Indholdsfortegnelse for August 2020 i PC Pro

TRY AS I MIGHT to find a nice way to dress this up, I can’t: we’re lazy. All of us. You, me, that driver who never thanked you for letting him pass. It’s human nature to follow the path of least resistance, which is why there’s always such a land grab when a new technology appears. Get there first and inertia will do the rest. Eight years ago, that technology was file sharing in the cloud and the company that swept to market dominance was Dropbox. I don’t have mystical powers, but I’m willing to bet that you (and that rude driver) still use Dropbox today. It’s the Coca-Cola of cloud storage. So, in a spirit of wild adventure, I urge you to read through our selection of Dropbox “killers”…

Nicole Kobie is PC Pro’s Futures editor. She had never heard of Zoom until the lockdown, used it relentlessly for three weeks and now hates it. It’s a roller coaster of emotions over here, my friends. @njkobie In the week after lockdown began, I attended a birthday party, lunch with friends and a board game night – all over Zoom. Everything still felt new, and peering at friends through a webcam was better than not seeing them at all. My favourite singer, Dan Mangan – look him up, you’re welcome – even held gigs via Zoom. It was the best bits of going out without the downsides of leaving the house. I wasn’t alone in this new-found love of videoconferencing. Zoom shot up the download charts, with 200 million daily…

We also asked what today’s games developers can learn from the coders of the 1980s. A lot, it turns out. “You don’t need ‘4K photo realism graphics’ to have a good game,” said Michael Oglesby. “I feel many game developers concentrate too much on graphics rather than the actual gameplay or story.” In fact, style over substance was a running theme: “Gameplay will always be more important than graphics. Too many of today’s games look pretty but have little depth,” wrote Glen Wilson. However, Ian Lowe points to a more recent example that got the gameplay formula spot-on: “I reckon Nintendo nailed it with the Wii just as 1980s programmers did – the games had to be interesting. Good ideas.” Luigi will be delighted. Join the debate Join the growing…

Running your own web serve at home is more than just a money saver. While it does mean you’re not subject to ongoing fees – and their inevitable annual increase – you also benefit from the freedom to install whichever web apps and add-ons you want. Need cutting-edge PHP to run your preferred application? Not a problem, despite the fact that many commercial hosts adopt a wait-and-see approach to patches like that. Running out of space? Use a different drive. If the server will only ever be accessed over the LAN, you also have guaranteed uptime, whether your broadband’s up or down This month, we’ll show you how to set up Apache, PHP and a database to run your own web server on a Raspberry Pi. We think it’s the…

PRICE 128GB, 12.9in, £808 (£969 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk If you believe the hype, the new iPad Pro is utterly magical. It redefines what you can do with a tablet, with a portable computer and probably with your life too. That’s a lot of hype to live up to, so I was curious to see if the reality came anywhere close. First, let’s cover the basics. The 2020 iPad Pro is available in two sizes: 11in and 12.9in. You can buy it any colour, as long as you want silver or Space Grey. You can choose between 128GB, 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of storage, with Wi–Fi connectivity by default but the option of 4G cellular support. Pick and choose between these options to fit your needs, with no lockout combinations…

PRICE £833 (£999 inc VAT) from samsung.com Although Samsung’s phones dominate in the UK and Europe, it surprised us all by pulling out of the laptop market in late 2014. While it’s flirted with the 2-in-1 form factor through its range of tablets, such as the Galaxy Tab S6 (see issue 305, p70), those have all been on Android rather than Windows. Now it’s back. With a cutting-edge Qualcomm ARM chip running a tweaked version of Windows 10 Home, along with built-in 4G, this is a machine that anyone looking for a travel companion should consider. Price mover One of the reasons why is its price: £999 is competitive for such a slimline laptop. That matches the cheapest of Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 3 range (see issue 304, p54), with a…

PRICE £2,750 (£3,300 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk If you had told Intel in 2014, after the successful launch of its fifth-generation Core processors on the all-new 14nm process, that it would still be using essentially the same lithography in 2020 then it would have laughed good-naturedly and slapped you on the back. Yet here we are, and Intel refuses to go quietly into that good night: it boasts that its Core i9-10900K is the fastest gaming processor in existence. Now the burden of proof falls on its system-building partners, with Scan being one of the most important in the UK. By good fortune, which I’ll pretend is excellent planning, we are in prime position to see how it compares to AMD’s top-end Ryzen 9 3950X. That’s because we reviewed the…

