Computer Shopperの August 2016 の目次

WINDOWS 10 HAS finally got Microsoft back on track in the operating system business. Windows 8 launched to much criticism back in 2012, with many users preferring to stick to Windows 7, or even XP. After a lot of soul-searching at Microsoft HQ – no doubt involving countless skinny soy mocha lattes and kale salads – the firm got it right with Windows 10, bringing back much-missed features such as the Start menu, while also offering a free upgrade from any Windows 7 or 8 machine. This has helped Windows 10 rocket to some impressive installation numbers, running on more than 300 million machines as of May this year. Microsoft will be expecting to see an even more rapid rise for Windows 10 downloads as the free upgrade period draws…

LESS JEEVES, MORE PEEVES I was depressed and disturbed by your digital assistants feature (Shopper 341). Depressed because, in these days of market forces and supposedly overwhelming choice, is there really only one (half) decent search engine? Is Apple incapable of developing its own search engine, rather than using Microsoft’s? I was disturbed by the report because of some of the responses to your enquiries. Presumably, companies have made deals with Google to get given priority in searches. For example, nobody should be using Trainline for booking rail tickets, because they charge fees. Use National Rail Enquiries, which will put you through to the website of the operator that you’re travelling with, where you can buy tickets without charge. The cinema query is even more disturbing. Are small independent companies/stores/service…

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

We’re all slaves to the latest technology, eagerly snapping up the shiny bits of new kit manufacturers put out. Still, it’s better than being a slave to Mel Croucher Mel Croucher RAVES This month’s column is brought to you by a team of minions slaving away over a keyboard I AM A slave driver. I employ slaves at slave wages and I am unashamed. When I need a website converted into an app, or a shiny new logo, I log into my Fiverr account. Then I wait an hour or two for Fiverr slave minions to grovel and abase themselves as they compete with one another to supply me with the best solution, in the fastest time, at the cheapest price. I show no mercy. I pay my slaves $5…

£270 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT It’s expensive, but the Kindle Oasis is a great bit of design and the best eReader yet AT £270, AMAZON’S Kindle Oasis costs the same as about 54 traditional paperbacks, or one hell of a summer holiday reading binge. It’s also £160 more than the excellent Kindle Paperwhite, which does everything you need in a sturdy, practical package. Thankfully, then, the Kindle Oasis is in another league. It’s even more desirable than last year’s Kindle Voyage, especially as it comes with a leather-fronted case. The Oasis and the case have been designed together, making it essentially one device that can split apart when required. The eReader part feels almost weightless in your hand, as most of its meagre 131g is offset to one side, making…

COMPUTER SHOPPER Chat and Communication UPDATED Evernote 6.0.6 Store your notes, ideas and plans in the cloud, and synchronise them between computers. NEW Mailbird 2.3.11.0 A free desktop email client for Windows. NEW Miranda IM 0.10.51 Chat with friends across multiple messaging platforms, including AIM, Facebook, IRC and MSN, all from one simple interface. UPDATED Skype for Windows 7.23 Make internet voice and video calls for free, and buy credit to make calls to mobiles and landlines. Trillian 5.6 Use all your instant-messaging accounts with one application. Supports Windows Live!, AIM, Yahoo! and Google Talk. NEW WhatsApp Desktop 0.2.684 A free PC and Mac version of the popular messaging app, allowing you to chat straight from your desktop instead of using the web app. Customisation NEW iolo System Mechanic Free…

£500 • From www.box.co.uk VERDICT An undersized motherboard is a small price to pay for the Cube Captain’s superior performance THE CUBE CAPTAIN is a gaming-focused system, evident from the comically aggressive names given to its components, from the MSI A68HM Grenade motherboard and the CiT Dragon 3 case to the 8GB of HyperX Fury RAM. More pressing is the matter of how the Cube Captain handles AAA games. It’s good news in that regard: in the Dirt Showdown test, running on Ultra settings at 1,920x1,080, it averaged an outstanding 66fps. You’d need a 120Hz or 144Hz monitor to take advantage of anything higher, which would be fairly a incongruous purchase next to a £500 PC. It was hard to fault the Cube Captain in the Metro: Last Light Redux…

£500 • From www.eclipsecomputers.com VERDICT Poor performance and a limiting case make this SSD-equipped PC a let-down WHETHER YOU’RE SPENDING £500 or £1,500 on a new PC, systems that come in a compact, understated package will always have a certain appeal. The Eclipse Fusion Pro, despite its name, is a machine that seemingly wants to sit at home, beside a monitor or under a desk, and run basic programs and games without any fuss or fanfare. That’s the initial impression, anyway – judging from our benchmark tests, the Fusion Pro is quick to fall apart when faced with even moderately intensive tasks. Its image-editing score of 74 and video-encoding score of 58 are both decent, but it managed only 38 in the multitasking portion of our test, resulting in a…

