Table of contents for November 2022 in PC Pro

You walk into a shop. You head to the computers sitting on the table, but you’re confused. That huge colossus of a desktop PC, with screaming fans and so much RGB lighting that Elton John thinks it’s garish, has a Core i7 and GeForce RTX 3070 graphics. But so does the tiny laptop to its left. Surely one can’t be as fast as the other, can it? You turn to the sales assistants for help and they assure you that both machines are just as fast as the other. After all, a Core i7 is a Core i7, and an RTX 3070 is an RTX 3070. Right? Well, obviously, you know that’s wrong. For one because you’re one of the technorati that reads publications such as PC Pro, and for…

Exciting news if you’re rich, famous or paranoid: Apple has announced a new feature that will lock iPhones down tighter than ever before. Lockdown Mode, which is set to launch on iOS16 in the autumn, will cut off or restrict a wide range of features that most of us take for granted. Messages won’t be able to receive attachments, your phone won’t accept calls and messages from unknown numbers, and the Safari web browser’s rendering engine will be stripped back with features such as embedded fonts disabled. “What these really advanced groups have figured out is there [are] some flaws in things that don’t require any interaction,” said Chester Wisniewski, principal research scientist at security firm Sophos. “In the security world, we call them zero-click vulnerabilities, meaning the user doesn’t…

We’re just back from a visit to my in-laws in Scotland, our first proper break from London since the lockdowns disrupted everything. Before Covid we would visit Scotland most years, either by car or by train, hitting the likes of Edinburgh, the Highlands and the Mearns of the North East. However, since PC Pro isn’t a travel magazine, I figure that the best way to tie this column into technology is simply to describe what felt so different this time round. Packing used to be a matter of some concern in the days of Windows laptop, tablet, digital camera and phone/PDA, along with their rat’s nest of cables and power supplies. This time I took only my Chromebook and phone, and though it would be nice to claim only one…

Battling with Google I sympathise with Barry Collins (see issue 336, p22) on running a website for a small business, and constantly battling with everchanging Google policies in an attempt to keep the website visible in searches. I maintain the website for our small church, and the pandemic facilitated the growth of the website beyond whatever I imagined. I am in full-time employment, and I serve the church in a voluntary capacity. I want to put what limited time I can spare into building the site; I do not want to have to constantly work out how best to please Google. A church is not competitive in quite the way that businesses have to be, although I would certainly like to think that anybody Googling for a church in our…

There’s a good reason why 3CX has won awards in every PC Pro test of phone systems over the past decade. To quote Dave Mitchell’s most recent review, of 3CX Phone System Enterprise 18 (see issue 333, p94), “3CX’s Phone System 18 is perfect for SMBs that want a highly flexible VoIP system they can manage themselves”. But what if you’re a really small business? That’s where a new product called 3CX StartUP comes in. Its foundation is the 3CX Phone System that Dave Mitchell describes in his review, but rather than expect small business owners to configure everything themselves, StartUP does the heavy lifting for you. You don’t need to worry about choosing the right settings or even investigating the opaque world of SIP trunks. You’ll be up and…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £1,500 (£1,800 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk The Dell XPS 13 was one of the few modern-day laptops to make our list of iconic PCs (see issue 333, p26), so full credit to Dell for daring to mess with the recipe. Admittedly, there is a 2022 update of the plain XPS 13, but it has minor tweaks; the XPS 13 Plus is a complete departure. The result is one of the most visually stunning laptops around. From the almost invisible glass touchpad to the ultra-thin bezels, this is refinement and beauty that few other laptops come close to. If choosing a laptop was simply a matter of style, it would be a shoe-in for the A List. Plus and minus Take the graphite finish. This would be…

SCORE PRICE £833 (£999 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk I’m not sure what a collective noun of Dell XPS laptops is – a luxury? – but the Inspiron 16 Plus breaks away from this month’s pack to focus on value. And in terms of spec, it’s hard to criticise. Yes, it’s an 11th gen Intel Core processor rather than 12th gen, but you also get RTX 3050 graphics, 16GB of memory, a 512GB SSD and a 3K 16in display. Quite a haul for £999. For most people, the eight cores of the Core i7-11800H will be plenty. A score of 6,219 in PCMark 10 hammers that home, as does 7,273 in Geekbench 5’s multicore test, 9,673 in Cinebench R23 and 265 in the PC Pro benchmarks. An equivalent laptop with a…

SCORE PRICE £1,667 (£2,000 inc VAT) from lenovo.com The Legion 5i Pro is Lenovo’s no-holds barred gaming laptop. With a 2.5kg weight and height of 26.6mm, it’s designed with thermals in mind rather than portability. This allows Lenovo to not only pack in thunderously powerful components but feed them with all the watts they desire. With 125W to play with the RTX 3070 Ti graphics card is particularly noteworthy, ripping through games faster than rivals with the same headline specs. The MSI Creator Z16P (see issue 336, p57) could only feed around 105W to the card, while the Asus ROG Zephyrus M16 (see issue 331, p59) provided 100W. This extra firepower pushed the Legion 5i Pro to 11,912 in 3DMark Time Spy compared to the MSI’s 9,854 and the Asus’…

