Indice dei contenuti per July 2025 in PC Pro

If you head to YouTube, you’ll find a five-minute video of Steve Jobs on stage at WWDC in 1997. In it, he answers a pointed question from a snotty developer who tells Jobs it’s “clear that on several accounts you’ve discussed, you don’t know what you’re talking about”. The developer is upset that Jobs has seemingly chosen Java over OpenDoc. Jobs takes a long pause, a slug of water and then justifies his decision to the developer, implying it’s a fool’s errand to pick a technology and then work out how to make it work for the consumer. “As we have tried to come up with a strategy and a vision for Apple, it started with what incredible benefits we can give to the customer.” Somewhere along the line, it…

iPhones have a neat little trick: take a picture of a leaf, tap the information icon in the Photos app, and it will identify the plant. When I first discovered this, it seemed like a mini miracle. I lack horticultural knowledge – what’s the opposite of green fingers? – but inexplicably decided an allotment was a wise idea. When we first joined the waiting list, it was 12 to 15 years long. Plenty of time to learn about a hobby we wouldn’t actually take up in earnest until our later years. Then Covid happened and, depressingly, the list evaporated and we had a plot. We had to learn fast. But no worries, right? We live in the future, with all the world’s information at our grubby fingertips thanks to the…

Phone a dragon I have just been reading your guide “Which Home VoIP service is best for you?” (see issue 369, p38) but I didn’t find the information I was looking for. As both sets of parents don’t own a mobile nor want one, when we changed from copper to fibre we had no choice but to keep our landline phone. Although I actually find a landline phone easier to hold and to tuck under my chin while writing notes or typing during a call. Our parents have been told that their copper line will be replaced with a new fibre supply. However, they have an emergency contact button that at present only works on copper; in power cuts, this would fail, and this is possible when an emergency could…

Unlike its fibrous counterpart, ePaper is a slow burner. Although Amazon’s Kindle and other ebook devices have been with us for almost 20 years, the ePaper technology has largely been confined to such readers – at least until the past couple of years. Suddenly, ePaper is everywhere. In smartphones, tablets, laptops, monitors, smartwatches and other displays. And now that colour ePaper has entered mainstream production, it’s likely we’re going to see the technology further spread its wings. There are many advantages that ePaper (often incorrectly referred to as E Ink, which is an ePaper brand) has over conventional LCD displays. It’s low power, much easier to read in sunlight and relatively inexpensive. It has its drawbacks, too, of course. Snail-like refresh rates, ghosting and a lack of vibrancy when it…

PRICE £917 (£1,100 inc VAT) from motorola.com Folding phones are no longer the hot new thing, but Motorola’s Razr mobiles keep getting better. The Razr 60 Ultra is the best take we’ve seen on the flip format, although the cost pits it against formidable non-folding competition. At least Motorola is providing a generous specification in return for your cash. The Razr 60 Ultra comes with 512GB of storage, the latest processor, a big 4,700mAh battery and fast charging. You also have a great range of new Pantone-branded finish options to choose from, namely Cabaret, Mountain Trail, Rio Red and Scarab – translating to a rich pinky purple, earth tones, maroon and opal green, respectively. Aside from the new colours, Motorola deviates little from the established Razr design; the most visible…

PRICE As reviewed, £2,000 (£2,400 inc VAT) from lenovo.com This is the first laptop that’s made me feel old. Is the X1 Carbon really turning 13? It remains an outstanding 14in ultraportable, but you need to give it a close examination to spot the differences to last year’s model. But there are differences, all of them positive. First, it’s even lighter at 1kg rather than 1.1kg. Second, it now includes Core Ultra 200V series processors, bringing support for Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC scheme. Third, the SSD has been upgraded from Gen 4 to Gen 5, and that means astonishing 13,588MB/sec sequential writes and 10,403MB/sec reads. The IPS panel also gains a minor upgrade, pushing up to a stated 500cd/m2 maximum compared to 400cd/m2, and my review sample peaked at 501cd/m2. It’s…

PRICE £2,083 (£2,500 inc VAT) from box.co.uk There are two main routes to buying a gaming PC. The first is to choose a custom-builder such as CyberPowerPC (see p58). Such companies have a base in the UK where they build systems to order, right down to the type of thermal paste. The second is to buy a pre-assembled PC, either from a British manufacturer or familiar names such as Acer and HP. Or less familiar names such as German manufacturer Medion, a division of Lenovo. This is my first look at its line of Erazer Hunter X30 gaming PCs, and I was immediately struck by its design. Looked at from the front, the lower two-thirds resemble a speaker thanks to the metallic grille, with the top third finished in blackened…

PRICE £858 (£1,030 inc VAT) from laptopsdirect.co.uk Given the popularity of Apple’s iMac range, it seems odd that the all-in-one Windows PC has never hit similarly heights. There’s an extremely limited choice of system for buyers, which means that when a company such as MSI – the Taiwanese manufacturer best known for its gaming laptops and motherboards – offered me the chance to review its latest offering I grab it with both hands. There are two points of difference here compared to, say, the Dell Inspiron All-in-One (see issue 350, p47). The first is that MSI is targeting professional buyers, as indicated by “Pro” in the product name and the inclusion of Windows 11 Pro rather than Home. The second is that it opts for desktop rather than mobile processors,…

PRICE From £339 (£399 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk When Nvidia launched the 16GB model of the RTX 4060 Ti, it played second fiddle to the mainstream 8GB version. This time around, the roles have swapped, with Nvidia pushing the 16GB version of the RTX 5060 Ti and the 8GB model being far less common. And for good reason. Most games are still able to run okay on 8GB cards at 1080p with maxed-out settings, and often even 1440p. But 4K proved to be too much in several games in our test suite, so if you’re spending this much on a card – the cheapest version of the RTX 5060 Ti costs around £350 – then it makes sense to choose 16GB. One of the biggest changes with the RTX 50-series…

