Indholdsfortegnelse for November 2020 i PC Pro

IT’S HARD TO find a positive headline at the moment – unless, that is, you’re a shareholder of an US technology company. “Combined, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Facebook earned $28 billion,” reported The New York Times on 31 July. “Amazon had warned investors to expect profits to be wiped out by $4 billion in coronavirus-related costs. Although the firm spent as much as promised, sales grew so fast that it turned a $5 billion profit for the second quarter, double the result of the year before.” Three weeks earlier, by contrast, John Lewis announced that it was closing eight of its 50 department stores, including the Watford branch where I worked for three years during the late 1990s. This was yet another hammer blow to shopping centres that rely on…

PREMIUMLAPTOPS Apple MacBook Pro 16in Powerhouse laptop with a price to match, from £2,399 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 HP Spectre x360 (2020) HP keeps producing exceptional laptops and the new 13in Spectre x360 is one of its best. A striking convertible with all the mod cons. £1,399 from store.hp.com REVIEW Issue 307, p60 LG Gram 17 A 1.3kg 17in laptop with battery life of over 11 hours might…

@bazzacollins Last November, noting that my old laptop was starting to creak, I had a decision to make. Should I go for a powerful desktop with top-notch graphics and more storage than I could ever fill? Or should I sacrifice some of that graphical oomph and storage capacity for a laptop that I can take on my increasingly occasional business jaunts and foreign trips? I plumped for the latter’s flexibility. Nine months on, circumstances have made me regret that decision somewhat. I’m still a big fan of the MacBook Pro, but given that the coronavirus has left us all decidedly jauntless, I now wonder if I’d have been better off with that desktop. These ponderings were reinforced recently when I had a chat with the global MD of IT analysts…

23% I don’t listen to music while working 21% Music-streaming service such as Spotify 16% Streaming radio service such as TuneIn or BBC 13% Streaming from my own NAS or similar 12% I don’t listen to music while working 10% Good old-fashioned radio 3% Not quite so old-fashioned CDs RIP CDs. It seems that our forward-thinking readers much prefer streaming, whether locally or online, to older technologies. Yet there are some who are still waving the high-fidelity flag: “I use an Apple iPod Classic (fitted with an SD card) playing lossless audio ripped from not quite so old-fashioned CDs,” wrote Roy Tait. Meanwhile, Mobailey has splashed out: “As it looks like I’m going to be working from home for a while longer, I’ve treated myself to a new smart micro…

Benjamin Franklin wrote “nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. Fast forward to today, and the answers to life’s endless questions are a few keystrokes away or a shouted request to Alexa. Lost? Your smartphone can tell you where you are and get you from A to B. Need to check the weather? Ask Google and you’ll get an instant, local forecast. Want to know what’s happening in the world? Log in to Facebook or Twitter for a personalised stream of news. Yet, few of us stop to question the truth behind what our devices tell us, or as German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer put it: “When the soothsayers work with computer algorithms rather than tarot cards, we take their predictions seriously.” Some say this illusion of…

PRICE £1,833 (£2,200 inc VAT) from chillblast.com It’s fair to say that Chillblast is on Flight Simulator’s case. Head to chillblast.com and you’ll find 14 PCs tailor-made for flight sims, ranging from £760 to £4,900, and it’s had early access to Flight Simulator’s alpha and beta code to help fine-tune its offerings. That said, the ingredients behind a flight simPC are well understood. First, you need as powerful a processor as you can afford, and that honour goes to the eight-core Core i7-10700K here. Next up, the graphics chip: the GeForce RTX 2080 Super shoulders this burden. And to complete the crew, two 16GB sticks of 3,200MHz memory, a fast 1TB PCIe SSD and a 4TB mechanical hard disk – the latter useful when trying to meet Flight Simulator’s heavy…

PRICE 45mm, £349 (£419 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com In spite of its name, the Galaxy Watch 3 is only the second “true” Galaxy Watch Samsung has made. While the sporty Galaxy Watch Active 2 (pcpro.link/313active) surfaced in early 2020, this is the first proper upgrade to the company’s flagship, which launched in 2018. The Watch 3 comes in two sizes – 41mm and 45mm – and both run Samsung’s Tizen operating system, meaning you can use them with Android and iOS smartphones. The smaller model starts at £399 for the Bluetooth-only variant and comes in bronze and silver, while the larger model costs £419 and is available in black and silver. Another £40 buys you 4G, irrespective of which size you pick, so a 45mm 4G Galaxy Watch 3 costs…

PRICE £291 (£349 inc VAT) from store.google.com Google’s cheapest smartphone is almost here – it goes on sale in October – and it’s immediately obvious that Google is aware it must work harder with the 4a than the Pixel 3a (see issue 304, p85). Not only does it cost less than last year’s phone did at launch, its slim body houses a larger screen and is crammed with handy upgrades. Such improvements are essential. Whichever way the company turns, it has competition. Above: OnePlus with the pricier expensive Nord (see p62). Below: Motorola with the £300 Moto G 5G Plus (see issue 312, p68). And to the side: Apple with the revamped iPhone SE (see issue 310, p77). Winning formula To fight off such fearsome opposition, Google has simplified its…

PRICE New licence, Home & Student, £58 (£70 inc VAT) from parallels.com Parallels Desktop has been my go to virtualisation platform for a while, mostly hosting Windows 10 installations. As you’d expect from a fully featured hypervisor, it allows you to do things that you simply can’t dream of when Windows is installed onto base hardware. Take a snapshot of how everything is just now? No problem: it takes a few seconds. Roll back five minutes to that moment before you installed an unstable app? Not a problem: with a wave of your magic wand, everything is reset. This is especially powerful when you are working with buggy code, such as a wobbly app or driver. As before, Parallels lets you set up new virtual machines with a few mouse…

PRICE £174 (£209 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk It’s testament to NEC displays’ quality that a product released in 2012 still stands tall next to much more recent models. Although “tall” is stretching things: at 21.5in, it’s looking decidedly titchy, despite its 130mm of height adjustment. Pivot the screen 90° and it’s easy to access the DisplayPort, DVI, VGA and HDMI inputs, and there’s even a four-port USB hub. Predictably, these are USB 2 rather than USB 3. Another sign of age is its 14ms grey-to-grey response times, but, more tellingly, its viewing angles aren’t up to the standards of modern IPS panels, with a notable drop-off as you move away from a head-on view. That’s a shame because the panel itself remains technically strong: 94.5% coverage of the sRGB colour…

