Innehållsförteckning för April 2017 från Computer Shopper

MICROSOFT HAS enjoyed an impressive level of success with the Windows 10 rollout. The firm boasts that more than 400 million devices across 192 countries are now running the OS. Much of this uptake was down to Microsoft’s novel approach to pricing for Windows 10, with a free upgrade on offer to millions of PC users within the first year of release. However, while the software giant certainly achieved its objective of pushing out its latest operating system to a huge number of users, not all of them were thrilled with the results. Since its launch, the Shopper inbox has been kept busy with dozens of missives about Windows 10 – and unfortunately for Microsoft and our readers, most of the experiences have been negative. Grant Wilson shared his experiences:…

Size isn’t everything @ I’m an amateur photographer and always interested to hear when developing technology can give me camera quality that would have been unavailable or of unjustifiable expense in the past. I was therefore interested to read your review of the Nikon B500 bridge camera (Shopper 349); a top maker, a zoom of up to 900mm and a reasonable price of just £220. It has understandably been manufactured with some economies, but I cannot understand one shortcoming you identify, which is a small sensor. When I look at your Best Buys pages I see that the Panasonic DMC-FZ330 has a smaller sensor size of just 1/2.3in but costs nearly twice as much. The Nikon D500 has the same size sensor of 23.5x15.7mm as the B500 and yet costs…

WHEN ARTICLE 50 is finally triggered, signalling that the UK will leave the European Union, it’s of vital importance that cyber security is not overlooked during the negotiations. While the UK may be able to take more control over its physical borders, the internet is different. Thanks to its globally spread servers and open access, the internet is impossible to control and remains borderless. It’s an important point, as problems online can’t be localised and contained, but have to be dealt with in the wider international community. Part of this requires continued co-operation with our European neighbours so that the UK can maintain its levels of cyber defence, and continue to track down, prosecute and stop international cyber criminals. NO GOING IT ALONE There’s a real danger that these points…

For the den At last, a pedigree gaming laptop that’s also truly thin, light and portable. The Razer Blade QHD+ has the muscle for smooth AAA gaming at high resolutions, thanks to its quad-core i7-6700HQ processor and desktopgrade GeForce GTX 1060 GPU, but manages to squeeze these internals into a chassis that’s well under 2cm thick when closed. It is, as you’d expect, rather expensive, yet even the price doesn’t stop this being one seriously desirable piece of kit. For your money, you also get a crisp, colourful 3,200x1,800 display and Razer’s excellent Chroma keyboard, RGB lighting and all. (Page 28) For the wallet The entry level for 3D printing has been lowered even further, with the XYZprinting da Vinci Minimaker offering a full, easy-to-use printer for just £200. It’s…

RESEARCHERS FROM THE University of Cambridge have developed a way of forming graphene into a superconductor. In a report called Graphene’s Sleeping Superconductivity Awakens, the scientists claim a great graphene leap forward. They explain that they have found a way to trigger the “innate, but previously hidden, ability of graphene” to act as a superconductor. This means that it can be made to carry an electrical current with zero resistance. Dr Jason Robinson, fellow at St John’s College, University of Cambridge, explained: “It has long been postulated that, under the right conditions, graphene should undergo a superconducting transition, but can’t. The idea of this experiment was, if we couple graphene to a superconductor, can we switch that intrinsic superconductivity on? The question then becomes how do you know that the…

LGA1151 PROCESSOR INTEL Core i7-7700K £339 • From www.overclockers.co.uk VERDICT The Kaby Lake flagship squeezes even more performance out of a modified 14nm process, but it can swelter in certain tasks HERE WE HAVE it, the premier consumer enthusiast chip from Intel’s seventh generation of processors: Kaby Lake. The Core i7-7700K is the replacement for the Skylake family’s Core i7-6700K, and is a fully unlocked quad-core CPU with each core running at 4.2GHz with a 4.5GHz Turbo Boost clock. It’s important to appreciate the extent of Skylake’s success since launching a couple of years ago and, in turn, the weight of expectation that Kaby Lake chips such as the Core i7-7700K carry on their pin-freckled shoulders. Architectural improvements to the Broadwell generation’s 14nm manufacturing process made for even more power-efficient…

£800 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT A stylish-looking all-in-one with a great screen, but a sluggish mechanical hard disk lets it down APPLE’S RANGE OF iMacs has set the bar for gorgeous-looking all-in-one computers, but you have to pay a lot of money for the privilege of owning one. With the IdeaCentre 510S, Lenovo has come up with an all-in-one that looks just as good but costs a fraction of the price. Keeping the cost down has seen Lenovo use metal-effect plastic, but you’d be hard pushed to tell. In fact, without touching the computer, it’s hard to tell by sight alone the difference between the plastic case and the computer’s full-metal ‘V’ stand. The ‘S’ in the model name stands for ‘slim’, and the 510S doesn’t disappoint. Measuring just 8mm…

