Sommaire pour September 2016 de Computer Shopper

NORMALLY THIS letter is reserved to tell you about the latest and greatest technology projects or products we’re serving up for you in the current issue. But for once, I’m going to focus on something that doesn’t often get the limelight in Computer Shopper: our News section. I’m pleased to tell you we’ve given the News pages a lick of paint and a thorough overhaul. We put together some of the best minds in the technology industry (including the Shopper team, of course) to think about what a monthly magazine news section means in this era of online breaking news. Our answer: a monthly digest themed by section. We’ll be scouring the depths of the web, attending the furthest-flung events, and investigating every possible information source to dig out the…

During a recent tidy-up of old PC components and software, I came across a copy of Lotus 1-2-3 on a 5¼in disk. For those not familiar with Lotus 1-2-3, it was the killer app spreadsheet of the 1980s written in assembly language. Out of curiosity, I tried running it on a modern PC with an Intel i7 processor. After a few tweaks, the program was up and running at light speed. The CPU in a PC has remained backwards-compatible for over 30 years with many generations of architecture. Software written for the first generation of processor will still run on present-day CPUs. Why can’t Microsoft achieve the same backwards-compatibility with Windows? Windows isn’t exactly an exciting piece of software, its main purpose is to link together hardware and organise files.…

Software and systems developer letters@computershopper.co.uk I’M OFF ON holiday at the end of the week. I can already hear you thinking “What, again?” – but hang on a mo, here I am, well past retirement age (ignore the optimistic picture on the left) and I’m still nose to the keyboard. So a three-month gap between holidays seems reasonable to me. Despite my best efforts to keep the fact from them, my customers have scented my imminent departure and conjured up a ton of stuff that absolutely must be attended to immediately. It wouldn’t be so bad if some hadn’t also contracted a bad case of WYSINWYM, which is an acronym in the same style as the better-known WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). WYSINWYM stands for ‘what you…

Microsoft joins mobile payments party SAY WHAT? MICROSOFT HAS THROWN its weight into mobile payments and finally set up its alternative to Android Pay and Apple Pay. Microsoft Wallet is available to people on the Windows 10 Insiders program and is aimed at users on build 14360 or higher. Microsoft promises that the mobile wallet is secure, reliable and convenient. The option is available on the Lumia 950, 950 XL and 650 and starts in the US with a claimed one million payment options and spending opportunities. “In our increasingly mobile and busy world, our on-the-go customers want to pay for their everyday purchases without the hassle of digging through their physical wallet. Our customers enjoy the ease of signing in with a Microsoft account and having their secured payment…

1 Robots Robots could be classed as ‘electronic persons’ with rights if the European Union accepts a draft plan. 2 Steam users Valve is devoting a third of its workforce to virtual-reality work. That’s around 100 people and a lot of effort. 3 The Internet of Things Samsung has directed £800m at UK-based IoT projects. 4 Privacy Firefox maker Mozilla has announced $1.25m in funding for projects including encrypted browser Tor. 1 Half-Life 3 See Valve and its priorities above: Half-Life 3 doesn’t feel close at all. 2 Customer security TalkTalk boss Dido Harding received a salary in 2015 of £2.81m, despite a cyberattack on the firm that cost £60m and hit 101,000 customers. 3 Romance A total of 19% of Brits see virtual girlfriends and boyfriends becoming commonplace within…

Tim’s back on earth and on top of the world MAJOR TIM PEAKE, the first Briton to set foot in the International Space Station (ISS), is back on earth having spent six months performing in lots of scientific experiments during his official 40-hour working week. Peake said as he emerged from the landing capsule that the ISS experience was “the best ride I’ve been on ever”. However, he appeared to be glad to be back on terra firma. Peake’s journey and time on the International Space Station has been an inspiration to us all, and has sent a thrill of enthusiasm for science and discovery through the young. “At least one million young people have taken part in 30 different projects that cover a broad spread of curriculum subjects and…

£1,774 • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT The inclusion of a new Nvidia GTX 1080 makes this a mighty, if mightily expensive, system for 4K and VR gaming WE’VE BEEN ITCHING to get our thermal paste-covered hands on a system based around the GTX 1080, the crème de la crème of Nvidia’s new Pascal architecture graphics cards, and this premium rig from Scan’s 3XS division was the first to arrive in our labs. It’s built around an Evga-built GTX 1080 Founder’s Edition, which uses the stock design and cooler but has been overclocked from 1,607MHz to 1,807MHz per core. The 16GB of DDR4 RAM has also been cranked up to 3,200MHz, and the Intel Core i7-6700K has been overclocked to 4.6GHz. That’s a lot of tuning, but thankfully a closed-loop Corsair Hydro…

£1,240 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Asus ZenBook Pro UX501VW has a great 4K screen, but its processing power could be better THE ASUS ZENBOOK Pro UX501VW is a high-end desktop replacement with its sights set firmly on Apple’s 15in MacBook Pro and Dell’s XPS 15 (Shopper 338). It certainly looks the part, as Asus’s trademark ripple effect on the lid gives it a premium feel that’s subtle yet has just enough detailing to make you want to show it off. Its 15.6in IPS display has an incredible 3,840x2,160 resolution, putting the MacBook Pro’s 2,880x1,800 to shame. It’s this screen that makes the ZenBook Pro stand out. While our sRGB colour gamut measurement of 90.4% doesn’t quite match Asus’s claimed 100% coverage, it still looks absolutely lovely and is only…

