Sommaire pour September 2017 de Computer Shopper

THIS MONTH, we’re bringing you a comprehensive guide to getting your PC in the best shape possible. We’ve covered everything from more basic fixes such as removing annoying programs and performing a Windows refresh, to more advanced projects for the adventurous reader, such as adding an M.2 SSD or more RAM. Our step-by-step guide will boost your PC, whether it’s years old or brand new. Buying or building a new machine is often assumed to be the only way to get optimum performance. But even for those lucky enough to have a shiny new PC on their desk, it’s worth going through these steps as there are some that will fine-tune even new models, making sure you get rid of any unwanted programs or bloatware. So for those of you…

Crucial cuts Just a couple of notes on your laptop upgrade guide (Shopper 353). It felt a bit like I was reading a thinly veiled advert for Crucial. While I appreciate the usability of Crucial’s software (I used it myself many moons ago), for older laptops with DDR3 I think it would have been good to point out that buying second-hand SODIMMs from eBay is likely to be a good bit cheaper. I did this to build a couple of Frankenstein machines, never had any problems and got these bits dirt cheap. You could use CPU-Z to get the speeds and type of RAM, or better yet just check the installed type on the flap on the bottom (or use Crucial’s software). Also, with regards to installing an SSD on…

ACCORDING TO GARTNER, the analyst firm, there will be 8.3 billion Internet of Things (IoT) devices in 2017, rapidly rising to 20.4 billion by 2020. When we think of IoT devices, our minds wander to consumer products: security cameras, alarm systems, smart lightbulbs and the like. Indeed, this area is going to be the biggest, with 5.2 billion devices connecting this year. As big as consumer IoT devices are, that means there are three billion-odd business devices, and growing. Don’t think of this as just products installed in a corporate environment, but products used by a business. F-Secure recently told us that it believes the future of IoT will be split down the middle, with many products likely to have an internet connection solely for the manufacturer’s purposes. For example,…

▸ For the wallet Nostalgia is a big part of what makes the new Nokia 3310 so appealing; it may be thinner and lighter than the iconic 2000 handset, but the curved buttons and convex body shape bring us right back to one of the most successful and indestructible mobile phones in history. It’s still a feature phone, not an app-friendly Android remake, but for £49 (and with potentially several days of battery life), it’s well suited as a backup device. Besides, Nokia has not skimped on modern updates, with features such as the added rear camera and bright 2.4in colour display. (Page 46) ▸ For the shelf We put the BlackBerry KEYone here with a caveat: if you’re already inclined towards phones with physical keyboards, or BlackBerry in general,…

£1,463 • From store.hp.com/uk VERDICT A potent Intel Xeon workstation in a tiny package, but some practicality has been left behind WHEN WE THINK of workstations – not simply PCs you might use for work, but systems tailor-made for highly technical professional applications – we tend to think of either enormous desktop towers or back-breakingly bulky laptops. HP’s Z2 Mini G3 has different ideas. It’s a true mini PC, measuring just 216x216x58mm, so it stands a good chance of having an even smaller footprint on your desk than your monitor stand. And that’s just when it’s laying flat – it can also be tipped on its side, so it takes up even less room. What’s more, the insides of this tiny computer have some highly respectable workstation credentials. The Z2…

£73 • From www.shop.bt.com VERDICT It’s not entirely an SSD-beater, but Optane Memory succeeds in wrangling solid-state speeds out of an old hard disk CONVENTIONAL WISDOM DICTATES that the ideal PC storage setup – the sweet spot between performance and affordability – is an SSD master drive with a mechanical hard disk providing extra capacity. It makes perfect sense: you get a few hundred gigabytes of solid-state storage to keep Windows and some choice applications nice and responsive, while a terabyte or two of HDD space takes care of big files, which don’t suffer so much from slower read and write speeds. Intel’s Optane technology heralds the biggest challenge to this approach in years. It’s based on 3D XPoint, a new kind of non-volatile memory co-developed by Intel and Micron…

£547 • From www.cclonline.com VERDICT You’ll need a powerful graphics card, but this is a great monitor for 4K gaming 4K GAMING IS in its infancy, but if you have a PC that can handle it, the 27in ViewSonic XG2700-4K may grab your attention. It’s not particularly cheap or attractive, with wide bezels and a basic plastic stand. However, you can adjust height, tilt and rotation, and if you need even more flexibility there’s a VESA mount on the rear. The retractable headphone mount is a nice touch. As for connectivity, you get three HDMI ports, a DisplayPort and Mini DisplayPort, four USB3 ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The touch-sensitive controls at the front are poorly labelled so using the OSD is a pain, but at least you get…

£152 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT An impressive NAS with exceptional performance and a huge range of features SYNOLOGY’S NAS DEVICES have impressed Shopper for years, with their excellent hardware and software making a winning combination. This year’s entry-level DS216J shows just why the DiskStation products are so good, shipping with a range of features that put some high-end models from other manufacturers to shame. SLIPPED DISK As with all of Synology’s products, the DS216J is a barebones model, which means you need to fit your own hard disks. Taking the side off is easy, as it’s screwless, but the internal drive bays require you to attach the disks using screws. It’s a shame that this part hasn’t been overhauled to include screwless drive bays. Still, a little bit of hassle…

