Sommaire pour October 2019 de PC Pro

How well do you remember the late summer of 1994? Well, as Can You Feel The Love Tonight emerged from your FM radio, you might just have been one of the first people to read PC Pro. While we spend most of this celebratory issue looking forward to the next 25 years, we’ve reprinted a number of interesting pages from the first issue. Sadly, we have to rely on scans as the original pages were saved to long-lost CDROMs… and created using software that’s now 20 years out of date. Still, we hope you enjoy reading through two news pages from that first issue on p14, an early laptop review on p55, Jon Honeyball’s take on a new PC on p59 and a game review by a certain Charlton Brooker…

1 Summer heat puts brakes on 5G handsets 5G handsets could face a summer slowdown as reports emerged that phones were throttling back or switching to 4G services because high temperatures meant that new modems couldn’t dissipate heat. Tests of Qualcomm chips by PCMag found that temperatures of 29°C could send the 5G components into temporary meltdown. 2 Apple reached into Macs to remove Zoom Apple was forced to reach into customers’ Macs to remove a series of hidden web servers related to the videoconferencing app Zoom. The security flaw in Zoom’s software meant websites could initiate video calls on machines running the program. 3 Facebook shrugs off record fine Facebook found itself better off despite being hit by the Federal Trade Commission’s largest ever fine, when the firm largely…

I reckoned I’d served my time in the purgatory that is the computer show. For 15 years, I spent whole weeks at CeBIT in Hannover, checking out new tech for Byte magazine; I’ve done Comdex in Vegas (I stayed in Bugsy Siegel’s horrendous Flamingo, where you walked through a mile of slots to get to your room); I’ve flown steerage to Taipei to help judge product awards at Computex. So I thought I was done, but the CogX 2019 festival had two irresistible attractions: it brought together the world’s top AI researchers for three days of serious talk, and it was in King’s Cross, a short walk down the canal from my house. CogX was the first proper show to be held in the futuristic Coal Drops Yard development and…

Just as in Game of Thrones, the balance of power in the technology industry swings rapidly from one ruler to another. When PC Pro first sprang to life in the mid-1990s, it would undoubtedly have been Bill Gates sat at the top of the pile. Now, he barely clings on to a place in the top 25. Steve Jobs dominated the early 2000s, but sadly only his company and protégés live on. The “person” at the top of our list wasn’t even born at the turn of this decade. Our handpicked power list is a reflection of the current state of the tech industry, not a reflection of the past 25 years. We’ve limited each company to one slot on the list, so if you’re wondering where Jeff Bezos and…

When you install it for the first time, the Windows Subsystem for Linux is a bare-bones environment, lacking any of the tools you will need to be productive. Below is a step-by-step guide to installing a popular stack of components that are used for Linux-based web development – namely a web server, a database engine and the PHP scripting language. 1 INSTALL APACHE WEB SERVER We’ll start with the Apache web server. As you would expect, this is simple to install using apt: the command is “sudo apt-get install apache2”. Installation normally takes less than a minute, but before it starts you may be prompted to enter your password, and to confirm that you’re happy for the installation to continue. 2 TURN OFF WINDOWS WEB SERVER Once Apache is installed,…

PENTIUM PC VERDICT You can make it too cheap. Not specified well enough for any reasonable use. The remaining collection of parts is too weak a proposition to tempt budget buyers away from well-balanced 486 systems. PRICE £1,199(£1.409 inc VAT,) SUPPLIER Esrom 0800 665500 AVAILABILITY Now SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS 60M Hz Pentium processor 4Mb of RAM, n 406Mb hard disk, PCI bus, 1Mb Video Seven graphics card. 14in monitor, MS-DOS 6.21, Windows far Workgroups 3. 11. This is a big-box computer designed for lots of expansion. It isn't even a fashionable mini-rower, more a nineties answer to the original IBM AT box. What's special about this Pentium PC is its spectacularly low price. Open up the lid and there are surprises in score. The case construction wouldn't win any quality prizes:…

PRICE Unlimited Max contract,£53 (£63 inc VAT) per month, £24 (£29 inc VAT) upfront, from vodafone.co.uk We liked last year’s Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 (pcpro.link/300mix): at £499, it offered a fine alternative to the OnePlus 6T, even if the 6T’s superior rear camera and less fiddly software edged it ahead. Now the Mi Mix 3 has returned, but with a facelift. Not only is it more powerful but it supports 5G. This is courtesy of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset and the bundled X50 modem, which can connect to sub-6GHz 5G networks with download speeds up of to 2Gbits/sec. This low-band frequency can’t match the speeds expected to be delivered by millimetre wave (mmWave) 5G frequencies, but it’s a promising start. On testing in various 5G locations around central London,…

What do you have to pay for a decent laptop these days? Less than you might think. Sure, you can spend a small fortune on an ultralight designer system clad in titanium and offering vast quantities of memory and storage. But very few of us actually need that sort of hardware. This month, we round up 11 systems costing £800 or less, offering all of the features anyone could want. On the pages that follow, you’ll find swish convertible laptops, brawny Core i7 processors, speedy NVMe SSDs, killer gaming performance and even a hulking 17in desktop replacement – although actually, that machine costs a whisker more than £800. Never mind. The point is, no matter what your needs, there’s a laptop out there that will do you proud at a…