£75 • From shop.vodafone.co.uk VERDICT It’s not very fast, but the Vodafone Smart Prime 7 is a beautifully designed and executed £75 smartphone NETWORK-BRANDED SMARTPHONES used to be pretty pitiful, but Vodafone has slowly been putting this notion to rights. The Smart Prime 7 might be one of the most elegant and well-designed smartphones we’ve seen for under £100. With its slim, 7.9mm profile and classy, carbon fibre-like rear panel, it’s a world away from even our favourite top sub-£100 smartphone to date, the 2nd Gen Moto E . Its charcoal looks are quite plain, but nicely understated, and its textured volume and power keys feel great under your thumb and easy to find by touch alone. It’s small details such as this that elevate the Smart Prime 7 above…

£100 • From www.getgeared.co.uk VERDICT The Drift Compass is a flawed life-logging camera with a frustrating design and disappointing app WEARABLE ‘LIFE-LOGGING’ cameras take a decidedly more mundane approach than ruggedised action cams, such as the GoPro series, capturing those candid, serendipitous moments as we go about our days. The Drift Compass is one such camera that’s designed to be worn and forgotten about. Its square, black design is inconspicuous and it weighs a featherlight 34g, so you barely even notice you’re wearing it. It comes with a standard clip in the box so you can attach it to a jacket collar in any orientation you please, but it can also be used with a lanyard if you want to dangle it around your neck. When the lens is positioned…

£2,299 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT The Viera DX902B has astounding image quality and excels at both UHD and HD content PANASONIC’S VIERA DX902 series is the pinnacle of the company’s Ultra HD lineup for 2016. It packs in the technology to make the most of exciting new formats such as 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, using the latest in High Dynamic Range (HDR) standards. The 58in model we tested is a chunky TV, with just 40mm of clearance at the bottom – meaning many soundbars will struggle to fit under it – but overall its design is simplistic, never distracting from what’s on screen. Unusually, the TV tilts back slightly when on its stand, which makes it feel as if you’re always looking up at it. That’s easy to forget when…

£149 • From www.hifix.co.uk VERDICT A worthy, great-sounding successor to the original WITH ITS ROBUST build quality and sleek aluminium finish, the SoundLink Mini II is a Bluetooth speaker at the premium end of the market. While well constructed, though, the finish is prone to scratching, and its significant weight means there are better portable options, such as the Fugoo or UE Boom 2. However, at 670g, you’ll happily move it from room to room and it could accompany you on trips if you aren’t fussy about the weight of your luggage. Silicon buttons are found on the top. There are the usual volume controls as well as Bluetooth pairing; you can pair the SoundLink Mini II with two Bluetooth devices at the same time and swap between them. There’s…

£133 • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT A reasonable single-bay NAS, but recent Synology products have been far superior SYNOLOGY HAS A problem. It’s simply too good. So when an occasionally average drive like this one comes along it shows up like a… well, like a Wings album to a Beatles fan. The same nucleus, the McCartney if you will, is there in the form of the ever-improving DiskStation platform, now standing at DSM 6.0, which is still our favourite NAS operating system. But after the run of White Albums in recent months (see the DiskStation DS216+, Shopper 340), this just feels ordinary. Band on the Run gave us Jet, but that’s no substitute for Helter Skelter, is it? There’s no Yoko here, but the Linda might be said to be build…

£330 • From www.box.co.uk VERDICT It may cost a bomb, but this opulent X99 motherboard has the capabilities to be worth every penny INTEL’S NEW RANGE of ultra-premium Broadwell-E chips are out in the wild. As shown by the flagship Core i7-6950X (Shopper 342), they’re incredibly powerful but prohibitively pricy, gleefully smashing through the £1,000 barrier and beyond. Fortunately for anyone considering an upgrade from Haswell-E, however, Intel isn’t forcing you to buy yet another motherboard as well. All Broadwell-E CPUs use the same X99 chipset and LGA2011-3 socket as Haswell-E, so strictly speaking, you won’t need to partake in the current wave of freshly released compatible boards, such as this, Asus’s top-of-the-line X99-Deluxe II. Still, this beefy component includes enough upgrades over the original X99-Deluxe to be worth a…

£80 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Great app and gaming support, ideal for Amazon Prime subscribers THIS SECOND VERSION of Amazon’s Fire TV box supports 4K Ultra HD resolutions. You’ll need a 4K-capable screen to take advantage, but Amazon Video at least has you well served when it comes to content with more and more content available in Ultra HD. The square-shaped Fire TV is about the size of two decks of cards side by side, so it’s easy to hide away in an AV cabinet. Sadly, there’s no bundled HDMI cable, which seems miserly considering that Amazon has its own Amazon Basics brand of cables. The Fire TV has built-in 802.11ac Wi-Fi and there’s also a 10/100Mbit/s Ethernet port for wired connections should your router not be up to the…

£15 • From www.nowtv.com/box VERDICT It has its limitations, but the Now TV service is a great way of getting catch-up TV on the cheap IF YOU ALWAYS wanted Sky TV but were put off by the high prices and the need to install a satellite dish and Sky+ box in your home, the Now TV service may be the answer. In direct competition with Netflix and Amazon Instant Prime Video, Sky’s service provides topquality content via your internet connection. The content itself is split into Sports, Cinema and Entertainment, which largely mirror Sky’s satellite offerings. How you pay for these is very different, with all three available individually, rather than in complex bundle deals, and you can cancel and restart each service as you wish. BARGAIN BOX Alongside support…

£70 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT Superb range of content and ease of use make the Roku 3 the best media streamer around IF YOU’VE USED a Roku device in the past, the Roku 3 will feel instantly familiar. Small enough to hide inside an AV cabinet, it supports many different types of content, from catch-up TV via BBC iPlayer and Demand 5 to Netflix and Sky’s Now TV, if you have a subscription. Roku’s catalogue of channels and apps has grown impressively; even the Roku 3 launched without All 4 and ITV Hub, but this has since been rectified. The Roku 3 is an evolution of the Roku 2 XS, and shares its Fast Ethernet port, a microSD card slot and USB port, but loses its predecessor’s AV output. This…