PRICE £240 (£288 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com Acer produces so many monitors that it seems to have run out of model names. Search for the B277U on its website and the one with part number UM.HB7EE.011 is first to appear – an older model that includes a webcam. We’re reviewing the B277U identified by UM.HB7EE.014, which jettisons the webcam but benefits from a more recent panel. As always, we’re pleased to see that it’s based on IPS technology. This helped the B277U to a strong showing in our gamut coverage tests, and unusually this wasn’t restricted to the sRGB colour space. While it performed well there – 98.8% coverage, 102.5% volume – we were most taken by its 85.7%/95.7% return in Adobe RGB. That rubs shoulders with monitors that target…

PRICE £215 (£258 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk On the face of it, it might seem odd that we’re recommending this 1440p screen when Iiyama is selling a 4K monitor for almost exactly the same price. While the XU2792UHSU-B1 has its undoubted attractions, we think this more rounded monitor is a better choice. For one, while you do notice a lift in sharpness when you move from a 1440p to a 4K 27in screen, the difference isn’t as big as you might expect. At standard viewing distances, 2,560 x 1,440 pixels don’t have any obvious fuzz. If you’re willing to accept this argument, this monitor’s advantages start multiplying. For a start, it comes with a far superior stand than its sibling. There’s 130mm of height adjustment, support for portrait mode and…

PRICE £125 (£150incVAT) from box.co.uk The GL2780 is the sole monitor in this Labs to use a TN panel, and if nothing else it serves as a useful reminder of this technology’s limitations. That’s despite BenQ’s best efforts, because in terms of testing it performed well: in sRGB mode, it covered 90.6% of that gamut with 101.9% volume and an average Delta E of 1.05. However, numbers never tell the whole story, and as soon as you start using the GL780 you’ll become aware of its limited viewing angles and tendency to wash out colours. This is despite a technically strong contrast ratio of around 1,200:1. It doesn’t help that a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution results in jagged-looking text, which BenQ does its best to iron out with sharpening –…

PRICE £316 (£379 inc VAT) from shop.benq.eu Not every creative professional can afford to spend over £1,000 on a monitor, but BenQ reckons it has the answer in the PD2705Q: a hardware-calibrated display with the assurance that even screens from different production lines will output consistent colours. Each monitor comes with its own calibration report and the promise of an average Delta E of under three, plus certification from CalMAN and Pantone. What you don’t get is coverage of the Adobe RGB gamut, so print designers need not apply, but if your work is within the sRGB or Rec.709 gamuts then you’ll be happy: the PD2705Q achieved stellar scores of 96.2% coverage/98% volume with a 0.47 average Delta E, while you can widen its gamut by switching to Standard mode…

PRICE £333 (£399 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk While gaming monitors aren’t the focus of this Labs, when MSI offered us this curved 27in 1440p monitor for review we couldn’t refuse. That curve is gentle in practice, with 1500R not obvious in this size of screen, but what really matters is refresh rates and response times. With a VA panel in place, the MSI impresses: a maximum of 165Hz and 1ms, together with a measured contrast ratio of 2,502:1, means you won’t miss a detail through smearing or darkness. Press down on the rear joystick and you also get “Screen Assistance”, with a crosshair appearing in the centre of the screen, while pressing up gives a choice of gaming modes: FPS, Racing, RTS, RPG and one user-defined mode. Press down to…

PRICE £429 (£515 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk On paper, the Asus has obvious competition this month: the MSI Optix MPG341CQR is also a large VA gaming monitor with an 1800R curvature and 144Hz refresh rate. Placed side by side, though, these are very different screens. Where the Strix uses a 31.5in panel with a 16:9 aspect ratio, the Optix stretches to a cinematic 21:9. Although the MSI has a wider 34in diagonal, the Asus actually has a larger area of panel and that results in a lower pixel density of 93ppi: it consequently lacks the sharpness of its rival. Their performance in our technical tests was almost identical, although the Strix benefits from a dedicated sRGB mode. This locked our panel’s brightness to 169cd/m2 but provided 99.5% coverage with an…

PRICE£724 (£869 incVAT) from scan.co.uk The MSI Optix MPG341CQR is one of the most striking monitors in this Labs. It uses a 34in curved 1440p VA panel with a 110ppi pixel density, and it looks sharp from normal viewing distances. Certainly sharper than the 31.5in Asus ROG Strix XG32VQR, which offers the MSI its closest competition in this Labs. Well, kind of. The Samsung LC34J791WTUXXU also uses a 34in curved VA panel, but in terms of appearance they couldn’t be more different: the Samsung is finished in smooth office-white while the MSI is boys’ bedroom grey with a strip of programmable RGB LEDs on the front. MSI also packs this screen with electronics to enhance the panel’s natural gaming abilities. It promises a 1ms grey-to-grey response time, support for AMD…

PRICE £740 (£888 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk This 4K monitor has so much going for it. The IPS panel is top quality, hitting 94.3% of the sRGB gamut out of the box and 99.5% with a little tweaking. It even covers 97.3% of the DCI-P3 gamut. Those are both terrific results, as is its average Delta E of 0.49. Dell hides this light under the bushel of its feature-poor OSD, which is crying out for preset modes that go beyond the basics of Movie, Game and ComfortView. Unless you have a spectrometer to help you widen its gamut, the best you can do is head to the colour temperature options and find the one that best suits you. No doubt Dell is aiming for elegant simplicity, and that certainly applies…

PRICE £1,108 (£1,329 inc VAT) from laptopsdirect.co.uk While most curved panels use VA technology, LG opts for IPS with this 37.5in display. On the surface, this sounds identical to the panel inside the Asus Designo Curve MX38VC, but some digging in diagnostic utilities revealed that the LG’s panel was manufactured earlier this year while the Asus uses one created in late 2018. As a result, it benefits from a number of upgrades. Top of the list is a 144Hz refresh rate, which will naturally make a big difference in games compared to the Asus’ peak of 60Hz – if you have a graphics card powerful enough to feed 3,840 x 1,600 pixels. Add a 1ms response time, and adaptive sync support for both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards, and you…