PRICE £458 (£550 inc VAT) from bechtle.co.uk (businesses only) I’ve long been interested in the link between productivity and screens, and whether two screens are really better than one. There’s the advantage of working on two documents side by side, especially if one provides reference material, but what about the bulk of the time when the second screen merely serves as a home for interruptions such as Twitter and email? This is why I love super-wide monitors. If you have enough space on your desk, they combine the best of both worlds. When you’re working on a document, you maximise that document: it sits there in the middle, no bezel in the way. When you want to work on two docs simultaneously, or welcome distractions, you can arrange windows as…

We are all creatures of habit, which is why the next printer we buy tends to look rather similar to the one we bought before. This month, we’re asking you to break that habit. There’s a new breed of printers in town, and they might just be perfect for you. Much of this is due to running costs. The still-dominant business model is to subsidise the price of the printer with expensive ink or toner, which is why some people (and even businesses) prefer to buy a new printer each time rather than replacing the ink. However, if you look across this month’s printers you’ll see a new pattern emerging. Brother with its All in Box series, where it includes all the ink you’re likely to need for months if…

PRICE £174 (£208 inc VAT) from printerbase.co.uk The Pixma G series is Canon’s answer to Epson’s growing EcoTank range of refillable ink tank printers. Rather than use small and expensive cartridges, the Pixma G5050 arrives with two huge bottles of black ink, good for a whopping 18,000 pages. There are also bottles of cyan, magenta and yellow ink, although you can only expect these to last a piffling 7,700 pages. By contrast, the typical home inkjet arrives with around 150 to 300 pages of ink, after which you’ll be shopping for cartridges. The flipside of refillable printers’ inky largesse is that you’ll pay more for them upfront. Despite the G5050’s £200 asking price, it’s a reasonably straightforward single-function printer. While there’s no scanner unit on top, you do get a…

PRICE £34 (£41 inc VAT) from printerbase.co.uk A decade ago, £40 bought you a single-function printer that connected over USB: in some ways, the Expression Home XP-2100 is a reminder of how far we’ve come. A compact home MFP, the XP-2100 can print, scan and copy, and you can share it over your wireless network. It’s still basic elsewhere. There’s only one paper tray, duplex printing isn’t supported, and no screen means no advanced cloud functions. Despite the lack of screen, this is a simple printer to set up. If you’re not using Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), you can temporarily connect a USB lead and have the installer configure it for your wireless network, but this won’t work if you only have phones or tablets. As you might expect, the…

PRICE £133 (£159 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk Brother’s All in Box printers arrive with a generous supply of ink or toner. Some, like the MFC-J1300DW, are unique, while the HL1212W seen here can be had with or without the bundled supplies. While the regular model costs £100 and arrives with 1,000 pages’ worth of toner, the HL-1212W All in Box comes with five 1,000-page supplies. At the time of writing, this represented a £78 saving. This is as small and basic as mono laser printers get. In the base, there’s a simple 150-sheet paper tray that’s uncovered, allowing dust to gather on the top sheet if you leave it unused. Unload the paper and the tray folds neatly shut. It’s a similar story with the hinged 50-sheet output in the…

PRICE £177 (£213 inc VAT) from printerbase.co.uk Lexmark’s MC3224adwe looks like it could be the perfect colour laser MFP for a home office. It’s compact, for a start, being little bigger than its chunkiest inkjet rivals. Its two-tone grey plastics are appealing, and the front panel is free of clutter thanks to a medium-sized colour touchscreen. For the money, this is a highly specified device, with both wired and wireless networking, duplex printing and a 50-sheet ADF. It feels like a quality item too, with thick plastics and robust guides in the paper tray. The touchscreen takes a while to boot, after which it’s a responsive and simple way to control the printer’s functions. These include printing from, and scanning to, an inserted USB drive. The MC3224adwe is based on…

PRICE £475 exc VAT from printerbase.co.uk The ADS-3600W sits at the pinnacle of Brother’s desktop scanner family – and, as you’d expect from such a premium product, it offers a comprehensive set of features. It can connect over USB, Gigabit Ethernet or 802.11n Wi-Fi, boasts fast 50ppm scan speeds and includes a software suite that covers every need. That starts with Brother’s own ControlCenter4 scan management utility, which comes partnered with the iPrint&Scan Windows workflow app. On top of that, you get Nuance’s PaperPort 14 SE digital file cabinet, along with the ABBYY FineReader Pro 11 and PDF Transformer+ OCR tools, while mobile users can get in on the act with Brother’s free iPrint&Scan iOS and Android apps. Cloud support is as good as it gets, with native support for…