£160 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT Another decent Fitbit device, but it’s hemmed in by smartwatches on one side and its own siblings on the other AT FIRST GLANCE, the Blaze has a slightly split personality: it looks more like a smartwatch than a fitness tracker, but its feature set wouldn’t worry any smartwatch manufacturer. It’s also not really a sports watch, since most runners or cyclists will want a device with built-in GPS, which the Blaze doesn’t have. Indeed, with its selection of rubber, leather and metal straps, the Blaze puts appearance first and foremost. Placing the Blaze in one of the leather straps makes it feel like an altogether higher-quality item on the wrist – it’s still too light to feel like a real watch, but it’s undeniably comfortable…

£170 • From buy.garmin.com VERDICT If you’re serious about fitness, the GPS-equipped Vivosmart HR+ is the best you can get GARMIN HAS AUGMENTED the original Vivosmart HR’s abilities even further, adding GPS tracking to this new and improved model. Before looking at the big new feature, let’s recap on what was already there. This fitness tracker will log every step you take, along with estimating the distance you’ve travelled and the calories you’ve burned; it will also count every flight of stairs you climb. The Vivosmart HR+ will dynamically adjust your daily step goal based on your personal activity profile. If you’re smashing through the default daily goal, tomorrow it will be higher, but if you’re coming nowhere near that target, then the bar will be lowered accordingly. The built-in…

£80 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT Stylish design and an impressively long battery life, but the Shine 2 doesn’t feel very secure on the wrist IT MAY LOOK classy, but where the Shine 2 is concerned, form does at least partly follow function. The shape is dictated by its CR2032 battery, but at only 8mm thick, the Shine 2 isn’t much bulkier than that battery. Still, this is one stylish device, being constructed from tactile anodised aluminium with a wealth of accessories and replacement straps available. One area that could have done with a design update, though, is the way the Shine 2 is secured in its wristband or clip. The original Shine was always worryingly insecure when worn, being prone to popping out of its clip during a run, and…

£85 • From www.argos.co.uk VERDICT A comfortable fitness band with a built-in heart-rate monitor, but tracking accuracy could be improved THE SONY SMARTBAND 2 is one of the few wearables under £100 that comes with a built-in heart-rate monitor, making it an enticing prospect for those who don’t want to splash out on a higher-end Fitbit or Jawbone. What’s more, Sony claims it can also measure your stress and recovery levels by tracking your heart-rate variability (the time difference between two consecutive heart beats), adding an extra layer of data to the mix alongside the usual pulse, step, calorie and sleep tracking. It’s a well-rounded fitness band, although the lack of a physical display will no doubt be a deal breaker for some. Instead, Sony leaves all the data analysis…

IT WAS ONLY a few years ago that the idea of the ‘house of the future’ was stuck in the realms of science fiction, or at least evil super-villains. But the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) – with its cheap, small and most importantly affordable sensors – has brought a home that does things almost by itself within the reach of all of us. There’s a lot to take in. We’re only really going to be able to scratch the surface with the technology available today, but the good news is that there’s a whole bunch of stuff you can do today to make your home smarter. I’ve had something of an obsession with the idea of a smart home, stemming back to the Americana of the sixties…

Loxone Loxone specialises in offering complete custom packages delivered by a team of partners. For more information, go to www.loxone.com. Fibaro Fibaro products can be found on the internet but, like Loxone, it specialises in offering custom packages via agents. For more details, see www.fibaro.com/uk. Router Netgear Nighthawk X4 R7800 £223 • www.currys.co.uk Security cameras Netgear Arlo: Starter Kit £180 • www.currys.co.uk Netgear Arlo Q £160 • www.currys.co.uk Netatmo Welcome £159 • www.currys.co.uk Logi Circle £159 • www.johnlewis.com Withings Home £130 • www.johnlewis.com myFox Camera £149.99 • www.currys.co.uk Environment monitors Netatmo Weather Station £130 • www.appliancesdirect.co.uk Smappee Energy Meter & Controller £145 • www.morecomputers.com Controllers Logitech MyHarmony Elite £250 • www.shop.bt.com Logitech K830 Living Room Keyboard £80 • www.currys.co.uk Moto X Style £300 • www.laptopsdirect.co.uk Moto 360 Sport £170 •…

ben@computershopper.co.uk IF YOU’RE PLANNING a home improvement or garden landscaping project, your computer can be a great asset. 2D and 3D design software will let you map out your ideas, which not only helps you refine them but also makes it much easier to communicate them to a gardener, builder or unconvinced spouse. It’s a useful process when moving house or considering buying new furniture, too. It’s one thing to use a measuring tape to make sure a table or wardrobe will fit in the room, but creating a 2D or 3D model of the room and the furniture will give you a much better idea of how it will look and function. Will there be enough room to sit around the table without blocking people in? Will the wardrobe…

MEET THE TEAM Madeline Bennett Rain-activated self-closing Velux windows, so the bedroom doesn’t keep flooding with all these summer storms Seth Barton I want it to organise its own remortgaging and find the best utility deals automatically Katharine Byrne I’d automate the kettle to boil at regular intervals so I can keep my tea levels topped up Richard Easton Temperature sensor-equipped electric blanket so my bed is nice and toasty in the summer Nathan Spendelow I’d program the bins to take themselves out; no more forgetting about the bin collection David Ludlow A robot to empty the kittens’ litter tray James Archer My frying pan, for perfectly just-going-medium steaks every time David Neal My laptop, dog, decisions and responses Chris Merriman The windows should be automatically blacked out until I…