£410 • From www.eglobalcentral.co.uk VERDICT HTC’s flagship phone gains a larger, cheaper sibling – but it cuts far too many corners THE HTC 10 (Shopper 342) was a great smartphone – the best to come from the Taiwanese manufacturer in some time. It’s understandable, then, that the company has chosen to extend the branding to the cheaper HTC 10 Evo. Unfortunately, it’s a much less desirable phone. The problems begin as soon as you pick it up. Where the original HTC 10 came with a 5.2in screen, the 10 Evo grows it to 5.5in. That may sound a minor change, and even an improvement, but the flatter back makes the whole thing quite difficult to hold, with the angular sides digging into your palms. Bafflingly, the HTC 10 Evo also…

£953 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A technical triumph, the Sony RX100 V is the ultimate compact camera for those who can afford it THE SONY RX100 series is probably the most important development in camera design this decade. These cameras deliver something previously thought to be impossible: true SLR quality in a camera small and light enough to fit in a jeans pocket. It’s all thanks to the combination of a 1in sensor, which is around four times bigger than conventional compact cameras’ sensors, and an f/1.8 to f/2.8 lens that’s around four times brighter than the norm. That means 16 times more light reaching the sensor, giving the equivalent of an f/4.9-7.6 lens on a full-frame camera. That’s slightly better than a consumer SLR and kit lens – a…

£79 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A smart way for landline users to make their phone line more flexible A LOT OF us still use our landlines for making and receiving calls. While this can make economic sense, there’s still the frustration of having to run for the phone when it rings and accepting that you can’t get calls when you’re away. Voice Bridge aims to fix those problems, by integrating your landline with your smartphone. Voice Bridge works by converting your regular telephone line into a Voice over IP (VoIP) line via a small box that plugs into your landline and home network. Calls are then sent over your local network or even the internet to an app on your phone (Android or iOS). Setting Voice Bridge up is relatively…

£200 • From www.toysrus.co.uk VERDICT The da Vinci Minimaker may be aimed at kids, but grown-ups will appreciate its combination of value and print quality as well XYZPRINTING HAS CARVED a nice little niche for itself as a producer of simple, affordable 3D printers – we’re particularly keen on the Da Vinci Jr 1.0w (Shopper 342). In many ways, the da Vinci Minimaker feels like a spin-off of that device, albeit with a more compact, colourful design and a more specific focus on introducing 3D printing to kids. Yes, with its primary coloured plastic casing and simplified interface this is essentially a toy for building other toys. The setup process can be performed with only a bit of parental supervision: snap on the heating module, stick in the filament feeding…

£110 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT Heart-rate monitoring and five-day battery life come in a top-notch fitness tracker package FITBIT HAS MADE a name for itself with its family of stylish, straightforward fitness wearables, and now there’s another one to add to the list: the Charge 2. Taking the place of the Fitbit Charge and Charge HR, the Charge 2 is now the cheapest heart-rateequipped wearable in Fitbit’s 2016 line-up. The Charge 2 adds some welcome refinements to the design of its predecessors. You get a markedly comfier rubber strap, and the display has been swapped out for a larger OLED panel which, incidentally, seems to have been plucked straight from the Fitbit Alta. The Charge 2’s new-found customisability is a sight for bored eyes, too. If you’re not taken by…

£499 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT Gorgeous design, and great picture quality with a little tweaking PANASONIC’S X700B SERIES of mid-range UHD televisions includes 40in, 50in and 58in models, giving you a good scope of options. The model on test, the Viera TX-40DX700B, is the smallest model, but all of the range consists of almost identical specifications. The main differences between the 40in model and the rest are the energy-efficiency rating and the stand. Larger models include what Panasonic calls Switch Design Movable Feet, which essentially means you can move the feet closer together or further apart. With a little tinkering, image quality is excellent, although out-of-the-box performance is a little lacking FANCY FOOTWORK This gives you a little extra flexibility around your TV’s placement, which will be useful for those…

£829 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Amazing picture quality at a decent price makes the Samsung UE49KS7000 one of the best 4K TVs around IT MAY SIT at the entry-level end of Samsung’s SUHD range, but the KS7000 is no second-rate budget screen. Its super-slim bezels allow the Quantum Dot panel to take centre stage, displaying a superb 98.9% sRGB colour gamut coverage right out of the box. That’s just in Standard mode, too – in Movie mode, it reaches a perfect 100%, and can hit an ultra-low 0.05cd/m2 black level to boot. It certainly feels worthy of its UHD Premium badge from the UHD Alliance, which guarantees that you’re getting the best 4K HDR experience currently available. We weren’t actually able to measure a peak brightness as high as this…

£600 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT This high-tech soundbar has a gorgeous design, but the price is too high and the sound quality middling LET’S NOT MINCE words: £600 is a huge amount to pay for a soundbar, especially one without a subwoofer or rear channel speakers. Bose’s counterpoint is that, thanks to its audio-engineering expertise, the SoundTouch 300 is capable of providing the surround sound and bass to match multi-box rivals, without the need for extra speakers. It’s certainly packed with tech. For surround sound, it uses directional Phase Guide speakers, two of which are hidden behind the soundbar’s perforated, wraparound grille. Bass is enhanced by way of folded bass reflex ports with slots cut into the sides, and it’s all drawn together with Bose’s ADAPTiQ calibration tech, which tweaks…