PRICE £371 exc VAT from bmisolutions.co.uk The Kodak Alaris S2040 doesn’t do networking – we’re talking USB connections only. Even so, you don’t need to dedicate a high-end PC to hosting it: it has its own powerful onboard CPU, which handles image processing and enhancement internally, so you can drive it from a lightweight desktop with minimal hardware specs. It’s a speedy operator too, claiming 40ppm at 300dpi in both colour and mono, while a big 5,000-page daily duty cycle means it won’t baulk at major digitising projects. Although the specs are good, the installation process could be slicker: the CD supplied in the box was two years old, so we opted to retrieve the most recent software from the Kodak Alaris website. This was a pain, as each item…

Migrating from an old Synology drive goes smoothly aside from a camera hiccup, but a grumpy Jon is candid enough to admit he might be at fault too Even my best friends will admit that I can be somewhat of a grumpy old toad at times. They then usually smile and admit that it’s still a charming trait, and one that they’d miss if I turned into a contented old toad. Maybe it’s the effect of an endless lockdown and working from home, but I find my patience for dealing with substandard products is taking more of a beating than normal. Even products from mainstream vendors can result in my howling in pain, rocking back and forth in my seat moaning “no, no and thrice, no”. It all started when…

Smartphones may track our every move, but good luck getting wildlife to carry an iPhone (bat mobile, anyone? No?). Tracking animals is a key part of understanding their behaviour and protecting their habitats, and technology should be able to help – but it’s not easy to build systems that don’t interfere with animals, are affordable on limited academic budgets and actually work. That’s why Simon Ripperger has spent the past seven years gluing tiny backpack computers to bats as part of a project known as Broadly Applicable Tracking System (BATS). An academic at Ohio State University, Ripperger studies animal social networks – how they interact with each other, not what they put on their Facebook profiles – and seven years ago was tapped by a team of researchers and engineers…

LABS Processors From ultra-cheap Athlons to Intel’s extremely expensive Extreme processors, we test and rate a huge selection of CPUs in one roundup. FEATURES What’s new in Windows 10? This summer’s big Windows update includes a series of power-user features. Find out what they all are – and how to postpone the update if you don’t want to risk it. Be your house hold’s network admin Do you even know how many pieces of IT equipment you have in your home? We explain how to reduce hassle and boost security without being a tyrant. PCPro project: host your own cloud No need to pay extra for OneDrive, Dropbox or Google Drive: access and sync your files from anywhere, with no fees and no storage limits. Subscribe today Start your subscription…

New chips from Intel… We take a first peek at Intel’s tenth-gen Core offerings p12 …and new chips from AMD too How the new Ryzen Pros stack up against Intel’s vPro processors p12 PC Probe Gun-shy ICO “pauses” inquiry into real-time bidding ads p14 THE PLANNED MERGER of Virgin Media and O2’s UK operations may still not be enough to prevent the companies from leaving the UK market, an analyst has warned. Liberty Global, the parent of Virgin Media in the UK, and O2 Telefonica announced they would combine their UK operations in a fifty-fifty joint venture that creates a service provider worth more than £30 billion. However, there are many obstacles to overcome, not least which brand the new operator will work under and whether the parent companies are…

BUYERS OF BUSINESS laptops have had it easy for too long; the decision was less “should I buy AMD or Intel?” and more “which Intel chip should I buy?” Now the battle is on, with Intel launching a refreshed version of its vPro technology and AMD hoping to lure businesses with its new generation of Ryzen Pro processors. It’s no coincidence that both launches happened within days of each other. It’s also no surprise that AMD is hoping its multicore processors will give it the edge. The top-end Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U features eight cores and 16 threads, which AMD’s testing suggests gives it a 32% boost compared to an Intel Core i7-10710U with six cores and 12 threads in PC Mark 10’s Digital Content Creation tests. But it’s telling…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Apple MacBook Pro Power house laptop with a price to match, from £2,300 from apple.com/uk If you know you’ll take advantage of what the 16in MacBook Pro offers, you won’t regret buying it. The only question is where you draw the line, with options right up to 8TB SSDs and 64GB of RAM. Whichever version you choose, you’ll benefit from an improved keyboard, spectacular screen and the very best audio setup on a laptop. REVIEW Issue 305, p52 ALTERNATIVES Lenovo ThinkPad T490s Lenovo updates its T series with this thin yet powerful laptop. With a battery life of over 11 hours in our tests, it’s truly business class. From £1,161 from lenovo.com REVIEW Issue 301, p46 Razer Blade 15 Mercury White A beautiful gaming laptop with Max-Q RTX…

