Table of contents for August 2025 in PC Pro

Damn, I did it again. Clicked on a link without thinking, one that sucked me into the hell-hole that is a modern-day mobile website. Like a tug-of-war we can never escape, we’re constantly dragged along by clever headlines designed to create an itch that we suddenly need to scratch. “Celebrity A shares their secret feelings about Celebrity B”, it goes, and because we’re all such drones – half-asleep, bored, intrigued – we click it. And then we land on the site to be met with a double dose of awfulness. First, an article that has been written with the juicy nuggets – if there are any – only revealed several scrolls down the page. Second, to get there, bold adventurer that you are, you must vanquish the pop-up ad, negotiate…

The Briefing Interview People don’t pay small businesses because they know they can get away with it: small business owners don’t have the time to pursue debtors through the courts and lawyers are too expensive. A new AI law firm claims to wipe away those barriers. Garfield AI is a service that manages the entire small claims court process from beginning to end. From polite chaser letters to a bundle of documents ready to present to the court, the AI pretty much handles everything, working for fees that most lawyers would laugh at. But could you really trust an AI bot to deliver a court victory for you? The company’s CEO and co-founder talked to PC Pro to explain why you should. PC Pro: Why did you create Garfield AI? What…

Unless you’re a tech bro or CEO of a finance company, you might have noticed that the world of work has changed. The days of trudging to the office five days a week for eight-hour chunks is over. Now, that trudge hasn’t applied to me for a good long time. I work freelance, which means a home office and working whenever I like – or more accurately, whenever an editor hires me. I shifted to this style of working more than a decade ago, well before it was cool, but I’m heartened to see so many other people appreciate this style of working. Surveys suggest that most employees are happy in this new world. A survey from recruiter Robert Half found three-quarters of workers state flexibility in where and when…

If you work for Microsoft, best to look away now. If only one in ten of PC Pro readers have been convinced enough by its Copilot+ PC initiative to say they want one… well, you’re in trouble. Even worse, 18% of people said they weren’t sure what Copilot+ PCs actually are. “It feels like a marketing spin rather than a user benefit,” wrote Andrew Garnett on X. “Plus, we have been here before. For example, calling everything. net just to pretend you weren’t slightly late to the whole .com party.” Paul Roberts was equally decisive on Facebook. “Most AI is best done in the cloud, and I don’t have a need for the few use cases where it’s best done locally,” he wrote. Reading through people’s comments, we can’t help…

If I should die of a chocolate digestive overdose tomorrow, Tim wouldn’t have to find a new PC Pro Podcast presenter. As long as he was prepared to wait a few seconds for an answer. An answer that may not be strictly true, either. I built my own deathbot, with a free trial of You, Only Virtual’s Versona technology, normally charged at a stiff $40 per month. For that money you get a phone number where you can call your dead relative, supposedly holding a conversation with them as if they were still a functioning bag of atoms. Virtual told us the price would drop down to $20 per month soon, with a free version that’s chat-only. Training my deathbot was tedious, taking around an hour, but relatively simple. A…

Google Docs and Sheets are two of the world’s most widely used productivity applications. There are two very good reasons for that: they’re free, and they’re easy to use. That doesn’t mean they’re light on features, however. Tucked away in their menus (and in Sheets’ library of formulas) are some powerful tools that go far beyond what you’re likely to come across in casual use. On these pages we’ll reveal the best hidden features in each application: put them to use, and you’ll be working faster, with fewer mistakes and better results. DOCS Type less with automatic text replacements You may have noticed that when you type three dots in Google Docs, they get turned into a single ellipsis symbol. Similarly, typing “(c)” or “TM” gives you a copyright symbol…

SCORE PRICE £833 (£999 inc VAT) from pcspecialist.co.uk It’s hard to think of a greater contrast to the bombastic Chillblast Poseidon than this demure PC. It’s a mid-tower unit, but being based on Corsair’s all-white 3000D chassis it’s so discreet that it could appear in a Habitat catalogue and not look out of place. Providing you switch off the RGB lighting on its three front-facing fans, at least. The Frostbyte – a brief round of applause to PCSpecialist for this PC’s name – is also discreet in operation. During working hours you’ll barely notice the whisper of the fans if this PC is sitting next to you on a desk, and even when playing games it never roars. That’s partly due to the efficiency of the RTX 5060 card, making…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £2,916 (£3,499 inc VAT) from dell.com The return of Alienware’s Area-51 brand brings a futuristic look and what it calls “liquid teal”, a dark blue/green that shifts colour depending on the angle at which you look at it. Even the RGB lighting is used to artistic effect, with a blue ring shining through the shelf that juts out the back of the system. This is where you’ll find most of the ports, including three USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, two Thunderbolt 5, HDMI 2.1 and the connector for the 360W power supply. The left side houses only an SD card slot and a 3.5mm jack. Having the ports at the back is good for a clean desk setup but trickier to plug in accessories: the sides are…

