Table of contents for 549 in Computeractive

One of the cliches of the internet age is that data is the new oil. Companies once made billions striking black gold; now they seek fortunes selling customers’ details. If Dallas was remade now, JR Ewing would own a data-gathering company and swap his stetson for a baseball cap. You soon realise how firms can make so much money when you start checking how much data you’ve left online. As Will Stapley reveals in our Cover Feature (page 50), Google knows everything you’ve searched for online, Amazon shows you adverts based on past purchases, and Facebook keeps tabs on videos you watch. If you’re unsettled by this, follow Will’s advice to minimise your digital footprint as you browse the web. You should also use the tools he recommends to track…

Broadband providers must now tell new customers how fast their speed will be, under tougher rules from regulator Ofcom. If the speed drops below this level, ISPs have to improve performance within 30 days or let customers cancel without charge. This right to cancel also applies to landline and TV services that are part of the broadband package. Companies must also tell customers before they sign their contract how fast speeds will be between 8pm and 10pm, which is when internet activity peaks. Some ISPs reduce speed during this period to keep their service running smoothly. The rules are part of Ofcom’s revised voluntary Code of Practice, which came into force on 1 March and aims to make broadband contracts more “clear and honest”. Lindsey Fussell, Ofcom’s consumer group director,…

• 1990 Cern launches WorldWideWeb • 1993 Mosaic becomes first browser to show images alongside text • 1995 Microsoft launches Internet Explorer (IE) • 1996 Netscape Navigator’s market share peaks at nearly 80 per cent • 1998 IE overtakes Navigator, and remains the world’s most popular browser for 14 years • 2004 Mozilla launches Firefox • 2008 Google launches Chrome • 2012 Chrome overtakes IE, and now has a market share of 67 per cent • 2015 Microsoft announces Edge as IE’s long-term replacement • 2018 Microsoft says Edge will be rebuilt using Google’s Chromium source code…

WATCH OUT FOR… Malware inside Android PNG files What’s the threat? Google has warned Android phone and tablet users that hackers can exploit a security flaw that lets them send you harmless-looking image files containing malware. The images in question are PNG files, and would be sent by email or via a messaging app. Opening them would let the hacker remotely access your device. The flaw exists in Android versions 7 (Nougat), 8 (Oreo) and 9 (Pie). How can you stay safe? Google fixed the flaw in a security update for Android in early February, so you’ll need to check whether your phone or tablet has received it. Once Google makes an update available, it’s up to each manufacturer to add it to their devices. Devices made by Google itself…

Email: letters@computeractive.co.uk Facebook: www.facebook.com/computeractive Twitter: @ComputerActive www.twitter.com/computeractive Give me heavy laptops with many features I have to agree with Margaret MacEachern’s Star Letter in Issue 548 (‘I want a solid, not featherlight laptop’). When I need a new laptop I don’t want it as thin as a piece of card. I actually want it with some useful features such as a disc drive. Maybe like Margaret I will also need to build a new laptop to my own specification. Some of us use a laptop on a desk and don’t need to carry it around everywhere. Old fashioned, I know. Heavy laptops with lots of features, or light laptops with few features - I know which one I will always choose. Hopefully my fantastic Asus laptop will last for a…

Can I be charged for a free trial of antivirus software? LEAD CASE Q I wanted to try security software before committing to buy, so opted for a 14-day free trial that was on offer. After six days I decided I preferred my previous antivirus but when I called the retailer, I was told I couldn’t cancel because I’d downloaded the software and was charged £18. Is this correct? Kate Murphy A No, that’s not correct. If a retailer offers you a free trial of software, it’s obvious that you need to download it to try it. Providing you cancel within the given time period, as Kate clearly did, you shouldn’t be charged. We think we know what’s happened here. The retailer appears to have got the 14-day free trial…

Create an ancestor’s life story Not everyone is as passionate about genealogy as you are, so how do you enthuse other members of your family? One way is to tell your ancestors’ stories in a more compelling way than dry fact-based reports or indecipherable charts. Writing an ancestor’s biography is a good approach, letting you inject personality and interest into their life. You won’t need to spend hours staring at a blank document because there are plenty of excellent tools to help you collate your research, then turn it into an engaging story. Use your genealogy software Most programs provide what you need, such as Family Tree Maker’s Smart Stories tool. Select the individual you wish to write about, then click the Publish button and select Other under ‘Charts &…

How can I clean up my right-click menu? Q I’m fed up having endless software take over the menu that appears when I right-click files and folders. Can you recommend a free tool that will stop programs doing this? Brian Hannah A Unfortunately, Windows does little to stop programs hijacking your right-click menu (also known as the context menu). If a particular program appears in this menu, you might want to consider uninstalling it, which will also remove it from the menu. However, if you want to keep the program (but not its context-menu option), there are are a number of tools that can help you. Although primarily a disk cleanup tool, CCleaner (www.ccleaner.com) has a hidden context-menu editor. Click Tools, Startup, then the Context Menu tab on the right.…