We’ve already had a trickle of laptops based on Nvidia’s new RTX 50 series of mobile graphics, starting with our review of the Razer Blade 16 (see issue 369, p58) last month. Now that trickle is a flood. Our aim here is to round up a collection of the best gaming laptops that have landed so far, to help you decide which is best for you and also to show the state of the market. Our benchmarks inevitably focus on games, but one of the reasons we’re keen to cover these laptops in depth is that they lead a convincing double life as creative laptops. It’s ludicrously easy to switch between Nvidia’s Game Ready drivers and its Studio drivers, with the latter guaranteed to work with creative apps from Adobe,…

PRICE £2,667 (£3,200 inc VAT) from asus.com So there I was at the airport, my flight delayed by three hours. Normally in such a situation I’d bemoan my fate on social media, but with the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 in my carry-on I had no complaints. I happily whiled away the time, engrossed in high-end gaming; when at last it was time to board, I was actually disappointed that I had to fold down the lid. That’s the beauty of a 14in gaming laptop. While I see the appeal of 16in and 18in screens, the smaller format is more practical wherever you may be. The ROG Zephyrus G14 looks beautiful, too, combining a clean, Apple-style aesthetic with a touch of excitement courtesy of a diagonal slash of subtle lighting on…

PRICE As reviewed, £2,700 (£3,240 inc VAT) from lenovo.com Lenovo’s latest 16in gaming laptop justifies its high price with a one-two punch of killer performance and a superb display. Frankly it’s one of the most attractive machines I’ve ever reviewed. That has much do with its OLED display. I’ve always loved the bright whites, inky blacks and sharp contrast of OLED panels, and it makes everything you do on this laptop look amazing, especially gaming in HDR and Dolby Vision. Every time I opened the lid, I was struck by how rich and colourful the screen looked. I was even more impressed at the panel’s technical performance. This thing is bright, more than 100cd/m2 brighter than the HP opposite, with an SDR peak of 464cd/m2 that climbs all the way…

Let’s start with the basics: what is a virtual private network (VPN)? In short, it’s an encrypted connection from your device to a remote server. VPNs used to be common in the workplace, allowing those working remotely to access an on-premises or cloud-based office network. Here, though, we’re looking at consumer VPN providers. These subscription-based services provide an encrypted tunnel for all your internet traffic and typically provide endpoints in scores of different locations, allowing you to virtually locate yourself in any of those places. Privacy is a major selling point for VPN services. Data going to and from your device through an encrypted link to a remote server can’t be inspected by your ISP or, typically, monitoring tools on a local network. But that also means your VPN provider…

BEST DEAL 2yr, £72 (£86 inc VAT) from protonvpn.com RENEWAL PRICE £60 (£72 inc VAT) Once possessed of a rebellious image, Proton Technologies now takes itself seriously, with business tiers and lobbying interests. This has alienated some of its fans, but Proton VPN remains a fast and secure choice for a wide range of consumer VPN needs, from privacy to region-shifting. It’s one of our favourite free VPN providers, too, although recent changes to its free tier mean you can no longer manually select your endpoint unless you’re a paying customer. Recently, some of Proton Technologies’ choices have rubbed its more privacy-conscious users up the wrong way. It appeared to support a controversial US government pick in a post from an official account, although this was later walked back on…

BEST DEAL 2yr 4mth £50 (£60 inc VAT) from cyberghostvpn.com RENEWAL PRICE £50 (£60 inc VAT) CyberGhost is a long-established consumer VPN service. It’s a subsidiary of Kape Technologies, which also owns ExpressVPN and Private Internet Access, among others. Like its siblings, CyberGhost operates autonomously; while Kape is based in the UK, CyberGhost is headquartered in Romania. CyberGhost operates endpoints in 100 countries and gives you seven simultaneous connections. Client apps are available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS, with profiles for using the service with routers, smart TVs and other appliances, plus Firefox and Chrome plugins. CyberGhost’s clients variously use WireGuard, OpenVPN and IKEv2. Like many VPN firms, the company dropped support for L2TP/IPSec due to potential edge-case vulnerabilities in 2020. Despite reasonably fast UK transfer speeds of…

BEST DEAL Standard, 1yr £17 (£20 inc VAT) from uk.norton.com RENEWAL PRICE Standard, £34 (£40 inc VAT) Norton VPN – previously Norton Secure VPN – is most regularly found as part of Norton 360, a comprehensive suite of consumer antivirus and internet security tools, which earned four stars in our last antivirus group test. However, you can also subscribe to Norton VPN as a standalone service. If you only need one connection to be active on a single device at a time, Norton’s Standard subscription is the lowest around. It costs £20 for the first year, which works out at £1.67 per month. However, there are two big caveats. First, hardly anyone’s VPN use looks like that, particularly as Norton doesn’t provide profiles that you can use on your router.…

BEST DEAL Unlimited, 3yr $120 (£90) from tunnelbear.com RENEWAL PRICE Unlimited, $60 (£45) TunnelBear is one of a handful of truly reliable free VPN providers. Free users get 2GB of data and access to the service’s full range of endpoint locations, which makes it particularly worth having if you need to access online content from a specific part of the world. That’s even more true now that Windscribe’s free service only lets you choose from ten endpoint locations, while Proton VPN’s unlimited bandwidth free VPN no longer allows you to choose your endpoint location at all. If you’re happy to put your hand in your pocket for trips abroad, say, it will cost $10 (around £7.50) per month, which is one of the better choices out there for occasional use.…