£1,299 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT A highly impressive soundbar/subwoofer/ speaker combo with some concerning caveats THE HW-K950 not only comes with a wireless subwoofer and two wireless rear speakers, it’s one of the first soundbars to support Atmos, Dolby’s immersion-maximising surround-sound tech originally deployed in movie theatres. The feat of pulling off 10-channel audio from a small number of boxes comes down to drivers. Samsung has included 16 across the full set, all with dedicated amps, delivering a monster 500W of total power output. This power is contained in an understated, robust design. There’s a minimalist OLED display beneath the grille, a blue LED in the corner that lights up to confirm the presence of an Atmos soundtrack, and a series of basic controls on the right end. It’s big,…

£249 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT You’ll get excellent sound quality from the YAS-306, just don’t expect a full surround effect LIKE THE BOSE SoundTouch 300, the Yamaha MusicCast YAS-306 is a standalone soundbar that packs more of a sonic punch than you’d expect for the lack of a subwoofer – but for a much, much lower price. Packed into its chunky, understated case are two 2.13in drivers and two 0.75in tweeters aimed at producing virtual surround sound, plus a pair of side-ported bass drivers. This all delivers on an impressively large scale for a single-unit soundbar, going extremely loud without distorting, and blasting classical music with just as much balance and power as it does the dramatic soundscapes of films. The bass doesn’t extend to the rumbling levels of a…

£80 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A good media streamer with great app and gaming support, but Amazon Prime subscribers will benefit from it most AMAZON’S DINKY FIRE TV Stick is perhaps the better-known of its streaming devices, but this is the one to go for if you want to take full advantage of an 4K telly. The square-shaped Fire TV box is easy to hide away in an AV cabinet and includes both 802.11ac Wi-Fi and a 10/100Mbit/s Ethernet port, plus an optical S/PDIF connection and a USB port. However, the latter can’t be used for attaching external storage, just compatible peripherals, and there’s also no bundled HDMI cable – a somewhat miserly omission. The Fire TV’s remote control lacks an integrated headphone port, but has its own neat party…

£40 • From www.nowtv.com VERDICT The Now TV Smart Box is a versatile, affordable and user-friendly media streamer with great content bundles SKY’S LATEST MEDIA streamer was a huge improvement on the old Now TV Box when it launched last year, adding a Freeview TV tuner and accompanying a great system of pick-and-mix content bundles. It’s pretty sparse in terms of ports, but you still get the essentials: an aerial socket, Ethernet (as an alternative to Wi-Fi), HDMI, USB and a microSD slot. The interface remains easy to grasp and simple to navigate, and Freeview is handled well: your last used live channel appears on the home screen next to other top recommendations, and a simple TV guide can be accessed from the left hand menu. We’d have appreciated the…

Send your problems to help@computershopper.co.uk Shielded from printing eyes I use the web interface to configure my Dell 1320C colour laser printer, but if anyone else knew its address couldn’t they also connect to it over the internet? Is there a way to stop them? Thomas Marshall The short answer is that your printer is almost certainly not accessible to anyone outside of your own network. In the vast majority of cases, home routers are given one public IP address by an internet service provider (ISP). Every device in your own network then gets its IP address from the router, which allocates them from a private range. These private ranges are intended to be used and re-used widely, and as such they’re not addressable from the internet; instead, private devices…

Our example system is a pretty conventional build, but makers from across the world have used RetroPie to build extravagant, weird, amazing and bewildering games consoles. Here are some of our favourites. WORLD’S SMALLEST MAME ARCADE CABINET Built for curiosity rather than practicality, Phillip Burgess made this fully functional games-arcade machine from a Raspberry Pi Zero and a tiny 0.96in, 96x64-pixel display. The 5-way joystick is just about big enough to pinch with fingertips and there’s even a built-in speaker to relive your misspent youth. As Phillip himself says, “The colour display is just too small and coarse, requiring major graphics downsampling that render existing games just barely recognisable”. The system might work, but it’s an example of what can be rather than what should be done. See tinyurl.com/ tiny-mame…

MEET THE TEAM Madeline Bennett “The need for so many wires and cables; surely everything should be wireless by now?” David Ludlow “Stupid blue LEDs in chargers, which light the whole room up when I’m trying to sleep” Nathan Spendelow “Alexa. She’s far too judgemental of my day-to-day activites” James Archer “I actually like Windows 10 so am boycotting this question on moral grounds” Dave Neal “Enforced large game updates on the PS4 and XBox One. I want to play, not watch a 60GB download” Nicole Kobie “Online advertising; at least magazine ads don’t nag you about things you’ve already bought” Roland Moore-Colyer “Autocorrect, because it trips me up all the ducking time” Simon Handby “Smart’ motorways. Driving 10 miles at walking pace past an obstruction that’s disappeared”…