ON SALE in newsagents from 11th August LAPTOP EXTRAVAGANZA We’ll be testing and comparing all the latest laptops to help you choose the one that best suits your needs, from budget bargains to premium models and gamer devices. THE INTERNET OF THINGS We investigate the rapid rise of the Internet of Things to find out what impact it might have on everyday life, as well as uncovering some of the more interesting projects that are already under way. ROBOT REVOLUTION There have been many scare stories about how robots are set to take over the world, but what benefits will they offer? We take a look at current robot and AI technology, how it’s being used to improve our lifestyles, and the possible threats it poses. ATTACK OF THE DRONES…

With more than 30 years of experience in law enforcement, our retired cop gives a police officer’s perspective on the sticky subject of cybercrime letters@computershopper.co.uk I HAVE A confession to make. This month, I have contributed significantly to the rise in online crime and, to add insult to injury, this increase has taken place on a global scale. It’s not that I’ve been leading a double life, preaching about the evils of computer crime while at the same time stroking my cat and planning the next online heist to swell the coffers of my ill-gotten gains. No, it’s much more prosaic than that. I awoke one morning to find my business email account awash with undelivered mail, bounce-backs and message sub-system replies, all informing me that the email I had…

For the den Navigating Panasonic’s Viera TV range can be like ordering from a menu written in Urdu, but the Viera TX-58DX902B is top of the line, and it’s superb. A clever honeycomb-shaped backlighting structure allows for pure blacks and great contrast, while colours and detailing are about as good as you can get. Page 46 For the shelf Life-logging cameras have the potential to be fun little alternatives to expensive GoPro-style action cams, which is why it’s a shame that the Drift Compass fluffs the execution so much. Whether taking low-quality stills or capturing unwatchably juddery video, there was rarely a time when it wasn’t disappointing us. Page 41 For the wallet It may not be ideal for small hands, but the 5.5in Motorola Moto G4 has quickly become…

San Diego, USA Tasmanian devil survives surgery Road Runner birds are going to have to do more than spot a fake entrance to a tunnel on a cliff face if they’re to avoid the advances of Nick, the San Diego Tasmanian Devil that has just had his slow-running heart switched for a new pace-maker. “We are optimistic this procedure will give Nick an additional one to two years of a happy and healthy life,” said Dr Cora Singleton. This is the second time such an operation has been tackled, and the first time it has worked. Nick is now ticking along nicely. Russia VK not OK VK.com, the Russian Facebook, has been hacked and its users’ details exposed. The database on the LeakedSource website includes 100,544,934 records. Each one may…

£1,250 • From www.cclonline.com VERDICT Small and swift, at least in games, the RavenVR shows what the Nvidia GTX 1070 can do THE GTX 1080 seen in the Scan 3XS Z170 Vengeance 1080 (page 28) isn’t Nvdia’s only Pascal-powered graphics card. The GTX 1070 promises 4K- and VR-ready frame rates for over £200 less than its bigger brother, so we can see it being the bigger seller even if the GTX 1080 offers more sheer brawn. It’s also the card we find squeezed into this, the mid-range (for want of a better phrase – it’s still £1,250) variant of CCL’s new RavenVR series. We didn’t expect our first taste of the GTX 1070 to come from a small form factor system, but CCL has nonetheless managed that precise combination. Measuring…

£459 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT It’s super-fast and has a beautiful screen, but the Xperia X’s over-processed camera and high price holds it back SAY HELLO TO the new Xperia Z6 – yes, the Xperia X is the new name for Sony’s flagship smartphone. It’s a curious choice of leading model, as it lacks the Xperia XA’s gorgeous edge-to-edge display, but certainly feels like a successor to the Xperia Z5. It even has the Z5’s side-facing fingerprint sensor built into the home button. It’s rather narrow compared to a typical fingerprintsensor, but it’s exceedingly fast, and far more convenient than other home button sensors we’ve used. As the Xperia X has NFC built into it as well, you’ll be able to use this with Android Pay. In fact, the Xperia…

£128 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT It’s fast and has a great design, but the LG K8’s camera and underwhelming display drag it down AS MUCH AS we love the Motorola G4, it has one weakness: its 5.5in display is a bit monstrous compared to most phones and can make it hard to use one-handed on the go. Those after something that sits more comfortably in the palm will need to turn their attention back to the rest of the budget competition, such as the LG K8: a new sub-£150 contender that actually puts up a pretty good fight against its closest rival, the 3rd Gen Moto G. With a quad-core 1.3GHz MediaTek MT6735 processor and 1.5GB of RAM, it managed almost identical results to the Moto G in our Geekbench…

£620 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Fantastic for games, less so for work, but the BenQ XR3501 is far too expensive THE BENQ XR3501 is a 35in monitor with a 2,560x1,080 resolution and 144Hz refresh rate, which puts it in a peculiarly specific monitor sub-category: huge, curved, ultra-wide, with a high refresh rate but a fairly low resolution. It’s similar to AOC’s C3583FQ (Shopper 342), which is the same size and has the same curvature, but AOC’s screen has a slightly higher maximum refresh rate and support for AMD’s FreeSync adaptive refresh rate technology. As the BenQ monitor is more expensive and doesn’t have the FreeSync tech, which can lead to smoother, tear-free gameplay, it certainly has its work cut out. AHEAD OF THE CURVE First impressions are good. This is…

£379 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT The Samsung HW-K650 is a good-value soundbar with no shortage of connections THE HW-K650 INITIALLY looks like any other soundbar, with its pleasingly inconspicuous all-black (or all-silver) design and a height of just 54mm, allowing it to sit happily in front of most TVs without obstructing the display or IR receiver. Measuring 110mm wide, the HW-K650 is best suited to TVs that are 40in or above, but its wealth of connections makes it extremely flexible. As well as optical and auxiliary audio connections, the HW-K650 also has an HDMI input and HDMI ARC output, which lets you connect another device to the soundbar, such as a Blu-ray player or games console, and still only have one cable running into the back of your TV. This…