There’s one fewer ‘I’m from Microsoft’ scammer preying on computer users, after Baljinder Singh was jailed for more than two years. Until caught by undercover police, the 39-year-old father of two from South Shields had been merrily helping crooks in Delhi to con victims out of thousands of pounds. He was recruited in 2016 as the UK face of a criminal operation that tricked people into allowing remote access to their PCs to fix fake virus infections. The hackers then installed malware and persuaded users to offer up their bank-card details to pay for a fix, whereupon vast sums of money – an estimated £300,000 – were removed from victims’ accounts and sent to India. According to the police, Mr Singh is the first person in the UK to be…

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 IT Pro (www.itpro.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…

What does it do? The Galaxy Fold (pictured), announced by Samsung on 20 February, is an Android smartphone that has a regular 4.6in screen on the front, but opens to reveal a folding display more than twice as big. At 7.3in, its total area works out only just shy of a 7.9in iPad mini thanks to its squarer shape. The launch comes ten years after the company first demonstrated a prototype folding phone. Huawei’s Mate X phone, unveiled days later, has an even bigger screen. Why would I want it? Phone screens have been growing, but hands and pockets haven’t. The more conventional new Galaxy S10+ has a 6.4in screen, which, along with Apple’s 6.5in iPhone XS Max, may represent ‘peak phablet’. Folding screens, made possible by very thin and…

What was it? Launched in 2010, the Kin (pictured) was a semi-smart phone that focused on social networks and email. With a slide-out qwerty keyboard, the compact device was intended to appeal to younger (15-30) buyers. It was sold only on contract at up-front prices ranging from $50 to $100 (then £69). Why did it die? The Kin couldn’t have had a better pedigree, with J Allard (father of the Xbox), Roz Ho (one of the few prominent senior women engineers in Silicon Valley) and Android’s Andy Rubin all involved. But Microsoft was too slow to bring it to market, and it arrived as a hopelessly limited competitor to modern smartphones. Despite software adapted from Windows, the Kin had bizarrely limited features. It only received notifications once every 15 minutes,…

What you need: Amazon Fire TV Stick or Google Chromecast Time required: 30 minutes for initial set-up Amazon’s Fire TV Stick is far more powerful than you might imagine. For just £40 (from Amazon www.snipca.com/30697) you’re getting a fully fledged computer running Android 7 – you just wouldn’t know it because Amazon has given it a TV-friendly interface. However, once you know what’s lurking under the surface, you can start to take advantage of it to build on the Stick’s features. In this issue, we’ll show you how, by extending control of the stick to your PC, you’ll have a far wider range of TV sources to choose from. At the same time, we’ll show you how you can stream from your PC to Google Chromecast (£30 from www.snipca.com/30698, pictured…

What you need: ActivePresenter; Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 Time required: 35 minutes There are many programs that let you record what you do on your PC screen as a video. ActivePresenter stands out from the rest because it also lets you record from your webcam. This means you can record yourself speaking into the camera as you record what you’re doing on screen, making it the ideal program for recording a PC problem or tip. As well as this, you can record a specific area of your screen and annotate your recordings. STEP 1 Before you begin, make sure your webcam and microphone are connected to your PC. To install ActivePresenter, go to www.snipca.com/30759, click the blue Download button below the Windows icon 1, open the downloaded setup file…

Email to transfer videos My son often emails me photos and videos of my grandchildren. I prefer to watch them on my PC or iPad, but like to show them to friends on my mobile phone. In the past, this meant downloading the email attachments multiple times on each of my devices. Alternatively, I would connect the mobile devices to my PC using a USB cable to transfer the photos. And what I use instead… I recently came across a great free file-sharing service called Send Anywhere, which works as a PC program, mobile app, website and even a Chrome extension (www.snipca.com/30838). Simply open it on your device, click Send and select the WI-FI files you want. There’s no limit to the number of files you send, or the total…

Screen Crop 79p Android www.snipca.com/30809 Screen Crop adds a handy screenshot tool to your device’s quick access settings menu. Drag over any area of the screen that you want to capture. You can then refine this area by dragging the four white dots in each corner and save the screenshot or share it. Aroundsound Audio Recorder Free Android www.snipca.com/30808 Aroundsound (currently in beta) lets you record any audio or voice note instantly. You can then edit the audio to remove unwanted sections and download it to your device, or share it using compatible apps. The app syncs data online, so your recordings are always backed up. Eclipse Guide 99p Android www.snipca.com/30810 iOS www.snipca.com/30811 This app notifies you when a partial or total eclipse can be seen from your location. It…