£42 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A cheap 4K Android media player, but it can be a bit fiddly to use WHEN WE TRY out media streamers in Computer Shopper, they typically come from the big companies, such as Amazon and Apple. However, deviate from these giants and you can find some media streamers with rather impressive-sounding specs for a fraction of the price. Take the Seguro Trongle X4. For about the same price as the latest Amazon Fire TV Stick, you get a set-top box running Android 6.0 Marshmallow that’s capable of outputting a 4K picture, complete with HDR. On the face of it, that’s staggering value. Cheap products often have a budget look and feel to them, but the Trongle X4 is refreshingly clear of these usual hangups. It’s…

£499 • From www.carphonewarehouse.com VERDICT A good choice for those that want a physical keyboard, but this phone is underpowered for the price THE DECLINE OF the BlackBerry brand has been well documented, meaning new handsets such as the KEYone have their work cut out. Combining a signature physical keyboard with a more modern touchscreen and Android 7.1, the KEYone is highly practical, but in terms of looks it doesn’t get off on the right foot. It’s a dumpy 9.4mm thick and, despite only having a 4.5in screen, stretches 72mm across and 149mm top to toe. The keyboard is mainly to blame for this, but BlackBerry could have shaved off a little more. It’s heavy, too, at 180g. Elsewhere, it’s fairly run of the mill. The right edge accommodates a…

£67 • From www.printernet.co.uk VERDICT The Pixma TS5050 is a smart-looking MFP with good all-round performance THE PIXMA TS5050 is one of Canon’s latest additions to its home colour MFP range. The curved edges and attractive, squat design make it look more like fancy audio-visual kit than something as mundane as a multifunction peripheral, but an MFP it is: it can print, scan and copy, and you can connect to and share it across your home Wi-Fi network. It’s also great to see that Canon has made the TS5050 less fiddly to use than previous generations: the combination of a colour 3in display and redesigned controls are a definite improvement, and Canon has finally ditched its confusing mix of separate selection buttons and direction rocker. Now you just get simple…

£95 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT For anything other than printing photos, Epson’s WorkForce WF-3620DWF is a fantastic home or small-office MFP THE WORKFORCE WF-3620DWF is one of the more affordable examples of Epson’s home-office-orientated inkjet MFPs. For less than £100, this comes pretty close to a standard home inkjet like the Canon Pixma TS5050 in terms of affordability. Admittedly, one of its more businessfriendly features is a fax modem, which is a couple of decades late to being an essential inclusion, but otherwise it’s as modern and practical as you’d like. More useful features include wired and wireless networking, and duplex printing, scanning, copying and faxing. There’s also a 35-sheet automatic document feeder, and USB, SD and Memory Stick slots, so you can scan to or print from an inserted…

£256 • From www.ballicom.co.uk VERDICT Kyocera’s P5026cdw is a capable colour laser that turns out decent results without breaking the bank THESE DAYS, EVERYONE likes to put ‘eco’ in their product names, but Kyocera’s Ecosys printers have a fair claim to being slightly better for the environment. The series’ photoconductor drums are made from a ceramic (hence the ‘cera’ in Kyocera), giving them a longer service life than you’d find elsewhere. The drum on the P5026cdw is guaranteed for the earliest of three years or 100,000 prints – two or three times what we’d expect from a conventional equivalent. In other ways, the P5026cdw is a completely typical small office colour laser. It can connect via USB and wired or wireless networks, has a front panel USB slot for walk-up…

FIRST-TIMERS: MISFIT Ray Not that any of the devices covered here are built specifically with existing wearable converts in mind, but the Misfit Ray’s simplicity and affordability make it perfect for anyone merely looking to dip their toes in fitness tracking. At £50, it’s about half the price of Fitbit’s entry-level models, and you’re getting all the essentials you’d need; that includes accurate step- and sleep-tracking, plus an app with a detailed breakdown of your exercise and food intake data. Battery life is seldom a concern, too, as the disposable 393-type cells can keep it going for half a year. GENERAL FITNESS: FITBIT Charge 2 True, the Charge 2 is only showerproof rather than waterproof, and it doesn’t have built-in GPS, so you’re stuck with your smartphone if you want…

£100 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Misfit Phase has the design of a classic watch but with a fitness tracker built in – and serves both purposes well SMARTWATCHES AND FITNESS trackers almost always focus more on the ‘smart’ and tracker elements than the watch part. What you don’t really get with devices such as the Apple Watch Series 2 or Fitbit Alta HR, then, is the feel of a traditional analogue watch with a long-lasting battery. Enter the Misfit Phase, with the looks and style of a more classic timepiece along with a rather impressive (for a smartwatch, anyway) six-month battery life. When you need to replace the battery, you just use the plastic tool included in the box. The Phase display is made from stainless steel and aluminium,…

£129 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Fitbit has supercharged its stylish Alta with heart-rate tracking, but it’s got tough competition SITTING BETWEEN THE step-tracking Alta and the big-screened Charge 2, the Alta HR brings heart-rate monitoring to Fitbit’s most compact wearable yet. In terms of design, the Fitbit Alta HR looks almost identical to the standard Alta. There’s the same thin, rectangular monochrome OLED display that lets you cycle between the available stats with a firm tap on the screen, and the rubber strap can be quickly and easily swapped out for a new one. The bad news is that Fitbit has created another proprietary charger that isn’t compatible with the standard Alta, and at £17 a pop, you’d better not lose it. The only physical differences to the standard Alta…