PRICE £666 (£799 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk BENCHMARKS The S432F is the new flagship of Asus’ mid-price VivoBook range, and it looks upmarket. Mine came in tasteful “moss” green with an orange go-faster stripe, but you can also choose a businesslike “transparent” silver colour scheme, or go the other way with “punk” pink. Aside from the colours, the laptop has one other key distinction – a novel feature that Asus calls the ScreenPad (or the ScreenPad 2 to be precise, following on from the original version on the 2018 ZenBook Pro). Simply put, it’s a 14.5cm touchscreen beneath the keyboard. It works as a regular touchpad, but also provides visual shortcuts to selected apps and features, serves as a handwriting input area and transforms into a numeric keypad at the…

PRICE £666 (£799 inc VAT), Type Cover £71 (£85 inc VAT), from pcpro.link/300pro BENCHMARKS The Surface Pro 6 looks an awful lot like the Surface Go, and it broadly does the same job. In short, it’s a tablet with a snap-on keyboard that turns it into a laptop. Here, though, we’re looking at a more formidable piece of hardware. The 12.3in screen feels far more spacious, and accommodates the Windows desktop more comfortably than the fun-sized Go. Despite that, the Surface Pro 6 is still one of the lightest machines here: with the Type Cover attached, it weighs an eminently portable 1.08kg. The quality of the display is simply superb. I measured a dazzling maximum brightness of 410cd/m2, and a best-in-class contrast ratio of 1,341:1. It’s also this month’s sharpest…

PRICE £608 (£730 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/300swift The Swift 3 makes a great first impression. It’s slim, measuring just 17mm thick when closed, and when you open it up you are greeted by an expansive 15.6in screen with nice slim bezels. It performs well, too: Acer uses the same Core i5-8250U processor as the HP Pavilion x360, but manages to deliver slightly better benchmark scores. We surmise that’s down to better cooling, because the Swift 3 was a lot quieter than the Pavilion while the tests were running. It might not feel so slick in use, however, as the Swift 3’s SATA SSD is less than half as fast as the HP’s. Around the edges, two USB 3 ports, one USB 2 port and a USB-C connector should suffice for…

PRICE £624 (£729 inc VAT) from chillblast.com The Fusion Helios 4 is built on a rather bland-looking Clevo chassis – but what’s inside is anything but generic. The Core i5-8265U processor is a cut above this month’s norm, with Turbo speeds up to 3.9GHz, and it’s supported by a full 16GB of RAM. Thermal throttling kicks in when the workload gets heavy and the Helios 4’s overall benchmark score of 81 is strong, rather than exceptional, but for short, focused bursts of activity it’s a heck of a sprinter. 3D scores are above average for integrated graphics, too. The final piece of the performance puzzle is a Gigabyte-branded NVMe SSD, with a superb sequential read rate of 1,316MB/sec, and a very creditable 844MB/sec write speed. Uniquely this month, Chillblast has…

I’ve always been a firm believer in the maxim that you get what you pay for. For that reason, I’ve tended to insist on stumping up for a premium laptop: my current workhorse is a Microsoft Surface Laptop, and before that I had an Apple MacBook Pro. Both of them cost a fair bit more than £800. Yet after spending a few weeks with the 11 contenders in this month’s Labs, I’m starting to wonder whether I’ve been a bit of a chump. You see, I am one of those people who imagines that they need a ten-hour battery life, a huge SSD and a colour-accurate display – or, at least, who bases their purchasing decisions on the apprehension that I might need those things one day. However, when I…

PRICE £1,799 exc VAT from onedirect.co.uk The Rally isn’t a new racing wheel, but Logitech’s latest professional VC solution. Designed for medium to large meeting rooms, it’s a modular system that can be expanded with extra accessories, allowing it to grow with demand. Centre stage is the Rally Camera, a 4K unit that can be either desk or ceiling-mounted. It offers motorised PTZ operations with a 15x optical zoom, and draws power via a USB-C port, enabling it to be used either in standalone mode or connected to the Rally room system. The next module is the Display Hub, which provides a central point for connecting the camera, plus up to two Full HD or 4K displays and the chunky Rally Speaker. The single speaker that’s included will be fine…

PRICE £260 exc VAT from solwise.co.uk Wireless networks are about to get a lot faster. The Wi-Fi 6 specification – also known as 802.11ax to those of us who prefer the technical jargon – brings some major boosts to bandwidth and performance. It’s already trickling into the domestic market and EnGenius now brings us the first business-class Wi-Fi 6 wireless AP that’s priced right for SMEs. At just £260, the EWS357AP is a tempting proposition for anyone who’s eager to get on with adopting Wi-Fi 6, with competing products from the blue chips currently going for around four times as much. But don’t think this is a stripped-down, corner-cutting AP: it offers a good range of features and a choice of three management methods. You can deploy it in standalone…