We carry out tests on a Windows 10 desktop virtual machine hosted on a server with a symmetric gigabit fibre link. Using endpoints in the UK, Netherlands and USA, we download content from reference servers physically located in London, Amsterdam and New York. We do this via HTTP using curl at the Windows command line. We download around 600MB of data to allow us to observe variations in download speeds over time. At the time of testing, our virtual machine’s reference connection speeds were a speedy 314Mbits/sec to our UK target, 484Mbits/sec to the Netherlands and 68Mbits/sec to the USA. These reflect internet conditions at the time of testing and were borne out by the performance of most of the VPNs. Some VPNs were able to significantly improve on our…

PRICE £529 exc VAT from tradescanners.com Brother’s flagship desktop scanner delivers an impressive range of document digitising features at a good price. It’s geared up for a heavy demand and can churn through mono and colour documents at 60ppm with a 300dpi resolution, has a generous 100-page automatic document feeder (ADF) and boasts a big daily duty cycle of 9,000 pages. Connection options are in abundance: it offers USB-A and wired or wireless connection options, with the latter supporting 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi 4 networks. Its large 10.9cm colour LCD touchscreen makes light work of walk-up scan operations, and menus can be easily customised to offer staff a wide range of job options. Brother includes a good software bundle, with Windows users having the iPrint&Scan and ScanEssentials utilities, while mobile…

PRICE £249 exc VAT from thescannershop.com Ricoh offers an impressive range of desktop scanners, and the affordable fi-8040 on review is one of its most versatile. Using Ricoh’s embedded DirectScan feature, it can function as a completely standalone network scanner, it supports host-based operations using its USB or gigabit port, and it can be remotely managed and configured with the PaperStream NX Manager app. Installation is old-school as your host PC will need an optical drive. Fortunately, after loading the DVD in our Windows 11 test client, it offered the opportunity to skip the local files and download all the latest versions. For host-based scanning you have two choices, with Ricoh’s PaperStream ClickScan for Windows providing simplified one-touch scanning services. We loaded it on a Windows 11 PC and used…

Keeping track of what software you’re using – and what software you’re entitled to use – might not sound like rocket science. But when NASA audited its own usage in 2023, it made some sobering discoveries. In the absence of a centralised licence-management process for software, the audit report estimated that the agency had wasted around $15 million over the previous five years on unused licenses. And if that sounds expensive, there was worse to come. Auditors also found that the organisation had “historically experienced a large influx of software into its network environment that is not sufficiently tracked for licence compliance, resulting in more than $20 million unnecessarily spent on software fines and penalties over the last five years.” If such a high-tech, risk-averse organisation as NASA can make…

Expert advice from our panel of professionals Sometimes my head goes into a spin when thinking about all of the weekly grind of updates, licensing renewals and so forth. It’s easy to let things slip, especially when I need to buy some licences for the lab. It can be hard to claw back a licence renewal when it pops up on its annual payment, and the product on which the licence was activated is long gone. Microsoft Office 365 has been a mainstay of the lab since it first appeared. The bundle cost, especially for home users, is exceptional value. I know that Microsoft recently increased the price to cover Copilot costs, but my unfashionable view is that a price rise of a moderate lunch and pint of beer on…

Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a world where things weren’t quite so crazy? No, I’m not talking about the fascinating real-world cartoon that is President Orange and his sidekick, Space Karen, but rather one where ransomware actors weren’t still a massive threat to your networks, data, reputation and bank balance. But here we are. Despite FBI disruption, hairpulling and squabbling within criminal groups (Black Basta I’m looking at you) and a generally improved defensive posture against ransomware, the threat is not only evolving but surging. One report, from a group of threat intelligence experts at Ontinue, revealed a 132% increase in ransomware attacks in quarter one of the year compared to the quarter before. This comes at the same time as the amount of money actually being paid…

Inspirational stories from computing’s long-distant past If you’re writing someone a personal message, I’m guessing that you wouldn’t be very happy if someone was taking a sneaky peek over your shoulder. It’s the same online, which is why most people want to protect their privacy. It’s also why many of us have come to love encryption software – tools that scramble readable data while it’s being transmitted so that only the intended recipients are able to view it. But if it wasn’t for the efforts of activists and talented cryptographers such as Philip Zimmermann, there’s no telling what systems we would have in place today. For his is a story of strong principles, political will, technical brilliance, determination and innovation. Not to mention great courage and perseverance. Born in 1954,…

Features You and AI are gonna live forever With AI able to recreate your look, your voice and capture everything you’ve been thinking about, digital immortality is now a possibility. Features Displays: the expert guide Confounded by contrast ratios? Doubtful about Delta E? Darien Graham-Smith takes a close look at the specs and capabilities that allow the best screens to, quite literally, shine. Features Auracast: Bluetooth’s broadcasting future Auracast is going to change the way we listen to audio in public spaces, and make life considerably easier for people with hearing difficulties. We explain how. Labs Affordable laptops If you have no intention of spending over a grand on a laptop, next month’s Labs is for you. We find out exactly what you can get for your money, including the…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Apple MacBook Pro M4 M4 beast from £1,599 from apple.com/uk This M4 update to the already brilliant MacBook Pro line is an easy recommendation, so the big question becomes do you choose the 14in version from £1,599 or 16in from £2,499? And then how much do you upgrade, as Apple isn’t afraid of high prices. But whatever you choose should last for years, and look great while it’s doing it. REVIEW Issue 364, p50 Apple MacBook Air M4 If you don’t need the all-out power of the Pro, this is a brilliant, cheaper alternative despite the unchanged chassis and screen. 13in from £999, 15in from £1,199 from apple.com/uk REVIEW Issue 368, p54 Asus Zenbook S 14 OLED Asus pairs a Core Ultra 9 288V with a 72Wh battery…

