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I’ve read some honking hogwash about PC security during my time as a journalist, from shameless scare stories designed to flog products you don’t need, to so-called ‘research’ that tells you the bleedin’ obvious. One common observation that always irks me is when people who should know better say that getting hacked is like being burgled. It’s not. Unlike burglars who ransack your home, most hackers don’t want you to know they’ve infiltrated your PC. A hacker is more like a squatter who, living undetected in your loft, sneaks down every night to steal money from your jacket pocket. Crucially, they don’t steal so much that you suspect something is wrong. But although hackers are invisible, your PC will react to their unwanted presence. In our Cover Feature we reveal…

Tell us what’s on your mind Email: letters@computeractive.co.uk Facebook: www.facebook.com/computeractive Twitter: @ComputerActive www.twitter.com/computeractive Using XP is like driving an unsafe car Following your big (and entertaining) ‘Are XP users PC dinosaurs?’ debate, I predict you’re going to get a lot of emails from people still using it saying that they should be left alone to do what they want to do. I would agree with that, if using XP didn’t also affect everyone else. I’ve read lots of car metaphors in Computeractive about XP, so I hope you won’t mind me adding another one. Using XP in 2016 – when the company that makes it has said it’s unsafe – is like zooming down the motorway at 100mph on a car that hasn’t passed an MOT in five years. It’s…

Why won’t HP replace my laptop? Q In August 2015 I bought an HP Envy 15 laptop (£826) from HP’s website. The laptop never worked properly, so I sent it back to HP to be repaired after the company refused to give me a replacement, but I would rather have a new laptop. Is there anything I can do to insist on a new model? Pat Talbot A Sadly no, because Paul bought the laptop at a time when manufacturers were allowed to repair devices repeatedly, under the Sale of Goods Act (SOGA). That changed on 1 October 2015 with the introduction of the Consumer Rights Act, which limits manufacturers to one repair only. We’ve covered the misery of repeated repairs many times in Consumeractive, so we were pleased with…

SPRING 2016 Expected in April, LG’s G5 is a new kind of flagship smartphone with a modular design. This means you’ll be able to add upgrades such as cameras, replaceable batteries and memory cards. Yet it has a slim metal body that looks like a premium phone. Will it catch on? SPRING 2016 Announced at February’s Mobile World Congress, the Lenovo Ideapad Miix 310 is a tablet that runs Windows 10, and has a keyboard that attaches magnetically and a 1366x768-pixel, 10.1in touchscreen with great colour and contrast. It will only cost around £200. SUMMER 2016 Zotac reckons it invented the ‘mini PC’. Among the new range it plans to launch in the summer is an upgrade for the C series that squeezes Intel’s latest ‘Skylake’ Core i5 processor into…

What you need: Skype app; Android or iOS device Time required: 15 minutes Microsoft has updated the Skype Android and iOS apps with brilliant new features. In Issue 463, we showed you how to add up to 25 people – including those who don’t have a Skype ID – to a group conversation on your PC. You can now do this from your phone and tablet. Even better, you can have a group video call with all these people. First, install Skype on your Android device (www.snipca.com/19864), iPhone (www.snipca.com/19865) or iPad (www.snipca.com/19866). STEP 1 To create a Skype group on iOS, tap the ‘New chat’ icon 1 . On Android, tap the blue ‘+’ icon at the bottom right, then tap the speech bubble icon at the bottom. We’ll first…

Adobe Voice Free iOS: www.snipca.com/19805 Back in Issue 425, we showed you how to use Adobe Voice’s brilliant video-editing tools on your iPad (see ‘Make amazing movies on your iPad’ Workshop). The app is now available for iPhones. It lets you add your video clips and record a voiceover. The app then automatically adds transition effects and a soundtrack. Everalbum Free Android: www.snipca.com/19806 iOS: www.snipca.com/19807 New to iOS, Everalbum frees up valuable storage space on your device by deleting your photos and saving them to its website: www.everalbum.com. You can also upload your Instagram and Facebook photos, create shared albums and rediscover old photos taken on the same day in the past. BBC Music Free Android: www.snipca.com/19808 iOS: www.snipca.com/19809 Select your musical genre preferences to see related BBC content, including…