AnyTech 365 IntelliGuard Pro Sometimes you want to consolidate as many apps and system tools into as few packages as possible. AnyTech 365 IntelliGuard Pro aims to do just that: it provides a wide range of system optimisation and monitoring tools, along with access to support (both in-person and AI) and security options such as encrypted folders and a secure password manager. Setup is simple. Start by downloading and running the compact installer, which will obtain the latest version of the program for you and install it automatically, while providing a carousel of key program features. Once that’s complete, the main interface will appear, ready for you to register the program and explore those features. The IntelliGuard Pro interface provides a simple “System Health” score, based on your processor, memory and…

SCORE PRICE £43 (£51 inc VAT) from dell.com Forgive me for sounding like a broken record these past few months as I do Dell’s job for it, but at CES in January it rebranded its entire ecosystem of laptops, PCs and peripherals. Well-established sub-brands such as Latitude, XPS and UltraSharp are on the way out, with Dell Premium for high-end products and Dell Pro the universal label for devices aimed at professionals. This universality extends to keyboards, as shown by the Dell Pro Compact set here and the Dell Pro Collaboration keyboard opposite. A month after its big rebrand, Dell introduced its Dell Display and Peripheral Management software, which is surprisingly useful from an end user’s perspective. It allows you to control all your Dell hardware from one place –…

Since the latest Wi-Fi 7 standard debuted at the start of last year, we’ve seen a steady trickle of routers coming through the PC Pro Labs. Most of them from Netgear, which has been busily building a range of routers, from the premium Nighthawk RS700 (see issue 353, p76) down to the cheap but functional Nighthawk RS100 (see issue 370, p65), currently selling for £120 inc VAT. This month brings not one but two persuasive competitors. Rather than contesting the high ground, they both promise affordable Wi-Fi 7 with good-enough levels of performance. A tale of two routers At £99 inc VAT, the Asus RT-BE58U is the cheapest Wi-Fi 7 router we’ve yet seen. The TP-Link Archer BE550 aims higher, with more bandwidth for both wireless and wired connections. While…

SCORE PRICE £500 (£600 inc VAT) from motorola.com The Motorola Edge 60 Pro is the company’s most expensive non-folding smartphone, but that price includes 512GB of storage. Compared to the 512GB Google Pixel 9 Pro (see issue 362, p58) or Samsung Galaxy S25 (see issue 367, p72) it’s a bargain: those cost £919 and £959. It comes in an exciting trio of Pantone-designed hues: I tried Dazzling Blue, but there’s a greenish-khaki Shadow option or the vibrant Sparkling Grape. On the back is a raised camera bump, but as this doesn’t stick too far out you can lie the handset flat on a surface without undue wobbling. The rear is textured, too, making it feel more premium than your average Android phone. The Motorola Edge 60 Pro’s other premium feature…

We all like value for money, and when it comes to laptops that often means exploring the budget and mid-range options: these markets are both huge and incredibly competitive. However, build quality, screen quality and the overall spec can vary massively between models, and the amount of money you spend doesn’t necessarily always match the quality of the resulting laptop. In this guide, we aim to provide a structured approach to narrow your options down. This means that you should end up with a smaller pool of laptops to choose from, but we also hope that you can spot the times when spending an extra £50, £100, £150 will make a difference – and where you’re simply wasting your money. STEP 1: CHOOSE YOUR OS AND ARCHITECTURE In the past…

SCORE PRICE £750 (£900 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com The Asus Zenbook A14 is proof that you don’t need to spend a fortune for a stylish thin and light laptop. In fact, signs of having been built to a budget are few and far between. Its shell is made from Ceraluminium, which is what Asus calls aluminium treated with a sort of matte ceramic coating. It’s very compact at 317 x 214mm and a mere 15.9mm thick. And at just under 1kg, it’s ludicrously light. The Ceraluminium is wear-, scratch-and smudge-resistant, and the construction as a whole feels solid and surprisingly tough. Despite being so slim, the Zenbook still crams in two USB-C 4 ports, an HDMI 2.1 output and a 3.5mm audio jack on the left-hand side, with a single…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £1,249 (£1,499 inc VAT) from hp.com HP revamped its laptop branding last year, with its OmniBook range now stretching across home and business, budget and premium. We reviewed the stylish OmniBook Ultra Flip six months ago (see issue 365, p46), and now it’s the turn of the plain OmniBook Ultra. It costs £999 for the 16GB/512GB version, but the unit on test included 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. Most importantly it packs the same AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 CPU. A quick look at our test results will tell you that it doesn’t always beat the Qual-command Intel-based competition, but it’s close to the top of each benchmark. What’s more, it steams ahead on 3D graphics performance and is the only laptop on test…

SCORE PRICE From £333 (£399 inc VAT) from acer.com 2023’s Chromebook Plus 514 was at the crest of the initial wave of Chromebook Plus devices, and now returns with updated internals: farewell AMD Ryzen 3 7320C, a big welcome to Intel’s Core 3-100U. In other respects, changes are limited. It’s slightly smaller, with a footprint of 316 x 227mm, while the two-tone plastic lid has been switched for aluminium. There’s some flex here, but nothing major, and the mostly plastic chassis passes a few of the MIL-STD-810H tests for durability. Acer has been reasonably generous on connectivity, with two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports on the left-hand side plus a single USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 connector, and a second USB-A port on the right-hand side along with an HDMI output.…