What’s the first thing you look for when buying a car? The safety record? The time it takes to get from 0 to 60? Whether the cup holders can accommodate a grande latte? For me, it’s whether it supports Android Auto. Okay, it’s probably not the very first thing I look for. Although there are few gigs as well paid as PC Pro columnist, even us high-rollers have to consider the price. Suffice to say I’ve not spent a great deal of time checking the in-car entertainment systems in Bentleys or Aston Martins. Not until Tim gives me a Real World Computing column. But once we’re down among the VWs, the Hondas, the runarounds that don’t cost more than a Premier League pay packet, then one of my top requirements…

Of the many different things that large language models such as ChatGPT are capable of, coding is arguably the most impressive. There’s something mesmerising about watching the AI rattle out line after line of code, and then watching it run. If you’ve got a great idea for app but don’t have the coding chops to make it happen, it’s certainly possible that the AI will be able to write it on your behalf – particularly if you’re coding in a popular language such as Python, which ChatGPT and rivals such as Claude and Google Gemini are right at home with. I’ve now created several different apps with ChatGPT’s assistance. I’ve made an app that tracks your personal expenses, an app that helps split bills, and a Wordle-like game where you…

Microsoft Designer is a quick, simple and free way to create high-quality images and designs that are ideal for sharing online. Since it’s underpinned by OpenAI’s DALL-E image engine, it can generate custom visuals representing anything you care to type in. However, it’s more than just an image generator – you can upload and edit your own photos too, and optionally combine them with AI-generated elements, to produce original, eye-catching content. How do I access it? Designer can run entirely in a web browser – just hop over to designer.microsoft.com to try it out – so you can use it on almost any platform, including macOS and Linux. If you prefer a native app, however, you can download a Windows-based front-end to Designer from the Microsoft Store, or install mobile…

PRICE As reviewed, £983 (£1,179 inc VAT) from dell.com The first thing that strikes you on opening up the Dell 16 Plus 2-in-1 is its sheer scale. The 16in panel seems to stretch forever due in part to the slim bezels on either side, while a 357mm width means the keyboard deck has plenty of room for a number pad. Flip over the lid and you have a huge tablet on your hands, albeit one that weighs 2.1kg. You won’t be carrying this around like an iPad but resting it on a table or your lap. Why might someone want to buy a 16in 2-in-1 laptop? Reading through people’s comments on previous such laptops on Dell’s website, watching videos in tent format or as a tablet came up time and…

PRICE As reviewed, £4,041 (£4,849 inc VAT) from dell.com The Alienware Area-51 is easily the heaviest gaming PC I’ve tested: 34kg. I couldn’t even lift it up onto the desk on my own. And its giant size isn’t merely for show, as it packs equally powerful components inside its futuristic frame. Photos don’t do this all-aluminium chassis justice, with elegant curves, hexagonal vents and a side-to-side transparent panel. With RGB lighting on its front sides, and an Alienware logo-shaped power button, this PC makes a statement. But Dell is making you pay. Its starting price of £3,799 only includes a GeForce RTX 5080; if you want the 5090, you’ll pay a minimum of £4,849. That price is discounted from £5,499: if you want to customise the spec to your exact…

PRICE £308 (£369 inc VAT) from dell.com As can be seen from the Dell UltraSharp review opposite, Dell’s rollout of its Good, Better, Best strategy – Dell, Dell Plus, Dell Premium – remains a work in progress. Here, though, we have the first example of its mid-tier Plus range coming to monitors, and rather nice it is too. In terms of looks, it feels more like a Premium product. I bring your attention to the incredibly slim bezels, while to my eyes the white finish is classier than the over-used metallic grey seen on the UltraSharp range. You still enjoy height-adjustment, up to 100mm, while the tilt angle of –5° to 21° is absolutely fine. What you don’t get is any rotation: if you want to show your screen to…

Price £108 (£130 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk In the past 18 months we’ve seen a succession of Wi-Fi 7 routers from Netgear. First came the top-tier Nighthawk RS700S (see issue 353, p76), with a steep launch price of £800; sensing that this might be beyond the budget of most upgraders, the company followed up with more affordable RS300 and RS200 models, costing (neatly enough) £300 and £200 respectively. The latest arrival is the cheapest model yet, and though Netgear hasn’t quite got the price down to a round ton, at £130 it’s still aggressively inexpensive. As you’d expect, the hardware you get for that money is decidedly cut down compared to the premium model. Where the RS700 boasts a top speed of 11.5Gbits/sec on its 6GHz radio, the RS100… well,…

PRICE £3,166 (£3,800 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk Asus’ ROG Strix Scar 16 makes quite a visual statement. For a start, the large ROG logo on the lid is actually a multicolour LED. Even that is made to look bashful compared to the array of 810 white LEDs that dance around when the laptop is in standby mode and flash “STRIX” when you turn it on. You can change these patterns to premade animations or import your own. Want more? There’s an RGB light ring around the entire perimeter of the enclosure, and per-key backlighting on the keyboard – all of which can be configured with the supplied Armoury Crate tool. Despite the showy exterior, the construction feels basic in places. It’s solid, but the keyboard deck and chassis bottom are…

PRICE £2,417 (£2,900 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk No laptop costing almost £3,000 can be considered cheap, but the Aorus Master 16 is the only gaming laptop here to duck under that mark. But it does feel cheaper than its rivals. Though many gaming laptops use plastic to prevent overheating and reduce weight, Gigabyte’s implementation of the material isn’t perfect. For instance, the lid features a lenticular material that reveals a ribbed pattern around the RGB-lit Aorus falcon logo. But the material feels like something I’d expect from a Happy Meal toy. At least on the lid, Gigabyte should have gone with premium aluminium. Then there’s the Aorus logo displayed garishly across the touchpad, spilling onto the palm rest. Mix that with the RGB keyboard (including a handful of transparent keys),…