WORD Collaborate on Word documents in real-time The best new feature of Word 2016 is the option to share a file with other people, give them permission to edit it, then work collaboratively on it at the same time. You can even see each other’s changes in real-time. First, install the OneDrive Desktop program/app (if you don’t already have it). The people you’re sending the file to will also need Word 2016 and OneDrive. Open the file you want to share, click Share at the top right, ‘Save to cloud’, OneDrive, Sign In and log into your OneDrive account. Next, select the OneDrive folder you want to save the file to, name the file, then click Save. A Share panel will now slide in from the right (see screenshot right).…

Boot up your current computer and you’ll be greeted by flashy graphics, smooth fonts and gigabytes of powerful, easy-to-use programs. But it wasn’t always like that. For a reminder of what computing was like 24 years ago, you should head online to the Internet Archive (http://archive.org), where you’ll find a fully working version of Windows 3.1 that runs within your web browser, as well as more than 1,300 free games and programs built for it. We’ll explain what’s inside this fascinating time capsule. What is Windows 3.1? First, a short history lesson. People often cite Windows 95 as the turning point for Microsoft, but Windows 3.1 – its 16bit predecessor – was just as significant. By 1992, Windows had been around for several years, but early versions were crude and…

• AUGUST 2015: Windows 7 and 8/8.1 users found 6GB of Windows 10 files in a hidden folder called ‘$Windows.~BT’. The download pushed many over their bandwidth limit. • SEPTEMBER 2015: Users reported seeing failed ‘Upgrade to Windows 10’ tasks in their Windows Update history. • OCTOBER 2015: A Windows Update bug forced some Windows 7 and 8.1 users to install Windows 10. • NOVEMBER 2015: A Windows 10 update removed some users’ installed software. • DECEMBER 2015: Users complained they’d accidentally upgraded to Windows 10 after clicking the GWX app pop-up. • FEBRUARY 2016: Windows 10 became a ‘recommended update’ and now downloads automatically via Windows Update.…

I applaud the Government’s plans to make porn sites check that its users are over 18 (News, Issue 470). It may not work every time - teenagers will always look for ways around it - but at least it makes it difficult for them. Adult magazines are on the top shelf for a reason, after all: so they’re out of reach of most teens. There’s no physical equivalent for the internet, so we just have to come up with new solutions. If you doubt the size of the problem, just look at the stats. In May 2015, 1.4 million people under 18 visited porn sites. In a perverse sense, that’s down to the success of the internet. It’s just so easy to use. Obviously you’d never get 1.4 million teenagers…

Wowcher! Refund for reader for broken tablet Forgive us if we shout ‘Wowcher’ just like those cheesy TV adverts, but we’re happy to report that we’ve resolved Darla Wilson’s case with the vouchers website. As we reported in Issue 469, Darla used a Wowcher offer to buy a Chuwi V90 Android tablet from Chimp Electronics (www.chimpelectronics.co.uk). She said the tablet wasn’t working properly, and wanted to know whether to pursue a refund through Wowcher or Chimp. In Darla’s case, Chimp was responsible for refunding her - and did so. But we’d like to say thanks to Wowcher, which contacted Chimp to make sure it processed the refund. Wowcher’s legal responsibility for the tablet had ended, so it could have washed its hands of the case. It told us that if…

EE customers: beware credit-card scam In February I received a genuinelooking email purporting to come from EE. The address was account. services@ee.co.uk and the subject line read ‘Your EE broadband account - your credit card is about to expire’. It told me that because my credit card needed to be renewed, I should click the link provided. My details in the email were correct, but knowing my credit card was not due to expire I checked with EE and they told me it’s a scam. There’s more information from EE about email scams at www.snipca.com/19661. Warn your fellow readers about scams at letters@computeractive.co.uk…

DESKTOP PC ❘ £499 from Mesh www.snipca.com/19822 One of our regular topics of conversation in the Computeractive office is which desktop PCs to review. What about this one, someone asks? It looks reasonably priced for a good specification. (You can see why people make Oscar-winning films about the exciting world of journalism. Some days we even have biscuits.) Now, in an ideal world there’d be little left to say except sure, let’s get that PC in for testing. But no. Because we know what desktop PC manufacturers are like. So we have to start asking awkward questions. “For a mid-range PC with all the essentials and none of the nonsense, this is an excellent choice” Good specification, you say? Good how, exactly? They haven’t by any chance spent all the…