Mel Croucher RANTS I MET ERNIE in 1985. His face was shiny and pale, and he was a bit deaf. And he only had one arm, which had turned yellow. But he was a very efficient bartender. Ernie was a robot, created by Honeybee Robotics, and I liked him. He had a robot sister named Cynthia, with throbbing red eyes and huge shoulders, who worked as a cocktail waitress in Tooley Street near London Bridge. I think she ran off to the Robot Bar in Ilmenau, East Germany, to join the swivel-headed Carl, who was engineered by the great Ben Schaefer and who served beer while spinning his bow tie and cracking dirty jokes. I miss my cyber pals behind the bar. They had more personality and better manners than…

France Double trouble French defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has told the press that the country was the victim of 24,000 cyber attacks against its defence systems in 2016, and warned that the number of attacks is doubling year on year. The alarming news comes after hackers launched such a successful attack on the French networks that they almost took a television channel offline. Luxembourg Space oddity Pocket-sized European nation Luxembourg has set its sights on being the dominant force in asteroid mining, and the market leader in off-planet minerals and other resources. The country is reportedly advanced in its plans, and is offering hopeful miners ownership rights to any space booty or material found in a near-world location. Companies including two major US players, Planetary Resources and Deep Space…

“The very first thing Tim [Cook] did as CEO was convert Apple from a dynamic changemaker into a boring operations company” Former Apple engineer Bob Burrough tweets his review of his ex-employer “We have long been clear in our stance that tech companies as good corporate citizens should comply with reasonable lawful access requests. I can reaffirm that we stood by our lawful access principles” BlackBerry CEO John Chen responds to Edward Snowden’s criticism about the firm’s personal data policies “Requests for representation of red hair in emoji have been ongoing, yet prove a challenge to address due to a number of competing implementation options. The goal of this discussion is to determine the preferred implementation for red hair in emoji” The Emoji Subcommittee gives the go-ahead for important discussions…

£1,000 • From www.chillblast.com VERDICT A commanding, classy demonstration of what the Kaby Lake Core i5-7600K can do IF YOU WANT to get your hands on a new Intel Kaby Lake chip, but don’t fancy performing the brain transplant operation that is installing one in a custom build, fear not – pre-built systems containing the 7th-gen processors are now available. The Chillblast Fusion Hubble, featuring a Core i5-7600K, is the first we’ve had on the Shopper benches. This specific silicon is the successor to the Core i5-6600K, arguably the best quad-core CPU for general use in terms of price versus performance. With a nippy base clock of 3.5GHz and a Turbo Boost clock up to 3.9GHz, the i5-6600K offered plenty of punch for simple tasks. Not only does its Kaby…

£2,699 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Razer’s Blade QHD+ might well be the best gaming laptop money – albeit a lot of it – can buy THE BULK AND weight of most gaming laptops can make them a hard sell, and even slimline options such as the HP Omen 15 typically sacrifice performance for portability. The Razer Blade QHD+, however, makes a convincing claim to the best of both worlds. For starters, it’s incredibly thin and light for a gaming laptop. At 1.95kg it’s very reasonable even by more general 15in standards, and considering the components inside, its top-to-base thickness of just 17.9mm is extremely impressive. It looks good, too, with a wonderful all-black matt finish and indented lines across the lid. Despite the slim frame, there are enough ports to…

£185 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT At just a fraction of the price of its flagship counterparts, Huawei’s P9 Lite is an interesting Moto G4 alternative HUAWEI’S SMARTPHONES HAVE been gaining in both quality and popularity in recent times, but until now it’s left the low end to its partner brand Honor. That changes with the Huawei P9 Lite, a low-cost version of the Huawei P9 (Shopper 342) and P9 Plus (Shopper 346). Not that you’d know that this was the cheapest model at first sight. The P9 Lite shares the lovely chamfered edges and clean lines of its pricier siblings, and it’s just as sleek and slim. The shiny aluminium finish has been dropped in favour of an all-black, textured plastic body, but that’s an improvement – we found the…

£249 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The super-portable GoPro Hero 5 Session isn’t quite the Hero 5 Black all-rounder, but it’s still a touch above the rest 2015’S GOPRO HERO 4 Session was a small, barebones action camera, lacking the 4K video recording of its more expensive counterparts. That’s all changed with the new Hero 5 Session, as GoPro has finally added 4K video to its entry-level offering. It’s significantly smaller and lighter than the current reigning action-camera champion, its brother, the GoPro Hero 5 Black (Shopper 349). At 74g and 38x38mm, it’s larger than the previous Session but, bar the change in chassis colour, it’s essentially the same cube we’re familiar with. SWIM WITH THE TIDE It still has the monochrome display on top, next to the Record button, as…