PRICE As reviewed, £3,500 (£4,200 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk Powerful gaming laptops command premium prices, and the MSI Raider is no different. This RTX 5080 system costs £4,200, but you can buy an RTX 5090 version for £4,499 from Amazon. Both models feature a generous 4TB of storage spread across a pair of 2TB drives, and the result is excellent speed: 2,252MB/sec in our real-world file-copy tests. Of the other systems here, only the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i breached 2,000MB/sec. And this laptop is all about speed, with the Raider hitting a maximum operating power of 260W thanks to MSI’s OverBoost Ultra technology. This led to atrocious battery life in our light-use test, 2hrs 33mins, but it lasted for a more respectable 1hr 46mins when we switched to gaming. More…

BEST DEAL 2yr 4mth $140 (£113) from expressvpn.com RENEWAL PRICE $100 (£81) ExpressVPN is no stranger to winning PC Pro awards and takes away this year’s accolade thanks to blistering speeds, outstanding region-shifting performance and a convincing track record on security. It’s expensive but it’s also worth it, although we recommend to committing to a longer subscription to reduce your monthly outgoings. Let’s talk speed first. The company recently launched new a version of its Lightway protocol, now developed in memory-safe Rust instead of C. This appears to have given its already fast transfer speeds a boost, as our test results saw it achieve a 499Mbits/sec average across its UK, Netherlands and US endpoints. That’s the highest three-country result in the tests, with individual scores of 473Mbits/sec from the UK,…

BEST DEAL Starter, 2yr 3mth £40 (£48 inc VAT) from surfshark.com RENEWAL PRICE £59 (£71 inc VAT) Like its sibling company NordVPN, reviewed on p90, Surfshark is rapidly moving into traditional internet security spaces. It now offers features such as remote and local malware scanning and protection for PCs, removal of your personal information from data brokers, eSIMs and single-use alternative identities. These are available in a variety of different bundles, but this Labs focuses on straight-up VPN services so we’ve reviewed the Surfshark Starter package. This doesn’t include any of these extras, unless you count the travel eSIM sign-up bonus, but it’s extremely cost-effective if all you need is a VPN. Surfshark is the consumer VPN service we most frequently recommend, thanks to dependable and fast performance in our…

STORE.PCPRO.CO.UK NORTON 360 DELUXE for £14.99 3 DEVICES 2YR LICENCE ▪ tinyurl.com/nortondeluxe2025 We’ve negotiated this exclusive deal for PC Pro readers. No subscriptions, just a one-off bargain price of £14.99 compared to the regular £149.99 charge. That buys you two years of cover from the powerful Norton Security suite across three devices, and there’s no danger of being hit with hiked renewal fees. Because it’s the Deluxe version of Norton 360, you get a host of extra tools. Top of the list is the full version of Norton VPN, both to protect your identity and provide a way of watching British TV while you’re abroad. There’s also 25GB of cloud storage for secure backup, while Norton’s Dark Web Monitoring service will alert you if private details – such as your…

BEST DEAL 2yr, £60 (£72 inc VAT) from vyprvpn.com RENEWAL PRICE 2yr, £60 (£72 inc VAT) VyprVPN is a longestablished provider that recently changed ownership. That always brings question marks. While it has a strong track record of keeping no logs, and was among the first VPN providers to commission a third-party audit, until we see new audits and evidence to back up Vypr’s no-logging status this remains an unproven factor. One thing hasn’t changed: if you require access to Usenet, you still get a full VyprVPN subscription with every annual subscription to the company’s sister Usenet provider, GigaNews. That makes sense as both companies recently transferred hands from Golden Frog into the hands of Certida (we’re aware that frogs don’t have hands). Golden Frog was legally based in Switzerland…

Geo-located pricing makes sense where the cost of living differs radically, but a number of industries are exploiting your IP address to charge you more than you ought to be paying. Airlines – particularly those based in the USA – are known to use your IP address’s geo-location data to determine how much to charge you for a flight. If you connect to the internet from one of the wealthier parts of the USA, you could find yourself paying almost $300 more for a flight from Paris to New York than if you’re connecting from France. This goes along with practices such as surge pricing (where ticket prices automatically increase if many are being bought at a given time) and other price-inflation tactics. There’s no shortage of online wisdom and…

PRICE £433 exc VAT from printerland.co.uk The imageFormula DR-S350NW networked desktop scanner has a neat trick up its sleeve: you don’t need to install anything to use it. Just point a browser at its IP address and you’re presented with its smart CaptureOnTouch (COT) Lite web interface, which offers a range of quick scan options. Clicking on the COT icon on its homepage presents a menu for selecting colour or greyscale, page size, resolution up to 300dpi, simplex or duplex scans, double feed detection and a passport mode. Moving to the Output page, you select PDF, JPEG or TIFF file formats, enable OCR with a choice of ten languages and hit the Scan button. It’s very easy to use, and we had no problems with Edge, Chrome or Firefox on…

PRICE Diskless, £354 exc VAT from lincplustech.com The LincPlus LincStation N1 impressed us on many levels when we reviewed it last year (see issue 362, p102), although we did bemoan the fact that the undeniable performance potential of this all-flash appliance was restricted by its 2.5GbE network port. The LinkStation N2 makes our wishes come true as it sports a 10GbE port but goes a lot further with even more upgrades. Physically the 35mm high chassis is the same, but the quad-core 2GHz Intel Celeron N5105 CPU in the N1 gets the elbow for a more modern quad-core Intel N100, which boasts a top burst frequency of 3.4GHz. Memory has also been improved: the N2 is endowed with 16GB of faster DDR5 soldered on its motherboard. Storage potential remains the…