SCORE PRICE £167 (£200 inc VAT) from consumer.huawei.com If Huawei’s Wi-Fi Mesh 7 is too pricey, the Mesh 3 kit may appeal. It seems good value, since you get an extra mesh node for £70 less, but there are a few vital differences. For a start, the Mesh 3 units are smaller. While they have the same basic design, they’re only 174mm tall, which makes them easier to situate unobtrusively around your home. Happily, the external features are largely unchanged: you get three gigabit ports instead of four, but the NFC tag on the top remains, as does the “HiLink” WPS button on the front. The bigger changes are inside. Where each Mesh 7 unit includes a pair of 5GHz radios, the Mesh 3 runs all device connections and backhaul…

Today’s Chromebooks mean business. While it’s true that Google-powered laptops are still strongest in the education sector, they’re no longer solely for the classroom. You can find them in multinational corporations, public services and in an increasing number of homes. Where we used to talk about all the things that Chromebooks couldn’t do, we’re now talking more about what they’re great for, and scenarios where they don’t work are becoming the exception rather than the rule. The more we’ve embraced streaming and online software, the more businesses have adopted remote working and the cloud, the more the Chromebook starts to look like a brilliant concept that has waited while the world caught up. What’s more, Chromebooks now come in a wider range of shapes and sizes, and cater to a…

SCORE PRICE Core i7, £916 (£1,099 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk Having conquered schools and made some headway in the home, the Chromebook’s latest target is the enterprise, with Google pulling out all the stops to get Chromebooks into gainful employment. It’s not hard to see where the Asus Chromebook CX9 (sometimes called the CX9400) fits into that strategy. With its black metallic casing, 14in NanoEdge screen and ultra-light form factor, it’s ideal for executives, mobile workers and anyone shifting between the office and the home office during the working week. It is, by any standards, a beautifully put-together laptop, just under 1.2kg in weight and 16mm thick. It meets US MIL-STD 810H standards and has been tested with shock, vibration and temperature tests, not to mention durability tests for the…

SCORE PRICE £1,083 (£1,299 inc VAT) from hp.co.uk (estimated price) Of all the big Chromebook manufacturers, HP has worked hardest to push its devices as serious corporate laptops. For one reason or another, these devices haven’t quite hit the big time, often seeming like generic business laptops given a quick Chrome OS makeover. With the Elite Dragonfly, that changes. This isn’t just a great enterprise Chromebook, but arguably the best of the lot. Much of that is down to the form factor. This is a 2-in-1 convertible with a 13.5in screen. It’s 16.6mm thick and weighs 1.3kg, and in tablet mode the slim bezels and 3:2 format screen make it feel like a supersized tablet, ideal for media consumption or annotating documents with the bundled USI stylus. In clamshell mode…

SCORE PRICE £249 (£299 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk The Chromebook Enterprise 514 is Acer’s mid-range business Chromebook, with specs that start with a Pentium Gold 7505 and 4GB of RAM and end with a Core i7 and 8GB. Whichever specification you pick, you’re getting what looks and feels like a high-class Chromebook, even if only the lid is aluminium, with the remainder a coated plastic. It’s light at 1.4kg, and not much larger than an A4 hardback, yet the plastics feel robust and there’s little undue flex to be found. Most of the connectivity is on the left-hand side, with two USB-C ports, both supporting DisplayPort and Thunderbolt 4, along with an HDMI output and a 3.5mm audio jack. However, on the right there’s a single USB-A 3.2 Gen 1…

In case you haven’t noticed, Chromebooks aren’t niche computers any more. I’m no longer hearing pundits say that Google’s cloud-ready OS is moribund, or that it’s due to be folded into Android. While Chrome OS is still strongest in the education market, it’s making inroads into enterprise and finding lots of happy customers at home. Some people will try it and hate it, but others spot the speed, simplicity and security and find that they like what they see. What’s more, leading Chromebook manufacturers are putting their weight behind the OS. We’re well past the stage where a company’s single Chromebook would be its lowest-spec Windows laptop with most of the storage stripped out. Instead, laptop makers are thinking about how they can add value or reach a slightly different…

SCORE PRICE 1 user per year, £72 exc VAT from acronis.com Best known for the excellent Cyber Protect backup and endpoint protection products, Acronis is making a play for the remote support market with its cloud-hosted Connect. Pricing looks good: the top-end Professional version on review has a yearly cost of £72 per technician with unlimited concurrent sessions. Connect presents an account administration web portal and client console apps for technicians to provide remote support. On-demand and unattended access to Windows, macOS and Linux systems, otherwise known as destinations, are provisioned respectively by a lightweight quick assist portable app and an agent. Acronis offers client apps (formerly Remotix) for iOS and Android devices so technicians can provide support on the move. These each cost an extra £13 and, at present,…

SCORE PRICE £19 per technician/mth exc VAT from zoho.com/assist A great choice for SMBs that want uncomplicated cloud-hosted remote support, Zoho Assist has been updated with a range of features that make it appealing to larger companies as well. Zoho’s flexible plans mean you only pay for the features you need and can upgrade, downgrade or cancel the contract on a whim. The generous free plan supports one technician, unlimited sessions, remote control, chat and clipboard-sharing tools, plus five unattended desktops that permit secure access without the user being present. More demanding support departments can choose from Standard, Professional and Enterprise plans, with discounts for monthly or yearly contracts. Unattended access is a separate module with two pricing plans. All remote support plans, including the free one, come with five…