£195 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Incredibly effective noise-cancelling headphones, but the fit and erratic auto-pause facility undermine the appeal DANISH AUDIO COUTURE firm Libratone has produced some cracking audio products in recent years, such as the portable Zipp (Shopper 345) and One Click (Shopper 344), but until now it has focused on speakers such as these. Now it’s branching out into personal audio, and its new Q Adapt On Ear is the first pair of headphones it has produced that we’ve had the chance to test out extensively. Just like Libratone’s speaker range, the Q Adapt On Ear is achingly stylish. It comes in either white or ‘stormy black’, and both models look as handsome as you could wish. The headband is clad in soft-to-the-touch textile, the exposed cylindrical hinges…

£140 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT GeForce branding is a bold but ultimately unnecessary addition to a lovely modular case DEDICATED GRAPHICS PROCESSING fans rejoice: you can now get the MasterCase Pro 5, Cooler Master’s modular mid-tower PC case, adorned with some Nvidia-themed decals. Jokes aside, this is literally the 2015 chassis with a new paint job. What was once plain black all over now has multiple flashes of green and grey as well, with a green-tinted acrylic side window and GeForce GTX signage right on the front. SHAKEN TO DÉCOR It’s certainly more eye-catching than the standard MasterCase Pro, which was already quite distinctive on account of its sloping lines and front-mounted carry handle. We particularly like how the matt finish of its black stripes and panelling contrasts with the…

£349 • From shop.samsung.com VERDICT Fantastic battery life, a luxurious design and all the features a fitness fanatic could need make the Gear S3 a winner WE WERE BIG fans of Samsung’s Gear S2 smartwatch. Its twistable bezel was an ingenious and effective way to control the built-in apps, and the watch itself was just the right size – elegant, but big enough to be clear and easily legible. The Gear S3 retains the rotating bezel, but the watch itself is a bit bulkier than the 2015 model. Whether you go for the smooth lines of the ‘Classic’ model or the more rugged ‘Frontier’ styling, the housing measures 46x49mm, and it’s a protuberant 12.9mm thick. It looks rather absurd on more delicate wrists, and it’s liable to catch on shirt…

PANASONIC Viera TX-40DX700B (£499) 40in of superb image quality at that all-important 3,840x2,160 resolution. You’ll need to play around with the settings to get it looking its best – straight out of the box, colours aren’t as vivid as they can be, and it looks a little too bright – but that’s equally true of a lot more expensive TVs. Furthermore, you get a great library of streaming services, including Freeview Play, which is built into the electronic programme guide (EPG). This comprises all the main UK terrestrial catch-up channels, and with Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, YouTube and Vimeo also included, you don’t have to buy a separate streaming box. LG SH5 (£199) A rich-sounding, well-designed soundbar and a thumping subwoofer all for less than £200? You’d be mad to…

£999 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT A brilliant, great-looking 4K HDR TV that comes with a soundbar plus built-in Freetime and Freeview Play THE VIERA TX-50DX802B is unlike any TV we’ve ever seen – suspended in mid-air by its sturdy metal support, it looks more like a piece of modern sculpture than something you’d put in your front room. It also comes with a soundbar, which plugs into the back of the TV via a short proprietary cable and sits neatly within the outer frame. Measuring only 65mm tall, its short stature cleverly draws the eye upwards, emphasising the screen that seems to levitate above it. You will, however, need a media cabinet of significant stature to hold its bulk. The 50in model is 316mm deep and 1.2m wide, and the…

£1,199 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT The Samsung UE55KS7500 packs in 4K and HDR, but its image quality is a little so-so for the money THE KS7000 SERIES sits at the bottom of Samsung’s 2016 SUHD TV range. We’ve tested the curved model, though a flat variant (which otherwise has identical specs) is also available for about £200 less – keep that in mind as you’re reading. In terms of design, the KS7500 has ‘branched feet’, similar to many Philips TVs. This makes the KS7500 quite different to Samsung’s other SUHD TVs, as these tend to have a central stand design. Which you prefer will be a matter of personal taste, but at least the feet are easy to install and set up without any tools. They simply click into the…

£199 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT With great sound and superb design, the LG SH5 is a brilliant entry-level soundbar and subwoofer combo FROM THE SUBWOOFER’S cuboid-patterned finish to the bookspine-like design of the soundbar itself, the LG SH5 has a classy yet understated look that sets it apart from most budget home cinema combos. The silver body may not suit everyone, but at least its compact design means it will be inconspicuous. The subwoofer is similarly compact, measuring 171x320x252mm, so you shouldn’t have too many problems slotting it behind your sofa or next to your AV cabinet. The good selection of ports includes an optical S/PDIF output, 3.5mm stereo input and a USB port, along with two HDMI connections. One of these supports ARC, meaning you can send audio from…

£569 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Playbar is pricey, but looks gorgeous, sounds amazing and can form a full 5.1 system with your existing Sonos system SONOS IS BEST known for its high-end multiroom audio systems, but the Playbar soundbar sees it taking on home cinema for the first time. At its core, it’s a 3.0 system, but group it with existing Sonos speakers and it becomes a 3.1 or 5.1 system. It’s also gorgeous to look at. We love its sleek, lozenge-shaped design, and it’s practical too – angled speakers and accelerometers can automatically adjust the sound depending on whether it’s laid flat or hung on a wall, giving you top-quality sound regardless of where you position it. Setting up is simple, especially if you already have a Sonos…