Acer is a firm that is extremely proud of its green initiatives and accreditations. It’s listed as one of Time magazine’s most sustainable companies, and its other ESG focused awards are numerous. In a tech sector desperate to convince investors and shareholders that it’s “doing its bit” to prevent the world from burning down, Acer consistently makes all the correct noises. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a frustrated Acer laptop owner is explaining to me where Taiwan’s finest can shove its eco-credentials. One fan inside Jordan’s Acer Predator laptop blew its bearings and became intolerably noisy. Headphones made this manageable when playing games, but Zoom and Teams calls were impossible, which was a problem for remote working. The Acer Predator had been an expensive purchase. A 2022…

The Wikimedia Foundation is challenging the lawfulness of the Online Safety Act, after Wikipedia was put at “unacceptable risk” of being subjected to the Act’s toughest duties. Although regulator Ofcom had yet to determine which category Wikipedia would be placed in at the time of writing, the Wikimedia Foundation believes it’s at significant risk of being deemed a “Category 1” site, which Parliament designated for services posing the biggest risk to society. The Foundation claims the criteria for deciding which category a site fits into are “flawed” and “have no real connection to actual safety concerns”. The criteria that will determine the site’s fate include the use of content recommendation systems, the ability to share content and the popularity of the platform, all of which are applicable to Wikipedia. If…

I’ve written many sceptical words about AI in this column, railing against overconfidence and hype, hubristic pursuit of AGI, deepfakery and content pillage. Nevertheless I do believe that AI – once we’ve civilised it – is going to be hugely important to science, economics, robotics, control systems, transport and everyday life. This assumes that, through political will, public concern about misinformation, invasion of privacy and theft of artistic data can be regulated away. Even then, one colossal stumbling block will remain: energy consumption. When AI firms consider purchasing mothballed nuclear reactors to power their compute-servers, the absurdity of AI’s current direction ought to be visible to everyone. Current GPT-based AI systems depend on supercomputers that can execute quintillions of simple tensor arithmetic operations per second to compare multiple layers of…

STEP 1 THE STARTER PROMPT So we’ve decided on creating a subscription tracker app in Python. I need to give ChatGPT a prompt to kickstart the project. It’s best to avoid over-burdening ChatGPT by describing every feature you want in the app from the get-go. Just give it a basic overview to start with. First I pick the ChatGPT o4-mini-high model from the dropdown menu (it’s the model best suited to coding at the time of writing), then enter the following prompt: “I want you to write a Python app that helps me keep track of monthly/annual subscriptions/fees I pay to various companies, including broadband providers, insurance firms, phone companies etc. The app should allow me to enter how much I pay each month/year for each service, and whether there’s…

Next-gen USB/Thunderbolt You can’t talk about the future of USB without talking about Thunderbolt, and vice versa. Although these two general-purpose interconnects were originally completely separate, with different plugs and cables, the latest Thunderbolt standards are supersets of USB, and operate over the same physical sockets. What that means in practice is that while the USB-C ports on your laptop will definitely support USB peripherals, they might (or might not) also support Thunderbolt – as long as you’re connecting a Thunderbolt-compatible device with a Thunderbolt-compatible cable. This somewhat confusing situation won’t going to change in the foreseeable future, because right now no future versions of USB or Thunderbolt have been announced. That doesn’t mean we won’t see any movement, though: few devices are up to date with the latest standards,…

Laptops and PCs We run a selection of benchmarks on all the PCs and laptops we test. Where possible, we use a cross-platform test so we can compare Windows and macOS machines, which is where both Geekbench and Cinebench come into play. Both push the CPU to its limit, exposing how well cooled a system is. We run extra tests for Windows systems. We use PCMark 10 to benchmark systems in office tasks, content creation and basic tasks such as web browsing and video calls. We also run 3DMark Time Spy and Shadow of the Tomb Raider as a minimum. We test laptops and PCs that include discrete graphics with a range of games, such as Metro Exodus Enhanced and Dirt 5. For laptops, we test battery life with Wi-Fi…

PRICE £2,917 (£3,500 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk Chances are that you’ve heard of the Medion brand. It’s a division of Lenovo, which bought a controlling stake in the German company in 2011. You’ll find Medion’s gaming laptops in a range of British online retailers, and its prices are often among the most competitive. As it is here. The Erazer arrived too late to be included in our Labs mini of gaming & creative laptops on p68, but at £3,500 it’s £499 cheaper than the HP Omen Max 16. In terms of specification, the Beast follows the same pattern as every other big-framed gaming laptop of 2025. Intel’s Core Ultra 9 275HX processor has become the de facto choice for this bulky breed, which makes sense: not only does it pack…

PRICE £3,333 (£4,000 inc VAT) from tinyurl.com/370cyber Tina Turner’s song springs to mind: by choosing the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics, CyberPowerPC has opted for simply the best gaming components. They have proven, through exhaustive benchmarking, to be better than all the rest. The question is whether this combination will give you everything you need. If you’re a gamer, then the simple answer is yes. Across the six games I tested with, at ludicrously tough settings with no assistance from DLSS 4, it only dipped below 60fps once: and that was by 1fps in Cyberpunk with RT Ultra settings. Once I re-activated DLSS, it zoomed up to 132fps and looked as smooth as could be. The only other time this PC fell close to…