PRICE £1,424 (£1,708 inc VAT) from alza.co.uk Acer has created a wood/metal aesthetic for its ConceptD workstation range, so it’s no surprise to see hints of both in this accompanying, stylish monitor. Acer doesn’t lose any crucial functionality: you can still adjust the height by 180mm, swivel it round 360° and tilt it back a full 35°. The only thing you can’t do is pivot it into portrait mode, but doing so would make the supplied hood fall off anyway. While its “brushed velvet” texture is odd, the hood is effective at blocking out surrounding light and means you can fully appreciate this panel’s finer qualities. Out of the box it covered 96.6% of the sRGB gamut with 101.2% volume, and minor tweaks took this to 97.6% and 99.9%; mix…

PRICE £493 (£592 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com At first sight this 1440p 27in monitor appears to be overpriced: after all, you can buy the 4K Dell UltraSharp U2720Q for almost £60 less. However, unlike the Dell, this ViewSonic isn’t designed for life in any old office. Instead, it’s aimed at creative professionals who will be jumping from video to print, and with the knowledge that they can trust the colours this panel shows. Naturally, it supports hardware calibration, and you can set a regular reminder in the OSD that it’s time for recalibration. What’s most impressive for a monitor this affordable is that it comes with the promise of 100% coverage of the Adobe RGB gamut and 96% of DCI-P3. Switching between these presets is easy through the OSD and…

PRICE Studio X30 with TC8, £1,700 exc VAT from best4systems.co.uk If you’re daunted by the prospect of setting up a dedicated videoconferencing system, Poly’s Studio X30 is worth a look. Aimed at small meeting rooms with up to six participants, it’s a standalone solution that’s designed to be and running connections and no host PC. The hardware could hardly be simpler. The X30 brings together a 4K camera, a loudspeaker and a beamforming quad-microphone array in a single lightweight bar, which can be controlled via a USB keyboard and an external monitor. For a slicker experience, you can also partner it with Poly’s TC8 control unit, which we’ve included in the price above. This automatically pairs with the X30 over your office network and provides a friendly touch interface for…

PRICE Appliance with 1yr Gold licence, £434 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com Not every business needs an enterprise-grade UTM. If you’re looking for something simpler and cheaper, Zyxel’s ZyWall ATP100 could well be the answer. Designed for small offices of up to 25 users, it borrows key features from Zyxel’s high-end USG series and adds cloud threat intelligence, sandboxing and analytics, all for a price that’s very hard to argue with. It comes in the form of a fanless desktop unit with one Gigabit WAN port, four copper LAN connectors and an SFP fibre socket for longer cable runs. Across these connections, Zyxel quotes a firewall throughput of 1Gbit/sec, dropping to 380Mbits/sec with all security services enabled. The £434 asking price includes a year-long Gold licence, after which renewals cost £212…

Andre called up the stairs: “Netflix isn’t working on the TV”. Keeping one’s partner happy is obviously priority number one, so I scampered downstairs to see the issue. The TV is a 40in Samsung UHD/HDR model in our kitchen/lounge, and we use its built-in Netflix app. And he was quite right: it was complaining about there being no data feed. I tried the Amazon app and that was dead too. Clearly something was amiss in IP-land. Going to the TV network settings showed it had managed to obtain an IP address of 192.168.168.101, with a default gateway of 192.168.168.1. Which is odd, because my network runs on the 10.101.x.x range. The only explanation was that I had a rogue DHCP server on my network. Now, I need to explain that…

Popular Computing Weekly said of Psion’s Flight Simulation on the ZX81: ‘No words can do justice to this most elegant of programs. You will not see a better computer game until Psion produce one for the Spectrum.’ Here it is. Learn to fly, bank, dive and climb, see the world outside through the cockpit windows, land and take off with the aid of many cockpit instruments.” So reads the inlay of the cassette tape for the 48K ZX Spectrum version of Flight Simulation by Psion. Deep in that area of the brain where earliest memories and nostalgia swirl into a dream-like haze, I long held an image in my mind of the cover art for that game. A cockpit… nighttime… runway lights. An image search and there it was, along…

On sale Thursday 8 October LABS Workstation laptops Need a mobile machine capable of heavy-duty action? We crunch the numbers on the best number crunchers around. Subscribe today Start your subscription today and claim a 4,000mAh power bank. You can read PC Pro in print, as well as on your iPad, iPhone or Android device. Turn to p108 for more details. FEATURES PCProExcellence Awards2020 Discover the most reliable(and least reliable) brands, whether you’r ebuying a laptop, phone or fibre broadband connection. Best Windows package managers Take the pain out of installing software–and keeping it up to date–with our guide to Windows pack age managers The tech that will keep usalive From exoskeletons to neural implants, there are reasons to be cheerful about growing older in the mid-to-late 21st century……

Sarah Kidner Have we become too used to receiving instant gratification from tech in a world full of uncertainty? Sarah provides a nuanced response on p34 Gavin Hall Who better to review the brand-new Microsoft Flight Simulator than a commercial pilot who grew up on sims? Read Gavin’s verdict from p42 Barry Collins A long-time Spotify user, Barry couldn’t help but wonder whether its rivals offered something better. His discovery? That Spotify is no longer king. See p26 Davey Winder Davey provides a double dose of ransomware advice this month: how to avoid it on p104 and then what happens when it hits from p120…

Last night I “attended” a superb jazz session by world-class musicians Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland and Brian Blade. Admittedly, it happened 16 years ago in Salzau in Germany, but I heard it almost as well as – and saw it far better than – if I’d been there. It was a free YouTube video, in HD, which I Chromecast to my LG smart TV, pushing the sound through my vintage hi-fi system (an excellent but hardly audiophile combo of Denon amp and Castle speakers). The advantages over a live concert are easy to list. For a start, the camerawork was exceptional: I saw the players’ fingers on their instruments and facial expressions in a closeup that I’ve never experienced at a live gig. I also avoided queuing for…

Spotify’s bold move to make streaming free and legal almost 15 years ago won it hundreds of millions of users, almost half of whom have since been converted to paying customers. But does Spotify still deserve such loyalty? Is it really that much better than the other streaming services or is it trading on the inertia advantage that stems from being the first company to crack the streaming market? I’ve been testing six streaming services for the past few months, letting them learn my music habits while I get to learn theirs. If you thought all services were the same, broadcasting the same catalogue at the same quality, I urge you to read on as that’s far from the case. Spoiler: Spotify is no longer the benchmark for the rest…