£50 • From www.misfit.com VERDICT It my have a basic feature set, but this featherweight fitness tracker is ideal for entry-level fitness fans THE OLD MISFIT Shine was rather bulky for a dedicated fitness tracker, but thankfully the newer Ray is something we’d be much more inclined to wear on a daily basis. It’s a beautifully minimalist aluminium cylinder with a comfortable plastic strap, and with a meagre 8g weight, we often forgot we even had it on. There’s a single LED mounted in the Ray, which is designed to convey a variety of information, but it’s unlikely that you’ll remember what all the different combinations of flashes and colours actually mean. Depending on how much data and detail you want readily accessible from the tracker, this might be an…

Mechanical hard disks may rule when it comes to storage space, but they lag far behind solid-state disks (SSDs) when it comes to performance. If you want your computer to boot in seconds and load applications in a flash, upgrading to an SSD is the perfect upgrade. We recommend this for Windows 10 PCs only, as Windows 7 needs a fair amount of configuration to make it play nicely with solid-state storage. Installing Windows 10 from scratch is the easiest method for adding an SSD, but you can clone your old disk to your new SSD if the used storage space on your disk is the same size or smaller than an SSD, which is unlikely. A clean install gets round this, although it means reinstalling your applications and copying…

Madeline Bennett The built-in steps tracker on my phone – a quick way to check my daily count, but easy to ignore on lazy days David Ludlow Running away from robots that have become sentient will be the only exercise in the future Nathan Spendelow The 7 Minute Workout app – the fact I haven’t used it in over 100 days is motivation enough James Archer I bought a salad with contactless once, does that count? Dave Neal My fitness band, because I always have to search high and low for it Roland Moore-Colyer Instagram: all the pictures of smashed avocado and selfies of toned bodies guilt me into healthy eating… sometimes Simon Handby Our two baby monitors get me up and down the stairs plenty…

≫ Use secret Windows apps and tools Windows 10 is packed with useful tools and apps, but many are hidden or not even enabled. We guide you through the backways of Microsoft’s OS to find the best secrets. ≫ Laptop buying guide We round up the 20 latest, best-value and innovative laptops and 2-in-1s, so you can pick your perfect device for going back to school, college or work after the summer. ≫ Tech sports Tech isn’t just helping traditional sportsmen, it’s creating its own sports, too. Tune in next month for the best in robot fights, eSports, drone racing and more. COMPUTER SHOPPER ISSUE 356 ON SALE IN NEWSAGENTS FROM 10th AUGUST…

1 Encryption The European Union wants to ban encryption backdoors 2 Electronic car recruitment Jaguar is working with trendy band Gorillaz to create an innovative tool to recruit 5,000 staff 3 Remote Scottish communities Hard-to-reach parts of Scotland, Altnaharra and Skerray in the Highlands, are on a high-speed fibre trial with BT 4 Delicate relations Nokia and Apple have settled all litigation related to their intellectual property dispute and have agreed a multi-year patent licence…

BT Openreach uses Heath Robinson tactics to fire up remote broadband TECHNOLOGY FIRM BT is sending its fibre engineers out to remote parts of the country with fishing rods and wellington boots in an attempt to get to some of the hardest to reach places. Northumberland will be swathed in Openreach engineers as BT looks to plug another rural gap, and some will be using fancy new technology including a ‘Mole plough’ that can dig and lay cables, and then clean up after itself. In other instances less technical solutions, such as the casting of a fishing rod, have been used to get a cable across a river. Around 90% of Northumberland now has access to superfast broadband, according to BT. This is despite some atypical obstacles, including Hadrian’s Wall…

£1,549 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A great Windows laptop becomes even better with an updated processor and longer battery life LAST YEAR’S XPS 15 (Shopper 338) was close to being a perfect Windows 10 laptop, and now, like the XPS 13 (Shopper 351), it’s had an Intel Kaby Lake refresh. Wisely, the new XPS 15 doesn’t deviate from the looks of its predecessor, sticking with the same smooth carbon fibre and aluminium combo, plus the tiny bezels of Dell’s 15.6in InfinityEdge display. It might not be as petite or as commuter-friendly as the XPS 13, but it’s well worth it for those added inches of screen real estate. While there’s a lack of outright design improvements, the XPS 15 remains a beautiful laptop. Its gun-metal body still tapers towards the…

£128 • From www.novatech.co.uk VERDICT This eye-catching motherboard is perfect for unlocking the potential of a Kaby Lake CPU THE TOMAHAWK ARCTIC is only the third full-ATX, Z270 chipset-compatible motherboard to find its way into these pages, but the other two – the Asus Prime Z270-A (Shopper 350) and MSI’s own Z270 SLI Plus (Shopper 352) have both proven to be top-quality partners for a 7th-gen Intel Kaby Lake CPU. They cost roughly the same, too, floating around the £130-£140 range. Why, then, should you consider this one instead? Let’s start with perhaps the most frivolous reason: it looks excellent. Style points aren’t generally worth much when you’re talking about a component that sits not only within a PC case, but is half-buried under multiple other parts and cables, and…