Cloud services have something to offer almost every kind of business. In fact, if you believe Amazon’s hype, we’re heading for a world where companies of all sizes run entirely on remote servers. Microsoft – perhaps understandably, given its roots – treads a little more cautiously and focuses on hybrid architectures. Either way, it seems certain that the cloud is integral to the future of business. But it’s not always easy to tell which company’s cloud platform will be the best fit for a particular role in a particular organisation. That’s partly because the different providers make broadly the same promises, enabling you to deploy computing services almost on a whim, and scale them up and down as needed. While the fundamentals might seem identical, as soon as you start…

At CST Group we’ve been slowly migrating a lot of our services to the cloud. In the old days we’d host everything in house. There’s still a lot to be said for that – you can hear when a hard drive in a server is about to go tits up, and you can smell when a power supply has boiled one of its capacitors. It’s great for control freaks who want to manage everything, but there’s no getting away from the fact that it takes a lot of time and effort to keep everything running. When you reach that point where it all becomes too much, you have two options: either move all of your existing kit into a data centre somewhere, or start using cloud computing resources. Or, perhaps,…

The history of the computer user interface is a long one, but one pivotal moment is surely the arrival of the graphical user interface. The switch from tapping keys to moving a pointer around the screen was truly a revolution. I won’t forget my early mouse-based explorations of Windows 1 and 2, or the first Mac devices: at first everything felt unfamiliar and wrong, as if I was trying to write left-handed. But there was no doubt that the old days of keyboard-only interaction were over. Alternatives to the mouse were soon available. Pen Windows, running on the Compaq Concerto, proved a revelation, and those of a graphical bent rushed out to buy Wacom tablets. While early pens weren’t particularly good, the arrival of pressure sensing introduced a whole new…

Darien Graham-Smith Darien lifts the lid on DDR5 memory, revealing not only the differences compared to DDR4 but also disentangling the mystery of latency… and what all those numbers mean. See p44. James O’Malley If you have a student living in your household or about to leave for uni – no matter their age – then you also have access to a bunch of handy discounts. James reveals how to save big money from p40. Steve Cassidy Every cloud provider has its own benefits and disadvantages. If you’re trying to decide for your business, read Steve’s in-depth comparison of AWS with Microsoft Azure from p102. Jemima Johnstone Britain’s departure from the EU doesn’t mean that we have to stop hiring tech talent from overseas; it’s just made it harder. Immigration…

Exclusive investigations into technology practices. Email probe@pcpro.co.uk if you have a story If you log onto Facebook on an election day you might see a banner at the top of your news feed urging you to vote. There’s even a link to help you find your polling station. Or maybe you’ll just type your postcode into one of the news websites covering the election, to find out where to go and who your candidates are. It’s simple, it’s easy, and it helps make you an active participant in British democracy. What might surprise you is where the tool that helped you find this information came from. It wasn’t provided by the government, or the Electoral Commission, the body that oversees elections. Nor was it the work of big news organisations.…

The internet isn’t just for teenagers but sometimes it feels that way. When Gen Z hit the web, social media companies bent and contorted to meet their interests, which seem to be short videos, social justice and lip syncing. Hence the rise of TikTok, and rivals desperately stealing its ideas to keep up. Look at Instagram. Once the nice social network, it’s floundered of late. First it was the addition of ads. Then it was a tweak to the algorithm that meant posts no longer showed chronologically, the way most of us experience reality. And then Instagram started shoving into my feed “suggested posts” – accounts I choose not to follow – in particular favouring videos, often nicked and reuploaded from rival TikTok. It’s not just me wondering why Instagram…

We have used Sage Line 50 accounts software for many years. Like most users we don’t use half of the facilities and only upgrade when necessary. We prefer to buy software outright and we like to have it running on our own server so that if the internet connection dies, we are still functional. Sage is now leaning on us (and others) to upgrade our software, on the basis that our software won’t work after September. The company is confusing customers and using the confusion to make them upgrade. The issue is that one of the methods Sage uses to communicate with the licence server is via TLS, and Sage says that is being retired by Microsoft. When logging in to Sage 50 it seems to briefly log on to…

When Microsoft first launched Windows 11 a year ago, it said it would only launch one major update for the operating system every year instead of two. Well, a year on, it’s time for Windows 11’s first major makeover – and it doesn’t disappoint. There’s no single new feature in Windows 11 that’s going to blow your mind or make any of the Windows 10 holdouts suffer enormous pangs of regret. However, there are plenty of worthwhile tweaks and new features that make Windows 11 feel much more like a grown-up OS and less like Windows 10 with a new shopfront. The update, named 22H2 to signify that it will be released in the second half of 2022, covers a lot of ground. There are major updates to Windows 11’s…

Norton 360 Premium for £19.99 (10 devices for two years) pcpro.link/norton360 We’ve negotiated a killer deal with Norton. No subscriptions, just a one-off bargain price of £19.99 compared to the regular £179.99 charge. That buys you two years of cover from the powerful Norton Security suite across ten devices. And because it’s the Premium version, you get a host of extra tools. There’s 75GB of cloud storage for secure backups, plus the full version of Norton Secure VPN, both to protect your identity and provide a way of watching British TV while abroad. Norton Parental Control provides tools to see exactly what your kids are up to on their various devices, and you also get GPS location monitoring for Android and iOS. To round things off, Norton Password Manager generates…

