snipca.com/16419). If you need support for the newer ACCDB format (Access 2007 and up), then MDB ACCDB Viewer (£13.99, www.snipca.com/16420) will do…

HARD DRIVE ❘ £65 from www.snipca.com/16530 The snappily named Toshiba MQ02ABD100H is a hybrid drive that’s supposed to give you the capacity of a hard drive and the speed of an SSD in one handy package. It has a SATA3 connection and at 9.5mm thick it should fit in most laptops, apart from very thin ultra-portable models. You store all your files on the 1TB hard drive, while an 8GB SSD works in the background caching the files you use most often, increasing the speed at which you can open and copy them. It copied large files at an average speed of 102MB/s, which is around 25 per cent faster than a standard laptop hard drive, but there was barely any improvement at all when copying small files, managing an…

Synology’s DiskStation DS215j, which won our fivestar Buy It! award in Issue 449, is one of the best NAS drives we’ve ever tested. It has room for two desktop hard drives with a maximum capacity of 12TB, (2 x 6TB drives, which are the largest currently available). It achieved extremely fast speeds when copying both large and small files, peaking at 94.3MB/s. To enter, email your address to cacomp@dennis.co.uk by midnight 9 June 2015. The Synology DiskStation DS215j is available now priced £143 from www.snipca.com/16187. For more information on Synology’s products visit www.synology.com and follow Synology on Twitter @SynologyUK.…

WINDOWS 7, 8 Shut down your PC with one click Shutting down your PC often requires at least three clicks, but there’s an easy way to speed up this process. This involves creating a Desktop shortcut that you click to shut down your PC. To create this, right-click any blank area on your Desktop, move your cursor to New, then click Shortcut. In the Shortcut field, type %windir%\system32\ shutdown.exe -s -t 5 (here ‘s’ stands for shut down and ‘t 5’ means your PC will shut down after 5 seconds – see screenshot below). You could in theory replace ‘t 5’ with ‘t 0’, but it’s always a good idea to give your PC a few seconds to close any processes that may be running in the background. Now click…

It’s easy to add a YouTube video to your presentation using PowerPoint 2013. First, open your presentation, click the Insert tab, then click the Video dropdown menu at the top right and select Online Video. You’ll see two options - YouTube and ‘From an Embed Code’. We’ll show you how to use the latter option. Open YouTube in your browser, then find your chosen video. Next, click the Share option below the video’s title, then the Embed tab, and copy the provided link. Now return to PowerPoint, paste this link into the ‘Paste embed code here’ field and click the small arrow to the right of the field to insert it into your presentation. Longer videos may take a while. When that’s done, you’ll see a black outline of the…

Make your keyboard sound like a typewriter What sound do you prefer: a clacketyclack typewriter or a bleeping Windows PC? The typewriter, right? Thousands of you clicked the link for free typewriter sound-simulator Qwertick (www.snipca.com/16449) after we mentioned it in Best Free Software (Issue 444). Run it to simulate the sounds of an old typewriter when you press your PC’s keys. Qwertick only works on Windows 7 or earlier, so for Windows 8/8.1 we’d recommend ClicKey (www.snipca.com/16459). Type a letter to choose one of the 26 sound-effect settings (‘a’ is the default). Swap Windows’ system sounds Windows helpfully lets you change its system sounds and even swap them around. Type sound into Start, click Sound, then the Sounds tab. Select an ‘event’ in the Program Events window and then browse…

Error messages during installation If you’re trying to install CCleaner for the first time, you may see an error message if you’re not logged into Windows using an administrator account. Select an administrator account when prompted, and then type the correct password. Alternatively, log out and log back in as an administrator. You may also see an ‘Abort, Retry, Ignore’ dialogue box when trying to update or install CCleaner in Windows XP or Vista. Exit CCleaner, wait a few moments then click Retry. CCleaner doesn’t clean up all user accounts CCleaner doesn’t clean every account by default. If necessary, reinstall CCleaner and choose the option to make it accessible to all users when it appears. Alternatively, install it for individual user accounts as and when needed. If you choose the…