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 email address…

SCORE  PRICE Starts from £804 exc VAT per year from barracuda.com Barracuda’s all-in-one backup solutions can look after all local and cloud backups, site-to-site replication and disaster recovery. Available as physical and virtual appliances, they can be managed entirely from Barracuda’s cloud portal. This year sees Barracuda launching a range of hardware appliances that have more on-board storage to avoid migrating to larger models when space runs low. New capacity-based subscriptions mean you no longer pay separately for the appliance and can increase storage as demand rises. We reviewed the Backup Vx virtualised appliance, which has a different pricing model and is great value for businesses already using Hyper-V or VMware hosts. The appliance is free and there are no restrictions on local capacity: you simply expand its internal storage…

SCORE PRICE £100 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com TP-Link offers an extensive range of discrete wall-mounted wireless access points (APs), and the EAP725-Wall brings Wi-Fi 7 services into play. Designed for environments such as meeting rooms and hotels looking to provide in-room network services, it has two gigabit downlink ports in its base plus a 2.5GbE passthrough port that provides PoE, allowing it to power extra in-room devices such as IP phones. At only £100 the EAP725-Wall is great value, but there’s a catch as it doesn’t have a 6GHz radio. It isn’t mandatory for Wi-Fi 7 APs to have this, though, and many other vendors are also offering low cost dual-band models. This BE3600-rated AP offers two spatial streams each for the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands and claims maximum speeds…

If you want to implement a new inventory-management project, you’ll probably want to get external help involved. Bear in mind that the more powerful and wide-reaching you want it to be, the more tightly it will be bound to the specifics of your business. As always, you’ll need to be ready for some debate and self-examination regarding your processes and goals – although hopefully that will help illuminate what you really need, and how to achieve it. Here are some points to consider: 1 Opinions matter Once you start looking for a partner in inventory or data-management, you’ll undoubtedly be on the receiving end of some heavy-duty sales pitches, perhaps the heaviest-duty you’ve ever seen. There are lots of implementation consultants out there offering some very powerful and expensive products,…

My daughter is excited to go to a birthday party this month, being held at an activity centre. All parents have been sent a link to a waiver that we need to sign for our children to participate. Parents are responding one by one: “Signed it.” I am just opening it up. First line: “I accept that there is… danger and risk of physical or emotional injury, paralysis, death, or damage to participants.” Just what every mother wants to hear. Next paragraph: “Activities are undertaken at the participant’s own risk and I will not hold the venue liable for any injury the participant may suffer.” Tough luck for us if any of their equipment is faulty. There’s more: “I will indemnify the venue against any claim… for loss, damage, injury…

Playground wars centred around 8-bit computers were commonplace in the 1980s. One side comprised those who would hear no wrong about their beloved ZX Spectrums. The other side supported the Commodore 64. And both seldom found common ground, except for a mutual disdain of those who owned an Amstrad CPC 464. But there was also a group of kids who didn’t even get that reaction – a small number whose parents bought computers made by Dragon Data. There was no pity, no laughter, just a shrug. And that was because the machine came and went so quickly it barely had time to ignite its fire, never mind burn rivals that arrived before and after it. Yet to ignore the Dragon 32 and its successor the Dragon 64 overlooks an important…

One of the wonderful things about riding motorbikes is the camaraderie that comes with it. As the summer months roll in, there are almost nightly get-togethers that you can ride to, grab a bite to eat and natter with like-minded people, some of whom become friends over time. Take Wicked Wheelie Wednesday, which happens every Wednesday night deep into the fens at Fendick’s Fishery, a place for fishing enthusiasts. It’s also home to a fine bar and a café that serves quite exceptional burgers. Leave home at 5pm, get there for 6, grab a burger and Coke, mooch around looking at the huge variety of bikes and still be home for 8pm. Just in time for a beer at the local pub with other friends. A few weeks ago, I…

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…

It’s hard to think of a more poisoned chalice than following Steve Jobs. You need only look at how Steve Ballmer withered in the hot seat at Microsoft to understand how following an iconic leader is brutally tough, even if you’ve been their right-hand man for decades. That Tim Cook has done so for nigh on 15 years is nothing short of remarkable. But it’s time to move on. Cook proved to be the right man at a terrible time. A steady pair of hands that knew the business inside out and turned its already fabulous portfolio of products into a thunking great pile of cash. The company now consistently earns net profits just shy of $100 billion a year. It’s a fatuous comparison, but if Apple’s revenue were counted…

“I would like to make my own witness statement,” said Christopher Pelkey as he stood before Judge Todd Lang in Arizona’s Maricopa County Superior Court, dressed slightly incongruously in a green hoodie and wearing a grey baseball cap, as if he were taking the dogs out for a walk. “To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me, it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances. In another life, uh, we probably could have been friends. I believe in forgiveness and in God, who forgives. I always have and I still do.” The judge thanked Pelkey as he finished his near four-minute statement, praising the forgiveness he’d shown. “I love the beauty in what Christopher… and I call him Christopher… I always call people by their…