PRICE £1,083 (£1,299 inc VAT) from cyberpowersystem.co.uk While I enjoyed using the Chillblast Captain Flight Sim PC (see p45), there isn’t a compelling reason to spend more than £2,000 if you want to enjoy Microsoft Flight Simulator. This Cyberpower system is a case in point: while it hasn’t been designed to run that highly demanding flight sim, it copes with it comfortably even at 4K. You’ll need to drop the settings from High to Medium, but the rolling hills still look amazing beneath you. That’s because Cyberpower invests in the core components, with an eight-core Coffee Lake-S Intel Core i7-9700KF chip arguably the most important. This has been usurped by the tenth-generation Core i7-10700KF in Intel’s lineup, but there isn’t a huge generational leap between the two: the older chip’s…

PRICE £1,750 (£2,100 inc VAT) from razer.com We tested the fully loaded Quadro Studio Edition of the Razer Blade 15 earlier this year (see issue 308, p56), but the Base model goes back to relative basics. The key word there being “relative”: this is still a powerful laptop, based on Intel’s six-core Core i7-10750H processor, 16GB of dual-channel 2,933MHz DDR4 memory and Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q graphics. I ran the machine through a variety of our benchmarks and it performed brilliantly across the board; you can see precisely how it compares to the new Dell XPS 15 using the graphs on p49. It falls behind the Gigabyte Auros 15G (pcpro. link/313gig) in the gaming tests, but that’s because the Auros uses RTX 2070 Super Max-Q graphics. If you want…

PRICE 12.4in, £666 (£799 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com The Galaxy Tab S7+ is clearly intended as a direct competitor to the recently refreshed iPad Pro (see issue 310, p52). Just like its rival, it comes in two different screen sizes, with the regular S7 costing £619 and including an 11in screen. Here, we focus our attention on the 12.4in S7+. This is the only model with the potential for 5G, but you pay another £200 for the privilege. Unlike the iPad Pro, it comes with a bundled stylus – now even more responsive thanks to the 120Hz screen – and you can expand the Tab’s 128GB storage via the SD card slot by up to 1TB. But its real advantage is price. The entry-level 12.9in iPad Pro costs £969, with…

PRICE 128GB, £316 (£379 inc VAT) from oneplus.com OnePlus made its name by squeezing top-specification components into keenly priced products, but that philosophy went bythe wayside as it attempted to elbow its way onto the top table alongside the big names. The Nord is an attempt for OnePlus to rediscover its “true north”, as founder Carl Pei put it in a Instagram post. With more brilliant budget phones on sale than ever before, however, jumping back in and winning costconscious customers over is no simple task. Assuming that 5G is on your must-have wishlist, its obvious rival is the Moto G 5G Plus (see issue 312, p68), which comes with the same chipset, 64GB of storage and a similar array of features for £300. Glassy design Where the OnePlus Nord…

PRICE £228 (£274 inc VAT) from lambda-tek.com With any other manufacturer, £274 inc VAT buys you a 27in monitor. Eizo isn’t just any other manufacturer, though. There’s a heft to the EV2460 that suggests top-quality electronics, and that’s reflected in the best OSD on test: it’s blissfully simple to make changes, thanks to front-mounted buttons matched with sensible icons that pop up to show you what to do. Say you want to switch from the sRGB profile to Movie. There’s no digging around in a complex menu, with six presets available within a button press or two. Naturally, image quality is the best around, as reflected by its brightness deviation across the screen; compare its results in the graphic below to that of the Iiyama. While its cheaper rival actually…

PRICE £133 (£160incVAT) from alza.co.uk If you only have limited space on your desk but still yearn for features and versatility, take a long hard look at the Philips 242B1. It even packs a twomegapixel infrared camera – which can be tucked away when not needed – that works with Windows Hello for quick and easy logins. Don’t expect iPhone-level image quality, though; it’s passable for Skype, but that’s it. Despite the 242B1’s competitive price, you’ll also benefit from a four-port USB 3 hub, 90° pivot, 150mm of height adjustment and all the inputs most people need: DVI, VGA, DisplayPort and HDMI. It’s only a shame that Philips doesn’t include USB-C, because that would have lifted it above the Iiyama as our outright winner. Nevertheless, the Philips 242B1 is still…

PRICE £234 (£281 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com If you’re looking for a 4K 27in IPS screen, and have a budget of under £300, it’s a straight shootout between this AOC and the Iiyama ProLite XU2792UHSU-B1. There are reasons to choose both of them – and reasons not to. So why buy the AOC? For a start, because it packs a number of valuable features that Iiyama jettisons. Where Iiyama chooses a fixed stand, this AOC includes a surprisingly flexible offering: the three key benefits are 130mm of height adjustment, 90° of swivel and portrait mode. It also feels more solid than the Iiyama. For example, where that screen wobbles on its stand when you press the OSD buttons, the U2790PQU has enough heft to stay (mostly) still when you prod…

PRICE £198 (£238 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com The AOC Q27P2Q is the cheapest of the three 27in non-docking monitors on test that include a 1440p panel, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best value. Not that this screen is short of features: there’s 120mm of height adjustment, a pivot mode and a four-port USB hub. The stand doesn’t offer any swivel, but because it’s so light you can easily twist the whole unit without much effort. There are signs of cost-cutting elsewhere, with only one HDMI port to accompany the DisplayPort and, unusually, VGA input. And that’s it for ports, unless you count the headphone jack and audio output – the latter a sign, perhaps, that AOC knows its pair of 2W speakers won’t blow anyone away with their sound…

PRICE £445 (£534 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk If you’re looking for a 27in monitor to set your pulse racing, we can think of many others in this Labs that will do the job far better than the Dell UltraSharp U2720Q. Perhaps most notably the MSI Optix MAG272CQR. If, on the other hand, you’re looking for a practical screen that will reduce cable clutter and reproduce accurate colours, this 27in 4K screen fits the bill – and, unlike the technically superior offerings from NEC and Eizo, it does so for a competitive price. While we say technically superior, in truth there isn’t a big gulf between this Dell and its more expensive rivals. Consider its Delta E: while there’s no guarantee that the monitor you buy will match the phenomenal 0.33…