PRICE £790 (£948 inc VAT) from dell.com There are several things about Dell’s latest UltraSharp monitor that make it special. One is that it uses an IPS Black panel, promising far deeper blacks than normal IPS panels; another its ludicrous levels of connectivity, built around Thunderbolt 4; and the third is that it escapes Dell’s new branding of Dell, Dell Plus, Dell Premium to indicate good, better, best. Perhaps it’s so spectacularly good that even the word “Premium” can’t contain it? Weight is given to this argument by the most striking IPS panel I’ve seen on a desktop monitor. If you’re upgrading from a five-year-old IPS display then the colours will slap you in the face, and due to its rich contrast (2,550:1 in our tests) and huge colour gamut…

Total value this month £120 Norton AntiTrack 2025 As soon as you connect to the internet – and the whole time you spend browsing – you’re leaving behind a trail of digital footprints. The websites you visit may well be collecting information about you and your browsing habits, and adverts displayed on those sites could be doing the same thing. There are social media elements to consider, too, with many networks able to see where you go courtesy of tracking pixels and other hidden technologies. All of this tracking is considered a huge invasion of privacy by some people, not to mention a security risk. The solution? Norton AntiTrack protection. As its name suggests, AntiTrack prevents the sites you visit from monitoring your online activity, using a variety of techniques…

PRICE £3,917 (£4,700 inc VAT) from asus.com If you thought the ROG Strix Scar 16 was a beast, you’ll baulk at this huge gaming laptop. It has an 18in display that looks more like a desktop monitor than a laptop screen, and it weighs a hefty 3.3kg. While the ROG Strix Scar 18 isn’t the most portable gaming system around, it is one of the best. That’s thanks to a combination of top-tier components and a screen that’s not only huge but gorgeous. When I say top-tier components, I mean the aspirational combination of an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU. It’s a power pairing made in gaming heaven, enabling the latest AAA titles to run smoothly with incredible visuals. In fact, Asus squeezes notably…

PRICE As reviewed, £3,333 (£3,999 inc VAT) from hp.com Not much makes me happier than a powerful gaming laptop, and the HP Omen Max 16 is one of the most powerful around. With an Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU and top-of-the-line Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics, it’s an unbeatable specification – and the OLED screen is a treat for the eyes, too. The design is chunky – that’s inevitable for a 16in gaming laptop – but its 2.7kg weight is on the heavy side even compared to its competitors this month. The overall shape is clean and simple, but is decorated with several attention-seeking design features: aside from the lightbar and RGB keys, there’s a glossy black Omen logo on the lid, and another “O16” logo below the keyboard,…

Is there any technology purchase quite as fraught with peril as a VPN? Or one where you need to place greater trust in the company you’re handing your money to? Because with that money you’re also giving them access to all your data, including confidential information such as banking details. But fear not, for we are here so you can avoid the pitfalls. Over the next 16 pages, we give you a side-by-side comparison in our feature table on p80, provide a buyer’s guide on p82, break down their performance results on p94 and show you well they performed when we used region-shifting to watch iPlayer, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video shows from abroad. That’s quite apart from detailed reviews, starting with extended reviews of products that were vying for…

BEST DEAL €5 (£4.34) per month from mullvad.net RENEWAL PRICE €5 (£4.34) per month Mullvad is, superficially at least, a no-frills service. It certainly has the simplest pricing scheme around: it costs €5 per month every month, for as long as you might want to subscribe. No discounts, no renewal fees, no limited-time-one-day-left-subscribe-NOW offers. You’ll be charged in euros, and at the time we checked that worked out at £4.34 – that’s the second most expensive price here, but remember that you only need to pay for this VPN when you need it. Those who want extra privacy can pay using cryptocurrency, using a gift card or even by posting an envelope full of cash. The only negative to note here is that Mullvad recently reduced its money-back guarantee period…

BEST DEAL 3yr £93 (£112 inc VAT) from avast.com RENEWAL PRICE £67 (£80 inc VAT) Avast, the free and paid-for antivirus brand of worldwide renown, is part of the Gen Digital group, which now also owns the Avira, AVG and Norton brands. We’ve also reviewed Norton’s VPN on p90, which uses a different infrastructure (as does Avira Phantom VPN), but it would have been pointless to review AVG Secure VPN as it’s exactly the same product as Avast SecureLine except with different branding on the client. Its features are limited. For example, it’s one of only two services here that don’t provide a Linux client, nor does it offer profiles for use with routers, services and other appliances. However, if all you care about is clients for Windows, macOS, Android…

BEST DEAL Basic, 2yr 3mth £65 (£77 inc VAT) from nordvpn.com RENEWAL PRICE Basic, £117 (£140 inc VAT) NordVPN was once known for obnoxious brash advertising, but the Latvian firm has grown up into an online security service provider with a more sober image. Nord Security services for consumers also include the NordPass password manager and NordLocker encrypted cloud storage, while the company provides a range of business services as well. It has its services regularly audited, convincingly addressed a breach and subsequently improved its customer communications. You can subscribe to NordVPN as part of a bundle with NordPass and NordLocker, which might be worth a look if you need secure cloud storage. But forget about NordPass: it won’t be our favourite password manager as long as KeePass and Bitwarden…

BEST DEAL 3yr 4mth, £54 (£65 inc VAT) from privateinternetaccess.com RENEWAL PRICE 3yr £54 (£65 inc VAT) At one time, Private Internet Access represented the gold standard for speed and proven security in the world of consumer VPNs, founded with an express mission of making privacy more generally accessible. It’s now a mid-tier player – its network infrastructure and consequently its transfer speeds haven’t seen the kinds of dramatic upgrades invested in by others, such as sibling company ExpressVPN and rivals Surfshark and Proton VPN. It was bought by VPN mega-player Kape Technologies in 2019, and infrastructure aside the company has been run independently and effectively since. Upgrades include support for the WireGuard protocol and unlimited (within reason) simultaneous connections, as well as standard features such as split tunnelling and…