The advent of the personal stereo allowed music to break out of the home and go anywhere. The Sony Walkman has given way to mobiles, and headphones are now wireless, but sharing music still means an earbud each. It’s either that or annoy the quiet carriage by blasting music for all to hear. Now there’s a way to prevent irritation on the 12:10 to Didcot. Auracast is a new Bluetooth technology that delivers audio to multiple devices simultaneously. Its advocates claim it will transform how we listen to music, station announcements, football matches, worship services, films, plays and concerts. Perhaps more significantly, Auracast-enabled hearing aids will benefit those with accessibility needs, including the 18 million people in the UK with hearing loss or tinnitus. The Bluetooth SIG showcased the technology…

When you’re buying a new phone, tablet or laptop, the quality of the screen is a big consideration. And naturally the same applies if you’re buying a new monitor for a desktop PC. The trouble is, there are many factors that contribute to the overall quality of a screen, and when you’re reading an online specification sheet – or even a review in PC Pro – it can be hard to visualise what they all really mean and how they tie together. Here’s our guide to all the different display features and measurements, and what to look for. Next month, alongside our annual group test of monitors, we’ll dig into the various different display technologies commonly used in modern screens, explore how they work and set out the strengths and…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £866 (£999 inc VAT) from microsoft.com I have been begging Apple to release a purple MacBook for years, so when I found out that the Microsoft Surface Laptop 13-inch would come in Violet – pastel purple to you and me – I elbowed my way to the front of the review queue. I’m not disappointed: this laptop is simply stunning. When finished in boring, default Platinum, the Surface Laptop 13-inch is as close to a MacBook Air for Windows as you’re going to find, but the Violet and Ocean colourways lift it above all rivals. The machined aluminium finish of the chassis works brilliantly in these pastel hues, all set off by the darker, matte colour of the keycaps and trackpad. This is also a brilliantly…

SCORE PRICE £2,333 (£2,800 inc VAT) from uk.store.asus.com There’s always a risk when investing almost three grand in a laptop. Let’s say you bought last year’s top-end ProArt P16 (see issue 361, p51), with its then-new Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor and more aged RTX 4070 graphics: was there a chance that this year’s model would blow it out of the water with far faster core components? The answer is yes… and no. AMD is yet to release a successor to the HX 370 and it’s once again accompanied by 64GB of DDR5 memory. But the graphics have jumped a generation, with Asus upgrading to Nvidia’s RTX 5070 mobile GPU. You can still order the RTX 4070 version for £200 less, but that hardly seems worthwhile. I had hoped…

SCORE PRICE 128GB, £541 (£649 inc VAT) from samsung.com Samsung’s Galaxy Tab FE tablets provide an affordable alternative to its S10 and S10+ models, attempting to cut the corners that most everyday users won’t miss. That means a drop in power for the main chip and a drop in impact for the screen, but it’s rare that you feel you’re buying a second-class product: it still looks and feels premium. Such is the case here. At 13.1in, its screen is 3in bigger than the plain S10 FE, giving a notable amount of extra space for your money: the 128GB models cost £499 for the S10 FE and £649 for the S10 FE+, while 256GB of storage ups that to £599 and £759. Even with the extra room, the S10 FE+…

SCORE PRICE £34 (£41 inc VAT) from dell.com Most of what you need to know about this keyboard is written in its name. It’s wired, it’s designed for collaboration – which is Dell code for the endless stream of video calls that fill many people’s workday – and it’s aimed at professionals. It’s also a keyboard. Let’s tackle the collaboration aspect first. This boils down to four shortcut keys that sit unlit at the top right of the keyboard, above the number pad, until you start a Teams or Zoom call. (I tried it with Google Meet but no luck.) By default they’re all white, but if you press the video button it will switch off your webcam’s feed and turn red; likewise for the mic button. These simple visual…

SCORE PRICE 256GB, £333 (£400 inc VAT) from honor.com It’s clear where the Honor 400 draws its inspiration from: the flat edges and vertically aligned cameras give off more than a whiff of iPhone. But that’s no bad thing when the Honor 400 costs less than half the price of Apple’s handset. Very much unlike an iPhone, Honor opts for a plastic chassis here, yet it still feels premium. And it looks good whether you opt for black, silver or gold finishes, while an IP65 rating means you won’t have to worry about a spot of rain. It’s a compelling design, especially for the price. The display keeps up that impression. The 6.5in AMOLED screen is gorgeous, with a crisp 1,264 x 2,736 resolution and vibrant colours. A peak brightness…

SCORE PRICE 256GB, £916 (£1,099 inc VAT) from samsung.com Samsung’s past Edge phones were notable for their curved screens, which wrapped round the sides like the Motorola Edge 60 Pro (see p72). This new model has a regular flat display, and instead distinguishes itself with a strikingly thin build. It’s a feat of design and engineering, but it comes at a steep price in terms of cost and trade-offs. There are three colours to choose from: Titanium Silver, Titanium Jetblack and Titanium Icyblue. Despite being 31% thinner than the Galaxy S25 Ultra (see issue 367, p70) and 29% lighter, it feels solid thanks to its metal frame and Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 display covering. It also has the same IP68 rating as the S25 Ultra. The 6.7in AMOLED screen is…