SCORE PRICE £13,333 (£16,000 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/337scan In last month’s Labs (see issue 336, p74), Intel overturned the dominance of AMD processors in workstations with a host of machines based on 12th generation Core chips. Part of the reason for this was the absence of AMD’s previously dominant Threadripper. Fortunately, it wasn’t deceased, only sleeping, and now we have our first chance to look at the new flagship of the Pro version. The Scan 3XS GWP-ME A1128T sports the 64-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5995WX, and it’s a monster. One of the reasons we didn’t have a Labs full of Threadrippers last month is that the non-Pro version has been discontinued. AMD also initially gave Lenovo a temporary exclusive deal on the new 5000 series. That lifted just in…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £1,836 (£2,200 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk Those put off by the design of the Dell XPS 13 Plus (see p52) have nothing to worry about here. This 2022 update to the XPS 15 sticks to the same outstanding design as its predecessors, and so remains one of the most attractive laptops around, right down to the brushed CNC aluminium chassis and carbon fibre keyboard deck. At 18.5mm, or three-quarters of an inch in old money, it’s thin considering the power of the hardware packed beneath that keyboard. Most importantly, that gives Dell room to fit a meaty cooling system. We moaned about the XPS 13 Plus’ power throttling, but here you can specify up to a Core i9-12900HK and know that it will be kept under…

SCORE PRICE £2,250 (£2,700 inc VAT) from razer.com/uk I’ll be honest: the 2022 Razer Blade 14 doesn’t look any different from previous iterations. Perhaps unsurprising when the Blade chassis has become iconic due to its clean-cut look, with little decoration beyond a Razer logo on the lid and glowing RGB keyboard. The entire body is cut from machined aluminium and painted black, which means it’s highly durable (if fingerprint-friendly). Hold it in your hands and everything screams top-tier build quality; for example, there’s virtually no flex in the keyboard frame. Compact dimensions mean the keyboard doesn’t have much room to breathe, a problem compounded by the twin speaker grilles on either side of it. They’re actually pretty good, but their presence means that the keys on the far right and…

SCORE PRICE Core i7, £1,083 (£1,300 inc VAT) from consumer.huawei.com/uk Without wishing to rewrite history, I’m pretty certain that it was 16in laptops Harold Macmillan was thinking of when he said “you’ve never had it so good”. In particular, I believe he was referring to the likes of the 1.2kg LG Gram 16 (see issue 336, p46), the £999 Dell Inspiron 16 Plus (see p58) and Huawei’s own budget offering, the MateBook D 16 (see issue 336, p62). So what does Huawei hope to bring to such a crowded field with the MateBook 16s? The answer is quality and power for a competitive price. Its all-metal chassis catches the light beautifully, while even after a day of gazing at the screen you’ll be impressed by its clarity and whites. The…

SCORE PRICE 2-pack, Wi-Fi 5, £162 (£198 inc VAT) plus subscription from £82 (£99 inc VAT) per year from plume.com If you’re anything like me, you’re thoroughly fed up of recurrent charges for software and services, so the idea of a home Wi-Fi mesh that requires an annual subscription sounds like an absolute non-starter. It’s not wholly unreasonable, though. The Plume HomePass wireless mesh integrates a suite of online services, designed to protect your home network against the latest threats, as well as shield kids from inappropriate content. There’s nothing revolutionary about charging for this sort of thing – TP-Link’s HomeShield subscription adds similar features to its routers and meshes for £54 a year, while many Netgear products can be upgraded with security and parental control services for £60 and…

SCORE PRICE 128GB, £833 (£999 inc VAT) from samsung.com/uk Due to the excellence of the Flip3 (see issue 326, p70), Samsung had no need to reinvent its clamshell-style foldable. And it hasn’t. Indeed, at first glance both the Flip4 and the Fold4 (see overleaf) look almost indistinguishable from their predecessors. That means the Z Flip4 rocks a familiar two-tone clamshell form factor, a dual rear camera and an external cover display. So what’s new? In terms of design, very little. It has a straight-sided look with a fraction less rounding than the Flip3, with a black “visor” along the top edge of the back that hosts two rear camera sensors and the cover display. The rest of the back comprises Gorilla Glass Victus Plus set against a colour-matched Armor Aluminium…

1. DEFINE YOUR REQUIREMENTS You should always start your search for a new Chromebook by pondering where you’re going to use it and what you’re going to use it for. If you’re looking for a Chromebook for working in the home or office and you don’t plan to move around too much, then it’s smarter to go big. Look for a 15.6in or 17in Chromebook and you’ll lose out on battery life and easy portability, but you’ll enjoy a larger screen and a more comfortable keyboard. In short, a device better suited to working all day long. Conversely, if you need a Chromebook for life on the go, one that you’ll be lugging around from home to your workplace or from client to client, then it makes sense to look…

SCORE PRICE £500 (£600 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com With its 15.6in screen, the Chromebook Flip CX5 (sometimes called the CX5500) is one of the largest convertible Chromebooks around, and it makes the most of the additional screen size and space. In standard clamshell mode, the larger screen is brilliant for working across multiple web-based apps and browser windows. Put it in tablet mode and it’s ideal for annotating documents or running Android apps, while the vibrant colours and contrast-boosting gloss finish are just as good in tent mode for streaming Netflix shows or playing Stadia games. Meanwhile, the white powder-coated “ceramic feel” aluminium alloy lid and matching plastic base make this one of the most striking Chromebooks on test. You can easily see where the black plastic interior meets the…