Adobe Photoshop is one of the best photo-editing programs but it’s only available on a subscription basis costing a hefty £20 per month. However, it has a lesserknown free Windows 10 app called Adobe Photoshop Express that offers a range of its more basic editing tools. Open the Microsoft Store, search for, install and open the app. You need to create an Adobe ID or use your existing Google or Facebook account to sign in. You’ll then be prompted to take a photo using your webcam, or edit an image stored on your PC. The program has a useful wand tool at the top that lets you enhance your image with one click. The button beside it lets you compare your original image with any edits you make, and the…

Survey your members using Microsoft Forms Canvasing members’ opinions is a great way to find discussion points for your next meeting. There are several ways you could do it, including email or a forum, but Microsoft has just rolled out a smarter idea: Forms. By running your members’ responses directly into a spreadsheet, Forms makes it easy to analyse the results. Get started for free by pointing your browser at https://forms.office.com and signing in with a Microsoft account. Build your survey Click ‘Create a new form’, followed by ‘Untitled form’. Give your survey a title and, optionally, a description. We’re calling our survey ‘Windows’ next update’, and have briefly explained that it will form the basis of our next discussion. Click ‘+Add question’ and choose the question type. Start with…

If you delete an email account you no longer use, your old address might be taken over by someone else. They won’t see any of your data (such as emails), but they will receive emails sent by other accounts that still use your old contact details and old friends getting in touch. Google doesn’t recycle email addresses, but Microsoft and Yahoo say they “may”. We recommend making these accounts dormant, rather than delete them. First, remove all personal data from the account - this protects you if the account is hacked. Then make sure you log into the account periodically to keep it active (Yahoo and Microsoft suggest at least once a year).…

1. The longest word you can type using the top row of your keyboard is ‘typewriter’. 2. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as a Japanese gaming card company. 3. The first computer mouse was made of wood - and it looked amazing (pictured below). 4. During the height of the Cold War, the password for nuclear missiles in the US was ‘00000000’. 5. In 1936, Russian scientist Vladimir Lukyanov built an analogue computer that was able to solve equations - oh, and it ran on water.…

Where’s my Share icon? Q I am puzzled by the advice on page 45 of Issue 546, headed ‘Save Emails as PDFs to read later or share’. I wonder if the person who wrote this tip can suggest what I am doing wrong, because I cannot locate a Share icon when following these steps. Specifically, I was using the default iOS Mail app on an iPad Pro running iOS 12.1.3. I select an email, tap the Reply button followed by Print to open the Printer Options box. This appears, but where is the Share Icon you mention? Wendy Sayer A On reflection our instruction to ‘swipe upwards and outwards’ probably wasn’t as clear as it could’ve been. Really, we should have said ‘pinch outwards’, or ‘imagine you’re pinching in reverse’.…

Older versions of USB 3.0 are being renamed in a move that is likely to frustrate and confuse many users who are still struggling to understand the existing terms. USB-IF, the organisation that decides USB standards, has announced new categories to mark the launch of USB 3.2, which doubles data-transfer speeds to 20GB/s (20,000Mbps). The previous two standards, USB 3.0 (5GB/s) and 3.1 (10GB/s), will now be known as ‘USB 3.2 Gen 1’ and ‘USB 3.2 Gen 2’ respectively. The latest standard will be officially called USB 3.2 Gen 2x2. Things were much clearer when USB 3.0 was launched back in 2008 because the names of the previous standards, 2.0 (480MB/s) and 1.1 (12MB/s), stayed the same. The idea behind the move is to simplify standards under the ‘USB 3.2’…

You’ll soon be able to access Linux files directly from within File Explorer, after Microsoft announced it will add this function to the next version of Windows 10 (1903), due in April. To open files, you’ll need to type explorer.exe into the Linux distribution you’ve installed on Windows 10. This will open a File Explorer window with the Linux files available in their own drive (see screenshot). Writing online (www.snipca.com/30825), Microsoft said the feature was “highly requested and long anticipated”, and admitted that previously creating and editing Linux files “resulted in losing files or corrupting data”. You’ll be able to perform routine tasks with the files, such as dragging them between locations. As well as Linux support, the forthcoming Windows 10 update will for the first time let you create…

Cambridge University has released an online archive of aerial photographs of the UK described as a “historical Google Earth”. The earliest photographs date back to 1945, when RAF pilots were asked to record the UK’s bomb-damaged landscape. By 1947 pilots were taking around 2,000 photos a year. The images reveal a changing nation, as motorways and new towns replaced countryside, and industrial areas like shipyards, factories and mills closed. Cambridge archaeologist Professor Martin Millett, who has often used the photography to help his research, said it “lets you travel back through time to a Britain which no longer exists”. One of the most poignant images shows the ‘Cornish Alps’, made up of waste dug from clay pits in St Austell (pictured). Many of these mounds were levelled for safety reasons…