£344 • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT A feature-packed 2,560x1,440 monitor, but image quality could be better THE PROLITE XUB2792QSU-B1 packs in a huge amount for just shy of £350. Very few 27in, 2,560x1,440 IPS monitors can claim to have a price this low, so it’s good value right off the bat, but Iiyama hasn’t skimped in making this a winning combination of pin-sharpness, ergonomics and connectivity. The XUB2792QSU-B1 has an edge-to-edge screen, with only the bottom edge having a full size bezel. This makes it easier to create almost seamless multi-monitor setups. The adjustable stand feels nice and solid, free from wobble. The screen can rise up and down by 130mm, spin into portrait mode, and tilt from 22° up to 5° down, so you should have no problems getting comfortable…

£1,700 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT Packed with professional features, the GH5 is the new standard bearer for filmmakers PANASONIC’S GH SERIES of compact system cameras (CSCs) have been hugely popular with amateur and independent filmmakers ever since the GH1 burst on to the scene in 2009. The GH4 made the leap to 4K in 2014, and with its outstanding picture quality, sublime ergonomics and a bumper set of features for both video and stills, there still hasn’t been much to challenge it – at least not at this price. The GH5 ups the ante yet again. It offers 4K (3,840x2,160) video at frame rates up to 60fps, either for high frame-rate footage or for slow-motion playback at 24, 25 or 30fps. Meanwhile, 1080p capture is at frame rates up to…

£49 • From www.tesco.com VERDICT Nokia’s magnum opus is back with a lightweight design, a budget price and, of course, Snake CAST YOUR MIND back to the turn of the century and you’ll recall a familiar handset crammed in most pockets: Nokia’s 3310. Having since achieved cult status for its near-indestructability, the 3310 was trusty, reliable and incredibly resilient. Now, 17 years later, the most beloved phone in history is making a comeback. The new 3310 serves as an homage to the coveted handset of old, keeping Nokia’s signature simplicity while modernising the handset for 2017. As such, while the new 3310 is clearly inspired by the old 3310’s design, there are several key differences. REVERSE AGEING For starters, this 3310 is, crucially, a fair bit smaller and lighter than…

£650 • www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT With its great looks and spanking new processor, the HTC U11 is a welcome return to form THESE DAYS IT’S becoming ever more difficult for smartphone manufacturers to build products that stand out, but HTC has managed to do just that with the HTC U11’s squeezable frame. This, claims the firm, will change the way we use our smartphones; a development on the same level as the capacitive touchscreen. This is hyperbole, as we’ll soon discover, but this is still a smartphone of rare distinction. Its glassy, glossy two-tone finish means it looks like no other handset, and its camera is on par with that of the Google Pixel XL (Shopper 347) and Samsung Galaxy S8 (Shopper 353). It’s a little cheaper than the S8, too,…

£345 • From www.printernet.co.uk VERDICT Brother’s DCP-L8410CDW isn’t perfect, but it’s a quick and versatile MFP THE DCP-L8410CDW SITS in the middle of Brother’s new range of colour laser multifunction peripherals, and has almost everything a small office needs. It supports wired and wireless networks, has a 31-pageper- minute duplex printer, and a 50-page automatic document feeder (ADF) for scans and copies. There’s a 6.8cm colour touchscreen, supplemented by dedicated numeric keys for easy inputs, and below it there’s a USB port for direct scan and print jobs. It’s a good specification at this price; the only omissions are faxing and duplex scanning, both of which are available further up the range. BULK BUY There’s not much you can do to disguise the heft of a colour laser MFP, and…

£135 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Pixma TS8050 is swift, flexible and produces great creative results – and so it should, at this price THE TS8050 IS almost the top model in Canon’s revised range of Pixma inkjet multifunction peripherals, and it has the price to prove it. For the money you get a highly specified device with a creative bias: its scanner can stretch to 2,400 dots per inch (dpi), capturing four times as much detail as the more frequently found 1,200dpi, while its printer has a claimed maximum resolution of 9,600x2,400dpi. That’s the highest you’ll find among consumer inkjets. It’s well specified elsewhere, too, with two paper trays, double-sided printing as standard, Wi-Fi and SD card support, plus a smartphone-like touchscreen dominating its glossy front panel. Alongside is…

£200 • www.ebuyer.com VERDICT If you’ve ever had separation anxiety for an inkjet MFP, HP’s portable OfficeJet 250 is for you WE’RE ALL USED to computing on the move, but if we want to print, scan or copy a document it’s usually time to head home. Where that’s really not an option, HP’s OfficeJet 250 provides a solution: it’s a tiny, portable, colour inkjet MFP. It’s perfectly specified for mobile work – there’s a colour touchscreen, support for wireless and Bluetooth networking, and a lithium-ion battery included as standard. HP has done a fine job with this MFP’s design. It’s fashioned from the usual matt-black plastic, but it’s thick stuff that ought to withstand a few knocks. A lid keeps dust out of the paper feeds and when open creates…