PRICE £773 (£923 inc VAT) from lambda-tek.com While Eizo’s FlexScan screens don’t have the hardware calibration of its ColorEdge series and can “only” display 16.7 million colours, they still offer phenomenal accuracy. That’s shown in the EV2785’s results, with 99.1% coverage of the sRGB gamut (116.1% volume) and a Delta E of 0.37. Even its worst result was 1.07, which means that its colours are essentially perfect. Despite this, we can’t recommend the FlexScan EV2785 for print-focused creatives as it only covers 73.5% of the Adobe RGB gamut; ViewSonic’s VP2785-2K is the better option here if your budget is limited. So who is the Eizo right for? Well, anyone looking for versatility, build quality and reliability. The EV2785’s stand offers an unmatched 178mm of height adjustment, while the screen swivels…

PRICE £632 (£758 inc VAT) from lambda-tek.com The EA271U first graced these pages in early 2019 (see issue 293, p92), earning a place on the A-List for its stunning whites and excellent all-round quality. Those traits haven’t changed a jot in the interim, with the monitor still a great choice for any office worker: it offers superb colour accuracy in the sRGB space, covering 98% with an average Delta E of 0.54. The EV2785 covers a wider range of colours, however. Even after some tweaking and shifting through the different colour presets, we couldn’t persuade the NEC to cover more than 70% of the Adobe RGB colour space, with DCI-P3 only slightly better at 76.7%. However, where this monitor wins is for the range of colour temperatures, with the option…

PRICE£292(£350 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk The Iiyama XB3288UHSU-B1 has much in common with the Philips 328E1. They both use a VA panel, both have a 4K resolution and are both aggressively priced. Their first and most obvious point of difference is that the Philips is curved while the Iiyama is flat, but the second is that Iiyama still includes many useful “extras” despite its budget. So, here you enjoy two USB-A 3 ports to the left of the screen. Then there’s a flexible stand, with height adjustment up to 130mm and 90° of swivel; there’s no support for pivot mode, but you can rotate the screen for easier access to the three inputs: two HDMI, one DisplayPort. Iiyama takes advantage of VA’s fast response times with support for AMD FreeSync.…

PRICE £393 (£471 inc VAT) from shop.bt.com We were so impressed by this monitor three months ago (see issue 310, p69) that we put it on the A-List and, while it loses that top spot to the LG UltraWide 38WN95C, the Brilliance 346P1 remains a phenomenal choice if a large, curved screen appeals. Philips lifts the 346P1 above rival 34in curved VA monitors by packing it with user-friendly features. It’s an excellent choice for anyone wanting a clutter-free desk, with an RJ-45 port, four USB-A ports (all sensibly mounted to the left of the screen) and even a KVM switch if you want to share your mouse and keyboard with a second connected computer. Note that its USB-C connection provides a wholesome 90W of power too. While the stand is…

PRICE £333 (£400 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com Read down the listing for the Philips 328E1 on p75 and you’ll see a lot of crosses. This monitor is pared down to the minimum, with the clear aim of delivering a curved 32in 4K screen for a price no other manufacturer can match. The question then becomes whether you care about the compromises Philips has made. For example, many of us can live with three video inputs – two HDMI, one DisplayPort – and do you really need a flexible stand with height adjustment? But the more important limitation is the relatively poor viewing angles of its VA panel. As you look into the corners, there’s a visible drop off in contrast. If you mainly work in apps with white backgrounds, where…

PRICE £908 (£1,090 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk There are three reasons to consider the Asus Designo Curve MX83VC over the spiritually similar LG UltraWide 38WN95C. The £239 price difference is the most obvious because that still buys you a gently curved 37.5in IPS display, but Asus hopes to also tempt you with a 15W wireless charger. Place a suitable phone on the centre of its stand and a gentle blue light starts pulsing to show it’s working. There’s also a powerful pair of 10W speakers, with plenty of depth to accompany their volume. The bad news for Asus is that in almost every other way the LG is superior. For a start, it’s brighter. While the Asus’s peak of 306cd/m2 in our tests is fine for most setups, it lacks…

PRICE £1,000 (£1,200 inc VAT) from box.co.uk It isn’t enough for manufacturers to lure creative pros with the promise of calibrated panels that have a Delta E under two anymore – that’s rapidly becoming the standard for mid-range screens. Instead, the likes of BenQ must entice people with features beyond “normal” monitors. BenQ hopes that its Hotkey Puck G2 will do exactly that. This connects to a port at the rear and provides a handy dial for controlling settings such as brightness. Shortcut buttons allow you to quickly switch between colour profiles and sources too. It’s a nice time-saving touch that means you don’t need to dive into the more laborious OSD, which is simple to navigate using the joystick on the rear of the screen but no match for…

COLOUR TESTING Note that colour space testing was performed in the monitor’s relevant mode (such as sRGB) if available. The ideal is for a monitor to achieve 100% coverage and 100% volume; a big difference between the two values is not ideal as it shows the panel is not tuned to that colour space. sRGB coverage Adobe RGB coverage DCI-P3 volume Average DeltaE Maximum DeltaE Colour temperature against 6500K target Peak brightness Average brightness variation Peak contrast ratio…

PRICE £4,750 exc VAT from voipon.co.uk Plenty of companies will sell you a standalone videoconferencing system, but Lifesize has been offering an integrated platform from the start. Its Icon cameras and Phone HD base stations combine with the company’s own conferencing service to form a complete one-stop system. Lifesize is also one of few providers that currently supports 4K video calls and content sharing. That’s made possible by a proprietary compression scheme, which cuts bandwidth requirements to a modest 3Mbits/sec. Security won’t be an issue either as all meetings use end-to-end encryption. The Icon 500 camera unit we tested is Lifesize’s affordable option for small to medium-sized meeting rooms, and includes motorised pan, tilt and 5x optical zoom controls. The Icon 700 option adds around £1,300 to the price but…