I loved your ‘Beat the Burglars’ feature in Issue 548, and have showed it to all our neighbours. There was a recent spate of burglaries in our road, so we got together and hatched a plan. I had bought a Ring doorbell (pictured) a few months before, and felt reassured by seeing who was at my front door, even if I was miles away. I recommended them to my neighbours, and now we’ve formed a ‘Ring’ of fire protecting our homes, backed up by a Neighbourhood Watch-style group on WhatsApp. To illustrate how effective they can be, a few weeks back I saw on my phone, via the Ring doorbell, a dodgy character looking into my windows. I was at work, so texted my next-door neighbour, who was at home.…

At 630 Euros (about £550), the pack of wet wipes Stephen Warwick received from Amazon’s Spanish site (www.amazon.es) was roughly 629 Euros too expensive (see Issue 548). He actually thought he had ordered a OnePlus 6T phone, but fell victim to a scam. He wanted screen swipes, not wet wipes. Stephen reported the scam to Action Fraud in the UK and gave Amazon Spain a crime reference number, at which point it should’ve refunded him. But it didn’t respond to his requests, and nor did Amazon UK. All Amazon customers worldwide are covered by the site’s A-Z buyer protection, guaranteeing a refund if tricked by a scam, so we asked Amazon UK what was going on. It must’ve looked into the case because it replied saying it had been resolved,…

My mother was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and her mother in Bloemfontein. She married my father during World War II and came to Britain. We have never been able to find her birth or marriage certificate. Can you provide me with guidance on accessing South African records? David Cale A good starting point is www.snipca.com/30601, which contains details of what is and isn’t possible (certificates, for example, will be difficult, though not impossible, to obtain). You should combine this site with FamilySearch’s South African Wiki (www.snipca.com/30603), where you’ll discover lots of links to useful online records – some free, others that require payment. Have a genealogy question for Nick? Email letters@computeractive.co.uk with ‘Grow Your Family Tree’ in the subject line.…

HOW I USE… There’s something incredibly satisfying about Command Prompt (search for cmd.exe in the Start menu, then press Enter). It’s not just knowing I’m the one in control (as opposed to clicking something in a program with no idea what might happen next), but also the simple, text-based beauty of it all. Then there’s the sense of nostalgia it generates. Commands I used decades ago in MS-DOS (such as CD and DIR to change and list a directory) work exactly the same as they did back then – and by pressing Alt+Enter I can enter full-screen mode and forget Windows ever existed. While Command Prompt is primarily text-based, I do occasionally reach for the mouse when using it. I can highlight a section of text, which will then be…

PC | £700 from Palicomp www.snipca.com/30754 Seven hundred pounds is a big chunk of money, but pretty reasonable for a desktop PC, especially considering you could easily pay more for a phone. You’d expect some compromises in a system at this price: maybe a decent processor but a weak graphics card, or vice versa; fast SSD storage or a big hard drive, but not both; a small motherboard with limited expansion potential. “A minimalist design hides a great deal of speed, power and connectivity” Palicomp has blithely ignored these rules and put together a fantasy £700 configuration disguised, in its Kolink Stronghold midi-tower case, as a black rectangle. There’s literally nothing to see except through the tempered glass side panel, behind which multi-coloured LED lighting discreetly draws attention to a…

PC | £699 from Mesh www.snipca.com/30756 The first thing you’ll notice after powering up this mid-sized tower PC is the pair of large fans behind the front grille. That’s because they’re lit up with white LEDs that create an attractive whirling effect. The second thing you’ll notice is the other two fans, mounted at the back and on top. That’s not due to any illuminated decorations, just because four fans all going like the clappers makes for a fairly significant amount of background noise. Does a PC like this really need so many fans? Honestly, we suspect not. “A decent, all-round Windows 10 Pro PC with a few bonus points” Then again, Mesh has been building PCs for over 30 years, so if they think you need a couple of…

PRINTER £99 from Amazon www.snipca.com/30766 Interpreting printer model names is a hobby of ours here at Computeractive (that and the pigeons), but HP has stumped us. All right, the ‘w’ is for Wi-Fi. But what does this printer/scanner have two of? What does it have eight of? Maybe they’re just trying to say it’s 87 per cent better than the M15w (£70 from Amazon www.snipca.com/28661, see our review, Issue 534). That adds up, because the M15w has no scanner (albeit it’s £29 cheaper). Then again, we weren’t all that impressed with the M15w, a not particularly fast mono laser printer with limited features; it can’t even print both sides (duplex). The M28w is that, plus a colour scanner. This could work at up to 1200 dots per inch (dpi), suitable…

LAPTOP HP Envy 13 £750 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. £1,300 from www.snipca.com/26796 ANDROID TABLET Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 9.7 £400 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 the new Tab S4 (see Issue 540). Apple’s faster £319 iPad with optional £89 Pencil is superior, but lacks microSD expansion. ALTERNATIVE Amazon Fire…