SCORE PRICE £233 (£279 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk We’ve seen many Chromebooks costing around £600 that could pass as premium models, but Lenovo’s IdeaPad Chromebook 5i performs the trick despite costing under £300. Like Acer’s similar Chromebook 514, you get a range of CPU and RAM options, stretching from the Pentium Gold 7505/4GB spec we’re looking at here to a Core i5-1135G7 with 8GB. But crucially, the chassis and the 14in 1080p screen are the same throughout the line. It’s a good-looking unit, whether you choose it in dark grey or a light metallic gold. Only the lid is actually metal, but the plastics used elsewhere are coloured to match and a big step up from the cheap, creaky plastics used in many budget Chromebooks. The minimal bezels help keep…

SCORE PRICE £300 (£360 inc VAT) from uk.store.asus.com (estimated price) Looking for a big Chromebook with a small price? Head straight for the Asus Chromebook Flip CX1 (CX1500). Even by the standards of 15.6in laptops it’s a beast, with a 36 x 25cm desktop footprint and nearly 19mm thick when closed. It’s also heavy by Chromebook standards, weighing in at precisely 1.99kg. Mind you, that’s for the 2-in-1 version, identified by the “FKA” in its model name rather than “CKA”, which always adds some weight. The hinge allows the screen to rotate through 360 degrees so that you can use it in tent or tablet mode, which makes more sense than you might think: the screen size is great for prodding on your lap on the sofa, while the tent…

SCORE PRICE £58 exc VAT per agent per month from goto.com GoTo Resolve is a cloud-hosted remote support solution with security at the top of its agenda. Designed to ensure that access to unattended computers is locked down tight, it requires technicians or agents to enter a personal signature key before a session is permitted. Key creation is a one-time affair that happens the first time a technician accesses their personal Resolve web portal and attempts to download the unattended apps. Create a key that is at least eight characters long and don’t forget it; GoTo makes it clear that for extra security, it doesn’t store keys in the cloud and is unable to recover them. Resolve handles unattended access for Windows devices differently to most other remote support solutions.…

SCORE PRICE £471 exc VAT from printerbase.co.uk Brother’s X-Series MFC-J6957DW is the company’s flagship large-format inkjet MFP and offers busy workgroups a sizeable range of print, copy, scan and fax features for a very modest outlay. It has an impressive capacity, with three 250-sheet A3-sized cassettes plus a 100-page A3 multipurpose tray (MPT) and tops these off with an A3 colour flatbed scanner partnered by a 50-page duplex automatic document feeder (ADF). Speeds for A4 printing have been improved, boosting the 22ppm of the MFC-J6947DW (see issue 309, p99) to 30ppm, and its daily duty cycle gets a 75% increase to 3,500 pages. It’s well connected, too: it can be hooked up over USB, 10/100 Ethernet or 802.11a/n 5GHz wireless, and there’s built-in support for NFC, Wi-Fi Direct, AirPrint and…

So what is zero trust? At its simplest, zero trust can be summed up as an “always verify” approach to security. That’s hardly a new idea – it’s been kicking around server rooms for more than 40 years – but the modern understanding derives primarily from a 2010 Forrester report called “Introducing the Zero Trust Model of Information Security” by analyst John Kindervag (see pcpro.link/337zt1). In it, the idea of a zero-trust security model is broken down into three core practices: 1. Ensure all resources are accessed securely regardless of location2. Adopt a least-privilege strategy and strictly enforce access control3. Inspect and log all traffic In other words, assume that everything’s a threat until you can verify otherwise – and that applies to devices and users alike. So where do…

Thursday 19 May 2022 was an eye-opening day for our business, which ended with fuel for this not-so-subtle humble-brag. Our little computer shop was one of the dozen winners at the Which? Awards 2022, alongside other small businesses you may have heard of, such as LG and Samsung. I mention this for three reasons. The first is that PC Pro is akin to Hansard, so I’m putting this on the historical record. The second is to thank you for the congratulations via Twitter. Alison and I are greatly moved. Finally, to highlight the watchword used throughout the ceremony: sustainability. Exodus Travels won the Which? Sustainability Champion award and was praised by the judges for showing high levels of data transparency while trying to reduce its carbon footprint. As I mingled…

I don’t know about you, but the number of no-hook phishing messages arriving via SMS or WhatsApp has gone ballistic of late. I know what your immediate response to this will probably be: what the hell is a no-hook phishing message? Yeah, good point, well made. Let me enlighten you. First, think about how most phishing lures work. You get a message (the platform it’s delivered on is for the most part irrelevant) that appears to be from a trusted source. That could be your bank, a business you have dealings with, a brand you recognise offering you a deal of some kind, or even just someone you know. That is the lure; the hook is the link you are asked to click on or the number you should call.…

When the Raspberry Pi went on general sale ten years ago, the barebones, low-cost computer harked back to the past while looking towards the future. The idea was that users would learn how to program computers once more, evoking memories of the era of the BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum and a myriad other machines on which millions of people cut their coding teeth. While many Pi users have done just that, the computer has proven fruitful in other ways. The various versions of the small single-board computer have formed the heart of many projects, from magic mirrors and weather stations to robots and orreries. But an ability to emulate vintage computers and consoles has arguably caught users’ imagination the most. The free software library RetroPie, for example, lets people revive…