PRICE From £1,565 ex VAT from clearvc.co.uk UK-based StarLeaf has been in the collaboration game since 2008, offering meeting room solutions for companies of all sizes. Its entry-level Huddle system will appeal particularly to smaller organisations, as it includes everything you need to turn a small space or room into an instant videoconferencing suite. The kit comprises StarLeaf’s 3320 10.1in touchscreen control panel, a 1080p camera unit, a USB microphone pod and a small powered cable dock. It also includes StarLeaf’s Pronto cable, which lets participants easily connect their laptop to the Huddle system and share screen contents over a USB connection. One thing you don’t get is any loudspeakers. Indeed, the Huddle has no dedicated audio output: sound is relayed solely over the HDMI connection, the expectation being that…

It seems unlikely, but if I am ever suddenly put in charge of everything, the second law I pass will make it illegal for people who aren’t really sure what they’re doing to mess around in the settings of their broadband routers. I’ve lost count of the number of friends who have asked me to look at their broken setups, only for me to find all kinds of random things that have been “tweaked” by people who didn’t realise what those settings actually do. What’s worse is that they probably haven’t just clicked these settings randomly – there’s a whole raft of websites out there that will, when you search for Wi-Fi problems or look to increase your connection speed, give you no end of spurious advice. And this same…

Cast your mind back to the end of July when the world stopped for people who not only like to run but have an almost obsessive need to record details of every last step. Garmin, the technology titan when it comes to smartwatch GPS for runners, suffered a multi-day service outage. The outage, as many of us within the infosec community suspected, was actually a ransomware attack. It took Garmin four days to almost admit as much. I say “almost” because the nearest it came to uttering the “R” word at the time was to say that it had been the victim of a “cyberattack that encrypted some of our systems”. This didn’t surprise me. It’s an approach I’ve seen over and over from businesses big and small, unwilling to…

Critics have warned that algorithmic injustices highlighted by the A-level results furore will only increase without an official regulator to monitor their usage. Officials in the UK are increasingly using computer models to automate decisions based on the government’s datasets, but as the recent A-level fiasco has shown, such practices have huge implications for individuals. “We’ve talked about algorithm regulation in academia and now there’s going to pressure for a regulatory body in charge of this,” said Paul Bernal, professor in law at the University of East Anglia. “The thing that made a difference with the A-levels is we saw a direct impact – people were going to lose university places because of this algorithm.” While the A-level scandal, which initially saw thousands of students’ grades downgraded, was the first…

@njkobie David from Gateshead was expecting A*AA in his A-levels, but he was downgraded to A*AB because his school had never had such a good maths student before. “The college thought it would be the best year we’ve ever had, but the algorithm says it’s not allowed,” he told the BBC. He’s not the only one to be left disappointed this year – all because of one algorithm. Thanks to the pandemic, students didn’t sit their exams, raising the question of how to decide final grades with which to apply for university. There were myriad possible solutions: use their grades from the mocks, ask their teachers for predictions, find a way to sit exams online or with social distancing, or (and this is my preferred option) admit that exams are…

Paul Williamson’s article (see issue 312, p118) reminded me of my introduction to computing. He and I are contemporaries, but followed different paths. As a nascent experimental scientist, I began at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) in Harwell in 1965 as a scientific assistant, where my introduction to computing and computers was with IBM’s first transistorised “supercomputer”, the IBM 7030 Stretch at the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) in Aldermaston. Communication with the Stretch was by way of a van, which each day picked up trays of Hollerith cards from Harwell, transported them to Aldermaston and returned the following day with the trays and, hopefully, the printed results. Very quickly, I learned to triple-check the order of the Hollerith control cards to prevent “job failed” printouts returning. In 1970,…

Rather like switching banks, you might worry that switching streaming services would be a headache. What about all those playlists you have spent years carefully curating? Can you really face manually adding thousands of songs from scratch? Good news: you don’t have to. In the same way banks now handle the transfer of Direct Debits and standing orders, so too are there web apps that will shift your playlists, saved songs and albums to another streaming service. You don’t even have to pay for the privilege. TuneMyMusic (head to tunemymusic.com) will transfer your music collection between Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, YouTube and others. I asked it to heave my 10,199 songs, albums and playlists from Spotify to Deezer and it completed the transfer in just over an hour. TuneMyMusic allows…

PRICE Standard, £50 (£60 inc VAT) from the Microsoft Store or Steam Humankind had been obsessed with taking to the skies for millennia – just think of Icarus – so it was no surprise that early programmers were quick to simulate flight. Preeminent among these was Bruce Artwick, whose work dates back to the mid-1970s. When Microsoft was looking for a product to show off the power of IBM-compatible computers, it commissioned Artwick to bring his simulator to the PC. So, in 1982, Microsoft Flight Simulator was born. Its launch met with critical acclaim as reviewers and consumers alike sensed a purpose for PCs beyond running VisiCalc, storing recipes or playing trivial games. However, after 27 years and 12 releases, internal issues at Microsoft led it to close down its…

PRICE £749 (£899 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk What if. That is the question that haunts the the Acer Nitro N50-610. This gaming PC comes tantalisingly close to being a bargain, but it’s handicapped by two crucial cost-cutting measures that that it can’t quite overcome. If you have sufficient technical technical nous, it’s easy to rectify them both–but it will costa little money. The first and most obvious handbrake is 8GB of RAM. Supplied as two DIMMs, this leaves two empty sockets so you can add two more sticks yourself at around £20 each. Is doing so necessary? No, because Windows 10 runs happily with 8GB of RAM in general use, but it seems a shame to hold back a six-core Intel Core i5 processor that’s so capable at multitasking. Note…

PRICE £17 (£20 inc VAT) from Vodafone, plus £2 monthly subscription for two years While Bluetooth trackers are great for finding things that are nearby, there are numerous benefits to aGPS tracker that lives independently. The small, stylishVodafone Curve promises to be exactly that: you can attach attach it to your brief case, your keys(it comesw with a strap-on keyring), your dog’sc collar or your child’s backpack and it will regularly ping home and give you alocation. How regularly is up to you. In power-saving mode, it sends updates every two hours witha promised battery life of around seven days. Everyday mode updates every half an hour and should last five days. Switch to performancem mode and you’re talking five-minute updates and and a three-day battery life. You can also…