£497 • From www.overclockers.co.uk VERDICT A quality case and Skylake processor elevate the Kinetic H3 from decent to great IT’S FITTING FOR a relatively cheap PC to have a certain underdog element to it, even compared to its similarly priced contemporaries. The Kinetic H3 has such a quality in the form of its case, a low-budget chassis made by lesser-known firm Kolink. Indeed, despite costing just £40 by itself, the Kolink Refractor case is actually the Kinetic H3’s standout feature. A spacious mid tower, it’s equipped with many of the luxuries that are often passed over in budget PC builds, including a grand total of seven storage drive bays (each of which can hold either a 2½in or 3½in drive), plus three 5¼in drive bays and three internal fans (two…

2D performance Our benchmark suite uses a range of open-source applications to measure the image-editing, video-encoding and multitasking performance of a Windows, OS X or Linux PC. The scores from each are combined to produce an overall score, denoting the system’s general performance. Scores are me against those set by our reference PC, which comprises an Intel Core i5-4670K processor, 8GB of DDR3 RAM and an AMD Radeon R7 260X graphics cards. Test PC results are normalised to 100, for easy comparisons. If you want to try the tests yourself, you can download them from bit.ly/shopperbenchmarks. SETTINGS We run our application tests at native resolution WEB bit.ly/shopperbenchmarks 3D performance A fast-paced but relatively undemanding racing game, Dirt Showdown requires a minimum average of 30fps to be playable – though a…

£359 • From www.apple.com/uk VERDICT Well built, with a great camera and battery life, the iPhone SE is the small phone to buy APPLE SEEMS TO have nailed it with the iPhone SE: it’s got the build quality, it’s got the processing power and it’s got the camera, all packed into a neat metal chassis. Weighing 113g and 7.6mm thick, the iPhone SE is exactly the same size as the 5s and is compatible with the same range of cases and covers. While the SE is the lightest iPhone currently available, it’s actually the thickest. This doesn’t particularly matter, as it makes the handset easier to grip, and it means that the camera sits flush with the rear of the case. Besides, overall the iPhone SE is comparatively tiny by…

£250 • From www.mobilefun.co.uk VERDICT The budget phablet to buy for avid note-takers ONE REASON THE Stylus 2 doesn’t cost the earth is the decidedly entry-level tech inside it, such as its 5.7in, 1,280x720 resolution display. But with its respectable pixel density of 258ppi, the Stylus 2 looks perfectly sharp at a normal viewing distance, and it was only when we got up close that we could make out a few jagged edges around text and app icons. While its sRGB colour gamut coverage of 71.6% could be better, its contrast ratio of 1,259:1 is more respectable and a black level of 0.28cd/m2 is also highly impressive. Colours admittedly looked flat, thanks no doubt to its poor red and blue representation on the sRGB gamut, but it’s not the worst…

£189 • From oneplus.net/uk VERDICT Great build quality and excellent battery life, but the camera is disappointing THE ONEPLUS X is available in either onyx black or champagne white, but you can also get a protective case for an extra £28. These come in different wood and carbon finishes, but regardless of which model you choose, the OnePlus X makes a great first impression. With a brushed, anodised metal frame only 6.9mm thick, and a smooth glass front and rear, the OnePlus X looks and feels much classier than its price suggests. However, the grooved metal is a little scratchy in the hand. OnePlus has chosen an AMOLED panel for the 5in display. With a full 100% coverage of the sRGB colour gamut, the display looks gorgeous, delivering bright, punchy…

£129 • From www.wileyfox.com VERDICT A great design and customisable OS, but the screen and camera disappoint THE WILEYFOX SWIFT has a 5in, 1,280x720 display, 13-megapixel camera and a quad-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor. Rather than plain Android, it uses the Android-based Cyanogen 12.1 operating system, which has a number of useful features. Truecaller is built into the dialler, providing caller ID and a spam filter to prevent nuisance calls. Privacy Guard gives you more control over your personal data, as you can select which bits of information can be accessed by apps rather than having to give permission for everything as you do in plain Android. It also tells you how often that app has requested a particular piece of information. Cyanogen is also more customisable. You have…