£108 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Tiny, cheap, and quick to print, Ricoh’s SP 150SUw is a great little mono laser MFP for light home use IF YOU THINK laser printers belong only in the office, Ricoh’s SP 150SUw is here to convince you otherwise. For a start, it’s tiny – about the size of two loaves of bread side by side – but it’s also an all-in-one device that’s able to print, scan and make copies. The SP S150SUw’s diminutive stature doesn’t leave much room for fancy features. It’s mono only; if you want to print on both sides of the page you’ll have to do it manually; and the only controls are a power switch and a button that makes single photocopies. Its 50-sheet paper input tray is basic,…

£369 • From www.apple.com/uk VERDICT It might look the same as the first model, but the Apple Watch Series 2 makes improvements in all the right places THE ORIGINAL APPLE Watch was, once it had had a few software upgrades, a rather successful device. In fact, we had one on our wrists from launch, and it became our watch of choice, using it to check notifications, keep up to date with calendar appointments and pay for things in shops with Apple Pay (it still surprises some people when you do that). A year and a half later, it was high time that Apple went back to the drawing board to see if it could improve upon the original. The result is, well, a Watch Series 2 that looks exactly like…

£196 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Moto 360 Sport has the makings of a great fitness watch hybrid, but its design and inaccurate GPS limit its appeal BEFORE THE MISFIT Phase showed up, the Moto 360 Sport had already attempted to bridge the gap between smartwatches and fitness trackers. With the Android Wear operating system, as well as 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 like the perfect combination for those after something a bit more watch-like than your average band. In reality, though, it stumbles over a number of hurdles. First, the strap may be comfortable – as well as a more logical choice than metal or leather for wiping off sweat…

£110 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Heart-rate monitoring and five-day battery life come in a top-notch fitness tracker package THE CHARGE 2 is another fitness tracker that shows Fitbit’s eye for simplicity and stylishness. Not that it’s a totally basic model; taking the place of the Fitbit Charge and Charge HR, the Charge 2 was the cheapest wearable in Fitbit’s 2016 line-up to include a heart-rate monitor. The Charge 2 also adds some welcome refinements to the design of its predecessors. You get a markedly more comfortable 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 the…

£150 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Powered by Tizen and packing GPS capability, this slick tracker is well featured and easy to use SAMSUNG’S TIZEN OS isn’t just for casual smartwatches such as the Gear S3 – it’s also powering the Gear Fit2, an upmarket fitness tracker. Hardware-wise, it’s an attractive design. The little 128x432 touchscreen is bright and colourful, thanks to Super AMOLED technology, while the black rubber strap is tastefully low key – although if you’re looking for something more showy, you can snap it off and replace it with a range of coloured or metal bands from Samsung and third parties. The Fit2’s various menus can all be navigated with a swipe of the finger, but there’s also a pair of physical buttons on the side, for selecting…

Running proper security software will protect against most problems, but there’s a chance that hidden malware has found its way on to your system and is harming performance. Here we’ll show you how to give your PC a thorough going through, so that you can get rid of any hidden bad stuff. We recommend running proper security software, such as Kaspersky Internet Security, to block the really harmful stuff. However, your security suite may not stop all harmful software. Potentially Unwanted Programs (PUPs) are those bits of software installed alongside an application you want. We saw on page 111 how to prevent these applications installing, but the odds are that you may already have some PUPs on your system. Some PUPs are completely harmless, but others run in the background,…

TOP TIP Protect your memory RAM can be damaged by static, so touch something earthed (such as the unpainted part of a radiator) before you handle it. Increasing the amount of memory in your PC can make a huge difference. Simply put, more memory means that you can run more applications, or larger applications with ease. Newer operating systems can also be more resource-hungry. If you’ve recently updated to Windows 10, for example, and your PC is running slower than ever, RAM could well be the culprit. RAM keeps all the data your system is currently using in a volatile but immediately accessible state, making your PC run faster as a result. If you have too many programs open, you will start to run out of RAM and your PC…

Send your problems to businesshelp@computershopper.co.uk Protection brackets I’m writing my dissertation in Word 2010, and included citations in the text enclosed in angle brackets, so they appear: <Bloggs, F, Journal of Majorologies, 2015> I’ve now been told they should be included as endnotes rather than being within the text. There are hundreds of them scattered through the text; is there a way to convert them automatically to endnotes, either using some sort of Find and Replace that’s more sophisticated than I can come up with, or using a macro? Mary Phillipson The easiest way to do this is with a macro. All it has to do is to look through the text: .Text = "\<[!\>\<]{1,}\>" The confusing bit of the macro is the part that sets up the text to…

clive@computershopper.co.uk ‘AMAZE AND ASTOUND your friends and family by always knowing when they’re about to arrive!’ Or so would go the claims on the packaging were Shopper ever to get into the magic trick business. Instead, we’ll keep the hyperbole reasonably under control and show you how you can use a £10 Raspberry Pi to detect the imminent arrival of (almost) any friend or relative. What you do with that knowledge is up to you: we would like to think it’s because you’d always want to be at the door to greet loved ones with a smile, and an apparent air of calm and control. The first part of the magic trick is a Raspberry Pi Zero W, a £10 computer with built-in Wi-Fi. You’ll also need a case (add…