Barry Collins is a former editor of PCPro. Don’t call – he’s on the phone to Jon Honeyball, trying to set up his subnet masks. @bazzacollins Let’s be frank, all of us in the PC Pro community live in a little bubble. Jon Honeyball can spend his Real World Computing column telling us how he’s set up his own VPN server, and even if most of us couldn’t do it ourselves (I thought a subnet mask was something found in shops with frosted windows), we get the gist of what he’s banging on about. We all speak geek. Out in the real world, not the Real World that Jon and co nominally live in, things are different. Especially if you’re 83-year-old Terry, who I was delegated to look after as…

Most Windows users, we’d guess, are aware that there’s a system component called PowerShell – it’s been around since XP – but few have delved into what it is and what it can do. That’s fine because PowerShell is principally intended for network administrators, giving them a scriptable interface for managing fleets of computers. That doesn’t mean PowerShell isn’t useful or interesting to nonnetwork admins, however. It can do everything the command prompt can and more, and you may prefer its more logical approach. How do I use PowerShell? The quickest way to open PowerShell is to press Windows+X to open the Power User menu, then select “Windows PowerShell” with the mouse (or just hit the “i” shortcut). You can also open PowerShell by searching the Start menu for it.…

PRICE £291 (£349 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com While we lavished the Galaxy Tab S6 (see issue 305, p70) with praise as the best Android tablet around, at over £600 it can’t compete at the low end. Samsung addresses this predicament with the stripped-back Tab S6 Lite, and it finally succeeds in offering Android fans a mid-priced alternative to the iPad juggernaut. At £349 (£399 for the 4G LTE model), it’s exactly the same price as the most basic iPad. However, it doubles the base storage (from 32GB to 64GB), which can also be upgraded via microSD, and bundles an S Pen stylus. Nor does it feel cheap. The polished aluminium frame is nice to touch, the bezels are slim enough that the screen dominates the front of the device, and…

PRICE £999 (£1,199 inc VAT) from ao.com If this laptop was a boxer, it would be short, lean and wiry. It packs a lot of power, but that’s only obvious when you pitch it into battle. The muscle comes courtesy of Intel’s tenth-generation Core i7-10510U processor, and it’s got all the right components in its corner thanks to discrete Nvidia graphics, a fast M.2 SSD and a tasty 16GB of RAM. Considering the MateBook’s slight frame, that’s quite a lineup. While most 13in laptops are more than 300mm wide, it measures 286mm. It’s also a slim 14.9mm. Huawei still finds room for one of the best cooling systems I’ve seen in an ultraportable, helping to make this one of the fastest laptops we’ve tested with a Core i7-10510U. Just compare…

PRICE £274 (£329 inc VAT) from samsung.com/uk Samsung offers a bewildering range of phones that go well beyond the S series flagships, but its mid-range A series is the most notable. The A51 is the number two in its lineup, sitting just behind the equally new A71. Despite the price, you won’t spot any cost-cutting measures in the A51’s design. The black model Samsung sent in for review seemed unassuming at first, but closer inspection of the phone’s rear revealed a faint pearlescent finish, much like the £799 Galaxy S20 (see issue 308, p63). Its subtly curved sides and slender dimensions – it’s 7.9mm thick – ensure the phone fits well in the hand. An upright oblong in the top-left corner on the back houses the quadruple-camera array. The A51…

PRICE £129 (£154 inc VAT) from printerbase.co.uk Canon’s Pixma range has long produced some of the best MFPs for creative home users, but we’ve been underwhelmed by the current mid-range models. The TS8350 sits near the top of the tree, so we were eager to see if it matched up to our expectations. The first thing you’re likely to notice is that it’s a handsome device. The squat body combines shiny, expensive-looking black plastics with subtle chrome highlighting The end result wouldn’t look out of place in most living rooms. While Canon has removed colour touchscreens from its mid-range models – with a corresponding loss of some cloud features – the TS8350 is controlled by a giant example. It’s not the sharpest or most responsive we’ve tested, but it’s a…