BEST DEAL $69 (£52) from windscribe.com RENEWAL PRICE $69 (£52) Windscribe is a stalwart of the VPN world, and it has a great track record for calling out deceptive behaviour in the industry. For example, it has called out the practice of companies buying out both VPN providers and review sites. It also keeps on top of developments in VPN technology, from RAMdisk servers to quantum safe encryption. It’s perhaps best known for its generous free tier, which gives you 10GB of data throughput every month via ten endpoints around the world. We tested its performance across both a free account and our legacy lifetime paid-for account, and actually saw better results from the free endpoints. While it wins no speed awards, all the results are adequate for everything from…

Practical buying and strategic advice for IT managers and decision makers Small and medium businesses (SMBs) that want organised offices and tidy workspaces need to ditch their filing cabinets and move to document digitisation. Going paperless, or even just “paper-lite”, is the way forward, and investing in a document scanner can reap many benefits, including reduced office space requirements, increased productivity and improved compliance with data protection rules. With office rental costs rising all the time, businesses can save hard cash: once paper records have been scanned, they can be sent to a secure storage facility instead of occupying large swathes of valuable office floor space. Digitisation will improve workflow efficiencies and customer experiences too, as staff won’t need to waste time searching through filing cabinets looking for that crucial…

PRICE £1,135 exc VAT from ballicom.co.uk Businesses with a need for speed will love Epson’s WorkForce DS-900WN as this desktop scanner claims top speeds of 70ppm. It can do this for greyscale and colour scans at 300dpi, while the 11,000-page daily duty cycle and 100-page automatic document feeder are geared up for a high demand. The price is steep but the DS-900WN offers a lot for your money. As one of Epson’s ScanWay models, it can function as a standalone network device for walk-up scanning, and membership of the EdgeLink club brings in support for Epson’s Open Platform. This allows third-party independent software vendors to embed their document and data management software in the scanner’s web GUI and customise the icons on its large 10.9cm colour touchscreen. A good example…

PRICE Diskless, £395 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com Ubiquiti’s UniFi family has a well-deserved reputation for delivering classy managed wireless network solutions, and the company is now making a play for the business network-attached storage (NAS) space. It aims to make a big splash as its low price makes the UNAS Pro one of the most affordable appliances on the market. Aimed at large-scale file storage and sharing, this 2U rack-mounter sports seven LFF/SFF drive bays. This is an odd number for a NAS appliance, but Ubiquiti has forsaken an eighth bay so it can fit its trademark LCD touchscreen operator panel on the left, along with copper gigabit and 10GbE SFP+ fibre ports on the right. It’s powered by the same 1.7GHz quad-core Arm Cortex A57 CPU as found in…

Disinformation seems to be everywhere! Is it really something my business can “manage”? The honest answer to that is “partly”. Disinformation is a broad idea, and while there are steps you can take to manage many aspects of it, the overall threat is slippery to define and counter. The term generally refers to incorrect information that is knowingly fabricated and spread – as distinct from misinformation, which may simply be mistaken. Intentional or not, though, it can be difficult to trace and respond to, and its impacts can extend both inside and outside of an organisation. Look, I need practical action here, not philosophical commentary. I know you do – but it’s important to start by understanding what we’re dealing with. A lot of disinformation is not spread with wholly…

Nobody likes a know-it-all. Less appealing still is someone who actually says “I told you so.” But when someone unburdened by any measurable technical expertise happens to blurt something out on a podcast (PC Pro podcast episode 725, viewable at tinyurl.com/370pod725), and it later turns out to be eerily on the money, well – how can one not gloat just a little? You see, some time ago I asked, possibly with dramatic arm gestures, “Surely to God we have the technology to knock things out of the sky with a beam?” I wasn’t proposing death rays – although who among us hasn’t secretly wanted one? – but something a bit more precision-engineered. It turns out, we kind of do. Now, I’m not claiming to be a prophet. I merely speculated…

You may recall that, just before taking a break from normal subjects to address the likely technological impacts of a global war, I was idly announcing a future intention to upgrade my principal file store. Let me run over the size and shape of this job. First of all, let’s hear it for my principal Windows file server here, a little HP ML115 small business server, tweaked up just the way I like it. Lots of memory, an internal RAID made up of 750GB disks and a boot volume residing on an early SATA SSD. There’s also a four-port add-on gigabit Ethernet card, and this gives a clue to what this notionally humble and certainly old machine has going for it. This wasn’t my main file store with just the…

The trends and technologies that are the shape of things to come The Robotics Living Lab at Manchester Metropolitan University is trying to solve long-running robotics challenges. Nothing too special in that statement, but rather than sit in the computing or engineering department, this robot factory is part of the Manchester Fashion Institute. Why? Robotics are central to manufacturing in most industries, but clothing production has challenges not seen in car factories or chip fabs – after all, fabric is soft, making it difficult to manipulate by machine hands. If there was some way to solve this then we could reduce the fashion industry’s reliance on so-called sweat shops and allow it to finally catch up with the rest of the world. As it stands, fashion has a monstrous impact…

You know that sinking feeling you get when you land on a website and you’re instantly sucked in? Down the rabbit hole you go, either in amazement at wonderful things or in mild horror at what’s being presented. Sometimes it can be educational, sometimes fun. Sometimes it’s deeply disturbing, and you back away from the keyboard, not quite knowing how to process what has just been experienced. Today I had a mixture of all of that. Because I fell upon a website called National Day Calendar (nationaldaycalendar.com). This site details all the “National Day of Something” that seems to be happening all the time. It’s a very well presented website without a hint of parody. You can search by all sorts of useful parameters, but my own rabbit hole was…