SMARTPHONE ❘ £300 from Carphone Warehouse www.snipca.com/19867 You’d guess the Xperia M5 was the successor to the M4, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But compared to last year’s model, tagged ‘Aqua’ for its colourful waterproof case, the M5 is a much blingier affair. With a polished metal frame and 13-megapixel ‘selfie’ camera, it would be at home in one of those awful American TV shows about schoolgirls who drive open-topped cars and live in mansions. It comes as no surprise, then, that it’s more expensive than the Aqua, but £300 is still a reasonable price for a smartphone. So is it worth it? “The Xperia M5 will appeal if you want a sophisticated looking phone” Compared with plasticky rivals like the Samsung Galaxy S5 Neo and Google Nexus 5X, the…

SMARTPHONE ❘ £190 from vMall www.snipca.com/19790 Once upon a time, there was a prejudice that ‘Made in China’ meant cheap and rough. The smartphone industry has certainly turned those tables. Today, China is the world centre for the incredibly precise engineering that packs the latest technology into the slimmest slabs. And Huawei – based just north of Hong Hong – is among the companies that’s making its own products as well as hardware for Western brands. “Apps, photos and videos look good on the 5.5in HD screen” As if to reinforce its global aspirations, Huawei credits Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim museum in Bilbao as the inspiration for the Honor 5X’s one-piece aluminium case. We can’t quite see the resemblance – the Guggenheim is all glittering curves, while the 5X is plain…

Find out what other products we liked. Buy our new 2015 Back Issue CD: £15 fromwww.snipca.com/19124 LAPTOP Asus UX305 £580 from www.snipca.com/19439 Tested: Issue 447 13.3in is a practical size for a laptop, and this light but sturdy ‘ultrabook’ has a smart and slim design that does justice to its capable performance. Upgradeable to Windows 10, it’s limited mainly by its 128GB SSD, which makes it work fast but might leave you needing more space. ALTERNATIVE Toshiba Satellite C40-C This 14in Windows 10 laptop looks like it cost a lot more. It’s not the most amazing PC, but it’s fantastic for the price. £200 from www.snipca.com/19436 PHONE Apple iPhone 6s £539 from www.snipca.com/18240 Tested: Issue 461 It may look like the 2014 model, but this update is stronger and faster,…

Handy hints and tips from your fellow readers Email us your tips: letters@computeractive.co.uk I reluctantly succumbed to Microsoft’s nagging upgrade prompts and upgraded my PC to Windows 10. The process was actually much simpler than I thought it would be. I’ve been using the new OS for about a month now and apart from a few things that I had to acquaint myself with, I can confidently say that I love Windows 10. Your cover feature in Issue 470 was really helpful with regards to customising Windows 10. You mentioned the brilliant Classic Shell, but I think I found a better, free program that lets you tweak over 200 Windows 10 settings. Also, it’s one of the easiest programs I’ve ever used! It’s called Ultimate Windows Tweaker 4 and is…

AGES 0􀀇5 Pango Sheep £1.99 www.snipca.com/19810 (Android) £2.29 www.snipca.com/19811 (iOS) Your toddler plays as a shepherd in this fun, activity-based game. They need to tap sheep to gather them, and tap the ones with the same pattern to form herds. There’s also a colouring and counting game. After completing each level, they’re introduced to different animals, such as squirrels and rabbits. AGES 6-10 Vocabulary Builder Free www.snipca.com/19812 (Android) Free www.snipca.com/19813 (iOS) Vocabulary Builder will teach your kids word definitions via an engrossing, timed game. They need to select the correct meaning from a list of options. It consists of three difficulty levels. You can challenge your kids or random players online. AGES 11-16 Waking Mars 79p www.snipca.com/19814 (Android) £3.99 www.snipca.com/19815 (iOS) It’s the year 2097 and life has been discovered…

Share free book previews The latest version of the Kindle software, which arrived in February (www.snipca.com/19574) adds new ways to share, letting you send a free preview of a book’s opening passages or chapters to friends (and they don’t need a Kindle or Kindle app to read them). First, tap, hold and drag to select a section of text. Next, tap Share, followed by the method of sharing. To share via email, for example, tap E-mail, then tap Add (beside To), type the email address, tap Save, then tap to change Subject or Personal Message (optional). Finally, tap Send. Adjust brightness with a swipe In the reading view of the Kindle Android app, you can adjust brightness simply by swiping up and down on the screen with two fingers. You…