PRICE £42 (£50 inc VAT) from argos.co.uk At just £50, Epson’s Expression Home XP-3100 seems like a bargain. It can print, scan and copy, and you can connect and share it over a wireless network. On the front panel there’s a colour screen, navigated by “membrane” buttons, and there’s even support for automatic duplex printing. The XP-3100’s screen is small, meaning its menu system suffers from a lack of available space. You soon adjust, however, and it’s usable even for fiddly processes such as manually entering a Wi-Fi password. Everyday operations are all handled easily enough. This isn’t a particularly quick printer, but nor is it frust ratingly slow. It delivered 25 pages of black text at just 9.2ppm, but this rose to an impressive 16.1pp matdra draft quality. At…

PRICE £220 (£264 inc VAT) from lambda-tek.com Buy a cheap mono laser device and you’re usually saddled with expensive supplies that can make it poor value over the long term. HP is one of several manufacturers beginning to offer an alternative. The Neverstop 1202nw is a simple mono laser MFP that arrives with 5,000 pages’ worth of toner. When that’s exhausted, cheap supplies help to keep ongoing costs down. Low running costs to one side, the 1202nw is basic for the price. A small, plain MFP, it’s controlled by a few buttons paired with a basic mono display. On top, there’s a scanner without an ADF. In the base, there’s only a 150-sheet paper tray, but at least this is properly enclosed by a dust cover. There’s support for wired…

PRICE £308 (£370 inc VAT) from printerbase.co.uk HP’s LaserJet Pro M283fdw is a colour laser MFP for small offices. It’s got almost everything covered, with support for wired and wireless networks, and control via a clutter-free touchscreen panel. A 250-sheet paper tray sits in the base, while on top there’s an ADF with a generous 50-sheet capacity. As with some other recent HP printers, the LaserJet Pro M283fdw omits a driver disc, meaning you’ll need an internet connection to install it. HP’s website encourages you to install the HP Smart app, but we opted for the 240MB PC driver package, which inexplicably took 12 minutes to download over our 70Mbits/sec broadband. Once up and running, we were struck by how quiet a printer this is. Unfortunately, the quietest laser printers…

PRICE £435 exc VAT from uk.insight.com Small businesses short on desk space will love Canon’s compact imageFormula DR-S150: it’s nicely compact and supports both wired and wireless networks, so you can locate it wherever is convenient. Don’t think that small means cut-down, however. The ADF has a generous 60-page capacity, and a big 4.3in colour LCD touchscreen makes it easy to access scan operations. Indeed, it’s from here where you’ll begin setting up the DR-S150, by choosing whether to use USB or a network connection. If you go for the wireless option, the screen shows all available SSIDs, inviting you to tap on one and get connected right away; we opted for a wired connection, but you can switch between interfaces at any time with a couple of taps. Installing…

PRICE 4TB, £550 exc VAT from comms-express.com Small businesses with big data-transfer needs will love Buffalo’s TeraStation TS3420DN. It’s an affordable four-bay desktop NAS appliance that supports 2.5GbE, providing more than twice the speed of a regular gigabit connection over legacy Cat5e network cabling. The price shown above is for our review model, which came with four 1TB Seagate IronWolf SATA drives in hot-swap carriers behind the lockable front door, and Buffalo also offers the appliance in 8TB, 16TB and 32GB capacities. There’s no diskless option, but the standard three-year warranty also covers the supplied drives: if a drive fails, just call Buffalo before 12 noon and its VIP service will furnish you with a new drive and carrier within 24 hours. Drives aside, the core specification comprises a quad-core…

Paul explains why it’s time to review how you handle personal data and why you should make a hash of it, before upgrading his Raspberry Pi’s OS Do you remember GDPR and all the fuss that it created, along with the seemingly endless stream of emails? It seems like it happened ages ago but it’s only been a little over two years. Many of us worked long and hard back then to ensure our companies were doing the right thing when the regulation came into force. For smaller businesses that was relatively easy, but for bigger organisations it wasn’t just about doing the right thing – it was also being seen to do the right thing. Lots of procedures and documentation, lots of audit trails, lots of systems. That way…

Steve enters a world of pain when a client switches ISPs at the same time as Covid-19 hits, complete with its need to support new remote workers My heartfelt thanks go out to the friendly lady on the Gamma Telecom support line, deep in the lockdown period. No need to get the violins out: this was a practical matter, escalated from the Gamma reseller with little more delay than is customary for these things, and wisely so. The reseller made no bones about its comparative innocence in the matter of heavy-duty business connections, which was merciful because we avoided several days of “turn it off and on again” instructions before escalation. The problem started because my client, a mid-sized charity, wanted to switch ISPs. The day of the new connection…