Its been quite a ride. Back in 1994, we had computers running MS-DOS 6.22 with Windows for Workgroups 3.11. Windows 95 was about to arrive, bringing 32-bit GUI computing to the masses. Windows NT was still in its early days. A typical laptop had a 486DX processor at 33MHz, 4MB of RAM and a 240MB hard disk. Screen resolution was VGA only and battery life was around 2.5 hours. Weight was around 3kg. Networking was LAN only, with a bit of dial-up for the enthusiasts. Roll on, and everything has changed. We have instant access to information in a way that was unimaginable back in the mid-1990s. Access to larger documents and streaming video. And we can do all of that while on the move on our mobile phones. Given…

THE ODD THING about change is that you rarely notice it happening. Which brings me, naturally, to The West Wing. I’m a big fan of the show and rewatch it every couple of years, but I spend the first few episodes distracted by the technology on people’s desks. “What’s that over there?” my brain whispers. “A CRT monitor? How quaint!” The West Wing was first broadcast in 1999, which in terms of politics doesn’t seem that long ago. Cold, fractious relationship with Russia and China? Still there. Nuclear tensions with North Korea? Oh yes. Suave intellectual US president respected by the world? What’s that you say, PC Pro lawyers? Okay, let’s skip lightly away from that one and head back to the summer of 1994. For that was when the…

Qualcomm Snapdragon 215 Qualcomm has good news for parents in the shape of the Snapdragon 215 system on a chip (SoC), which promises significant performance benefits for low-cost smartphones. The “2” series has long been found in cheaper handsets, such as Microsoft’s Lumia 650 (right), but the hardware has proved restrictive. According to Qualcomm, the 215’s four ARM Cortex-A53 cores provide a 50% performance boost over the previous generation, backed up by a move to 64-bit processing, meaning handsets can support 64-bit apps. Aside from raw performance, there are additions that will improve user experience, such as Quick Charge technology for speedier battery top-ups and contactless payments via NFC. The Snapdragon 215 also features dual image sensor processors, another first in the series, which means it can support dual-camera depth…

ISPA has called for “proper scrutiny” of the plans to introduce DoH, but what about some scrutiny of ISPA itself? The organisation may present itself as the mouthpiece of the British internet industry, but it has vested interests. ISPA calls itself the “UK’s Trade Association for providers of Internet services” and includes broadband providers such as BT, Sky and Virgin Media among its membership, as well as firms from across the internet industry, such as Verizon, Nominet and even Google – who despite vocal support for DoH weren’t nominated as “villains”, unlike non-members Mozilla. ISPA policy decisions are made by a council that’s voted for by the larger membership, so in effect policy is driven by ISPA members. However, the day-to-day running of the company is undertaken by a political…

@njkobie The data watchdog is toothless no more. Until last year’s arrival of GDPR, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) was limited to fines of up to £500,000 against companies for data breaches. It didn’t use that power very often, saving it for the worst offenders, such as Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica debacle. Now, it can fine up to 4% of revenue or £17 million, whichever is larger – and it’s started to test just how sharp its new teeth are. BA and Marriott both felt the bite within days of each other. BA was fined £183 million for “poor security arrangements”, according to the ICO, which led to hackers making off with half a million customers’ login credentials, payment card details and more, working out to £366 per person affected. Marriott…

Thought I would drop you a useful tip regarding Kaspersky software. I’ve always used Kaspersky Total Security, and each time I’ve purchased a copy with five licences. As I’m sure most PC Pro readers do, I shop around for the best price, which varies each year depending on what offers are running at that time. I had an email from Kaspersky six weeks before my last subscription expired, warning me to renew and advising that, instead of the list price, I would get a discount. The list price was £59, which the discount took down to £41, but looking on Amazon I could actually buy a five-seat licence there for around £28. Fortunately, I had plenty of time-so I put it on hold. Three weeks later, Kaspersky contacted me with…

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PRICE £2,400 (£2,880 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/300razer In 2018, the portable and powerful Razer Blade 15 was the best all-round gaming laptop on the market. That was then, though. In the year since its release, competing laptops have emerged from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and others. Despite the previous Blade 15’s brilliance, it can’t match those recent rivals for gaming capability. Good thing there’s a new one, then. Admittedly, it doesn’t look much different, but that means it’s incredibly compact for the specification inside: at 355 x 235 x 17.8mm (WDH) and 2.21kg, it’s the only 15in gaming laptop I’ve reviewed that I can fit into the laptop sleeve I bought for my 15in MacBook Pro. Then there’s the sleek matte black chassis, which is made entirely of aluminium. My…

PRICE £1,599 (£1,919 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk The latest Dell Latitude doesn’t look like a Dell Latitude. Hewn from aluminium, with a dark, brushed design and slim screen bezels, the 7400 2-in-1 stands toe to toe with the best-looking laptops around. And build quality is superb: there’s barely any give in the metal around the keyboard, while the 14in screen rotates with a smooth action. While most ultraportable hybrids don’t allow full internal access, the Latitude does. Ten standard Phillips screws secure the base and handy indents behind each hinge allow the panel to ease free. Most components can be accessed, but the memory is soldered down. Dell further flexes its business credentials with good connectivity. On the left side, two Thunderbolt 3 ports handle DisplayPort and charging, alongside a…