£139 • From www.apple.com/uk VERDICT Slick, powerful and with a brilliant voice-activated remote, the new Apple TV is a top media streamer THE CURRENT APPLE TV model does much to right the wrongs of its predecessors: there’s an app store, improved internal hardware for speedier performance, and choice of 32GB or 64GB of storage. It’s small enough to fit almost anywhere, and showcases brilliant build quality, with a reassuringly rugged feel. Power, HDMI 1.4a, 10/100Mbit/s Ethernet and a USB-C service port are found on the back, but the digital optical audio output is gone. The lack of Ultra HD support will be a real problem for some people, though 1080p is a decent compromise between quality and the internet bandwidth required to stream video. The tvOS interface lays out apps…

THE FIX There are two issues to fix. First, you have to remove all the junk you don’t want; second, you have to stop Windows from suggesting or automatically pushing more junk to your computer. We’ll tackle the latter first. To stop Windows from installing apps on your computer automatically, you need to disable automatic updates. This means that you will have to update apps manually, which isn’t as secure. This is a good reason why Microsoft shouldn’t install junk on a computer without the user’s permission, so that we can all use automatic updates with confidence. To change the update settings, launch the Windows Store from the Start Menu, click your user icon (top right, near the search bar) and select Settings. Change the Update apps automatically setting to…

clive@computershopper.co.uk HERE WE GO! We used a Raspberry Pi 3 for our build, but almost any Pi will do, even the tiny, £5 Pi Zero. The Pi 3 is the fastest model available, however, and handles even most N64 games. It also has built-in Wi-Fi, which helps when updating the software and installing new games. Most of the other hardware required is standard stuff: a case, a 2A power supply, a 16GB microSD card and any USB gamepad you might have lying around. If you don’t have any gamepads, the £5 controller we’ve listed is a decent choice. The secret of our all-in-one retro games console isn’t the hardware, however, it’s the software. Enter RetroPie. Head over to retropie.org.uk, click the Download tab and then select which version to use.…

letters@computershopper.co.uk Farming the strike @ You mention the Agrilaser in Globe Trotting (Shopper 348), a fence that is designed to do away with scarecrows by shining a controlled beam at birds and other things that trouble farmers. I can’t help thinking it will be a short leap to Angry Laser (Angry Bird Laser?), where all that remains is a gently billowing cloud of feathers for those feathered creatures determined to hang around Farmer Giles’ field a little longer. If that is a success, it will be only a small step to produce a gently billowing cloud of fur. And what about sitting a few atop an electrified 10ft tower for better reach? And what about all those annoying solstice chasers, travellers, detectorists, picnickers, or those who wander a foot or…

Software and systems developer letters@computershopper.co.uk THIS COLUMN DIDN’T spring forth fully formed out of nowhere; there were influences I’d absorbed from masters of the genre. The two main ones were Hunter Davies (famous for the Beatles biography), who wrote a column called Father’s Day in The Sunday Times and could blather on for ages about the smallest of family happenings, and make it engaging and funny. Then there was Jerry Pournelle, who wrote the Chaos Manor column for Byte magazine in the USA. Byte was the king of computer mags in the eighties, full of wellinformed, well-written content. See tinyurl.com/bytemag for more info. I’m indebted to both. Speaking of indebtedness, I can’t end without thanking Bill Poel, Jeremy Spencer, Janey Goulding, David Ludlow and Madeline Bennett – without their encouragement…

ANYONE WHO WAS anyone who was doing business in the late 1980s and wanted to look organised will have shunned the Filofax and embraced the modern world via the British-made Psion Organiser. The first Organiser appeared in 1984 and cemented its position in briefcases throughout the decade. These were the days of writing things down and getting pocketsized address books for Christmas, or from the Post Office while you were queueing to post something; possibly a cardigan or a Black and Decker Workmate that you had ordered from a paper-based catalogue and wanted to send back. If you needed to know someone’s phone number, most likely a landline, you had to rely on a telephone directory or, if you had the cash and the swagger of an organised employee, a…

£1,000 • From www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk VERDICT An attractive desktop with a high-end SSD, but a middling processor holds it back SOME PCs ARE featureless cubes; others are titanic high-rise towers, luridly adorned with sickly LEDs and plastic accents. We’re forever grateful that some, such as the Infinity X55 VX, find a happy medium between eyecatching style and respectable tastefulness. Indeed, few PC builders have the same eye for a good chassis design as Cyberpower, and the Infinity X55 VX’s build quality shows some good part-picking in action. The ARC 649 mid-tower case is utterly gorgeous, flanked on both sides by tinted glass panels that temper the multiple instances of red illumination within; even the RAM sticks are kitted out with LEDs. The result is stylish but subtle, a welcome addition to…