WILDTRACK This nonprofit fuses an old idea with new techniques to follow animals in their natural habitats. Rather than dart and collar the beasts, WildTrack has developed software inspired by indigenous trackers’ skills at following animal tracks. The footprint identification technique (FIT) is 95% accurate at telling animals apart, using artificial intelligence in a similar way to facial recognition. The next aim is to pair the FIT system with a drone and track specific animals from the air, in order to understand where animals go and count them more accurately. CISCO CONNECTED CONSERVATION For the past six years, Cisco has built a surveillance state – but for rhinos. The tech company teamed up with a nature reserve in South Africa to protect the animals from poachers, but also to protect…

I have been following the disquiet over 5G that’s rumbling through the daily news cycle. The basic claim is that 5G is bad for your health. That it will cause all sorts of ailments and problems, and that, at the heart of the matter, there’s some sort of conspiracy by big business and governments to enforce the use of this technology and cover up the issues that arise. This is not a new story, of course. For years, people have claimed that they’re susceptible to “electrosensitivity” and other such terms, and that radio waves cause them all sorts of ailments. These can range from headaches to poor sleep, from skin conditions to even fatal diseases. Some maintain that Wi-Fi routers in the home must be switched off at night. That…

Oppo spots European opportunity Oppo is pushing into European markets through a partnership with Vodafone that it hopes will bring its handsets into the mainstream. Chinese manufacturers have been hungrily eyeing European consumers due to the impact of the US trade ban on Huawei. Oppo has rushed to take its place. Vodafone said it would stock a wide range of Oppo’s handsets from May, with a focus on 5G. According to analysts, the bold move could prove timely, especially if further arrangements follow with other carriers. “Securing a pan-European agreement with Vodafone is a significant milestone for Oppo,” said Ben Wood, a mobile analyst with CCS Insight. “It underlines the company’s global ambitions and is a clear signal that it plans to take advantage of Huawei’s current difficulties. For Vodafone,…

Dick Pountain is editorial fellow of PC Pro. His data may live in the cloud, but it has a holiday cottage on a local USB drive. If you’re a devoted reader of this magazine, you may recall my advice, two months ago, for newly homeworking readers to “Get a Google account and a Chromebook” (see issue 308, p8). This off-the-cuff suggestion made me realise how far I’ve drifted from the original personal computer revolution. That was about everyone having their own CPU and their own data, but I’ve since sold my soul to Google and I can’t say I miss it. When first turned on, my Asus Chromebook C301 sucked down all my personal data within five minutes, because I’d already placed it in Google Keep or Google Drive. I…

Better LTE than never After completing the home maintenance tasks – pressure washing the patio and paths – my mind has turned to tech and I’ve been revisiting past issues of PC Pro whilst waiting for the electronic version of the July issue to arrive. In particular, I’ve been researching “always-on” devices. Whilst there are what used to be called “phablets”, such as the massive Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra (with its equally massive price), there seems to be little happening with the always-on PC. Both Samsung and Apple offer versions of their tablets with cellular connectivity, but there seems to be no available PCs with LTE apart from high-end (read high-price), business-oriented laptops and 2-in-1 devices. What happened to the development of Windows running on ARM or other phone-based processors?…

The years 1980 to 1983 were ground zero for the UK’s home computing boom. Within that short, four-year period, Sinclair Research launched the ZX80, ZX81 and ZX Spectrum, while Commodore shipped the VIC-20 and the Commodore 64. Meanwhile, Acorn released the Atom and the school-friendly BBC Micro, and were soon joined by homegrown computer manufacturers such as Jupiter and Dragon. All of this hardware was embraced by a generation of young enthusiasts fuelled by excitement for computing and a love of arcade games. The result was a new breed of hero: superstar coders who would go on to build an industry and inspire others to make their own games. Forty years on, with the industry now dominated by global studios making games with budgets of tens of millions of dollars,…