1 Visit the PC Pro download site at pcprodownload.co.uk. You’ll need to enter the coupon code printed on the card, along with your email address. We’ll send you an email to confirm that your code has been registered. On subsequent visits, you’ll be able to access the download area by entering only your email address. 2 Once you’re into the download area, you can access this month’s bonus software by navigating to the relevant product page and clicking the red Install button. For trial software, freeware and other downloads, click the Install button below the product description, or follow the onscreen instructions (please read these carefully). 3 If the software needs registering, click the purple Register button, or follow the instructions on the left of the product page (again, please…

PRICE £249 (£299 inc VAT) from uk.sennheiser.com We wouldn’t normally include a pair of gaming headphones in PC Pro, but as the Sennheiser branding and the price betray, the GSP 670 isn’t a normal pair of gaming headphones. If you can get past its chunky styling, this set arguably performs exactly the same tasks as the “professional” Logitech Zone Wireless (see issue 299, p69), and in many ways does it better. Just like the Zone Wireless, it can simultaneously connect via Bluetooth to a phone and to your PC via a USB dongle. This promises low latancy, too, which in practice means no lag between the onscreen action and what’s going through your ears. You also benefit from side tone control, which means you can set how much of your…

PRICE £583 (£699 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/300hp BENCHMARKS On unboxing the HP Pavilion x360, I briefly worried that I’d been sent the wrong machine – because this two-in-one laptop looks like it ought to cost much more than £699. Although it’s encased in low-cost grey and silver plastic, the tasteful choice of colour and texture lend it an uncanny resemblance to a £1,500 Apple MacBook. It also looks a lot slimmer than the spec sheet would suggest, thanks to the clever deployment of curves and angles around the casing, and when you open it up, the two-tone hinge design cleverly de-emphasises how chunky the bezel below the screen is. In fact, when you fold the lid around to switch the x360 into tablet mode, you’ll be glad it isn’t any…

PRICE £666 (£799 inc VAT) from pcspecialist.co.uk The Cosmos is not a thing of beauty. To an extent, you can’t blame PC Specialist for that because the company doesn’t design its own chassis: what we have here is a motherboard and case made by Chinese manufacturer Clevo, which PC Specialist has kitted out with a custom selection of components. And while the Cosmos’ chunky, plasticky exterior might not match its rivals for style, it comes with one big benefit. Most of the slimline systems in this month’s Labs use Intel’s low-power U-series processors with slimline fans that struggle to dissipate the heat generated by a quad-core processor running at full speed for protracted periods. As a result, the CPU has to slow itself down after a minute or two of…

PRICE £591 (£709 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/300spin Last month’s Labs focused specifically on Chromebooks, but Google’s lightweight platform can hold its own against Windows-based alternatives. Indeed, since Chrome OS now supports both windowed desktop-style applications and full-screen, touch-enabled Android apps, the two-in-one concept arguably works better here than it does in Windows 10. By Chromebook standards, the Spin 13 is expensive. Last month’s Labs-winning Dell Inspiron Chromebook 14 costs just £599, and Acer’s own Chromebook 11 will set you back a mere £251. But, while the Spin 13 is priced similarly to this month’s Windows rivals, it outclasses almost all of them. As soon as you pick it up, the build quality is evident, thanks to an all-aluminium case and a tough, glossy Gorilla Glass screen. Then there’s the display…

PRICE £708 (£849 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/300dell The Inspiron 17 2-in-1 is a noteworthy machine in several ways. The first is its sheer size: it has a massive 17in touchscreen, which folds around to turn the whole system into an unwieldy tablet of almost A3 dimensions. It’s also one of only two systems this month to come with a Core i7 processor and it’s backed up by 16GB of RAM. Even better, you also get a discrete Nvidia GeForce MX150 GPU to handle 3D duties. All of this comes at a price, though. At £849, the Inspiron 17 2-in-1 stretches slightly out of our £800 price range – yet its performance is no better than many Core i5 rivals. Part of that is presumably due to a noisy and ineffective…

Effective communication has always been critical to success in business – and in today’s global economy that often means working closely with customers and partners in far-flung locations. Email and voice calls might be sufficient for basic exchanges of information, but videoconferencing (VC) offers clear benefits in communication and collaboration – so it’s no surprise that more businesses are embracing it. VC isn’t just about communicating outside of the company, either. Plenty of modern companies make use of virtual workplaces, where staff and teams don’t share the same physical office. VC provides the facilities for face-to-face meetings, helping staff to be just as efficient and productive as an on-site team. It’s good for morale too, allowing remote workers to feel more involved and less isolated. When you think of dedicated…

PRICE £666 exc VAT from amazon.co.uk The most tiresome part of an impromptu video meeting is the setup – getting the camera, microphones, conference table and participants all in place so that everyone’s in shot. The Meeting Owl from Owl Labs does away with all of that hassle: its fisheye lens puts everyone in the big picture, and the clever software automatically zeroes in on whoever is speaking. It comes as a single unit that works straight from the box, with nothing to configure. We connected the supplied USB cable to a Windows 10 host and the necessary drivers were automatically located and installed. As well as focusing on the person speaking, the Meeting Owl also provides a 360° panoramic view across the top, and can dynamically divide up the…