£187 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT HP’s OfficeJet Pro 8720 is a fast and practical inkjet MFP for a home office or small business HP’S HULKING OFFICEJET Pro 8720 is one of the biggest A4 inkjet multifunction peripherals (MFPs) we’ve reviewed. That’s largely down to an unusual design, where paper is ejected away from you to a 150-sheet tray (most inkjets print towards you). The top portion contains a flatbed scanner with a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF). The OfficeJet Pro 8720 is well specified for a busy small office, with support for wired and wireless networking, and a USB host port for walk-up print and scan jobs. Speeds are high, with HP claiming up to 24 pages per minute (ppm) for black A4 printing, and 20ppm for colour. The paper…

£349 • From www.span.com VERDICT An unnecessary luxury, like taking a Bugatti to do the Aldi shop THIS IS WHAT Seagate hopes the future looks like. The Seagate Innov8 is the first desktop (ie external) 8TB hard disk with no external power supply. Instead, both data and power are drawn via USB3.1, via the new USB Type-C standard cable, which at the moment is the domain of flagship machines such as the latest Apple MacBook and the Chromebook Pixel, but will eventually become the norm for everything, desktop and portable alike. Now, let’s get one thing out of the way early. You can’t just use a converter between USB C and USB A for this: the current simply isn’t there. Perhaps naively, perhaps deliberately, Seagate has opted not to even…

£24 • From www.digitalvolcano.co.uk AS THE PRICE of storage drops and we find ourselves drowning in multiple devices, the ogre of duplicate files has never been more of an issue. If you find yourself with a bunch of hard disks, thousands of files, and a constant fear of deleting the wrong thing, well read on, because Duplicate Cleaner Pro has had one of its biggest facelifts to date and it’s brilliant. We’ll get the grumble out of the way first. This is being marketed as a brand new piece of software, and users of versions 3.x and earlier are going to need to part with more money. But it’s worth every penny, and existing users do get a discount. Starting at the basic premise – you have files, some of…

VIDEO AND TV: Roku 3 Extensive catch-up service support, good image quality, a headphone jack built into the remote… there’s almost nothing to complain about the Roku 3’s credentials as a top-notch film and TV streamer. As well as all the terrestrial services you could want, such as BBC iPlayer and More 4, the Roku 3 is one of very few non-Amazon devices to support Amazon Instant Video, so it’s perfect for Prime subscribers. GAMING: Nvidia Shield Android TV Nvidia’s set-top box and controller combo is as much of a games console as it is a video streamer. Of course, you can play PC games over the cloud or beamed from your own rig a few rooms away, but the Shield Android TV is unique in its compatibility with several…

£129 • From www.apple.com/uk VERDICT Slick, powerful and with a brilliant voice-activated remote, the new Apple TV is a top media streamer, but it needs more apps THERE WAS ALWAYS one thing missing from Apple TV: an App Store for downloading new services and customising the experience. That changed with the 4th generation model, released late last year. It has the same 98mm square footprint, but new internal hardware means this latest model is 35mm tall, compared to 23mm on the old Apple TV. The A8 processor in the iPhone 6 reappears here, providing more power for games and apps, and there’s a choice of 32GB or 64GB of storage. It’s not so much bigger that you’ll struggle to put it anywhere and it will sit neatly under a TV…

£150 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT A feature-packed media streamer that’s great for games, but Android TV is still lacking TO CALL THE Nvidia Shield Android TV a mere media streamer is to do it a disservice; this 4K-ready set-top box is also a games console packed with serious processing power for playing Android games, and can even stream PC titles over the internet. Android TV is a work in progress, at least where app and service support are concerned. Nvidia was forced to develop its own iPlayer app – with the BBC’s blessing – but there’s no Demand 5, All 4 or ITV Hub. Shield Android TV was the first media player to support 4K Netflix streaming, but you’ll need a 4K TV with HDCP 2.2 support and 10-20Mbit/s broadband…

£60 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT With a good app, simple synchronisation and chameleon-like hardware, the Fitbit Flex is the best of the basic trackers PAY NO MIND to Fitbit’s website listing the Flex at £80; many retailers out there have it listed for only £60, making it a very attractive proposition for anyone looking for their first fitness tracker. Although the Flex is worn on your wrist, the device itself can be removed from the strap. This means you can colour-coordinate your Flex to match your outfit, and there’s a veritable rainbow of strap colours available. There’s no display on the Flex, just five white LEDs. Each LED represents 20% of your daily goal, so you can get at least a rough estimate of how you’re doing by glancing at…

£60 • From www.vmall.eu/uk VERDICT The Honor Band Z1 is neither the prettiest nor the most functional fitness tracker – so who’s it for? THE HONOR BAND Z1 is attractive, at least at first: the round, stainless steel rim looks good, and at just 25g with a 1.06in touchscreen, it’s appealingly diminutive, making most smartwatches seem positively obese. However, this changes when the screen comes on. The monochrome P-OLED display is considerably pixelated, giving it more in common with the first-generation Pebbles than the latest Android Wear beauties. There are perfectly good battery-shaped reasons for this, but it does detract from the luxurious feel it’s aiming for – as does the fact that the screen is actually a small square, rather than a true circular watchface. The steel rim is…

£170 • From www.argos.co.uk VERDICT A decent smartwatch with some useful fitness features, but the accompanying app and GPS are flawed THE MOTO 360 Sport aims to bridge the gap between smartwatches and fitness trackers. With built-in GPS, an optical heart-rate monitor, a silicone rubber strap and a new adaptive display for easy reading both indoors and out, it sounds ideal for those after something a bit more watch-like than most fitness trackers. In reality, though, it stumbles over a number of hurdles, starting from its basic design right through to its rather limited fitness features. The silicone rubber band, for instance, gets dirty easily, and its spongy finish makes it a pain to clean. With its 45mm diameter, it’s also pretty wide compared to most fitness trackers, though it’s…