SIGNS TO LOOK OUT FOR… 1 You can’t get administrator access on your own PC 2 Your internet searches keep being redirected 3 A file is unexpectedly corrupted or fails to open 4 Your passwords have changed 5 People in your address list get spam emails from you 6 Programs open momentarily and then close, so you can’t use them 7 A file has unexpectedly disappeared 8 You find programs in All Apps (in Windows), or Autoruns that you didn’t install 9 Your PC keeps connecting to the internet - even when you’re not using it 10 Your printer prints pages that you didn’t ask it to 11 Your browser’s homepage changes and extra toolbars appear 12 Your AV and malware-scanners won’t open or run…

As well as games and programs, the Internet Archive pays tribute to the darker side of computing, with its Malware Museum (www.snipca.com/19782), a collection of viruses and other nefarious nasties from the pre-internet age. Another gem is the Wayback Machine (www.snipca.com/19784), an archive of old web pages. Type a URL into the search box, press Enter, then browse the calendar to see what a site looked like at any point in the past 20 years. From the main Internet Archive homepage, click one of the icons in the middle to browse the corresponding libraries. The film icon, for instance, leads to the Moving Image Archive – home to more than 2 million video files, including many classic films (www.snipca.com/19783), all available for free. Similarly, the Audio Archive (www.snipca.com/19786) contains millions…

I thoroughly enjoyed your ‘Are XP users PC dinosaurs?’ debate in Issue 470. It reminded me of the good-humoured arguments at my local computer club, often accompanied by a pint or two down the pub. I’ve always sat on the fence a bit because I can see both points of view. I would like to suggest a ‘third way’ of looking at the issue. For me, the key aspect of computing is security. If your PC is hacked beyond repair, then it doesn’t matter what operating system you’re using. That’s why I upgraded one of my PCs from XP to Windows 7 a month before Microsoft ended support. The risk was too great. But I kept XP installed on another PC, intending never to use it to go online, and…

What happened? Security experts warned people about a spate of banking scams in which hackers send texts to phones in an attempt to steal money. Known as ‘smishing’ - a combination of phishing and SMS -these scams try to trick users with messages that appear to be legitimate alerts from banks. Worryingly, criminals are getting much better at making these messages look genuine. They send you messages in the same conversation ‘thread’ that your bank uses, making it very hard to tell what’s real. A popular tactic of scammers is to send warnings about ‘suspicious’ or ‘usual’ activity in users’ accounts (see the bottom message in the screenshot left). These messages emphasise how important it is that the victim takes action immediately, normally by transferring their money into a new…

SYSTEM TOOL Edge Blocker 1.0 www.snipca.com/19724 What you need: Windows 10 Like its impertinent sister Cortana, Edge – Microsoft’s successor to Internet Explorer (IE) – refuses to go away. It sets itself as your default browser and PDF reader in Windows 10, and there’s no built-in way to uninstall or block it. You can change your defaults (to the more familiar Chrome and Adobe Reader, for example) and you can remove the Edge icon from your taskbar. But in our experience, Windows 10 only gives you temporary control. We found that Edge is reset as the default following updates to Windows 10. Sadly, that kind of aggressive behaviour is what we’re coming to expect from Windows 10 (even if you’re still using Windows 7 or 8/8.1 – see our feature…

Netgear PLP1200 £80 from Currys www.snipca.com/16866 Powerline networking uses mains wiring to transmit data. Plug one adapter into a socket near your router, which attaches to it with an Ethernet cable, then plug in the other and connect a PC to its Ethernet socket. It’s like Wi-Fi, but works over any distance. The PLP1200 is a fast pair, with one Ethernet socket each. D-Link PowerLine AV2 1000HD Gigabit Starter Kit £45 from Kikatek www.snipca.com/17836 Although not quite as fast as the PLP1200, these adapters work as quickly as most Wi-Fi networks in practice. Again there’s only one Ethernet port, so you’d need to add an Ethernet switch (about £20) to connect multiple devices at the other end. It’s excellent value, but there are no pass-through sockets on the front. Devolo…