I don’t have an aerial, cable TV or satellite dish, so all my TV is streamed. I switched to a Fire TV Stick a few months ago, but for six years before that I had an old Mac mini hidden behind my TV. Why a Mac mini? Primarily because it was small, silent, and something I had knocking around already. However, the switch to Fire TV and a Chromecast has greatly simplified things, allowing me to get rid of the trackpad and keyboard that I previously used in place of remote controls. I’ve also found they stream without any of the awkward buffering pauses of my somewhat older Mac, which I now use as a home server for storing files and photos. Nik Rawlinson Got any good tips for the…

Email us your tips: letters@computeractive.co.uk WI-FI Stop Avast hijacking BT Wi-Fi with Fon I am a BT Broadband customer who uses BTWi-Fi-With-Fon - the company’s excellent service that lets you access millions of secure Wi-Fi hotspots across the UK and Europe (www.snipca.com/30832 – see screenshot below). Last month, I noticed that I couldn’t access any of these hotspots on my laptop. It simply wouldn’t display the website login page. A quick online search revealed that Avast Antivirus (which I’d recently installed) can cause this problem. I decided to check this for myself and uninstalled Avast. After doing so, the ‘BT Wi-Fi with Fon’ home page popped up and I could log in as normal. I then reinstalled Avast to confirm my suspicion and right enough, I couldn’t access the page…

There’s a common saying that ‘the best things come in small packages’. That’s precisely how I’d describe the Foktech Wifi Dongle. Until about two months ago, I had no clue such a device even existed and now it’s made a huge difference to where and how I browse. My Wi-Fi router is located downstairs in my living room, but I prefer using my laptop in my bedroom on the first floor. Unfortunately, the connection here was very erratic. Skype calls and online videos would vary in quality, and even emails sometimes wouldn’t get delivered. A friend then suggested the Foktech Wifi Dongle which fits into any free USB port on your PC. Simply install its drivers from www.snipca.com/30840, then insert the dongle into your PC and connect to your home…

Camera+ 2 £2.99 iOS www.snipca.com/30813 Camera+ 2 brings many of the same editing tools to iPhone and iPads as Open Camera (see below) does to Android. It also lets you save RAW images, which results in larger, sharper photos that make editing easier. You can control the levels of focus and blur while taking your photo. Best For: Adjusting blur while taking photos Analog Palette – Vintage Edition Free Android www.snipca.com/30814 Unlike the other two apps, this one won’t help you improve your photography skills. Instead it lets you apply ‘live filters’ when taking your photos. Choose from a range of retro filters, modify their intensity level using sliders, then take your photo. You can then use the app’s editing tools to tweak it. Best For: Applying retro effects before…

EXCEL Highlight the highest or lowest values in a column or row Excel has a useful feature that lets you highlight the highest and lowest values in a particular row or column. To do this, first highlight all the values you want to include, click the Conditional Formatting dropdown menu in the Styles section of the Home tab, move your cursor to Top/Bottom Rules, then select, for example, Top 10 Items (for the 10 highest values) or Bottom 10 Items (for the lowest). You’ll notice that those values will now be in dark red text within a red cell. To change the number of (highest or lowest) values and their formatting, simply click the up or down arrow beside the number 10 to choose the number of values you want.…

What is it? An online version of the drawing game Pictionary, in which a computer guesses what you’ve drawn, or you guess what it has drawn. It was created by US scientists to help add ‘common sense’ to artificialintelligence (AI) software. How does it work? Visit https://iconary.allenai.org, choose Draw or Guess, click Tutorial, then wait for the software, called AllenAI, to load. You’ll be shown instructions on what to do. If you’re drawing, you’ll see the phrase at the top that AllenAI has to guess. Click the ‘Draw’ icon (pencil), then start drawing the image with your mouse. This is where it gets clever. How so? Well, let’s use the example of drawing the phrase ‘walking in the forest’, as we were shown. We needed to break it down so…

Whether it’s with the personal information you willingly provide or the browsing habits gathered without your knowledge, online companies make billions using your data to sell advertising (last year, Google made $115 billion, Facebook £55 billion). So isn’t it time you got a slice of the pie? California Governor Gavin Newsom thinks so. In February, he announced plans for a “data dividend” that would see California residents “share in the wealth that is created from their data”. He’s not the first to suggest such an idea. Last year, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes said we should all share in the “economic value” our data generates and that “data agents” could be set up to negotiate fees on behalf of users of online services. Hughes cited Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) as…

If your printer connects to a wired or wireless network, it will probably have a hidden remote interface that lets you access even more settings. To load the menu, just type your printer’s IP address into a web browser on any computer connected to your home network. If you don’t know your printer’s IP address, open Control Panel, ‘Devices and Printers’, right-click your printer, then select Properties. Your printer’s IP address will be listed under ‘Web page’ in the Web Services tab (something like 192.168.1.110). You may also be able to find your printer’s IP address by checking the network settings on your printer’s LCD control panel or by opening your router’s settings and looking at the connected devices. The precise selection of settings on offer will vary – in…