SCORE PRICE £583 (£699 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk When it launched last year, the Acer Swift 14 AI had the makings of a compelling Copilot+ PC but for one thing: its price. Manufacturers could get away with a £1,199 inc VAT asking price on a top-spec model, but not on a mid-range performer using Qualcomm’s lower-end Snapdragon X Plus chip. Luckily, it’s a different story now that the Swift 14 AI is widely available for around £699 to £799. In fact, at that price it’s an absolute bargain. For a start, you’re buying a premium-feel aluminium body in an understated dark metallic shade. It looks great and feels robust, with a 323 x 226mm desktop footprint and a weight of only 1.4kg. It’s slim, too, measuring under 15mm at its…

SCORE PRICE £749 (£899 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk The Yoga Slim 7x has been a fixture on our A-List since Lenovo launched it last year, so it’s no surprise to see it triumph in this month’s Labs. Its price wobbles depending on promotions, and at one point during our tests it was only this base level version that slipped underneath the £999 price barrier we set for this Labs, but look at what you get for the money: a fantastic 14.5in OLED screen, a gorgeous slimline chassis and one of Qualcomm’s high-end Snapdragon X Elite CPUs. It’s the Copilot+ PC to beat. Let’s start with the design. With a body that’s under 13mm thick the Yoga Slim 7x more than earns its name, while the 1.3kg weight makes it one…

SCORE PRICE From £333 (£399 inc VAT) from acer.com The new Chromebook Plus 516 takes over from the Chromebook Plus 515 as the big-screen option in Acer’s Chromebook lineup, bringing in faster Intel Core CPUs and an additional inch of screen size. Unsurprisingly, it’s a whopper, measuring 359 x 253 x 19mm and weighing 1.7kg. It feels rock solid, but there’s no ignoring the bulk, even with Acer’s clever sculpting. However, the bigger screen and ergonomic advantages more than compensate if you spend your working life bound to a desk. In an ideal world the screen would be the Plus 516’s biggest selling point, but some compromises have been made. The 1,920 x 1,200 resolution looks blocky when stretched over a 16in diagonal, while colour reproduction is sub-par, with the…

SCORE PRICE £316 (£379 inc VAT) from hp.com HP’s convertible Chromebook Plus might not have the cute 12.2in form factor of the Acer Chromebook Spin 312, but it has several practical advantages, including a faster Core i3 N305 CPU and double the 4GB of RAM. It’s still not a star performer, thanks to the processor’s dated Alder Lake-N architecture, and the scores across our benchmarks are substantially lower than on the new Acer devices, both in our single-core and multithreaded tests. However, it makes the Chromebook Plus x360 a better option than the Acer for basic browsing and light office use. The laptop itself looks and feels as dated as the CPU, with a chunky 323 x 210 x 20.4mm body that’s big on silver plastic, though it looks nice…

The Network Practical buying and strategic advice for IT managers and decision makers Backup is an essential process for all businesses, and those that don’t have a clearly defined data protection strategy are taking unnecessary risks. A major data loss can be catastrophic; many businesses won’t survive long without access to essential information such as customer records, quotes, orders, invoices and payment details. An accidentally deleted file is an inconvenience at best, but businesses must now protect their data from an ever increasing number of threats that can cause far more reputational harm. These include theft, burglary, environmental disasters such as fire and flood and, of course, data breaches and ransomware attacks. All protection strategies must include off-site backup, and the cloud is the ideal candidate for this. The best…

SCORE PRICE 5TB, £791 exc VAT per year from idrive.com SMBs seeking a cloud backup provider that is totally transparent about pricing will love IDrive Business. Simply choose the amount of cloud storage you want and everything else is included with no hidden costs. IDrive Business starts at £53 per year for 250GB, increasing to £791 for 5TB if you pay yearly, and you can easily upgrade cloud capacity on demand. You can protect as many systems as you want up to your cloud storage limit, and platform support includes Windows workstations and servers, macOS and Linux desktops, iOS and Android mobiles, Hyper-V and VMware virtualisation hosts, as well as Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint and Oracle business apps. IDrive introduced optional cloud-to-cloud (C2C) backup services for Google Workspace and Microsoft…

SCORE PRICE Diskless, £398 exc VAT from unifydrive.com UnifyDrive takes NAS to the next level with its all-Flash UT2, the first we’ve seen that’s truly portable. Not much larger than a smartphone, it packs in an incredible hardware package making it ideal for mobile workers that need a fast storage device they can use in the field for file sharing, photo backup, storing documents and much more. It has two PCIe 3 slots for M.2 NVMe SSDs and is driven by a powerful Rockchip RK3588C CPU that presents four 2.4GHz A76 plus four 1.8GHz A55 cores, all served by a quiet internal fan. There’s 8GB of soldered DDR4 memory and an ARM Mali-G610 GPU that pipes 8K video to the HDMI 2.1 port, with the supplied Bluetooth remote handset used…