WHO’S HOME? As the output variable lists the MAC addresses of every device on your network, it’s fairly easy to change the focus of the Python script from who’s arriving to who is currently home. This might be useful if your kids tend to slink in and out without a word; you’ll be able to tell how many people to cook for without needing to bother them. Perhaps in years to come they’ll reminisce about your incredible psychic cookery abilities. Knowing who’s in and who’s out was the problem Rachel Gregory of Initial State solved in the article that inspired our piece (see tinyurl.com/355projects). Gregory streamed the results of her Python script to a website so that she could see who was currently in the Initial State office. If you’re…

letters@computershopper.co.uk Boom shakalaka Reading the enthusiastic and uncritical description of the UE Wonderboom (Shopper 354), I had the idle thought I often have when confronted with portable speaker reviews: isn’t it time for an SNP index for these products? No, not the Scottish National Party – Selfish Noise Pollution. You could rate them on how effective they were at driving innocent young families from the beach or your neighbour from her peaceful sunbathing. How about a closing sentence such as: “Yeah, some weirdos may want peace and quiet, but you can soon put a stop to that with the Goliath Noise Blaster. Ruin their day the Noise Blaster way!” When will magazines such as yours realise there are millions of people in this country who resent having their lives intruded…

Tech pioneer and all-round good egg letters@computershopper.co.uk I’VE GOT A great literary agent. His name is Henry. He lives in Manhattan. He represents all the Jason Bourne titles, and they’re worth around half a billion dollars. By way of contrast, the revenues generated from the titles I have written for him are worth bugger all. When Henry took me on, he told me that my fiction reads like Charles Dickens. I took this as a huge compliment, but now I see what he meant was my style is so old-fashioned that my readership died 150 years ago. In which case I have a problem. My problem is I have a publishing agreement for a quartet of novels, and I’ve only delivered one of them. So I need a rethink before…

Driverless cars get green light for UK road tests SAY WHAT? THE STREETS OF Milton Keynes and Coventry are soon to welcome a new kind of driver and a new kind of car. A car that doesn’t have a driver, unless you count artificial intelligence and robotics. The streets will see the largest road test in the country so far, as the government has awarded approval to the UK Autodrive project for real-world trials. UK Autodrive has already carried out a series of tests on a proving track in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. The trials were used to assess how rival companies’ cars communicate when out in the wild, how well they warn each other of their approaches and how well they cope with sudden breaking in poor visibility. “UK Autodrive is…

France Jaywalking warning Paris pedestrians are to get the fright of their lives thanks to interactive display boards that are designed to warn them about the dangers of jaywalking and give them a very real flavour of the negative consequences. If a walker wanders through a red light, they will be greeted with a blast from a horn and the screeching of towers. And if that isn’t bad enough, a photo – often of a shocked and terrified face – is also taken for posterity and posted on the display. France Fake face news An artist has gone to some lengths to get a computer-generated photograph of himself for his national ID card. Raphaël Fabre submitted the image of his face modelled using 3D software rather than a photo taken…

We never compromised the quality or relevance of the information we displayed. On the contrary, we improved it. That isn’t ‘favouring’ – that’s listening to our customers” Google reacts to EU criticism of its Shopping experience Three’s network should have been able to automatically divert emergency calls via backup routes in the event of a local outage. But these backup routes would also have failed because they were all directed through this one point” Ofcom slams Three with a £1.9m fine for emergency calls failure The Surface Laptop is not a laptop. It’s a glue-filled monstrosity. There is nothing about it that is upgradable or long-lasting, and it literally can’t be opened without destroying it” iFixit isn’t keen on Microsoft’s new laptop We’re not saying from a product view what…

£2,149 • From www.microsoft.com VERDICT It will devastate your bank account, but the redesigned Surface Pro is the technical pinnacle of Windows 2-in-1s IT’S BEEN NEARLY two years since we last saw a Windows 10 2-in-1 from Microsoft. That was the lovely Surface Pro 4 (Shopper 336), which despite spin-offs such as the Surface Book, Surface Laptop and Surface Studio hasn’t had a true replacement until now. That’s unusual for an industry where new models tend to appear on a yearly basis, sometimes to the week, yet even with this lengthy gap, the latest Surface Pro (the number suffix has been ditched) feels familiar. There’s the big, 12.3in touchscreen (again with a 2:3 aspect ratio), the angular shape, the magnetic keyboard connector underneath, the magnesium alloy construction, the huge, fully…

£1,500 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT There’s little to dislike about the Spectre x360 – it’s a classy laptop that will cope with almost any task HP HAS EXPERIENCED a resurgence of late, with high-end consumer laptops such as the Spectre 13 (Shopper 345) ranking among the most desirable you can buy. The Spectre x360 convertible keeps up the good work, running a 2.7GHz dual-core Kaby Lake Intel Core i7-7500U, 8GB of RAM, a fast 512GB PCI-E SSD and a discrete Nvidia GeForce 940MX GPU with 2GB of VRAM. This choice of an older graphics chip is odd, particularly when more recent alternatives such as the GTX 1050 and GTX 1060 have proven their superior power and efficiency. At the laptop’s native 3,840x2,160, we could only get 38fps out of Dirt…