£1,100 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A lower price and faster processor means this MacBook alternative is a tempting Windows 10 ultra-portable THE ASUS ZENBOOK range has always been – let’s put it politely – a sort of homage to Apple’s MacBook Air. Nowadays, though, that brand is no longer a byword for thin-and-light portability, so the new ZenBook 3 takes its inspiration instead from the 12in MacBook (Shopper 342). Look past the brushed swirl on its aluminium-alloy lid and you could almost get the two laptops mixed up. It’s not a precise duplicate, though: measuring 11.9mm deep, it’s very slightly slimmer overall than the MacBook. At 910g, it’s also 10g lighter, and while the chassis is a very similar size, the overall shape is a little more stretched, to accommodate…

£83 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT A great budget monitor that’s perfect for anyone who wants something cheap with decent image quality WHILE THERE ARE plenty of high-cost, flashy monitors out there, sometimes you just want something smaller, cheaper and neater. This is where the BenQ GW2270H comes in. At less than £100, this 22in, Full HD monitor is designed as a low-cost workhorse. Unsurprisingly, at this price, the GW2270H is rather plain. It has a simple black plastic case and stand. It may be a little boring compared to some displays, but that rather adds to the GW2270H’s charm, as this unobtrusive monitor will sit calmly on a desk without drawing attention. The one downside is that the stand doesn’t provide any height adjustment, so you’ll either have to place…

£179 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT A powerful app, simple installation and great image quality make this outdoor cam a winner, but subscription services are expensive FOR SOMEONE TO break into your house or shed, they first need to come on to your property. It makes a great deal of sense, then, to install an outdoor security camera to catch any would-be thieves at the earliest opportunity. The big problem is that most outdoor security cameras need specialist installation. Not so the Nest Cam Outdoor, which is designed to be easy on the eye and simple for most people to install. Rather than having to drill holes through walls and physically wire in the camera, the Nest Cam Outdoor has a weatherproof USB connector that you can plug into an outdoor…

Stream 1: £100; Stream 3: £130 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Gear4 Stream 1 and 3 provide a great alternative to more expensive Sonos speakers MULTIROOM AUDIO USED to be the sole provenance of Sonos and high-end audio brands; nowadays it’s everywhere and speakers are getting cheaper all the time. The Gear4 Stream 1 and Stream 3 are prime examples of this, providing Sonos-like facilities without the high price. You can’t currently buy the speakers in a bundle, but both can be purchased individually at £100 for the Stream 1 and £130 for the larger Stream 3 – slightly less than our current favourite multiroom speaker, the £150 Sonos Play:1 (Shopper 345). Both speakers are attractive, with simple designs that blend in well at home, and they’re well built, too.…

£155 • From www.box.co.uk VERDICT The best mid-range motherboard just got even better, with useful additions to both internal and external ports IT WOULDN’T BE the launch of a new processor architecture without some new motherboards to go with it, and in the case of Intel’s Kaby Lake, there are plenty of boards looking to use the updated Z270 chipset. Asus’s Prime Z270-A may look familiar, as it’s the direct successor to the Z170-A, our favourite LGA 1151 board. That said, there’s nothing particularly remarkable about the looks or the build of this ATX component, save for that signature white I/O panel cover. It’s actually one of the cheapest options in Asus’s freshly released 200 series. LOVE HERTZ That’s not to say it’s boring. In fact, Asus has made quite…

Chat and Communication Evernote 6.4.2.3788 Store your notes, ideas and plans in the cloud, and synchronise them between computers. UPDATED Mailbird 2.3.36 A free desktop email client for Windows. UPDATED Miranda IM 0.10.64 Chat with friends across multiple messaging platforms, including AIM, Facebook, IRC and MSN, all from one simple interface. Skype for Windows 7.30.0.105 Make internet voice and video calls for free, and buy credit to make calls to mobiles and landlines. Trillian 5.6 Use all your instant-messaging accounts with one application. Supports Windows Live!, AIM, Yahoo! and Google Talk. UPDATED WhatsApp Desktop 0.2.2731 A free PC and Mac version of the popular messaging app, allowing you to chat straight from your desktop instead of using the web app. Customisation iolo System Mechanic Free 15.5 Speed up your system…

£2,299 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT LG’s C6V is a beautiful OLED TV that’s let down by mediocre contrast, unintuitive menus and an astronomical price LG’S OLED TVs have always known how to make an impression. With their ultra-slender bezels, super-slim curved panels and rich, vibrant colour reproduction, even the very best LED TVs look monstrous when you compare them side by side. The new LG OLED C6V is no exception, and its razor-thin 5mm panel and attractive, see-through stand design make it look as though it’s simply floating in mid-air. It bulks out toward the bottom of the set, where you’ll find all its ports and connections, but that doesn’t detract from its overall loveliness. The 55in model we tested looks almost every bit as good as you’d expect, given…

£399 • From www.argos.co.uk VERDICT Now with HDR support, the Philips 43PUS6401/12 is a good buy for those after a small 4K TV THE PHILIPS 6400 series offers an Ultra HD resolution, Philips’ Ambilight illumination – where lights mounted behind the TV project colours in tandem with the onscreen images – and an Android TV interface. Judging from our time with the 43in model, the 43PUS6401/12, the OS is a mixed bag. Android TV is easy to set up, but its onscreen keyboard feels sluggish for inputting text, and there’s no microphone in the remote, so you can’t take advantage of Android TV’s voice controls. The menu system also feels slow. Perhaps most importantly for a smart TV, the 6400 is lacking in catch-up apps and Freeview Play support. BBC…