Iam getting increasingly annoyed with companies that make it difficult to update their software. Ideally, an app should have a “Check for update” menu item. Even better if there’s a “Check every day” switch as well, so I immediately get informed of an update. It’s common in the high-end test equipment world for such downloads to require a login to companies’ sites. Sometimes access is limited to those on an ongoing support contract, so that makes sense. I have to log in to Audio Precision (ap.com) to access the latest software for my APX517 or to Audiomatica (audiomatica.com) for its CLIO audio analyser. But for mainstream software, this login requirement is just a bind. It gets worse when the company involved makes the process actively hostile. Take, for example, VMware…

When it comes to icons of the British high street, they don’t come much bigger than Marks & Spencer. Even if you aren’t a lady of a certain age keen on getting a new girdle at the same time as buying some expensive tomatoes, the fact that M&S has been hit by ransomware attackers should worry you. Especially when another huge name in retail, the Co-op, fell to the same attackers soon after. It remains unclear if the same group was responsible for both, although it does appear to have made that claim. The final member of this very British retail trio, Harrods, has said that it was also targeted, but a spokesperson confirmed it “immediately took proactive steps to keep systems safe” by restricting internet access to impacted sites.…

Counting the instances of the letter “r” in “strawberry”. Generating an image to show kicking the bucket, monkey business or another idiom – or no elephants in a room. These are all examples of viral pranks played on large language models (LLMs), and they reveal plenty about how these systems work, when they don’t and how they’re slowly getting better. When it comes to idioms, LLMs perform much better when sticking with text than they do with images. Ask ChatGPT et al to explain a phrase in text, and you’re likely to receive a detailed and even accurate answer. But it’s still possible to trick AI by making up idioms. On social media, one suggestion was: “You can’t lick a badger twice.” It felt real enough to fool Google’s AI…

A group of open-source companies is urging users to consider Linux instead of dumping soon-to-be-defunct Windows 10 PCs. The EndOf10 campaign (endof10.org) has the support of The Document Foundation (makers of LibreOffice), openSUSE and repair firm iFixit, among others. The group is raising awareness of the free alternatives that could keep a Windows 10 PC running beyond the October support deadline and highlighting repair cafés and independent stores where people can get help with installing a Linux OS. KDE, another of the organisations backing the campaign, doesn’t mince its words on a page on its own site welcoming “Windows 10 exiles”. To persuade Windows 10 users who can’t install 11 to avoid buying new hardware, KDE says “you will be forced to spend your hard-earned cash and will be unwillingly polluting…

I’ve expressed my feelings about science fiction many times before in this column. Probably too many. A big fan in my 1960s teens, a bout of illness in the 1970s let me binge all the greats – Vonnegut, Ballard, LeGuin, Dick, Pohl, Bester – overdosing so badly that I never wanted to read sci-fi again. Looking back now as emotionally retarded pseudo-intellectual sci-fi fans appear to be taking over the world, I think my immune system was telling me something. However, this allergic reaction doesn’t apply to the closely related genre of fantasy (or gothic, or cosmic) horror. I still can cringe a little to M P Shiel’s The Purple Cloud, William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland or the entire oeuvre of H P Lovecraft. One of Lovecraft’s…

Sticking with Auto I broadly agree with Barry’s view on Android Auto (see issue 370, p22), except for the implementation of Google Maps and so-called screen mirroring. The “flawed implementation” in my opinion is the way the Google Maps screen on the phone changes from the usual map view to a list of directions, instead of remaining as the usual map view. I think this important because I have my phone on a high-level mount for navigation where I can see it easily while largely maintaining eyes on the road, whereas the car screens are much lower down the centre of the dash and you have to look much further away from the road to see the car screens. Admittedly if you have a car screen at high level and…

1 Airport/station announcements No more muffled PA announcements that can only be heard by the six people stood next to the loudspeaker. Auracast can delivered tailored information about specific flights/trains to passengers. 2 Split commentaries Pubs frequently broadcast more than one game of football simultaneously, but can obviously only broadcast audio from one match over regular speakers. Auracast TVs could let you listen to commentary from the game of your choice on your headphones. 3 Back-seat sharing If the kids in the back seat want to listen to Olivia Rodrigo while you’ve got Radio 6 Music on the car stereo, they can share audio from the same device on their own headphones, without having to awkwardly take an earbud each. 4 Clearer theatre It can be hard to hear dialogue…

SCORE PRICE £5,833 (£7,000 inc VAT) from chillblast.com Back in the day, we used to invite manufacturers to send in their wackiest, most expensive designs as part of our Ultimate PCs group tests. Go wild, we said. Create a work of art. Well, Chillblast – a Warrington-based manufacturer that has appeared in PC Pro on 44 previous occasions – listened to the echoes of that call and created something truly spectacular. The aptly named Poseidon is simply magnificent to behold, a whirl of transparent pipes and futuristic curves that combine function with form. The function being simple: keep the components cool so that you can extract the maximum performance from them for the longest possible period. It does so with barely a murmur and only the occasional gurgle, but I…