£704 • From www.lambda-tek.com VERDICT A gorgeous-looking display with solid image quality, but colour accuracy could be better THE PHILLIPS 349X7FJEW has won a Red Dot Design award, and it’s not hard to see why: this ultra-wide 34in, 3,440x1,440 display looks fantastic. We’re not always fans of curved displays, but the 349X7FJEW’s gentle sweep looks absolutely gorgeous. The subtle curvature used here is enough to add a bit of design interest without distorting the picture. A glossy white frame neatly complements the screen, while its ultra-thin side and top bezels are barely visible. There are no buttons to ruin the front of the screen, with a single joypad behind the display. It’s easy enough to use this to navigate through menus. Then there’s the stand, with its silver prongs jutting…

£212 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT It offers hardcore encryption and protection, but this external hard disk is exceptionally expensive EXTERNAL HARD DRIVES are still the best way to transport a lot of data wherever you go, but security is a big issue. Lose or have a drive stolen, and all your precious data is available to a thief. Using software encryption is one option, but it makes an external drive less flexible, as you have to run an application on every device you connect to. Fortunately, iStorage has an alternative solution, baking in hardware encryption to the oddly named diskAshur Pro2. From the outside, the diskAshur Pro2 looks much like any other portable hard disk. It has a captive USB cable, which clips neatly into the side of the drive.…

£199 • From www.shop.bt.com VERDICT Excellent image quality and great Windows Hello performance, but a high price and iffy build quality let this camera down 4K HAS BEEN a bit of a slow burner, but there are signs that it’s starting to grow in popularity, with an increased number of TVs and monitors running at the resolution. Now, we have the world’s first 4K and High Dynamic Range (HDR) webcam, the Logitech Brio. With its rounded edges and slim design, the Brio certainly looks the part. It’s something of a shame, then, that the accompanying accessories are rather cheap. Take the monitor stand: this bit of rubber is designed to bend over the top of a screen, letting the Brio sit on top. It’s rather cheap looking, and not up…

£678 SIM-free; £30 on £52-per-month contract • From www.amazon.co.uk (SIM-free); www.vodafone.co.uk (contract) VERDICT An incredibly powerful and beautiful phone that makes optimum use of its size ON THE FACE of it, the Samsung Galaxy S8+ is merely a larger version of the excellent Galaxy S8 (Shopper 353). It has the same range of features as its little brother, and the same specs, with the notable exception of a rather massive 6.2in screen. On paper, that would seem to suggest that the S8+ is an enormous handset of rather epic proportions. However, when we first picked up the handset (provided by Vodafone for this review), it became clear that the S8+ feels a lot smaller and easier to hold that we’d expected it to be. With both the Galaxy S8 and…

£349 • From petertyson.co.uk VERDICT A small soundbar with remarkably big sound WE’VE NEVER SEEN a soundbar quite like the Polk Audio MagniFi Mini before. It’s absolutely tiny – no bigger than a large loaf of rustic bread – and it comes with a separate subwoofer shaped like an oversized air freshener. Despite its size, it packs in plenty of features, including Google Cast and Bluetooth support. The MagniFi Mini costs £250, which brings it into competition with the Orbitsound One P70 (Shopper 353), Q Acoustics M3 (Shopper 352) and the Yamaha MusicCast YAS-306 (Shopper 350), but the big contender is the superb Cambridge Audio TV2 soundbase (Shopper 353), which is £100 cheaper. The main advantage the MagniFi Mini brings to the table over most of its rivals is that…

Chat and Communication Evernote 6.4.2.3788 Store your notes, ideas and plans in the cloud, and synchronise them between computers. Mailbird 2.4.3.0 A free desktop email client for Windows. UPDATED Miranda IM 0.10.70 Chat with friends across multiple messaging platforms, including AIM, Facebook, IRC and MSN, all from one simple interface. UPDATED Skype for Windows 7.37.0.103 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. WhatsApp Desktop 0.2.4240 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 UPDATED iolo System Mechanic Free 16.5.3 Speed up your system…

£169 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT A versatile, A3-capable small office MFP with decent print and copy quality, but an underwhelming scanner THE MFC-J5730DW IS the middle model in Brother’s current range of MFPs aimed at small and home offices. It’s very well specified, supporting wired and wireless networking and walk-up scanning and printing. In particular it has great paper handling features, with a 50-sheet automatic document feeder supporting automatic duplex scanning and faxing. There’s duplex printing and copying, too. This MFP comes with two 250-sheet paper cassettes and a 100-sheet multipurpose feed at the rear. Although it’s only a little bigger than a regular A4 inkjet, all three of these can hold A3 paper, making it particularly versatile. We loaded A3 paper in the bottom tray, A4 in the top…

£200 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT In the ET-2600, Epson has fitted its brilliant EcoTank ink system to another humdrum MFP EPSON’S ET-2600 LOOKS like any other basic home MFP, but as an EcoTank printer there’s an important difference. It arrives with bottles containing enough ink for about two years’ worth of typical use, the contents of which go in four big tanks at the right-hand side. This model may be a modest update of the now-discontinued ET-2500, but Epson has greatly improved its ink tanks: properly integrated into the printer body, they no longer look like a bulky afterthought. The EcoTank system slashes typical inkjet print costs of around 7p per page. On the ET-2600, these fall to less than 0.5p per page, applicable only after you’ve used up the…