It was only a few months ago that NFTs were the hottest trend in tech. Celebrities from Paris Hilton to Snoop Dogg were cashing in, and tech visionaries were imagining how the metaverse could be built on the back of nonfungible tokens. Now it appears that – like tulips and Beanie Babies before them – the hype-train may have hit the buffers. According to The Block (theblock.co), a site that compiles NFT data, weekly NFT trading volume fell dramatically from a high of $1.1 billion last May to a much more sluggish $53 million in mid-August. Similarly, weekly NFT sales have fallen from almost a million per week at the end of last year to around 280,000. The downturn can also be seen in the behaviour of crypto firms. OpenSea,…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Apple MacBook Pro 14in Stunning creative power from £1,899 from apple.com/uk Alongside its 16in sibling, this is simply the world’s best laptop for demanding users. The amount of power on tap via the M1 Pro or M1 Max processor is staggering, and it’s backed up by a terrific screen and stunning battery life. With all the ports you could ask for, the only negatives are its relative bulk (especially compared to the Air) and high price. REVIEW Issue 328, p58 ALTERNATIVES Apple MacBook Air (M1) The M2 MacBook Air is brilliant but expensive. Most people can happily save £250 and buy the M1 model for £999, as it’s still fast, light and top quality. From £999 from apple.com/uk. REVIEW Issue 318, p40 NEW ENTRY Dell XPS 15 (2022) Surely…

@bazzacollins Every month on page eight of this magazine, you’ll find an answer to a topical question that editor-in-chief Tim Danton puts to us contributors. Last month Tim asked: if you were to start a new job tomorrow, what’s the one piece of IT equipment you would want to be given? My reply? “I’d want a 3:2 4K monitor that can pivot into portrait mode. So much of my work is done in multiple windows that my current 24in screen isn’t cutting it any more.” Well, life moves fast here at PC Pro, and this month I’ve got a 27in, quad-HD, rotatable screen sitting on my desk. Don’t tell Tim, who loaned me this beast, but I kinda hate it. Life was simple with my 24in Full HD screen. You…

We wish we had asked this question of our readers ten and 20 years ago! How interesting it would be to see the changing trends, even if we can guess that it has shifted from 90% Windows and 10% Mac to the more nuanced mix we see today. So what makes people stick with Windows? The word “familiarity” kept on coming up in responses, but there were other reasons. “It’s easier to use Microsoft Office products,” wrote Stuart, “especially if you need to use macros.” Daniel026 echoed many other people’s views when he said: “Ease of use, tons of software available, secure, touch-enabled.” We suspect some would quibble with “secure”, but this month’s feature on what’s coming next to Windows 11 (see p28) suggests that it will soon be even…

Over the years, Microsoft has tried a few different ways of providing at-a-glance information inside the main Windows interface. In Windows Vista and 7 we had gadgets, which then turned into Live Tiles in Windows 8 and 10. Those disappeared in the move to Windows 11, to be replaced by a set of widgets that live in their own slide-out drawer. Windows 11 is limited to a curated selection of built-in widgets, but that will soon be changing. Microsoft recently announced that developers will be able to start creating their own widgets for Windows 11 this year, using a framework called Adaptive Cards. If you’re fluent in JSON you can try it out now at adaptivecards.io. Not everyone wants to get handson with code, however, and frankly not everyone loves…

Whether you or a loved one are heading to university this September, or even just back to school, one constant remains: if you’re going to work hard, you need to have the right tools to help you do it. It’s lucky, then, that PC Pro has been busy over the summer, scouting out the best student deals and discounts to help that student loan go a little bit further. It’s worth pointing out at this early stage that you don’t have to be doing a degree to qualify for these big savings, either. Children in full-time education and adults in higher or further education can often qualify for education discounts, not to mention teachers. Always check the terms of deals carefully, but you may be surprised at who qualifies for…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £1,460 (£1,752 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/337box There’s nothing new about customisable PCs. After all, Michael Dell built a world-conquering company out of the concept. Where Box is attempting something different with its custom-built range is that it defines “the look” of your PC, and then allows you to choose exactly which components you want to put inside it. Let’s say you like the cut of the ZX8’s jib. That means it will be built with stylish white or black braided cables to match the striking design of the case, created by Chinese brand 1stPlayer. You can also be guided by Box’s handpicked recommendations as you go along. Your choice isn’t limited to this chassis, with a dozen preset options on offer at pcpro.link/337custom. If the ZX8…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £2,124 (£2,549 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk If the design of the Dell XPS 17 (2022) looks familiar, that’s because it is. Physically, this revised 2022 model is a dead ringer for last year’s XPS – and the one from 2020 (see issue 315, p48). It also shares exactly the same design philosophy as the XPS 15 opposite. That means a super-sleek design and excellent build quality, with the main chassis and lid finished in aluminium and the palmrest covered in carbon fibre. It still looks modern, thanks to ultra-slim bezels on all four sides of the display. The XPS 17’s weight of 2.6kg is heavy compared to the 1.4kg of the LG Gram 17, but that reflects the Dell’s additional firepower. My sole issue with the…