PRICE £400 (£500 inc VAT) from huawei.com/uk On the face of it, the MatePad Pro faces the same problems as the Huawei P40 Pro I reviewed last month (see issue 309, p62). Thanks to the US trade sanctions, it doesn’t have access to Google’s apps, Play store or services – and many popular apps rely upon the latter. However, the types of apps people use on tablets are different to those on phones. There’s less reliance on location services, powered by Google, and I found the lack of direct access to the Google Play store wasn’t an issue. If I needed to grab an app not available on Huawei’s AppGallery store, I could legitimately copy it over from my phone; that worked fine for Netflix and Spotify. Microsoft Office is…

PRICE £1,039 (£1,247 inc VAT) from ballicom.co.uk If you have a perception of Acer as a maker of pile em high, sell em cheap laptops, your stereotypes need an update. While Acer still produces budget laptops, the business-focused TravelMate P6 is a different beast entirely. What lifts the P6 onto a different plane is build quality, with a magnesium alloy chassis that’s a match for the best in the business. It’s no surprise to see that this laptop has been through the MIL-STD-810G tests, although consider upgrading the one year of return-to-base cover (if you buy direct through Acer, a three-year on-site warranty costs £150). At a shade over 1.2kg, it’s also surprisingly light. That’s 100g less than the Huawei MateBook opposite, and that makes a difference in the hand.…

PRICE £1,165 (£1,399 inc VAT) from pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews If you’ve stuck loyally with Intel until now then it could be time to make a big decision: stick with Core chips or twist with Ryzen. It’s a great time to make that decision too, as Intel has just released its tenth generation of Core desktop processors (see p12). We’ve already seen what its top-of-the-range Core i9-10900K can do courtesy of the Scan 3XS Vengeance XTi (see p64), but that has the distinct disadvantage of costing £3,300. If you don’t have such deep pockets, this more restrained and more affordable machine from PC Specialist will suit you better. It’s based on the mid-range Core i5-10600K, and take note of that “K” suffix. Unlike the regular 10600, this chip operates at a base clock…

“We were able to increase our phone capability 250%+ in record time to meet the demands of the NHS professionals responding to the Covid-19 crisis. Working together with Adept CTS and 3CX, we were able to deliver a flexible and rapid deployment, providing new and increased capabilities to health professionals in the UK, ensuring service users get the support they need at this very critical time. Thank you 3CX for your excellent support in this time of crisis!” Matt Buckley, head of enterprise architecture and design, technology management and architecture at NHS South, Central and West “We have been extremely happy with 3CX’s ability to enable communications across our rapidly growing and highly distributed business. The ability for the phone system to support calls across both head office and a…

PRICE 64GB, £349 (£419 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk Pity the poor owners of the original iPhone SE (see issue 261, p74). They’ve waited four long years for this refresh, with Apple no doubt hoping they would instead shell out on an iPhone 11 (see issue 302, p52) or iPhone XR. But with iPhone sales declining recently, Apple evidently felt the need to appeal to people unwilling to spend more than £600 on a new handset. In terms of design, the iPhone SE (2020) duplicates the appearance of the iPhone 8 to the millimetre and gram. It’s 138mm tall, 67mm wide, 7.3mm thick and weighs 138g. Glass panels sandwich an aluminium frame and it’s available in black, white and “Product Red” colours (a portion of funds raised from the Product Red…

PRICE £241 (£289 inc VAT) from printerbase.co.uk The MFC-J1300DW is a small-ish colour multifunction peripheral aimed at the home or micro office. While Brother’s inkjets aren’t always the most exciting, this one distinguishes itself by arriving with enough ink for a claimed 7,200 full-colour prints. Brother says that’s enough to last three years – perhaps more pertinently it works out at just 4p per page. Happily, this MFP isn’t a bust elsewhere. It’s well specified, with support for wired and wireless networks, and a medium-sized colour touchscreen control panel. On top there’s a scanner with a 20-sheet ADF. However, while the printer supports automatic double-sided (duplex) printing, its ADF can’t duplex scan, fax or copy. This MFP’s ink arrives in a laudably small amount of packaging, and each chunky cartridge…

PRICE £87 (104 inc VAT) from printerbase.co.uk The OfficeJet Pro 8022 looks every inch the small office printer. It’s made from muted grey and off-white plastics, and proudly wears its ADF like a hat. There’s little clutter. The 225-sheet paper tray juts out slightly from the front, but the eye is drawn by the tilted, touch-sensitive control panel above it. This MFP has most of the features you’re likely to need in a micro or home office. There’s copy, scan and fax support, along with both wired and wireless network connections. The printer can automatically print on both sides of a page, but the 35-sheet ADF is simplex only, ruling out unattended double-sided scans, copies or faxes. HP has mastered touchscreen controls, and the example here is a case in…