£110 • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT HP’s OfficeJet Pro 6960 is a capable home office MFP, but its scanner could be improved HP’S OFFICEJET PRO 6960 is a mid-range colour inkjet multifunction peripheral (MFP) that’s designed for home and small offices. At over £100 it’s fairly pricey, but the standard specification includes a three-year guarantee, automatic duplex printing, scanning, faxing and copying, and both wired and wireless networking. The only obvious omission is a USB host port for walk-up printing or scanning. This MFP’s design is typical of the latest generation of HP printers: all swoops and curved surfaces, and a colour touchscreen rather than the clutter of conventional buttons. It’s rather nice, but it’s not perfect: there’s a lot of sombre black plastic, and the 250-sheet paper input tray is…

£285 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT This 4G-ready smartwatch overcomes some fitness foibles with the aid of a brilliant OS HUAWEI’S SECOND CRACK at a smartwatch comes in a fitness-orientated Sport version and a more stylish Classic model; we tested the former. The Classic has a stainless-steel body and comes with a leather strap, while the Sport has a plastic body and strap with a ceramic bezel and stainless rear – plus the option of 4G connectivity. The headline feature is undoubtedly the Watch 2 Sport’s ability to work independently, without the need for a smartphone. Every version of the watch has GPS, so you can go on a run and have it track your pace and location accurately, but the 4G facility is the cherry on the cake here, allowing…

£280 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Its OS isn’t as mature as Android Wear, but the Gear S3 offers sumptuous design and great health tracking 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 combination of elegance and usability. 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 (around £350) or the more rugged Frontier styling, which we reviewed, the housing measures 46x49mm and is a protuberant 12.9mm thick. It looks rather absurd on more delicate wrists, and it’s liable to catch on shirt cuffs and the like.…

£129 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Huawei Fit is a far more convincing fitness band than the Chinese company’s previous effort HUAWEI’S HONOR BAND Z1 (Shopper 343) was a decent fitness tracker, but didn’t excel in any particular area. Its replacement, the Fit, aims to be a much more memorable wearable – as it should, considering it’s about £60 more expensive. That said, the two do look physically similar. Both have monochrome displays to boost battery life, both have textured rubber straps, and both have circular displays. All of these things are true, but in every instance the Huawei Fit is better. The strap feels less plasticky and cheap, the monochrome screen looks sharper (its resolution is 208x208 pixels, compared with the Z1’s 128x128) and the circular screen is used…

When you get a new PC, the one thing you really notice is just how fast everything is. It’s not just new hardware, either. When an OS is fresh and hasn’t been loaded down with extra applications and programs, it’s at peak performance. Slowly, though, over time Windows can start to get a little bloated, and your PC can start to take its time to do even the simplest of tasks. Before you fret and buy a new computer, our guide will walk you through the best ways to give your PC a speed boost and return everything to normal.…

Cleaning the Registry Registry cleaners promise a lot, but in reality they achieve very little. A few outdated Registry entries will make no difference to system speed, but accidentally removing an important entry could break your computer. Emptying the Prefetch folder Online advice often says to clean out the Windows Prefetch folder, but don’t do this. This special folder acts as a cache for up to 128 of your most used programs; clean it out and application load times will increase while Windows rebuilds the data. Disabling or delaying services Windows launches a lot of services at startup, with a popular myth saying that choosing to disable some or using the delayed startup option can improve PC speed. It can’t, and playing with services is a sure-fire way to break…

Send your problems to help@computershopper.co.uk Powerlines are down Around eight years ago I set up a HomePlug network at home to connect a Windows Vista PC in my upstairs office to a Linksys Media Center Extender connected to my TV downstairs. This link was using 85Mbit/s adaptors. I had a TV tuner card in the PC, which allowed me to use Windows Media Center as a PVR, then the extender enabled me to watch the shows I had recorded. On average, around once an hour, playback would fail. At the time I put it down to issues I suspected with the Linksys device. A few years later I replaced the PC with a Windows 8.1 Pro system. I also upgraded from ADSL broadband to BT Infinity, replaced the TV with…

GET A FEW minutes’ warning on the arrival of a friend or loved one with this technological ‘magic trick’. How you use that time is up to you: whether it’s tidying the house, doing a final mirror check before a date, preparing a surprise or just being ready to greet your partner as they get in from work. Best of all, the trick uses a £10 Raspberry Pi Zero W and a bit of code, so there’s no need to install sensors around your home or solder wires.…

ben@computershopper.co.uk IN PREVIOUS PHOTOGRAPHIC projects covered in Multimedia Expert we’ve often recommended using Raw-processing software to put the finishing touches to an image. This is a complex procedure in itself, though, so this month we’ll explore exactly what’s involved. If you’re a keen photographer and have yet to discover the joys of shooting Raw, this article is for you. And even if you’re already a convert, you’ll hopefully find some useful tips for getting the most from your Raw files. Digital cameras can do a pretty good job of optimising colours and details when they save photos as a JPEG, but saving as a Raw file gives full control over this process and lets you take your time to get the settings just right. The downside is that Raw files…