Buying a monitor seems like such a simple task. You probably have a rough screen size in mind, an equally rough budget and a solid idea of the tasks you want to use it for. So, head to your website of choice, hit a few selection boxes and your choice is made for you. Job done. You can do that and the monitor that you buy, in all probability, will be fine. As you’ll see from this month’s bumper crop of 35 screens, if you stick to a well-known brand then there’s minimal chance of buying a dud. The question is: should you settle for “fine”? We’d argue not. There are some spectacular monitors out there, and not just in terms of image quality. The right monitor can genuinely make…

PRICE £108 (£130 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk If you’re on a tight budget, we can cut to the quick: the Iiyama ProLite XUB2493HSU-B1 offers unmatched value without making any obvious sacrifices. Indeed, you could place this 24in monitor next to the twice-asexpensive Eizo and wonder why they aren’t the same price. Cosmetically, there’s little between them. Both employ slim bezels to give an edge-to-edge appearance, with the only blemish on the Iiyama being an ugly sticker that proclaims all of its features. Luckily, it’s easy to strip this off. And, in Iiyama’s defence, there’s quite a feature list: you can flip it into portrait mode, it provides VGA, DisplayPort and HDMI inputs, plus there are two side-mounted USB 3 ports for easy access. The Iiyama also uses the same IPS…

PRICE £162 (£195 incVAT) from currys.co.uk Unusually for a “basic” 24in monitor, the ViewSonic includes a USB-C video input. If you use a USB-Cpowered laptop that requires 60W or less – and many do – then your desk will look a whole lot neater. Note, though, that ViewSonic relies on an external power supply that’s roughly the size of a phone (but double the height) and that it saves money by not including any USB-A ports. As a result, this monitor can’t act as a virtual docking station. Other signs of designing to a budget: no DisplayPort input and a basic stand that only offers tilt and swivel adjustments. The cheaper Iiyama is much more flexible. It also includes a superior panel, but not by much: the ViewSonic covers 88.8%…

PRICE £233 (£280 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk Iiyama clearly had one aim when designing the XU2792UHSU-B1: to build a good-quality 4K monitor for a great price. After all, not everyone wants a feature-laden screen, so why pay for the privilege? Admittedly, you might be taken aback when you start assembling this monitor. The plastic foot stand is so light that it would be blown away by a gust of wind, so it’s little wonder the screen wobbles once you start clicking the OSD buttons mounted on the underside of the bezel. Note that you may want to find a monitor stand – or a hardback book – to place this monitor on, as it sits low on the desk. We took advantage of the screen’s single piece of flexibility, the…

PRICE £292 (£350incVAT) from scan.co.uk As the VG279QM’s full name gives away, gaming is the clear focus of this Asus monitor, but we can see few reasons to pick it over others on test. For a start, it has a Full HD resolution. That can work to your advantage in games, especially as lower-resolution panels often include higher refresh rates, but there’s nothing special about 144Hz anymore, while the 1ms response times and support for Nvidia’s most basic G-Sync standard (Compatible) fail to inspire. The fact it’s based on an IPS panel rather than twisted nematic (TN) should lead to higher image quality, but there’s no hiding from the 82ppi pixel density. Text simply looks fuzzy. And, truth be told, for an IPS panel its results are average: in sRGB…

PRICE £387 (£464 inc VAT) from shop.benq.eu With the EW2780U, BenQ is asking one simple question: why spend more than £500 on a 4K USB-C monitor? BenQ covers all the most important basics, choosing a high-quality IPS panel that’s well tuned to people’s daily needs: in Standard mode, it covers 98.5% of the sRGB gamut with 109% volume, while its average Delta E of 0.29 is exceptional. If you want refresh rates higher than 60Hz or a wider gamut, you’ll need to look elsewhere, but a contrast ratio of 1,085:1 and excellent brightness uniformity mean that it makes an excellent first impression. It has a trick up its sleeve too, which is in part thanks to a strong peak brightness of 371cd/m2. BenQ takes advantage of this to provide three…

PRICE £399 (£479 inc VAT) from store.hp.com If the HP E27d was a human, it would wear a sharp grey suit, carry a briefcase and always complete its to-do list. As befits such a creation, HP supplies it in “Neutral” colour mode. This tracks the sRGB colour space and we assume targets the 6500K temperature, although our testing showed it to go a little beyond on both counts: while it covers 99.6% of the sRGB gamut, we measured 110.2% volume and its temperature at almost 6700K. Colour accuracy is spot on, with an average Delta E of 0.44. You can push brightness up to 352cd/m2, well beyond what’s necessary in the office or study, where this screen will surely end up, but note that we wouldn’t choose it for watching…

PRICE £458 (£549 inc VAT) from box.co.uk Philips has embraced the idea of docking monitors with gusto, with both its “P Line” monitors here including an RJ-45 Ethernet port along with four USB-A ports: as long as you have a laptop that will charge via the 60W USB-C connection, you can reduce the clutter on your desk to that one wire. If you aren’t too fussy about aural output, you should also be happy with the pair of 3W speakers; they’re far from audiophile quality, but are fine for background music and videoconferencing. You can even make the argument for this screen to act as a TV (you can add a TV stick into one of the two HDMI ports and then power it via USB), because the Brilliance does…

PRICE £286 (£343 inc VAT)from scan.co.uk Take two monitors into the office? Not Iiyama. With this 34in widescreen, it really is like having two monitors pinned together to form one gigantic workspace. With a resolution of 3,440 x 1,440 you aren’t getting the same amount of area as two 27in 1440p screens; in terms of screen diagonal, it’s closer to two 21in monitors. Still, no one will want for desktop space, with the panel a gift to any spreadsheet devotee or those who like to have two or three windows in view simultaneously. However, we found ourselves drawn in closer than with a 27in 1440p monitor, and that means that its 109ppi density becomes a drawback. Also note that a 21:9 ratio results in black bars on either side of…

PRICE £438 (£549 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk Samsung is best known in the UK for its phones and TVs, but it also sells numerous “professional” monitors. It can’t help itself from adding consumer pizzazz, though, and here it’s evident in a glossy white finish on the rear of the screen: this 34in curved monitor would be equally at home on a receptionist’s welcome desk as it would an executive’s office. Said executives can minimise cable clutter thanks to the Thunderbolt connection, and there are two USB-A ports for attaching peripherals. A second Thunderbolt 3 connector that can supply up to 15W means you have a potent docking station. Samsung takes a different approach to the stand, opting for what it calls a “swing-and-tilt” mechanism. As you lift the panel through…