Windows 8 introduced the Windows Store for apps, which Windows 10 continued with, but unfortunately retaining the same drawback: the Store only supports Universal Windows Programs (UWPs), not ones that you can run on your desktop, such as Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop. This changes with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, with a wider range of programs coming to the Store. WHAT’S DIFFERENT? Microsoft hasn’t changed the way the Store works: it still only supports UWPs. However, it has launched Project Centennial, or the Desktop App Converter to give it its proper name. This app is designed for developers, letting them convert a desktop app into a UWP one, so that it can be deployed through the store. The Desktop App Converter is designed to run on the Enterprise and…

One of the most exciting announcements about the Anniversary Update is the integration of the Bash Linux command line shell. This was developed with Canonical and provides a full Ubuntu command line, which means you can run full Ubuntu apps from Windows. Currently, the system supports only command-line apps, although it’s possible to hack the system into running GUI apps, too, although they’re not particularly fast. So why bother? Well, the main reason is that built-in Bash is great for developers, but the second reason is that it makes Windows 10 more flexible. We wouldn’t be surprised if the system got more powerful with time, supporting more and more complex features. HOW TO INSTALL BASH Bash isn’t installed by default, as it’s designed for advanced users. To install it, go…

Any mention of Microsoft changing the Start menu is likely to have many people slightly worried, particularly after the mess that was Windows 8. Fortunately, you don’t have to worry here, as the Anniversary Update simply tweaks the existing Start menu, largely for the better. A NEW LOOK Microsoft has altered the look of the Start menu. Gone is the All Apps option, which expanded to show you everything installed on your computer. Instead, you now just get a single list of apps. To aid navigation, the top of the list contains your most-used apps, while the rest of the list is sorted alphabetically. Up to three recently added applications (up from one with the original release) are also shown. ONEDRIVE SEARCH OneDrive search is now built into the Start…

Strange case of the missing emails Q In the last couple of weeks I’ve had problems receiving emails from one of my sons. He has several email accounts, and we’ve discovered that they all work, except his personal account – the one he most often uses to contact me. Nobody else seems to have a problem receiving mail from this account, but I no longer get anything, and my son doesn’t get any error messages. As far as I’m aware neither of us have any other problems with email. I’m using Microsoft Live Mail on a Windows 7 Home PC, and my ISP is Virgin. I wondered if I had accidentally added his address to my blocked senders list, but his emails aren’t going to my Junk folder. We’ve checked…

Overclocking is the practice of making a processor or graphics card operate faster than it normally would, potentially delivering the performance of a much more expensive part. However, achieving a higher clock frequency usually requires a higher input voltage. Consider a 3GHz processor that operates at 1.3V (its ‘VID’): each and every transistor within this processor must be able to switch from delivering 0V to 1.3V (or vice versa) within 1/3,000,000,000 of a second. Now let’s theoretically overclock our processor to 4GHz; those transistors now have only 1/4,000,000,000 of a second to switch, and if the voltage fails to rise to 1.3V within that time for any given transistor, a digital 1 will be mistakenly construed as a 0 and the PC will crash. We need to ensure that our…

MEET THE TEAM Madeline Bennett “A Bluetooth speaker to get round hotel room music systems still supporting iPhones c. 2010” Seth Barton “My tablet so I can play Hearthstone on the beach; can’t go a week without a game” Katharine Byrne “Since I’m old-school and refuse to buy a Kindle, I’d take a mountain of books and my 3DS” Richard Easton “An action camera to capture extreme footage of me taking afternoon siestas” Nathan Spendelow “I can’t be without at least a couple of portable battery chargers, wouldn’t want my tech to die on me while I’m on the beach” David Ludlow “A VR headset to give out in the Irish pub, so people can pretend they’re not somewhere foreign” James Archer “My phone, so I can sit in the…

Smart Security delivers top protection from the word go with its default settings. The sleek user interface allows you to easily set up routine tasks or customise your security profile with over 150 detailed settings. New Banking & Payment Protection ensures that you’re always doing your online banking and shopping in a secure browsing environment, keeping your accounts and your money safe. Smart Security detects and destroys all forms of digital threats, including viruses, rootkits, spyware and worms. The antiphishing feature keeps your usernames, passwords and other sensitive information safe from illegitimate websites. Botnet Protection protects against botnet malware, preventing spam and network attacks being launched from your computer. The enhanced Exploit Blocker protects you against attacks specifically designed to evade anti-virus detection. Even with its extensive protection Smart Security…

Software and systems developer letters@computershopper.co.uk THE SPREADSHEET FIRST appeared on small computers as VisiCalc in 1979, courtesy of Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston. That was superseded by Lotus 1-2-3, which in turn got beaten up by Microsoft Excel. The results, when crafted with care, can be excellent. When crafted carelessly, which is all too often, they become the spawn of Beelzebub. The problem is that errors in logic aren’t easy to spot, and often the results look plausible even though they’re wrong. Professional programmers expect mistakes to creep into program creation, and the wise ones adopt defensive strategies and build repeatable tests they can run at the initial development stage and when any additions or changes are made. Casual users, in their haste to get on with it, often skip…