Email us your problem and we’ll try to help: noproblem@computeractive.co.uk PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT How do Ireformat a Linux SSD? Q I’ve a spare SSD that I want to use as an external drive on my Windows 10 desktop PC. However, this SSD has had a Linux system installed on it. So, I need to know how to remove Linux from this drive and reformat it to use with my Windows PC. Could you help? John Roberts A There are few possible scenarios, dependent on how the SSD was originally formatted and partitioned – with some methods quicker and easier than others. By necessity, we’ll explain a method that’s a bit long-winded but should work for you. However, be warned that if you get one particular part wrong then there’s…

1080p Of the common types of high-definition video, this is the best quality: 1920x1080 pixels. 32bit/64bit A measure of how much data a PC can process at once. Most older computers are 32bit, more 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. Add-in Microsoft’s name for tools that can be added to Office software. AMOLED Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode. An alternative technology to LCD. aptX A codec used to compress audio so it can be transmitted over Bluetooth with minimal loss in quality. Beta A version of software that’s being tested. BIOS Basic Input-Output System. Software built into every PC that connects the vital components. Blue light Light from…

YouTube is to prevent users from leaving comments on videos featuring young children, as it aims to “better protect children and families”. It had previously disabled comments only on videos that had received predatory and sexual comments. The site’s decision follows several leading brands, including Nestle and Hasbro, removing their adverts after it was found that paedophiles were trying to groom children by leaving comments. In a blog post (www.snipca.com/30862) YouTube said it will “suspend” comments on all videos of younger children, plus those featuring teenagers that “could be at risk of attracting predatory behaviour”. However, it will let a “small number” of video creators keep comments as long as they constantly check what people say, and remove anything obscene. Andy Burrows from the NSPCC welcomed the move as an…

BBC TRIALS 5G RADIO BROADCASTS The BBC is running a trial to broadcast radio over 5G mobile networks in Orkney, Scotland, as it continues to extend its rural coverage. The world-first trial is part of the RuralFirst scheme (www.5gruralfirst.org), which is testing the potential of 5G to boost remote communities and businesses around the UK. AMAZON LETS FIRMS REMOVE FAKE GOODS Amazon is letting companies remove fake items from sale without having to report them first, in a bid to tackle the growing problem of counterfeit goods. At first it will invite select brands to take part in the scheme, called Project Zero, before making it more widely available. The company is also using artificial intelligence to scan product listings in order to detect fakes. Read more on Amazon’s blog:…

Web designers at Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, have recreated the world’s first web browser, capturing a time before annoying ads and persistent pop-up boxes - and almost everything else besides. The browser was launched in 1990, when the building blocks of the internet were being developed at Cern by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. To help his colleagues access the first web pages, he built WorldWideWeb, a basic browser and editor. You can now use this in your modern browser by visiting https://worldwideweb.cern.ch and clicking the blue ‘Launch WorldWideWeb’ button. You’ll see a crude grey screen with no address bar for typing URLs, so you’ll need to open the ‘hypertext reference’ box by clicking Document on the left, then ‘Open from full document reference’. Type the URL you want…

Tesco ‘car reg’ text I got a very strange text message apparently from Tesco congratulating me - though it didn’t say what for. It just had my name next to my car registration number. There was a suspiciouslooking URL next to the message ‘Confirm here’. No way was I going to tap that! I searched online, and saw that Tesco had confirmed it was a scam, and published a similar text to the one I got (pictured). Richard Timothy Warn your fellow readers about scams at letters@computeractive.co.uk…

I can well believe Microsoft’s claim that the UK is the world’s politest country online (News, Issue 548, page 8) because we still remain a very well-mannered nation. I recently went around Europe on a well-earned retirement holiday, and was shocked by how rude and impatient some of our continental neighbours can be. But being online in general can be a far from polite experience. It’s probably truer to say the UK is ‘less rude’ than more polite, because the default attitude of most people communicating online is unprovoked outrage. You could call it ‘internet rage’, and see it as an extension of ‘road rage’. In both instances, people feel detached from the person they’re abusing. In the car, they are separated by metal and glass. On a computer, they…

For as long as I have had my mobile-phone service with EE, trying to maintain a working signal anywhere indoors has been a nightmare, because my location is at the edge of the local mast’s range. However, just after Christmas I noticed a newspaper article in the Mail on Sunday Finance Section saying that mobile companies were offering signal boosters, at no extra cost, for many frustrated users in my situation. On calling EE I was delighted to be told that because I was on the fringes of reception, they would immediately send me a Cisco Signal Box (pictured) at no cost. EE are often knocked in surveys of mobile customers, but they impressed me with the speed of their service. I now have five bars of signal indoors. Well…