TIPS FOR Organisers 1 It’s obvious, but if this meeting is for employees then you should treat their time as a precious commodity – as you would for a physical meeting. So work out what you want to achieve, who you need to invite (and consider if they need to be there the whole time) and set a clear agenda. 2 Make sure you keep all your source material within easy reach. If you’re using digital resources (such as a PowerPoint file), put them in one place so they’re easy to find when necessary. 3 If you’ll be sharing your screen, look out for distracting or embarrassing documents! Clean up your desktop, remove that background image of your holiday in Magaluf, and switch off notifications – both from Windows and…

■ It seems like people have been hyping AI for years: is it ever going to actually help us make money? First of all, I’d take issue with saying AI has been hyped – I would say it’s been over-hyped. Not least as most of the high-profile AI developments can be more precisely defined as machine learning (ML), which is a specific, relatively basic subset of AI. But, for the sake of convenience, let’s pretend that the two are one and the same thing – after all, that’s what the media seem to be doing. ■ Fine, so what is machine learning going to do for our company? Well, how does the idea of AI-enabled chips grab you? Amazon, Google and Microsoft are all investing heavily in custom chips that…

The other day I got chatting to a lady called Jen who works as a volunteer for a wildlife rescue charity. She explained how team members normally get called out to rescue things like abandoned chicks and injured foxes, but said that occasionally they also get involved when domestic pets have become entangled on barbed wire fences or trapped on construction sites. She explained that, when they are dealing with “pets”, they normally take them back to the charity’s offices so they can scan the animal for a microchip to find out whether the owner can be contacted. Many cats are chipped these days and dogs have to be by law. Jen said that it would be good if the volunteers were able to do this out in the field,…

The Real World Computing section made its debut back in the very first issue of PC Pro, which should come as no real surprise to anyone. Perhaps more surprising, though, is the fact that of the original ten RWC contributors only two have survived this incredible journey and are still here where it all began. It almost goes without saying that one of them is the inimitable Jon Honeyball, a man in whose company I am very glad to be included. Yep, I was right there in November 1994 with my “On Line” column (note it was two words) with the somewhat cheesy strapline of “you can bet that whatever’s going on in the world of communications, ‘Wavey’ Davey Winder is there first”. A lot has changed in those 25…

REQUIRES: 386 or better; 4Mb of RAM; joystick; SoundBlaster-compatible sound card. US GOLD: 021-625 3366 Tie Fighter is the long-awaited sequel co LucasArts’ 1993 space combar sim, X-Wing. This is a polygon-sculpted recreation of the Star Wars universe, which had Luke and Leia wannabees rushing out co buy the game in their thousands. And it works because it recreates every facet of the film. The theme tune's there, playing over chat intro of letters streaming off into the distance. Cinematic cut-scenes show Darth Vader interrogating Rebel prisoners and the Imperial fleet destroying innocent worlds. Then the whole game derails the entire Rebellion campaign - its spaceships, historical battles, mission objectives and training procedure - with you, a young rookie, in the center. The action is fast-paced and thrilling, more often…

As PC Pro’s Futures editor, I speak to futurists, tech inventors and cutting-edge academics, but it hasn’t dampened my natural cynicism for the more out-there predictions. Driverless cars, cryptocurrency, and AGI don’t convince me. Instead, smaller, incremental improvements are more intriguing. Bitcoin hasn’t helped me, but Monzo is genuinely life changing. Better batteries could mean electric cars; air pollution chokes us regardless of whether a computer or human is at the wheel. And helpful though a sentient robot butler would be, specialised AI could one day not only spot cancer, but develop a personalised treatment plan. That said, 25 years is a long time in tech. It’s been only 12 years since the first iPhone, and most of us now have a smartphone in our pockets at all times. I…

A NEW TIE-UP between the NHS and Amazon’s Alexa devices has been accused of putting headline-grabbing gimmicks ahead of patient safety. Brits will soon be able to ask Alexa devices for medical advice, with answers scraped from the NHS site. The hope is this will deliver more accurate advice, rather than relying on a range of less reputable sources. However, experts and clinicians warn that the rush to push the NHS into consumer technology could cause long-term damage and is being done without sufficient clinical oversight. “Clinicians and advocates for the NHS would welcome new tech if – and it’s a big if – it has been reviewed, tested and proven to be effective,” said Samantha Wathen, a spokesperson for the medical campaign group Keep Our NHS Public. “The issue…