£450 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The Huawei P9 sports an innovative dual-lens Leica camera, but it’s not without its issues THE HUAWEI P9 seems like a smartphone that’s been designed for photographers. Its dual-lens camera, designed in partnership with German camera and optics manufacturer Leica, captures images at up to 12 megapixels and includes one monochrome-only lens which can capture up to 200% more light than the colour sensor. It does have a few downsides, however. For instance, each pixel measures only 1.25um in each sensor, which isn’t quite as large as the 1.4um pixels found on the Samsung Galaxy S7. The P9 has no optical image stabilisation, either, which is odd considering the photography emphasis. The f/2.2 aperture lenses also aren’t the largest around; the Galaxy S7, for example,…

£169 • From www.thehut.com VERDICT The Steljes Audio Calliope sounds fantastic for the money and offers plenty of connection options FOR £169, THE Steljes Audio Calliope soundbar packs in several features you might not expect at this price. Chief among them is its plentiful supply of connections; you have two HDMI 1.4 inputs plus an HDMI ARC port, so you can have two devices connected to the Calliope while only having one cable going to the back of your TV. It also has optical and coaxial connections, as well as Bluetooth with aptX support. The HDMI ARC (Audio Return Channel) output is a particularly big coup for Steljes, as many soundbars under £200 simply don’t have one. Budget soundbars don’t usually have many setting options either, but the Calliope bucks…

£103 • From www.pcnation.co.uk VERDICT Fetching and flexible, the NZXT Manta is an outstanding case for Mini-ITX systems IF YOU’RE BUILDING a PC based around a teeny Mini-ITX motherboard, chances are you’ve looked at a lot of small, squat, almost cube-shaped designs. The NZXT Manta, on the other hand, adopts an almost-standard mini tower form factor – though we say ‘almost’ because of its main distinguishing feature, the convex side, front and top panels. While this means the Manta’s dimensions are a bit thicker than they strictly need to be, we soon came to appreciate the curved shape. It has a truly unique look, without the gaudy lighting or any other mad decorations that enthusiast cases sometimes use to stand out. There is a huge side window, but otherwise the…

£500 • From www.chillblast.com VERDICT Small but strong, the Fusion Nitro is a gaming-ready rig with just the right amount of flashiness ONE OF THE most common techniques used by PC builders to keep prices down, as you’ll notice in this group test, is to opt for slightly older parts instead of the latest components. It’s a sensible line of thought – price drops on older hardware can result in a better cost-to-specs ratio than brand new parts – but it’s not one that Chillblast has followed for the Fusion Nitro. This PC, while diminutive, comes equipped with a Skylake-generation Intel i3-6100 processor and a 4GB Sapphire Nitro Radeon R7 370 graphics card, both of which are currently less than one year old. Indeed, this is a particularly modern-feeling PC,…

£500 • From www.falconcomputers.co.uk VERDICT The Falcon Blaze FX performs mostly well and includes plenty of nice extras, but its upgrade potential is low CREDIT WHERE IT’S due, the Falcon Blaze FX does a lot to create a greater sense of premium quality than its budget status might suggest. For starters, it comes equipped with the two biggest symbols of gaming PC opulence: a transparent side panel and bold LED lighting, which runs around the two front case fans as well as in a strip down the motherboard. Another nice touch is that by using a couple of switches at the front of the case, you can both toggle the lighting and either slow down or shut off the fans – good for basic, low-demand usage where you can sacrifice…

£500 • From www.palicomp.co.uk VERDICT Palicomp has assembled a mighty, if miniscule, budget PC with premium-grade storage LOOK FAMILIAR? THE Palicomp AMD Avenger employs the same Fractal Design Core 1100 case as the Eclipse Fusion Pro, putting it very much at the smaller, shorter end of the tower PC spectrum. Unlike the Fusion Pro, however, the AMD Avenger hasn’t paired this case with modest components. It’s packing a 2016-launched AMD Athlon X4 880K, with each of its four cores pre-overclocked to a formidable 4.5GHz. The graphics card is one of our favourites: the GTX 960, which in this case is a Palit-built variant with an added dual-fan cooler. In truth, it looks as if fitting this bulky card inside the chassis was a tight squeeze. The same could be said…