SYSTEM TOOL O&O AppBuster www.snipca.com/30849 What you need: Windows 10 If you’re fed up with Windows 10 filling your hard drive with useless apps, take back control with AppBuster. The program lists all pre-installed Windows apps (as well as those you’ve installed yourself), then lets you quickly remove any you no longer need or never wanted in the first place. Although you can uninstall some of these using Windows’ built-in Apps tool (click the Windows button, the Settings cog, then Apps), others are more stubborn and either have their uninstall option greyed out or are simply hidden from the list. It’s possible to remove these using the Windows Powershell tool, but it’s fiddly and you need to type commands to remove each app individually. AppBuster is much faster since it…

WARNING: JUNK AHEAD Junk offender: Office 365 As part of my ongoing mission to keep hard drives everywhere junk-free, I often advise people to uninstall programs they don’t use, and I regularly warn against naughty software companies that bundle their programs with loads of unwanted junk. But it wasn’t until I tried to slim down my installation of Office 365 that I realised Microsoft’s subscription suite of programs is one of the worst junk offenders I’ve ever come across. Don’t get me wrong – I use Office 365 every day for work and I actually like it as a product. But it comes with a bunch of tools I simply never use – including database tool Access and desktop-publishing software Publisher – as well as an email program (Outlook) that…

LAPTOP | £1,999 from Overclockers UK www.snipca.com/30827 Why shouldn’t a laptop do everything a desktop PC can? It’s an obvious question, but in some ways irrelevant, like asking why a moped can’t carry pallets. Still, processors are small, right? How hard could it be? Several manufacturers rose to the challenge at January’s CES tech show, and after years of increasingly skinny laptops it looks like 15 and even 17in models are making a comeback. Is there a catch? Of course there’s a catch! All right, three catches. They cost a fortune, they weigh a ton, and they’re styled for gaming addicts. “A powerful laptop, but it costs too much for such a poor screen, touchpad and build” As you can see from the price above, MSI has failed to address…

PHONE | £462 from Ballicom www.snipca.com/30763 The evolution of the smartphone presents some conundrums for its intelligent designers, the hardware companies. How can a pocket-sized phone have a screen bigger than your pocket? Samsung thinks it has the answer (see right). How can a phone whose screen covers the entire front panel also have a camera that points at your face? Apple solved this with the iPhone X’s ‘notch’, since copied by every other manufacturer. But Xiaomi had a different idea. Arguably, a fairly silly idea. But an idea that’s now become reality in the Mi Mix 3. Ladies and gentlemen, allow us to present: the slidey camera phone. “Smooth running, long lasting and clever camera design” Imagine, if you will, a thin phone sandwiched together with an even thinner…

Q I plan to keep my excellent Lumia 950 XL phone (pictured) as long as I can, but now that Microsoft has discontinued Windows Phone and will eventually stop security updates, I’ll have to think about an Android phone. Will I need a Google account to install apps? Do any Android phones have something similar to Windows Phone’s glance screen, showing the time and notifications while on standby? Will I be able to replace the app launcher with Microsoft Launcher? And finally, I have concerns about Android apps being more susceptible to malware, so are there any antivirus apps you recommend? Mark Littlewood A You’ll need a Google account for the Google Play Store, which also answers your question about viruses: as long Android is set to only allow apps…

Here’s another rival to Apple’s AirPods, the wireless earbuds that connect to your phone via Bluetooth and stick in your ears without being physically attached to anything. And RHA, based in Glasgow, has come up with something rather special. Like Mobvoi’s TicPods Free (see our review, Issue 547), the TrueConnect units are a little bulkier than their sleek white Apple counterparts, with conventional squishy in-ear tips. These are supplied in various widths and lengths, including Comply TrueGrip Plus foam options, so you should find a good fit that blocks out a fair amount of background noise. “Lightweight, snug and delivers a spacious, punchy sound” The matt black earbuds have a distinctive style and feel very well made. Each has a button – a proper button, not just an easily fumbled…

Synology’s first mesh router, the MR2200ac brings fast, reliable Wi-Fi to every corner of your home. You can easily add more units to the base to cover your home in a blanket of speedy Wi-Fi. It automatically chooses the best route (2.4GHz, 5GHz or Ethernet) for communication between each MR2200ac router and the devices connected to them (such as your phone or laptop). This guarantees you’ll always get the fastest possible path to the internet. Its Safe Access feature makes it the perfect router for parents. You can decide what your children can access online without having to constantly monitor what they do. Once you create user profiles, you can check how long they spend online every day. The whole system is easy to set up. Select which router you…