Interest-free PCs Interest-free credit for PCs is now an option from Time Computers, from just £29 a month for a PC with a pre-lnstalled operating system and applications. There will be a deposit of between £200 and £300 for each PC and credit is subject to status. Time Computer Systems: 0282 777111 Acer Notebook Acer has introduced the Acer-Note colour notebook range:. The high-end 780 model has a DX4 75MHz chip, 8Mb of RAM for £1,959; the mid-range: 760, a DX! 50MHz chip with 4Mb of RAM. Both have a bullt-in track· ball, plus a 9.Sin colour screen. Acer: 0628 533422 Kamco sold again For the second time In less than a year the ownership of Kamco Computers has changed hands. The company, which was bought by The Shield Group…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Huawei MateBook 14 Ultraportable from £1,000 from huawei.com Huawei gets everything right with this 14in ultraportable. It boasts a ten-hour battery life, plenty of power – enough for some gaming, even – and excellent connectivity, including a handy USB-A port. Both models are great value: the £1,300 variant adds a touchscreen and upgrades the processor to a Core i7, the RAM to 16GB and the SSD to 512GB. REVIEW Issue 296, p56 ALTERNATIVES Apple MacBook Pro 15in (2018) A machine for true power users with amazing specifications, including that infamous Core i9 CPU and up to 4TB of SSD storage. From £2,399 from apple.com/uk REVIEW Issue 288, p48 Dell XPS 15 We all know what to expect from Dell’s XPS 15 range, yet it continues to reign supreme…

@bazzacollins I am in deep, deep trouble. I have roughly 15 minutes of disposable downtime a month and I’ve been sucked in by Civilization VI. I’m now weighing up what to sacrifice: sleeping or eating. The Civilization (or Civ for short) games, for those unfamiliar with this long-running series, are for desktop despots everywhere. You get a fledgling city on a map and you have to expand your empire, turn by turn, as the game crawls through the ages. There is thunderously more to it than that, but if I tried to explain the whole game this issue would be the biggest in our 25-year history. After hell-knows how many hours of tutorials, YouTube explainers and reading up online, I’m still being comprehensively outsmarted by the AI, even on the…

1 Using the computer you will want to access from a remote location, point your browser at remotedesktop.google.com, log in to your Google Account and click Turn On. Needless to say, this needs to be set up before you leave home, so it’s worth doing now rather than realising too late. 2 You can add multiple computers to every Google Account, allowing you to set up simultaneous access to work and home machines – as well as to less technically literate relatives who may want you to have access so you can help them out of a future hole directly, rather than trying to talk them through applying a fix over the phone. For that reason, each computer registered to your account needs a unique name. Make it something logical…

Linux has long been positioned as an alternative to Windows. If you don’t like Microsoft’s way of doing things, you can download a free installer for Ubuntu, Fedora or some other Linux distribution and dive into a whole different platform, with its own library of applications and a philosophy that tends to emphasise openness and versatility over ease of use. Today, though, it’s no longer an either-or choice. As of 2016’s Anniversary Update, Windows 10 includes a framework that lets you run Linux commands and even launch Linux programs directly from the Windows desktop. It’s called the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), and it’s not achieved by emulation, virtualisation or any such tricks: what you get is a genuine Linux kernel running natively within Windows. But, before you get too…

PRICE £1,249 (£1,499 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/300folio This isn’t the first folio laptop design I’ve seen. Way back in the early 2000s, IBM’s ThinkPad division took a select group of laptop “experts” – journalists who reviewed them, such as me, and analysts from firms such as Gartner – to Rome for a secret briefing. The idea was to show prototypes and get our feedback on them; we would get an early sighting and IBM supposedly benefited from some free consultancy. The one product that sticks in my mind is, essentially, the Spectre Folio. Screen on one side, computer internals and keyboard on the other, folding together in the unique style of a folio. I assured them this was a brilliant idea, so it should be no surprise that the product…

PRICE£2,083 (£2,500 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk When Nvidia launched mobile versions of its RTX graphics at CES in January, we knew what to expect: slimmer gaming machines with even better performance. Add the latest mobile Intel chips into the mix and you have all the ingredients required for a stunning gaming laptop. The challenge for manufacturers is to lift their offerings from the rest, and in particular to unseat Razer as the gaming laptop maker of choice. Asus has sometimes used gimmicks such as shuffling the keyboard to the front, but it sensibly keeps things much simpler with the Zephyrus S; the only frippery is the RGB-lit vent on the bottom, which opens up when you lift up the screen. What’s more, this vent has a legitimate use of cooling…

PRICE£3,083 (£3,700 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk When AMD released the Ryzen 7 and Threadripper, the company was clearly back in the processor business for real. But that was just the opening salvo. This month, we see the arrival of the AMD Ryzen 9 3000 series (see p64), based around the Zen 2 architecture. Where the Ryzen 7 2000 series was a tweak of the original 1000 series, including a die shrink, the 3000 series is much more of a leap. Our first look comes in the shape of the Ryzen 9 3900X delivered in a high-end workstation from Scan, the 3XS WA4000 VR. Scan has taken full advantage of the capabilities of the Ryzen 9 3900X with its 3XS WA4000 VR workstation. The CPU has a base frequency of 3.8GHz,…