The colour space below is what your eyes can see. It’s far beyond what can be reproduced by a digital device. Colour spaces such as sRGB and Adobe RGB define target gamuts for capture devices (such as cameras) and output devices (such as monitors), so that we have standards rather than the Wild West. The triangle within the graphic is the sRGB colour space. If we were to show Adobe RGB in the same image, it would extend further into the greens and blues – useful for showing lush landscapes. If you’re a professional photographer, this is something to bear in mind. Adobe RGB is closely matched to CMYK, as used by most commercial printers, which is why it’s so important for print designers. We mention DCI-P3 in many reviews,…

PRICE £705 (£845 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk Why buy the 43in U4320Q? Dell has financial firms in one of its sights, with the option of four different computer inputs and the ability to view them side by side. A 103ppi density helps, as it’s sharp at the viewing distances this monitor will be looked at. But you are hitting the usability of a screen on a desk. Shifting your gaze from the left to the right of the panel is reminiscent of spectators transfixed by a rally on Centre Court, and no curvature gives the illusion of the screen bending away at the edges. There’s also a discernible drop-off in contrast at this panel’s extremes. It covers 96.5% of the sRGB gamut but only 69.5% of Adobe RGB space and…

PRICE £1,410 (£1,692 inc VAT) from wexphotovideo.com If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if you gave engineers the task of building the perfect monitor, and then told them not to worry about silly things such as price, then we present to you the Eizo ColorEdge CG279X. It sets the gold standard for colour-accurate monitors, and is able to perfectly render that gold standard on request. The OSD brings new meaning to the word “control”, with the ability to move up in brightness by 1cd/m2 increments. That same level of control extends to colour temperature, gamma, hue and saturation. Plus, the buttons on the bottom bezel are so responsive and well explained that a four-year-old could use them. The irony is that you probably won’t need to head into such…

You might have noticed there are more products than we normally include in this month’s Labs. There are a couple of reasons for this, with one of the most notable being that I’m an optimistic fool: “Let’s make this truly comprehensive,” I thought to myself in mid-June. “How long can it really take to test 30-odd monitors?” The answer to that, I now know, is six weeks and a lot of early mornings. But the second reason is that it’s so easy to buy the wrong monitor for your needs. By giving you several to choose from, having put them all through the same set of tests and printed those results side by side, you can make a truly informed decision. It could be that you were considering spending over…

PRICE Large Rooms, £5,000 exc VAT from onedirect.co.uk Logitech released its first webcam in 2002, and it has gone on to develop an impressive range of professional videoconferencing products. Its Room Solutions are a choice of ready-made packages, designed for meeting spaces of various sizes and for specific providers such as Google Meet, Barco ClickShare and Zoom Rooms. We tried out the Microsoft Teams kit for large rooms, which comes in at 1p under £5,000. That may seem steep, but the money buys you a lot of quality hardware: all bundles include Logitech’s intuitive Tap display hub, with its generous 10.1in colour touchscreen, plus an entire Intel NUC mini PC running Windows 10 IoT to serve as the brains of the operation. Unsurprisingly, the audio-visual provision depends on which package…

PRICE Appliance with 1yr Total Security Suite, £720 exc VAT from guardsite.co.uk WatchGuard’s Firebox T20-W is a compact, silent tabletop UTM appliance that will appeal to small businesses – and to larger organisations seeking easily managed protection for remote sites. The price above includes a year’s subscription to WatchGuard’s Total Security Suite, which enables a broad selection of security measures: these include antivirus, anti-spam, web filtering, application controls, botnet detection, intrusion prevention, DNSWatch, an advanced persistent threat blocker – plus WatchGuard’s RED (Reputation Enabled Defense) service for tighter web security. Alongside its four Gigabit LAN ports, the unit even includes a Wi-Fi gateway that can broadcast its own 802.11ac services or provision other WatchGuard access points. While this is a great spread of features, it’s worth noting that the T20-W…

During lockdown, I rummaged through various boxes and cupboards looking for items that have been gathering dust for too long. I’ve done the same with my hard drive, so this month’s column is a selection of tales that never made it into the magazine. Think of it as an unreleased Monty Python script with none of the funny bits and absolutely no cultural significance. Let’s start with Tesla. Mr H owns several Teslas, but the one he’d selected to drive to our shop was a Model X P100D, which has a forecourt price of around £85,000. Mr H pushed two USB sticks towards me and asked me to “fix his Tesla”. Teslas have a feature called Sentry Mode, which uses the external cameras on the car to detect potential threats.…

I don’t think I’m cut out for the cybersecurity industry. If you put me in a security presentation, I’ll be squirming in my seat, biting my lip, desperate to ask some questions and jump the rail tracks of death by PowerPoint. The security business loves to list things: this turns what could be punchy, short, relevant bursts of information into agonisingly detailed lists of malware names and the “krew” behind each one. Is it of practical interest to know all those names when they’re all made up in the ephemeral world of online chatrooms and forums? Not when the headline that drew me to this particular talk was “nation-state cyberattacks”. FireEye makes security hardware and software, so of course it wants you to feel under threat – but it’s of…

Driverless cars, AI, automated everything – these future technologies all have one thing in common: they’ll make and use huge amounts of data. And our current data centres may not be enough. “The industry is constantly innovating, but the challenge for some data centre providers is keeping up with the rate at which new technologies are emerging,” said Rob Spamer, director of data centres at Pulsant. That’s particularly true with technologies such as neural networks, which are distributed across thousands of specialised processors that can churn through data 20 times that of a standard CPU. “Because they consumed so much more, they can communicate much more as well,” explained Georgios Zervas, associate professor at University College London’s department of electrical engineering. “You need networks that can sustain this growth.” Data…

It was the sort of plaintive phone call that makes your heart sink, although perhaps my own fault; after all, I did inadvertently advertise my tech-fixing services in last month’s column (see issue 312, p130). I’ll rename this distraught caller, a good friend from my village, Mary. Her laptop, an aged ThinkPad, was “going very slowly and I can’t get any work done”. Mary’s employer, a utilities company, had decided that working from home was the best thing to do during The Great Unpleasantness. So Mary had rearranged the lounge in her house to ensure that she had a good table, a view out onto the road, good lighting and a proper chair. After all, she would be sitting there for most of the working day, so there was little…