SCORE PRICE £1,416 (£1,700 inc VAT) from lenovo.com Consider the Legion Slim 7i Gen 7 as a stealth gaming laptop. You can buy a version with per-key RGB lighting, but this model (part code 82TF004JUK) uses a more conservative white backlight, so only the GeForce RTX sticker on the palmrest and Legion logo on the lid give its gaming skills away. With a sober gunmetal grey finish and separate number pad, it almost exudes a business-like air. But it’s what inside that matters. First up is the 100W version of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, which pushed this machine to 8,327 in 3DMark Time Spy; that’s around 1,600 ahead of the 75W RTX 3060 in the Alienware X14 (see issue 331, p58), and I saw the same pattern repeat in…

SCORE PRICE £333 (£399 inc VAT) from logitech.com If ever there is a product for our times, surely this is it. A docking station that doesn’t merely provide a bunch of handy ports, power to your laptop and dual monitor outputs, but also integrates a microphone and speakers for the endless series of audio and video calls that now mark our working lives. It will be particularly useful to users of Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and Zoom: as soon as a call starts you can jump in by pressing the button that sits in prime position above the fabric fascia. This button has a Teams icon on it, but it works equally well with Google and Zoom. This assumes you have downloaded Logi Tune, which then connects with your calendar.…

SCORE PRICE £225 (£270 inc VAT) from consumer.huawei.com Are you looking for a Wi-Fi mesh that makes a real design statement? Huawei evidently hopes not, as even by the standards of networking gear its new Wi-Fi Mesh 7 looks bland. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to ignore, however. The system comes as a pack of two sizeable stations, each of which stands 221mm tall, with a rounded footprint that extends to 76 by 150mm. A few points of interest are dotted around the plain white casing: at the front, an ornamental “H” logo adorns what Huawei optimistically describes as a “HiLink” button – known to the rest of us as WPS. On the top, a discreet NFC logo indicates another way to easily connect any Android device, by tapping it…

SCORE PRICE 256GB, £1,374 (£1,649 inc VAT) from samsung.com/uk Is it possible that the foldable phone has reached maturity? With the Galaxy Z Fold4, Samsung hasn’t reinvented the genre. Instead, it brings a number of small but welcome enhancements over the Z Fold3 (see issue 325, p46), including a new processor and upgraded cameras. There are lots of design tweaks too, some of which you can see while others are hidden. At 155mm long it’s almost 3mm shorter than the Fold3, giving it a more conventional phone shape, and it’s thinner. Where the Fold3 was 6.4mm thick in unfolded tablet mode, it now measures 6.3mm. It also brings the weight down to 263g, so is 8g lighter than the Fold3. All progress is welcome but let’s not pretend: when folded,…

SCORE PRICE £667 (£800 inc VAT) from store.acer.com In its original guise as the Spin 13 (see issue 300, p86), Acer’s convertible blazed a trail for high-end Chrome OS devices by combining a high-res screen and a strong spec based around Intel Core i3 and i5 CPUs at an affordable price. Subsequent models haven’t wandered far from the template, and it’s easy to understand why. The lightweight convertible body and square-ish screen make for a Chromebook that’s portable and versatile, but still big and powerful enough to get some proper work done. Why reboot something that already works so well? The 13.5in screen has a 3:2 aspect ratio and a 2,256 x 1,504 resolution. It’s beautifully crisp, working with Chrome OS’s excellent display scaling to give you smoothly rendered text…

SCORE PRICE £541 (£649 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk It won’t have escaped your attention that the HP Chromebase isn’t a Chromebook at all, but an ingenious Chrome OS spin on the all-in-one. The 21.5in screen sits on a chunky conical support, which contains the core components, the audio system and the connectivity. What’s more, the screen is mounted deliberately high because it pivots, giving you the choice of working on a portrait-mode desktop as well as the more conventional 16:9 widescreen format. The design is surprisingly compact and space-saving – the base only takes up a circular area roughly 17cm in diameter – while portrait mode is great for editing Google Docs documents or doing research, particularly if you have to scroll or page through long reports. Annoyingly, the pointer…

SCORE PRICE £191 (£229 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk The cheapest of the three Acer Chromebooks in this month’s Labs does a passable impression of a mid-range Chromebook at a bargain basement price. Here there’s no cramped 11.6in screen or 1,366 x 768 resolution, just a slimline, 14in Chromebook with a Full HD touchscreen in what looks like a sleek metallic chassis. Sadly, the more you look at the Chromebook 314 Touch, the more that impression goes awry. The chassis turns out to be silver-coated plastic rather than the real deal, and there’s quite a lot of flex in the thin lid. Connectivity is also sparse, with a single USB-C 3.2 port on the left-hand side and one USB-A 2 port on the right. When you consider that you’ll need the…

SCORE PRICE £458 (£549 inc VAT) from hp.co.uk Chrome OS’s future as a tablet operating system seemed to have died with the demise of the 2018 Google Pixel Slate, but there has been a renaissance of late, with Asus, HP and Lenovo all launching tablets with click-on keyboards. HP’s Chromebook x2 11 is a great example. Weighing 580g and just 7.5mm thick, it’s a fine 11in tablet. The thin bezels, aluminium shell and toughened glass screen make it feel like the Chrome equivalent of the Microsoft Surface Go (see issue 328, p64). Here, there’s no integral kickstand. Instead, HP supplies a rear cover that clamps on magnetically, with the bottom section folding outwards to form the stand. The keyboard clips on at the base, transforming the tablet into a mini…