SCORE PRICE Tablet only/256GB, £666 (£799 inc VAT) from microsoft.com Once upon a time, Microsoft’s Surface devices acted as showcases for the latest Windows features. They championed new form factors, such as magnetic keyboards that snapped into place on the Surface Pro. But times change, with Microsoft slimming down the number of models and its ambition. The affordable Surface Go range won’t be updated, the company told me, with Microsoft instead adding a more affordable 12in Surface Pro – as tested here – to sit alongside the existing 13in offerings. So don’t think of the 12in Surface Pro as an upgrade to what was previously called the Surface Pro 11 (see issue 360, p52) and is now listed as the “Surface Pro, 13-inch”. It’s actually a downgrade in terms of…

SCORE PRICE 12GB/256GB, £441 (£529 inc VAT) from oneplus.com I always hoped the day would come when I’d find an Android tablet I’d be happy to exchange for my iPad – and here it is. I do have a few quibbles with the OnePlus Pad 3, and it can’t fully replace an iPad for all people and purposes, but in my view it’s absolutely the best balance of price and features you can get in a tablet. It starts at a reasonably affordable £529 inc VAT in its basic form with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage, or £599 for 16GB RAM and 512GB storage. The design isn’t especially eye-catching. The flat edges and pill-shaped camera bump are par for the course, and it’s only available in a sombre Storm Blue…

SCORE PRICE £63 (£75 inc VAT) from logitech.com One of Logitech’s big sells for this wired keyboard and mouse combo is that the keyboard has a similar keystroke to a laptop’s, allowing users to be “instantly familiar” with its “fluid keystrokes”. I think the copywriter needs to have a lie down; yes, some people will appreciate the short, sharp (and noisy) click of this keyboard, but I didn’t notice my keystrokes becoming any more or less fluid. In terms of function, most everything is here, and much of it comes courtesy of Logitech’s neat Tune software. This allows you to reprogram all the function keys and the various icon shortcuts – so the cut, copy and paste buttons that sit above the insert, home and page up key scan be…

SCORE PRICE £583 (£700 inc VAT) from honor.com The Honor 400 Pro isn’t quite as cheap as the regular Honor 400 (see opposite), but it’s still very reasonably priced for a “Pro” handset, costing £100 less than the Google Pixel 9 (see issue 362, p60) or the Samsung Galaxy S25 (see issue 367, p72), Surprisingly, the design doesn’t follow the iPhone-type stylings of the Honor 400. It has a more rounded look, with an aluminium frame that curves around gently and sits comfortably in the hand. The camera module at the rear is a sort of rounded trapezium shape; wonky looking but characterful. All these curves disguise the fact that the Honor 400 is a big phone, weighing 205g. In return it’s both solid and robust, with IP68-certified waterproofing. Colour…

Not everybody has the budget for the latest flagship slim-and-light laptop, creative powerhouse or ultimate games machine. Luckily, as this group test proves, you don’t need to. There are plenty of high-quality, stylish laptops around that cost under a grand, and you may be surprised to discover that many now run on Chrome OS. In this test, we have two groups of people in mind. First, small businesses that aren’t bothered with advanced features or the lowest possible weight; they’re looking for a laptop that just works and feels comfortable to use. A solid all-rounder with enough performance to run a wide range of applications. Second, anyone buying a laptop for home use or study. People who might not want to splash out on the latest, greatest models, but still…

SCORE PRICE £583 (£699 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk While it’s easy to be enthralled by the latest ultra-slim, ultra-light laptops, the Vivobook S15 is a great example of the advantages a larger model brings. Not only does it have a big, 15.6in OLED screen that’s perfect for either productivity or entertainment, it has a more spacious keyboard, a numeric keypad and more connectivity than rival Copilot+ PCs. If it’s not the most exciting device on test, it’s easily one of the most usable and versatile. It’s also one of the best built, with a solid aluminium shell for protection. Despite its large 353 x 227mm desktop footprint, it’s only 14.7mm thick and 1.4kg in weight, so not too much of a handful if you’re carrying it around all day. There’s…

SCORE PRICE From £833 (£999 inc VAT) from dell.com Dell pitches the 14 Plus as a lightweight AI laptop for small businesses and creatives, and in most respects it’s right on the mark. With a choice of 200-series Intel Core Ultra 7 and Ultra 9 CPUs, it has the NPU performance for Copilot+ AI applications, plus the integrated Intel Arc graphics to run local AI apps and accelerate some video and design tools, or even handle basic gaming. The 14in screen might not be OLED, but it has the high resolution and colour performance less demanding creative users will require, and at 1.55kg it’s reasonably light, though not in the same league as the sub-1kg Asus Zenbook A14. It’s a well-built laptop, even if the design is rather pedestrian. It’s…

SCORE PRICE Core 5, £499 (£599 inc VAT) from samsung.com This is the undoubted star of this month’s Chromebook lineup, thanks to a killer combo of speed, screen and style. It takes its cues from the brand’s premium Galaxy Book line, with an all-aluminium body and distinctive inky blue for the base and lid. At just under 12mm thick and 1.2kg in weight it’s thinner and lighter than a 15.6in laptop has any right to be. The construction is solid so you won’t have any concerns carrying it around in a bag all day. Usability is just as good. The keyboard action is light but with clicky tactile feedback, and it’s easy to forgive a few quirks about the layout, such as the small cursors and thin numeric pad. This…