PRICE £335 (£402 inc VAT) from printerbase.co.uk For a small business, a colour laser device offers great speed and print quality, but too often the flip side is high running costs. Kyocera’s Ecosys M5526cdw aims to balance features, performance and cost. It’s a MFP that scans, copies, faxes, and can print up to 26 black or colour pages per minute. The M5526cdw is bulkier than an entry-level device and weighs 26kg, so it might be hard to accommodate in smaller offices. It’s a shame that the main paper tray holds only 250 pages, but there’s a 50-sheet multipurpose feed, and you can add another 250-sheet tray as an option. The generous 150-sheet output bin also detects when it’s full. The 50-sheet ADF supports duplexing, so you can automatically print, scan,…

PRICE £290 (£347 inc VAT) from printerbase.co.uk Kyocera’s Ecosys M2735dw is a medium-sized mono laser MFP aimed at busier small offices and workgroups. In the base, there’s a 35ppm printer, while on top the scanner is paired with a 50-sheet automatic document feeder. This MFP connects via USB, Wi-Fi or a Gigabit Ethernet connection, and control comes via a large colour touchscreen. Despite this, the top panel is still liberally sprinkled with buttons, making it appear overly cluttered. This is a rapid printer, reaching 25.9ppm over 25 pages of text, including the time taken to spool the job. Over 50 pages it managed 33ppm, close to its rated speed. Graphical prints were little slower, reaching an impressive 25.3ppm on our 24-page complex test. Unusually, this MFP can print at 1,200dpi…

By now, it’s clear that the myth of the paperless office is just that – a myth. But don’t write off the whole idea: while it might not be realistic to ditch physical documents entirely, you can certainly reduce your reliance on them, and reap the rewards of a “paper-light” workflow. For a start, if your office is packed with bulky filing cabinets, you can reclaim that space by digitising statements, invoices, sales records and legal documents. The original hard copies can be sent off to secure archival storage, where they are protected from disasters such as fire and flood, while you put the floor space to more productive uses. Naturally, you’ll need to invest some time into the digitising process itself – but there are plenty of fast,…

PRICE £350 exc VAT from ebuyer.com If you’re seeking effortless passport and ID card scanning, the Fujitsu fi-800R will suit you down to the ground. Its ingenious design sucks an open passport in through a slot at the front, then ejects it the same way, so the bulk of the passport never needs to pass through the mechanism. Even better, it’s small enough to be kept at the front desk, so the customer’s passport need never leave their sight. Don’t think of the fi-800R as solely a specialist scanner, though. With a 20-page ADF and an advertised 40ppm scan speed, it’s more than equal to everyday scanning tasks. And we can’t quibble with Fujitu’s performance claims: our sheaf of 20 bank statements was digitised at 41ppm at 200dpi and 300dpi,…

PRICE £253 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com Zyxel’s GS1350 series of Layer 2 switches make perfectly fine general-purpose PoE switches, but they’re especially well suited to driving IP cameras. The distinctive Auto Recovery feature keeps a watchful eye on all powered devices and can automatically power-cycle any that become unresponsive, while Zyxel’s patented surge protection circuitry also protects exterior cameras from lightning strikes. The switch family comprises four models, ranging from the six-port GS1350-6HP up to the rackmount, 26-port GS1350-26HP. We tested the GS1350-12HP, which presents eight Gigabit Ethernet ports providing 802.3at PoE+ services, along with two pairs of unpowered copper and fibre dual-personality ports. The unit has a reasonable power budget of 130W, and an extended-range mode that overcomes the 100m PoE cable length limitation, allowing powered devices to be…

While wondering why cycle repair shops are still open but computer repair shops are closed, Lee rips apart a 14-year-old Nintendo Wii For once, we were ahead of the curve. On 16 March our shop became “appointment only” in response to Covid-19: no booking and you weren’t getting in. Customers would arrive, ring the Ring and be instructed to place their computer in the taped-off zone and leave quickly. Once the door was locked, I pounced with anti-bac spray and rubber gloves like a low-budget version of Kim and Aggie. It’s not the warm and fluffy welcome we normally offer but it’s designed to eliminate the gaggle of coughing pensioners that can stack up in our waiting area. We’re considering a rebrand: Inspiration Computers – striving to keep you alive!…