If the pandemic and extreme heatwave have taught us one thing, it’s that smart, forward-thinking businesses can implement a successful hybrid working strategy. Flexible working arrangements bring undeniable benefits in these uncertain times, but for them to be effective, companies need to adopt new ways of providing essential IT support services regardless of where their staff are located. Delivering support in these new working environments brings many challenges. It’s impractical for technicians to visit users personally every time they have a hardware or software issue, and telephone support is also inefficient and frustrating; it’s often impossible to fix a problem without having access to the recalcitrant system. Remote support software is the perfect solution as it puts staff in front of the user’s troublesome workstation without having to be physically…

SCORE PRICE 1 technician, 500 endpoints, £355 exc VAT from solarwinds.com Part of SolarWinds’ burgeoning IT service management portfolio, Dameware Remote Everywhere (DRE) is a web-hosted service aimed at businesses supporting a large, geographically distributed workforce. Its pricing plans are clearly geared up for this as they’re based on concurrent technicians and each licence enables support for 500 devices. DRE comprises five components, with the Admin Area providing a central account administration web portal for viewing active support sessions, managing departments and technicians and creating detailed reports. Along with applets and agents for on-demand and unattended support sessions, each technician receives a personal tech console app for providing remote assistance, and end users can join sessions from the SolarWinds’ startcontrol.com web portal. Privilege levels are assigned to technicians to determine…

SCORE PRICE Diskless, £499 exc VAT from terra-master.com/uk Small businesses that want plenty of network storage on their desktop will find TerraMaster’s T6-423 NAS appliance could be just the ticket. This small footprint box puts six hot-swap LFF/SFF SATA drive bays on the table and teams them up with dual 2.5GbE multi-Gigabit ports. Inside you have a 2GHz quad-core Intel Celeron N5105 CPU partnered by 4GB of DDR4 memory, upgradable to 32GB using the two SODIMM slots. The appliance also has two M.2 NVMe SSD slots that can be used as a performance-enhancing cache or as a standard storage pool. The appliance is well built, with a solid steel chassis and metal drive carriers. Two rear 9cm diameter fans handle all cooling, and we found them to be extremely quiet,…

Last month I covered the Allegro 500 network analyser in some detail. For the weeks I had it installed on the core lab network, albeit on one segment covering one building, I found it invaluable. And once it had gone back to Networkology (which kindly loaned me the unit) I found myself firing up a browser to check on some piece of test equipment’s network traffic. And rather like Winnie the Pooh, the more I looked, the more it wasn’t there. Things reached a peak when I had to set up a mirror port on the switch, feed that into a test computer and then run Wireshark against the traffic flows, just to find out what was happening with a particularly garrulous webcam that was sending out all the right…

The skills shortage in the UK tech industry has been recognised for years, but as the country emerges from the pandemic, numerous polls and surveys are confirming that the crisis is getting worse. According to figures released in TechNation’s People and Skills Report 2022, tech roles now make up 14% of all job vacancies in the UK, up from 11% in 2019. Cybersecurity, data management and software development are often flagged as the skills in shortest supply, but there are skills shortages across the industry. As demand for IT professionals continues to grow, the gap between need and available talent in the UK widens. Hiring from abroad is one way that companies can fill that gap, but for those who’ve not yet dipped a toe in that water, the immigration…

Problems aren’t in short supply at the moment. If it’s not the Russians or global warming, then it’s the hardware crunch. Ordering a complete new machine may look unchanged from the pre-pandemic days, but the reality is that a filled-in order page on an e-commerce site is no guarantee that you’ll get your order in a timely and straightforward manner. This is putting the kibosh on equipment-replacement projects, which might sound like a mild and only passing problem in the great scheme of things. It’s not. Imagine for a moment that you are a reseller or software system supplier (perhaps you are). You will know that it’s not unusual for a single and relatively unknown software package to define how a business works inside its industry. This isn’t the modern…

Flying cars are set for take-off in the UK, but as we’ve become used to this summer, you should expect delays. Two years, to be precise. And they’re not flying cars, but electric aircraft. At this year’s Farnborough Air Show, a host of British organisations including Virgin Atlantic, Atkins and Vertical Aerospace unveiled the Advanced Mobility Ecosystem Consortium (AMEC), which will spend a £9.5 million grant from the UK government to set up a trial of electric aircraft between Heathrow, London City Airport and Bristol beginning in 2024. “We’re hoping to prep the industry for as close to commercial operations as we can,” said James Richmond, head of advanced air mobility at Atkins, the company overseeing the trial. The trial will see two test flights in 2024: one between Bristol…

Features TECHNOLOGY EXCELLENCE AWARDS2022 PC Pro Excellence Awards 2022 It’s time for our annual awards to discover which companies offer the best service and the most reliable products, all based on your feedback. The AI that’s remaking history Artificial intelligence is helping to lift the lid on the past, from archaeology to bringing faded mono photos to colourful life. The naturally intelligent Lee Grant explains how. How to unlock Google apps’ secrets Whether it’s Google Drive, Google Docs or Google Sheets, there’s far more to the search lord’s latest tools than immediately meets the eye. Labs Desktop PCs We focus on home and office PCs in next month’s test, including all-in-one systems. Discover exactly what can you buy for between £400 and £1,000. Retro The lost art of the big…