PRICE 8GB/256GB SIM-free, £583 (£700 inc VAT) from carphonewarehouse.com Like all smartphones, the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom is essentially a bag of off-the-shelf bits bolted together, running mostly standardised software. That sounds boring, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Without this approach, our smartphones would almost certainly be less sleek, less exciting and a lot less capable. The flipside is that, once you boil it down to the essentials, it makes it awfully tough for manufacturers to differentiate their hardware from that of their competitors’ phones. Which is why the Oppo Reno 10x Zoom’s specifications read like a boilerplate checklist of must-have flagship features. For this is an Android handset that leaves no 2019 trend unturned: top-of-the-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset? Check. Huge edge-to-edge AMOLED display with no notch?…

PRICE £67 (£80 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/300echo If all battles were won purely by force of numbers, Amazon would have had the smart speaker market sewn up long ago: with the release of the Amazon Echo Show 5, its Alexa-enabled troops have now swelled to 13. That’s a huge battalion of products, many of which share largely similar duties. The question is: does adding yet another speaker to the lineup make sense? Or are you better off with one of the company’s many other existing smart speakers? Best on Show? The Amazon Echo Show 5 is, effectively, a smaller version of the company’s £220 Echo Show 2 (see issue 291, p65). It has most of the same features and functions of that speaker and, as with any other Amazon Echo…

We ran each laptop in this month’s Labs through our standard in-house benchmarks, which comprise an image-editing exercise, a video-transcoding task and our taxing multitasking test, which carries out both benchmarks at once while also playing a 4K video file. This gives us comparative scores for different aspects of desktop performance, along with a combined overall rating. We also test gaming performance using the GFXBench tool, which runs two simulated gaming scenarios (“Car Chase” and “Manhattan”) in both onscreen and off-screen mode, to give a measure of 3D performance. Storage speed is tested using the AS SSD benchmarking tool. We then use X-Rite colorimeter hardware to measure the maximum brightness, contrast and sRGB coverage (as a percentage) of each laptop’s screen. Average Delta E values are also calculated, indicating how…

PRICE £385 (£462 inc VAT), Type Cover £75 (£90 inc VAT), from pcpro.link/300go BENCHMARKS We last looked at the diminutive Surface Go back in issue 290, in a Labs test of high-end tablets; this month it slots comfortably into a group of mid-price laptops. That’s a testament to the flexibility of the Surface concept. Truthfully, though, the Surface Go works better as a tablet than as a laptop. For a start, it doesn’t even come with a keyboard: you can use the onscreen keyboard to enter text, but if you want to do anything remotely serious then you’ll need to fork out an extra £90 for the optional Type Cover, pushing the effective price up to £552. Its compactness is a double-edged sword, too. With its 10in screen, the Surface…

PRICE £392 (£470 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk Glance down the X512UA’s spec sheet and nothing particularly sticks out. Like several other contenders, it has a quad-core Intel Core i5-8250U processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. It also comes with a generous – albeit non-touch – 15.6in screen. What’s remarkable is that, while similar rivals cost £700 and up, the X512UA is just £470. Inevitably, that price tag comes with a couple of compromises. The major one is the screen. Make no mistake, it’s a nice big panel and the surrounds are as slim as you could ask for. It’s reasonably bright too, topping out at 255cd/m2. However, a shockingly low contrast ratio of 250:1 makes even the most vibrant images look flat and washed out – and as…

PRICE £633 (£759 inc VAT) from pcspecialist.co.uk The Lafité’s exterior may appear somewhat anonymous, with no company branding on the lid or interior, but it’s got what it takes to compete with the big names. That’s partly because PC Specialist has managed to cram in a Core i7-8565U processor, with a top speed of 4.6GHz. This tears through jobs like our image-editing test, in which the Lafité recorded one of this month’s highest scores. As usual, however, the slim Ultrabook chassis can’t keep it cool for prolonged periods; performance in our video-editing and multitasking tests was more on par with the Core i5-powered competition, and the same goes for gaming performance. The Lafité also features not only a 256GB SSD but a secondary 1TB hard disk, pretty much guaranteeing you…

PRICE £6,150 exc VAT from onedirect.co.uk Lifesize has always had a sharp focus – if you’ll pardon the expression – on cloud-based videoconferencing. Its Icon 700 camera and Phone HD speakerphone pack takes this to the next level: it’s a true 4K VC solution, yet its encoding software has bandwidth requirements as low as 3Mbits/sec. Combine this hardware bundle with Lifesize’s cloud portal and client apps and you’ve got a total solution that can cover an entire meeting room, while also connecting people at their desks and on the go. Even those who don’t have the software can join in using Lifesize’s web app for Chrome. The Lifesize system is a cinch to set up. The web-based administration portal is very informative, with a dashboard showing all call details in…

PRICE £752 exc VAT from lambda-tek.com Polycom is a well established name in the videoconferencing industry – but since its acquisition by Plantronics it’s now known simply as Poly. One of the first products to be launched under the new brand is the Studio, a sleek USB video bar that brings convenient 4K VC facilities to smaller businesses. The appeal to SMBs starts with the tempting price tag and ease of use is a focus, too. Since the Studio is an integrated unit there are almost no cables or connections to mess with, and when we plugged it into a Windows 10 PC the operating system immediately found and loaded the appropriate device drivers. The one thing you will want to install manually is the free companion app for Windows…