£162 • From www.handtec.co.uk VERDICT A great fully equipped workout buddy for those wanting to focus on fitness THE SPARK CARDIO + Music is the highestspec Spark variant available, combining multi-sport tracking, GPS, heart-rate monitoring and Bluetooth music playback. This makes it a pretty compelling combination of smartwatch and fitness tracker. Despite this abundance of features, it has a more restrained design than TomTom’s previous wearables. Its rubber strap makes it comfortable to wear for long periods (including overnight) and the double prong clasp ensures it never falls off mid-sprint, swim or cycle. The exercise options – including cycling, swimming, treadmill running, general gym activity or ‘freestyle’ activities – are easy to navigate, and in our experience, recordings seemed pretty accurate and consistent with previous readings. There’s no option to…

ONE OF THE biggest issues with building a smart home has been the huge range of different and incompatible protocols. It has led to people either having to go down an expensive, custom installation route, or to resign themselves to the fact that they’re going to have to put up with multiple apps on their phones. Fortunately, there is a better way, with many smart home manufacturers now turning to If This Then That (IFTTT) to provide a way to make disparate products work together, by letting them communicate through a third-party service. Even better, it’s entirely free and you can sign up for your own account at www.ifttt.com. IFTTT is built around recipes, which make smart things happen in your home. The ‘if this’ part is known as a…

Managing separate email accounts Q I’m using Outlook 2007 to manage a number of email addresses that I have. I want each address to have its own Inbox, Sent items, Deleted items and so on, and to be able to arrange the addresses in the order that makes most sense to me. Is there a way to do this using Outlook? The emails currently all come to the same folders and I have to sort them manually. It’s also a pain having to change the ‘From’ address every time so I’m replying using the appropriate name and email address. Jacky Spence A The reason your email addresses are mixed up is that in Outlook 2007, POP3 accounts were installed by default to use the same set of folders. You need…

CONTACT LETTERS letters@computershopper.co.uk BACK OF THE Q I read David Ludlow’s article about Sky Q with interest (‘Q Tips’, Shopper 342), since I had wanted this system myself. But in inquiring about it, I discovered a serious flaw that David didn’t cover. I have two lodgers, and at the moment they have their own Sky+ HD 2TB box, while I have a second one in my sitting room and a third in my bedroom – a total of 6TB, all independent of one another. If I had Sky Q, the storage total would drop by two-thirds, and all the recordings would be in one place – mine and the lodgers’. So the space would fill up randomly, with no control on my part, and I would be searching through their…

Do you wish your computer was faster when booting and loading applications? Thanks to Crucial, you can achieve your dream of a faster PC or laptop with the BX200 SSD. The writer of our Star Letter will be awarded one of these solid-state devices, which can be installed in a desktop PC or a laptop. This fast SSD is 15 times faster than a hard disk, and will make your computer boot incredibly quickly and make applications load faster. With 480GB of storage, there’s plenty of room for Windows and all your apps, too.…

Mel Croucher RAVES It’s the end of the road for cash, and it’s good riddance to filthy lucre. Just be careful if you ever run out of credit… CASH IS DISGUSTING. Coins make protuberances in your pants and scratch your smartphone screen. Banknotes are impregnated with cocaine. The average banknote is home to 26,000 bacteria, and there are more germs on a £1 coin than on a toilet seat. Let’s face it folks, cash stinks. So I’m pleased to learn that electronic payments have just overtaken stinking cash payments in our enlightened society. Cash has had a pretty good run for its money for the past 3,500 years, but the forecast is that electronic transactions will soon wipe out cash altogether, and good riddance I say. And so says the…

DO WE REALLY NEED A FIFTH VERSION OF BLUETOOTH? The updated and upgraded version of the Bluetooth specification, which is being lined up for release, promises to make an already successful communications system better, faster and stronger. Bluetooth doesn’t seem to have the glamour of Wi-Fi, but as far as modern home connections go, it is a big feature. Thanks to fashionable technology this will only increase. WHEN’S IT COMING? The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) says that devices will start to arrive in 2017. You can probably guess where you are likely to come across it, particularly if you have been keeping an eye on recent releases. The 4.2 update to the specifications had an emphasis on the Internet of Things (IoT), and it’s predicted that billions of connected…

£169 • From www.motorola.co.uk VERDICT With its blinding speed, excellent camera and superb battery life, the Moto G4 is the best budget smartphone yet HOW DO YOU beat the Moto G? Many budget smartphones have tried and failed over the years to claim the Moto’s throne, with only a few even coming close. This year, though, Motorola has made sure that even the second-best budget smartphones don’t even come anywhere near its brand-new Moto G4, as its specs are simply beyond belief for something that costs just £169 SIM-free. It’s so good, in fact, that it effectively eliminates nearly every mid-range smartphone of the last six months – including Motorola’s own Moto X Play (Shopper 335) – as the G4’s octa-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor and 2GB of RAM…

£230 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT The new Chromebook 14 has been improved in all the right ways, but its mediocre display is still a sticking point YOU COULD ALMOST mistake HP’s new Chromebook 14 for its similarly named 2014 predecessor. Both have a neat, white exterior and flashes of sky blue along the side, but open the laptops up and the differences quickly become apparent. Whereas the last model had only a sky-blue finish around the lid, the new Chromebook 14 is now blue throughout, giving it a more eye-catching, vibrant finish with a pleasant pattern design around the keyboard tray. Overall, the Chromebook 14 feels well constructed, despite its copious amounts of plastic. It’s a little lighter than its predecessor, at 1.69kg to the former’s 1.9kg, and it’s also…