Q Now that The Independent is to stop print production, I will need to switch to an online subscription. Could you recommend a tablet on which to read it? I have no need for a phone, camera, etc, just a good screen, Wi-Fi, and enough storage for offline reading. Eddie Kelly A The Independent’s digital Daily Edition is for iPad and iPhone only. It contains no more content than you can read free on the website, but adds interactive versions of the puzzles and is laid out more attractively. At £13 a month, it’s a better choice than the £10 Kindle or Nook e-reader version, which is poorly designed. Android users only get an app for the smaller i newspaper, which has been bought by Johnston Press. So your best…

Win 1 of 4 MAGIX Movie Edit Pro 2016 Premium The perfect program for high-quality video projects, Movie Edit Pro 2016 Premium combines all the new features of the Plus version with a unique selection of stunning effects. It supports 360-degree editing for videos made with panoramic cameras, and has improved ‘object tracking’, letting you focus with more precision on moving objects. You can even pin text to objects, place black rectangles on faces and blur car licence plates. To enter, email your address to cacomp@dennis.co.uk with ‘premium’ in the subject line by midnight 29 March. MAGIX Movie Edit Pro 2016 Premium is available to buy priced £89.99 from www.snipca.com/19859. For updates on MAGIX software ‘like’ their Facebook page (www.facebook.com/MAGIX)…

ANDROID Free up storage space quickly Unless you have the option to use a microSD card, you’ll find your phone running out of storage space very quickly. After videos, photos are the biggest space hogs. The new Photos option in AVG’s free Cleaner app finds unwanted, bad and duplicate photos, so you can delete them in an instant. Open the app (www.snipca.com/19802) and tap the New Photos option at the bottom. The app will start analysing all the photos on your device, after which you’ll see three category tiles – ‘Photos for Review’, ‘Bad photos’ and ‘Similar photos’. The first category contains photos you may not want to keep for long, such as screenshots you’ve taken and photos other people have sent you. Tap it to see these arranged in…

WINDOWS 10 Make Windows 10 download files faster If you notice that files in Windows take longer than usual to download, there’s an easy way to speed up the process. Basically, Microsoft has categorised Windows 10’s Downloads folder as a Pictures folder. This means it’s optimised to download photos quickly, but other file formats (such as setup files or eBooks) will take longer to download. There’s a simple way to change this folder’s properties, so it’ll download any file type with the same speed. To do this, open File Explorer, right-click the Downloads folder, then click Properties. Now click the Customise tab, click the ‘Optimise this folder for’ dropdown menu, set it to ‘General items’ (see screenshot above), click Apply, then OK. ALL VERSIONS (XP TO 10) Bypass installing updates…

If you use Outlook.com, you’ll soon notice some exciting new tools in your inbox. These features have been in the ‘preview’ version of the webmail service since May 2015, which has been available to selected users. Microsoft announced in February that the revamped Outlook.com will soon be available to everyone, starting – predictably – with people based in North America. You don’t need to do anything to get these new tools – Microsoft will eventually upgrade you (hopefully by the end of March, if not sooner). Your email address will stay the same. If you don’t use Outlook.com and want to try these features, create a new account at www.snipca.com/19713. Below we pick five useful new things you can do in Outlook, but there’s a lot more to discover, as…

Websites won’t load or update If you encounter problems with sites that won’t load fully (or at all), or they load but won’t update to show the latest information, then try clearing Firefox’s cache. Click the menu button (three horizontal lines at the top right), then go to History and click Clear Recent History. Open the ‘Time range to clear’ dropdown menu and choose Everything. Make sure at least Cache is ticked (see screenshot below) and then click Clear Now. Try opening the affected websites again. If they still don’t work, repeat this tip but tick Cookies in addition to Cache. Random crashes or unpredictable behaviour Unexpected problems in Firefox are almost always caused by misbehaving extensions. The only sure-fire way to work out which one is responsible is by…

Imagine that it’s 2115. Take a good look around you. It’s a fantastical place, isn’t it? All your worldly possessions were manufactured on your levitating 3D printer. This includes your own biosphere, located in a well-to-do part of your underwater bubble city. You telework only three days a week, never get sick, and grow all your own food on your own hydroponic farm – an invention that has eliminated world hunger. Quantum broadband means that Windows 10 updates are delivered before Microsoft has even developed them. All that incredible stuff, and it’s only a quarter past nine (boom, boom!). “The futurologists of yesteryear predicted flying taxis and underwater croquet, but no PCs or internet” Actually, by 2115 I really mean a vision of the world 99 years into the future.…