PRICE £197 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com If you hate downtime, you’ll love DrayTek’s Vigor 2620Ln. In addition to its built-in ADSL2+/VDSL2 modem, it has a 3G/4G modem with dual SIM slots for primary and backup connections to mobile networks – and one of its two Ethernet ports can also be configured as another backup WAN connection. Each of these interfaces can be configured in failover mode, so you don’t even need to lift a finger to stay online. The bottom line? With the Vigor 2620Ln looking after your connection, you’d need to be having a really bad day at the office to lose internet access. Security is another strength of the 2620Ln. Its firmware includes a 300Mbits/sec SPI firewall, with app controls and the optional GlobalView web content filtering. The…

Videoconferencing has always struck me as a famine-or-feast kind of thing. The numbers Nik quotes come from a seasoned player in the low to mid-range sector: by contrast (hey, it’s what I do), I seem to get war stories from the extreme top end and the bargain basement, and nowhere in between. There are good lessons from both these spaces, such as the Cisco demonstration partnered by a paint-making company. All the rooms participating right across the world were painted the same colour, to fool the brain into thinking everyone’s in the same place. The connections were impressively fast, the sites were numerous and the distances impressive. Less so the big football commentator-style microphones: all of those bare identical walls might have helped with the psychology but they played havoc…

A few months ago, I discussed how I had finally moved the lab accounts from hand-rolled Excel to QuickBooks Online (see issue 296, p112). The problem with an accountancy package is that it’s very tricky to perform a trial run without ending up pouring many months of your business into the platform, and then to use it on a day-to-day basis. And it’s in those nooks and crannies that the annoyances can really live, hidden away from the spotlight of even an in-depth review. My accountants are currently processing the year-end analysis, and I’m sure I will be presented with a huge tax bill payable to Her Majesty. I have already done the transition to Making Tax Digital, which was relatively painless and claims to be fully supported by QuickBooks.…

I wouldn’t want you to think that our computer repair business is an endless stream of success, resulting in delighted customers carrying me shoulder high through the village. It’s imperative that, from a customer’s perspective, the job is successful, but the way we earn that happy smile is a pothole-pocked path. Here are some jobs that required the “Debbie McGee touch”. The art of pushing the snarling tiger down the trapdoor whilst changing into the glittery leotard before the curtain drops, exposing you to the crowd. Grinding out success As you’re nearing the end of this issue, I imagine you’re already astounded by its value. May I suggest a subscription for yourself and a friend? PC Pro’s generosity continues with a tip that’s guaranteed to extend the life of your…

The thrill never goes away: being published every month in PC Pro ought to be enough, you might say, but it was every bit as exciting to get my car on the front cover of Jaguar World magazine. And the connections that triggered this bit of good fortune convinced me that the world is increasingly dependent on firmware. My car has a well-known failure mode, in which the supposedly lifelong transmission fluid isn’t lifelong at all. Replacing it, however, is only the start of the process. The reinvigorated transmission only works properly if it’s given a flash upgrade – in our terms, as if someone upgraded the device driver, except that the computer in question is inside a ZF six-speed gearbox. I’m used to seeing substantial differences in behaviour after…

It’s almost impossible to predict anything 25 years away – it’s like forecasting the weather for next January. So much has changed in the past two-and-a-half decades that the only prediction we’re sure of is that more change will come. Still, our (more than) 25 experts were willing to take a punt on predicting what 2044 could bring. Here’s what they said about AI, science and more. AUTOMATION AND AI ■ All cars will be driverless Let’s get this one over with first: plenty of tech industry experts are certain that driverless cars are only a matter of time, but what that means for our commutes remains to be seen. “Car sharing will explode – even by as early as 2026 it’s predicted that more rides will occur with ride-sharing…

On sale 12 September 2019 LABS Monitors Whether you’re looking for superfast response times for gaming, low Delta E scores for colour accuracy or simply a great screen for a great price, next month’s Labs has you covered. Subscribe today Start your subscription and claim a special 25th anniversary of PC Pro mug while stocks last. You can read PC Pro in print, on your iPad, iPhone or Android device. See p108 for more details. FEATURES BuildyourownEcho Nik Rawlinson gets his hands dirty and demonstrates how to create a privacy-focused smart speaker with Raspberry Pi and Picroft. MakeAIworkforyou Saving time and money may be a cliché, but when it comes to AI it’s also true – we show how you can turn AI into your dream personal assistant. DeepDive: Task…

There is quite a fuss going on in Germany at the moment about the relationship between Microsoft and children using Office 365 in schools. In a somewhat circular argument, it seems that parents aren’t allowed to give permission for their children to use the service, but the children aren’t deemed capable, either. This has blown up because Microsoft is unable or unwilling to give binding assurances that user data won’t be taken out of Germany, and especially handed over to government organisations in the US. As I understand it, Microsoft previously gave assurances that its cloud service would be available from data centres hosted in Germany, but this has now ceased to be the case. And, since that point, a Mexican standoff has occurred. Then there are the ongoing discussions…