£350 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT The Huawei MediaPad M2 10.0 looks fantastic, has loud speakers and a decent camera, too THERE ARE PLENTY of quality Android tablets around, and now Huawei’s having a go with the MediaPad M2 10.0. This 10.1in tablet comes in two versions, but there’s little difference between them. The £250 base model has 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, while the £350 model on test here comes with 3GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, as well as a stylus and a protective case. Otherwise, both models share the same design, screen resolution and CPU. There’s no microSD slot on either, so if you’re keen on topping up on apps, go for the 64GB model. Whichever you choose, the M2 isn’t adept at playing games.…

£599 • From www.jessops.com VERDICT Responsive, feature-packed and good value, this has nearly everything you’d want from a compact camera THE GX80 IS the fourth model in Panasonic’s GX series of CSCs, and it’s also the most affordable to date at £599 with a 12-32mm kit lens. It sits below the GX8, with various slimmed-down features and a price that’s £400 lower than the GX8 was at launch. The controls have been pared back compared to the GX8; there’s no dedicated exposure compensation dial or manual focus switch, though the former is still quickly accessible, by pressing and spinning the rear command dial. Single auto, full-time auto and manual focus are accessed via the Q menu, or can be reassigned to the customisable buttons, but there’s no labelled switch. Videographers…

£240 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT Impressive image quality and an easy-to-use interface, but this curved, 1080p screen costs too much IT SEEMS THAT curved monitors, far from being a gimmick, are here to stay. Considering the C27F591FDU has only 1,920x1,080 pixels, rather than the 2,560x1,440 resolution that is increasingly common on 27in screens, it’s a surprisingly expensive addition to the pile, though its 72Hz refresh rate is higher than most and makes for slightly smoother motion in games and in desktop applications. The screen’s 1.8-metre radius curve (if you were sitting at the centre of a complete ring of these monitors, they would be 1.8m away from you) is a little tighter than the 2m curves of screens such as the AOC C3583FQ (Shopper 342) and BenQ XR3501 (page 42),…

£70 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT This set of Bluetooth cans is a fine follow-up to the original Grind, but its media controls can be fiddly THE ORIGINAL SKULLCANDY Grind was great value, offering excellent sound and build quality for £40. The Skullcandy Grind Wireless swaps the 3.5mm cable for Bluetooth – albeit for a notably higher £70. However, it’s still competitively priced, and has the same great design and build quality as its predecessor. The metal headband is well padded, and a small indentation in the centre conforms to the top of your head. The earcups are comfy, and we found the headband didn’t press down during longer listening sessions. The earcups have only a small amount of horizontal swivel, but this wasn’t really an issue. It would have been…

£453 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT Fantastic running costs aside, the Epson EcoTank ET-14000 is an underwhelming A3 inkjet EPSON’S ECOTANK PRINTERS do away with conventional ink cartridges in favour of large fixed tanks, which you fill up with big bottles of ink. It’s a great way to reduce packaging and lower running costs, particularly if you need to print often, or print out lots of graphics – usually an expensive undertaking on an inkjet. These are exactly the kind of jobs Epson has in mind for the EcoTank ET-14000, an A3 inkjet aimed at moderate office and home office use. At more than 70cm across, this is one of the widest consumer printers we’ve seen, partly thanks to those ink tanks, which are contained in a small unit that hooks…

£64 • From www.watercoolinguk.co.uk VERDICT Arctic’s first foray into closed-loop CPU cooling successfully beats the heat ALL-IN-ONE liquid coolers were always a smart idea: the superior performance of a watercooler, devoid of any serious maintenance requirements and compressed into a manageable form factor that anyone with two hands and a screwdriver can install. What’s not to like? Not much, according to Arctic. After having entered the liquid GPU cooler market last year, it has produced its first AIO CPU coolers: the Liquid Freezer 120 and this, the Liquid Freezer 240 (which, as you can imagine, has a larger 240mm radiator compared to its sibling’s 120mm). It’s a fairly late debut – AIO or ‘closed loop’ coolers have been around for a few years now – but considering Arctic’s success in…

£26 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Brilliant, gory fun, Doom sets a new standard for fast-paced first-person shooters IT’S BEEN OVER 10 years since we last saw a new Doom game blast its way on to our PCs, but id Software’s classic shooter is finally back in all its monstrous glory. This isn’t simply a remake of the original Doom, though, even if the rust-coloured husk of the UAC’s Mars space station forms a familiar-looking backdrop. Instead, this loose reboot is all about rediscovering what Doom does best, and that’s delivering fistfuls of super shotgun shells into the warped faces of hell’s finest demons. With its fleet-footed combat and lively set of adversaries, Doom is about as far removed from Doom 3’s slow, survival horror tendencies as it can get. Gone…

Chat and Communication UPDATED Evernote 6.1.2 Store your notes, ideas and plans in the cloud, and synchronise them between computers. UPDATED Mailbird 2.3.15 A free desktop email client for Windows. UPDATED Miranda IM 0.10.52 Chat with friends across multiple messaging platforms, including AIM, Facebook, IRC and MSN, all from one simple interface. UPDATED Skype for Windows 7.24 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 0.2.936 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…

£35 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Amazon Fire TV Stick excels if you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber THE FIRE TV Stick is no larger than a USB flash drive. It has an HDMI connection on one end for plugging into your TV, and a microUSB port on the other for power. If your TV’s USB ports are powerful enough, you can use them to power the Fire TV Stick; you won’t be able to update the firmware, though, so we recommend using the supplied USB power adaptor. An HDMI extender is also included, which could be useful if your TV’s HDMI ports are packed closely together. We had no issues with wireless connectivity during our testing but you may find the extender cuts down on interference from your television. The…