SCORE PRICE £274 (£329 inc VAT) from acer.com In many ways, the Acer Chromebook Spin 312 feels like something of a step back to the days when Chromebooks were seen as secondary devices or school PCs, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s compact, inexpensive and versatile, with a 360° hinge that allows it to be used as a small laptop, a chunky tablet or in a tent configuration. At 289 x 204 x 19.9mm, it takes up barely any room in a bag or backpack, and is small enough to use on a train or busy coffee shop. At 1.29kg, it’s light but pleasingly robust. What’s more, its 12.2in screen is surprisingly capable. A glossy surface adds reflectivity but also helps boost contrast, and while the maximum 302cd/m2…

SCORE PRICE £583 (£699 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk MSI’s 15.6in laptop packs in an impressive spec for its budget price, with an Intel Core 7 processor, 16GB of RAM and a large Full HD display. A couple of years ago it would have been hard to beat on bang for buck. However, the arrival of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X CPUs has mixed things up, and now the Modern 15F1MG faces stiffer competition. It’s a solidly built if plastic-heavy laptop, with a 359 x 236mm desktop footprint and a weight of 1.7kg. Sure, it’s hefty, but that translates to decent ergonomics, with a wide keyboard, large touchpad and a comfortable typing position. The chiclet keys are backlit and the layout straightforward, with well-sized Shift and Ctrl keys, separate cursors and even a…

SCORE PRICE From 50GB, £24 exc VAT per month from backupvault.co.uk BackupVault will appeal to SMBs seeking predictable cloud storage costs as its prices are based purely on the total amount of data they want to back up. The company offers an extensive range of backup solutions, and the Enterprise Server Edition (ESE) on review is designed to secure physical, virtual and cloud-hosted Windows servers and hosted apps, with the price including support for unlimited systems. Prices start at £24 per month for 50GB of storage, and you can increase this on demand in 100GB increments with substantial discounts applied when you go over 1TB. The price includes a rolling 30-60 day retention period for all file versions, with backups older than 31 days deleted on the first day of…

SCORE PRICE From 5TB, £423 exc VAT per year from synology.com Best known for its highly respected NAS appliances, Synology also offers a range of cloud backup solutions. C2 Backup for Business provides simple, easily deployed cloud backup and data recovery services with no on-premises hardware requirements. The starting price of £423 per year gets you a big 5TB chunk of cloud storage, with 1TB increments costing a further £101 per year. It supports unlimited Windows and macOS devices and includes cloud-to-cloud (C2C) backup services for all four Microsoft 365 (MS365) components, with the Business plan protecting up to 250 users and 50 teams. During account setup, you select a Synology data centre and enter a unique domain name, which provides secure access to users of the backup service. Next,…

Keeping track of what you own sounds like an innocent, even mundane subject. Those of us who were working in IT back in the last century may associate the phrase “inventory management” with afternoons spent among silver plastic sticky labels and long debates about whether a mouse was a consumable. But to businesses built on shipping goods to customers, inventory management is a much bigger and more fundamental function. And it’s no longer just about the physical items sitting on your shelves, but also the devices that process them and the data they generate in doing so. ERP in depth Inventory management is an old idea, but it ties in directly to the modern notion of enterprise resource planning, or ERP. This ambitious practice in effect takes in every reachable…

It’s heartening to know that I can still be surprised. Earlier in the year, I received a reader’s email with the subject “Incredulous” and, after reading what they had to say, you may agree. Alan was the happy owner of an Aerox 3 mouse made by SteelSeries. It isn’t a brand I encounter too often, but its vast range of peripherals is a hit with the gaming fraternity. Alan’s Aerox 3 had fulfilled its murine mission for some months before spluttering its final squeak. Alan contacted SteelSeries’ support, who popped into life full of apologies and assurances of inwarranty returns. Earning extra points for environmental integrity, Alan enquired if there was a repair option, but SteelSeries explained: “We do not have an official repair service for these sorts of cases…

Even I, with my exotic lifestyle and winning social manners, do not expect to bump into an MP just wandering around the streets of London. It’s taken four decades or so for us to be sitting in the right place at the right time – that is, outside a noodle bar at some wobbly metal tables just after 8pm, a bit north of the National Gallery in Chinatown. My partner is the one with the parliamentary employment history, and she jumped up from her outdoors seat in an instant, chasing a nice grey-haired chap inside. One moment later and we were doing the introductions, and that slightly edgy moment when my career crops up in conversation. Quick as a rattlesnake, the politician said: “IT, is it? You blokes are in…

ON SALE Thursday 7 August Features Windows 10: the ultimatum Lee Grant provides a step-by-step guide for anyone who’s currently using a Windows 10 PC and needs to decide whether to stick, upgrade or switch. Features 10 Windows PowerToys you’ll use every day Discover the free add-ons that can speed up your workflow and make Windows behave the way you want. Features Keeping your cool Why is thermal management so important to modern devices, what’s the best cooling strategy – and what are the risks if your devices overheat? Labs Monitors, monitors, monitors! We put 20 varied monitors to the test so that you can find the ideal choice for quality, size, features and value. Retro Classic review: Amstrad PCW 8256 David Crookes has bought a second-hand PCW. How useful is…