In Issue 548’s How To section (page 35), Nik Rawlinson explained how to digitise paperwork and convert it into ePub files (ebooks) to read at our convenience. At the end of the section, he showed us how to transfer these files to read on iOS and Android devices. I have a Kindle Fire tablet and a Kindle Paperwhite e-reader and wondered if there was a way to read these files on those devices. On the tablet, this process is very easy. Simply install the free third-party app Aldiko Book Reader (www.snipca.com/30829), but with a Kindle e-reader it involves a little more work. You need to convert your ePub files to Kindle’s default format (.MOBI). The easiest way to do this is by using the free program Calibre (www.snipca.com/30830). During installation,…

ANDROID & iOS Find out which apps you use most often Late last year, Apple and Google added new features that let you know how long you’ve used your phone or tablet for and which apps you use most. On an iPhone or iPad, tap Screen Time in Settings. If you use a Google Pixel phone, tap Digital Wellbeing in Settings. While the Android feature is currently limited to Pixel phones, new free app ActionDash (www.snipca.com/30803) lets you add it to any Android phone and tablet. Install and open it, then tap ‘Grant access’ (this takes you to your device’s Settings). Here, select ActionDash, tap the ‘Permit usage access’ slider to switch it on, then return to the app. You’ll now see a circular graph telling you how long you’ve…

WINDOWS 7, 8.1, 10 Open links faster using the middle-click button Most PC mice today have scroll wheels rather than a middle button, but you can often press the wheel to replicate the function of a middle button. One of the best ways to make use of this is to open a link on a web page as a new tab. Whenever you see a link on a web page you’re interested in, move your cursor over it, then click your middle button or scroll wheel. You can also enable this option on a laptop’s touchpad. Open Settings, tap Devices, then Touchpad on the left. Scroll down to the ‘Three-finger gestures’ section, click the Taps dropdown menu at the bottom, then click ‘Middle mouse button’ (see screenshot below). From now…

Microsoft has a superb Office add-in called Dictate that uses speech recognition to automatically convert anything you say to text. You need a Windows 8.1 or 10 PC to use it. The add-in works with Word, Outlook and PowerPoint in Office 2013 onwards. Before installing it, you need to find out whether you use a 32bit or 64bit version of Microsoft Office. Most Office versions are 32bit even if you use a 64bit PC. To check this, open Microsoft Word, click the File tab at the top left, Account at the bottom, then click the ‘About (program name)’ button on the right. In the window that opens, you’ll see which version you have on the first line at the top. Now close the program. To install the add-in, go to…

These days, we’re all more cautious about how we use the internet. We’re aware of the massive data breaches that occur seemingly every week, and we know not to share too much of ourselves with companies we know little about (or even those we know well). But cast your mind back 10 or 20 years. Were you as careful then? Chances are your passwords were weaker and you were far more willing to share personal data when creating new accounts. And while you may have forgotten about certain accounts you’ve created over the years, they won’t have forgotten about you. Many will still be active, and possibly sharing your personal data with other companies. It’s only a matter of time before one of them is hacked and your data ends…

I’ve been online since the heady days of text-based bulletin boards back in the early 1990s, so I was expecting the web to know a fair bit about me. Finding recent searches stored in my Google account wasn’t a surprise, but the detailed search history dating back to 2011 did leave me a little uneasy. However, I was shocked to find my full postal addresses (and other details) from 2002 to 2006 available for all to see on 192.com and Ancestry.co.uk – I used the free 14-day trial to get full access to the latter (I’ve never been a member). I phoned the Information Commissioner’s Office (https://ico.org.uk) and was told that I must have failed to opt out of the Open Register during this period. Why the Open Register isn’t…

Q My Windows 10 PC has thousands of photos, files and programs that I don’t want to lose. I’ve recently downloaded Macrium Reflect Free, as per your main Best Free Software suggestion back in 541. However, it’s not clear to me whether I should choose the ‘Clone this disk’ or ‘Image this disk’ option, not least as both are listed under the ‘Create a backup’ tab. So, could you explain the difference? Jeff Owen A Cloning and imaging do seem similar and, in some instances, the net benefits of using one are the same. However, there are fundamental differences that we’re happy to explain. A clone is an exact, bit-for-bit copy of one drive on to a second drive. This means the two drives are digitally identical. So, in the…

My Windows 10 computer and I have been together for three years. Thirty-six long, faithful months. And it still can’t remember who I am. I turn up with coffee every morning and it always asks: “who are you again?”. Then, worse: “prove it”. This machine has serious trust issues. My TV and radio never demand ID. Even my Android phone doesn’t. You’re right, that shows I need to improve my mobile security, but the point is I get to choose. I can lock my phone with fingerprints, PINs, encrypted eyebrow-wiggles if I want. But I don’t have to. Because I’m in charge. Windows 10, though, can’t bear the fact that that I can pull its plug any time. So it petulantly throws its weight around with unwanted updates, overbearing defaults…