£30 • From store.google.com VERDICT The latest and greatest Chromecast is a cheap way to add smart functionality to your TV WHEN THE GOOGLE Chromecast was first released in 2013, it was the cheapest and easiest way to give your TV a smart boost. At £30 it was an enticing device that made getting content on to your big screen a breeze. Google’s latest Chromecast comes in a slightly different form factor, with improved networking performance thanks to 802.11ac Wi-Fi support. As the small dongle doesn’t require lots of messy cables and it’s all controlled via Wi-Fi, the Chromecast can be tucked neatly out of view. Setting up couldn’t be easier. To start with you just plug the device’s HDMI connector straight into a spare port on the back of…

£117 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Doko provides remote access to your PC, but its execution is poor for gaming THE LIVING ROOM is unquestionably the focus when it comes to gaming right now, even for PC manufacturers. Playing games and watching movies can be infinitely more comfortable when you’re sitting on the sofa rather than stooped over a desk – although this doesn’t necessarily mean building a small-form factor PC that will fit in the AV cabinet in your living room. This, of course, is where a streaming device comes in. Just as the Google Chromecast can beam in video and audio content, products and services such as the Nvidia Shield Android TV and Steam’s built-in streaming feature can be used to stream games from your main PC to…

£100 • From www.fitbit.com VERDICT Well designed in every respect – it may not be feature-packed, but this is still a good buy THE ALTA CONTINUES the modular theme seen in previous Fitbit devices, with the device interchangeable with different strap colours and types. You can swap in a solid metal bangle, but the standard rubber strap is the sweet spot – it looks good, wraps around the wrist nicely, and is comfortable to wear. The Alta is dominated by an OLED display. This is much larger and easier to read than the examples on the Fitbit Charge and Charge HR, and the Flex doesn’t have a display at all. The display can be configured in various formats to suit the individual – you can have the information displayed in…

£90 • From buy.garmin.com VERDICT The Vivofit 3 has a huge one-year battery life, but we’d rather charge an alternative instead GARMIN HAS GONE a long way to ensure that the Vivofit 3 at least looks different to its predecessors; instead of the display running along the length of the device leaving you to hold your wrist at a jaunty angle to read it, the Vivofit 3 display can be read in a far more natural way, just like a normal watch. The downside of the change in orientation is that the screen is much smaller. But despite its reduced size it’s easy to read, essentially making the Vivofit 3 a viable everyday wristwatch as well as a fitness tracker. A large button below the screen cycles through all the…

£80 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT It has a stylish design and a great app, but the Jawbone UP3 can’t outrun the competition THE FIRST THING you’ll notice about the UP3 is that the simplistic yet comfortable design of the UP devices has been abandoned. No longer is the UP a flexible bangle that wraps around your wrist; it now has a traditional strap, with an adjustable clasp. The reason for this change is so that the UP3 can measure your heart rate, which means the integrated sensors in the strap need to have snug contact with your skin. It’s this heart-rate measurement that sets the UP3 apart from the UP24 before it, especially now a firmware update has allowed it to measure your ‘passive’ heart rate during the day instead…

£130• From buy.myzone.org VERDICT It doesn’t count your steps or track your sleep, but the MZ-3 is an accurate and fun heart-rate monitor YOU MAY NOT have heard of MyZone before, but this US-based company has just started selling its heart-rate tracking devices in the UK. The MZ-3 is a heart-rate sensor that snaps into a chest strap, which itself has built-in heart-monitoring electrodes intended to provide more accurate measurements of your workout than your typical wrist-based fitness tracker or smartwatch. The idea behind the MZ-3 is simple. You exercise with the chest strap – be it running, rowing, cycling or whatever gets your heart racing – and earn points based on your beats-per-minute measurement. These can then be used to improve your rank within the MyZone app, compete with…

SMART HOME TECHNOLOGY has the potential to make your life better and save you lots of cash. But there are plenty of pitfalls to watch out for, not least over-priced technology that doesn’t deliver on what it promises, and products that just won’t work together, meaning a whole lot of integration hassles or starting again from scratch. So here’s our comprehensive guide to getting a smart house or flat with the minimum cost and fuss, covering everything from installation tips and the best smart kit to buy to making sure it’s all compatible.…

GETTING A TRULY smart home has usually been something reserved for the rich and famous, turning to custom installers to build a complete system from scratch. Today, the technology exists for the hobbyist to do the same thing on a much lower budget. With so much kit out there, it’s possible to completely configure your home to do exactly what you want it to do. The bigger problem is trying to work out what kit you need to buy and then making sensible choices so that your smart home is actually useful, rather than just a clever demonstration of what technology can do. That’s where we can help, as our house has been a guinea pig for a lot of smart home kit. It’s a mish-mash of different systems, because…

PC is ticking me off Q I am having a rather strange problem with my computer: I turn it on, it boots as normal and runs the POST checks. The mouse and keyboard light up, then the internal speaker starts to make a rather fast clicking sound, a bit like a failing hard disk. It’s a five-year-old system based on a Gigabyte GA-870A-UD-3 motherboard, with four Corsair Vengeance DIMMs, a Sapphire Nitro Radeon R7 370 graphics card, a 250GB Seagate hard disk, an independently powered external 1.5TB disk and a Corsair GS800 PSU. I have tried dismantling the whole lot to check for damage. The components and power supply all look OK, and according to my power supply tester the PSU voltages are all still good. I took the system…

clive@computershopper.co.uk DROPBOX IS UNDENIABLY useful, so much so that Microsoft tightly integrated the OneDrive competitor into Windows 10. But what do you do when you hit your online storage limit? You must either delete files you might still need, spread your data across multiple services, or fork out a monthly fee. But hang on – isn’t storage meant to be cheap these days? So why does Dropbox charge £8 a month for up to 1TB of storage when a 2TB hard disk only costs £50 and should last at least five years? Connect that hard disk to the internet and you’ll save yourself over £400. STORAGE HUNTER We’re going to use an old Synology DS211j (circa 2011) to show that a DIY Dropbox service needn’t cost any money at all.…