£169 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT The Bose Solo 5 is a simple budget soundbar with a useful universal remote, but its sound quality is a little disappointing THE BOSE SOLO 5 is one of the smallest soundbars we’ve seen, looking more like a dedicated 5.1 centre channel speaker than a soundbar. It measures 548x70x86mm and weighs 6.35kg, making it easy to slip under a TV or mount to a wall (though you’ll need to buy the £35 mounting kit separately). There aren’t any control buttons on the soundbar itself. Fortunately, Bose includes a universal remote control. While a remote is often included with most soundbars, the Bose universal remote is impressive as it can be programmed to control other devices, such as Blu-ray players, using the database of manufacturer IR…

£120 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A decent, well-priced boost to your TV audio for films but its design and sluggish controls make it fiddly to use THE SUB ZERO III is a rarity among soundbars, in that it’s primarily designed for wall-mounting rather than resting underneath a TV set. All the ports, for instance, face downwards from a recess in the bottom, making them impossible to access when it’s sitting on a table. It does come with a small adaptor to allow at least one HDMI lead to exit the soundbar horizontally, but you’ll have to buy more if you want to connect other devices, such as a Blu-ray player or a games console. It’s a shame, as it’s also uncommon to see two HDMI inputs and an ARC connection…

£99 • From www.zavvi.com VERDICT The Steljes Audio Calliope sounds fantastic for the money and offers plenty of connection options FOR JUST £99, the Steljes Audio Calliope soundbar packs in several features you might not expect at such a low price. Chief among them is its plentiful supply of connections; you have two HDMI 1.4 inputs plus an HDMI ARC port, so you can have two devices connected to the Calliope while only having one cable going to the back of your TV. The Calliope also has optical and coaxial connections, as well as Bluetooth with aptX support. The HDMI ARC (Audio Return Channel) output is a particularly big coup for Steljes, as many soundbars under £200 simply don’t have one. It’s also unusual to see more than one HDMI…

£30 • From store.google.com VERDICT The latest and greatest Chromecast is a cheap way to add smart functionality to your TV GOOGLE HAS RECENTLY released the Chromecast Ultra, a 4K-capable edition of its puck-styled media streamer for a relatively cheap £69. For anyone on a truly tight budget, however, there’s a lot to be said for the standard 1080p Chromecast, which is still available for a mere £30. The Chromecast works differently to most rival devices, mainly in the sense that it’s controlled entirely from an app on your PC, smartphone or tablet. Even so, its tiny size and flexible HDMI cable mean it’s child’s play to set up and keep out of sight. Power is still delivered through a Micro USB port, ideally connected to a USB socket or…

THE FIX Fixing default programs is straightforward. We’ll show you what to do to set a new default PDF reader, but the same instructions apply to other applications, too. Go to the Control Panel and ignore the Settings app. Go to Programs, Default Programs and choose Set your default programs. Scroll through the list of installed applications and select your PDF reader. Click ‘Set this program as default’, and you’re done. If your default changes again, you’ll need to repeat this step.…

Send your problems to businesshelp@computershopper.co.uk Weekend working I want to find a way in Outlook to be able to find all the emails in my inbox (and ideally in the folders into which I’ve placed emails) where the received date is a weekend. I can do all sorts of searches, but I can’t see how to search for emails received on a specific day. Where is it hidden? I’m using Outlook 2010. This is one of the ludicrous bits of Outlook that is missing. You can search on all sorts of things, but not for a specific day of the week. You can do a search for ‘Saturday’, but that only refers to the most recent Saturday, not for all Saturdays. What’s more, if you set up a Search folder…

IF THE MENTION of Streets of Rage, Ecco the Dolphin, Road Rash or Sensible Soccer doesn’t send shivers down your spine, you haven’t lived. The battle between Sega and Nintendo brought us some of the best games ever made, and birthed some of the most iconic characters gaming has ever had: Mario, Link, Sonic, Toejam and Earl, Spider from Micro Machines… However, you don’t need a cupboard full of retro consoles to relive past glories: a Raspberry Pi can play every game released for every console from the Master System to the N64, plus a bargain-bucketful more.…

ben@computershopper.co.uk Animated logos You can bring your logo to life with a burst of animation. Ben Pitt explains how to get things moving with some free software A LOGO IS vitally important for any company or organisation. From car manufacturers to community allotments, high street shops to amateur video production companies, the logo is often the first thing people see, and it’s the common element that ties all the strands of the organisation together. A logo sets the tone, too. It might be traditional or modern, formal or casual, lively or calm. It may include graphics that say something quite specific about the products or services on offer. For printed marketing materials, a simple block-colour logo tends to work best as it will be legible at any size and get…