£170 • From www.ebuyer.com VERDICT It has a fingerprint sensor, but the 5X is let down by its poor camera and performance THE HONOR 5X’S design riffs heavily off the Honor 7, as its square camera, rounded fingerprint sensor, and fake material dimple pattern at the top and bottom of the handset look almost identical. However, you can tell the Honor 5X is the cheaper of the two phones as soon as you pick it up, as despite its full metal unibody, Honor’s ceramic finish makes it feel like cheap plastic. Its dimpled, plastic antenna sections also don’t lie flush to the back of the handset, and there’s a very slight amount of flex in the screen if you apply too much pressure. It’s not brilliantly well made, but at…

£139 • From www.appliancesdirect.co.uk VERDICT Superb build quality and a fantastic display are hamstrung by the terrible processor THE LUMIA 650 has a gorgeous metal frame and smooth, matt plastic rear. Measuring just 6.9mm thick, the diamond-cut edges can feel a little rough on your palm, but they provide plenty of grip and it feels very well made. Lift off the plastic back and you’ll find a replaceable 2,000mAh battery, as well as a microSD card slot and a nano SIM card slot. The 5in 1,280x720 screen provides plenty of clarity, and the OLED panel delivers bright, punchy colours and dark, inky blacks. Colour calibration tests confirmed it covered a full 100% of the sRGB colour gamut and delivered pitch-perfect 0.00cd/m2 black levels. Likewise, with a contrast ratio of infinity:1,…

£150 • From www.johnlewis.com VERDICT Incredible battery life and a beautiful display, this is Samsung’s best budget phone yet ONE OF SAMSUNG’S new budget handsets, the Galaxy J5 managed to beat the flagship Galaxy S7 we reviewed in Shopper 340 in our battery life test – even if only by two minutes. With the screen brightness set to our standard measurement of 170cd/m2, the J5 lasted an incredible 17h 50m in our video playback test. That’s amazing for a smartphone that only costs £150 SIM-free. However, the J5 makes other compromises. Its plastic frame doesn’t protect against water damage, and its plastic chassis and glossy finish look and feel a little tacky. Where the J5 leaps ahead is its 5in, 1,280x720 Super AMOLED display, which makes other budget LCD-based displays…

Windows 10 has taken the PC world by storm, making the OS more modern, while retaining the features that people have loved for years. Of course, adoption of the OS has clearly been helped by the fact that Microsoft has been giving it away for free to anyone with a Windows 7 or Windows 8 PC. But, 300 million installs later, it’s clear that, free or not, this is one popular operating system. Microsoft isn’t just sitting back and resting on its success, however. The company is just about to start rolling out the second part of its OS master plan: regular big updates to Windows 10, the first of which is the Anniversary Update. Codenamed Redstone, the Anniversary Update is a huge overhaul of Windows 10, adding new features…

BETTER POWER SAVING With Windows 10, you can stop a resource-hungry application by choosing if it is allowed to run in the background, helping to save power. With the update, there’s a new ‘Managed by Windows’ option, which is designed to automatically turn off resourcehungry apps. TASK VIEW IS MORE USEFUL Task view now allows you to right-click a task and select Show this Window on all desktops. This will make the current task appear on all your available desktops, which will be handy for some applications, such as media players. TABLET MODE GETS A BOOST Tablet mode, which is used for dedicated tablets and 2-in-1 machines when the keyboard has been undocked, now looks a little more like Windows 8, with the All Apps mode now appearing full-screen, making…

ben@computershopper.co.uk Photographer, musician, sound engineer, designer and video producer Ben Pitt guides you through a multimedia project THE VOCAL IS usually the most important instrument in a mix, but it doesn’t always get the attention it deserves. After all, it’s less of a technical challenge to record someone singing than it is to record a drum kit or acoustic guitar. There’s a big difference between a good vocal recording and a great one, though. Let’s see how to maximise your chances of success. KITTING OUT Equipment is important, but it’s not the be-all and end-all. An outstanding performance will sound outstanding if it’s recorded with a £5 microphone. Then again, you don’t need to spend big bucks to get hold of equipment that – to most ears – is indistinguishable…

CONTACT LETTERS letters@computershopper.co.uk SMART’S NOT CLEVER Reading your news in Shopper 341 about the LG SmartThinQ family of devices, which are “designed to turn your old dumb appliances into smart appliances” I wondered: would they attach to my collection of chocolate teapots or the ashtrays on my motorbikes? Or to the users instead? As I sit in my living room, I’m closer to my washing machine than my phone or tablet when they’re charging and can hear it all over the house when it plays its little Nintendoesque tune at the end of a cycle. Coincidentally, it’s an LG, but I don’t need it to push a message to my phone. I run appliances overnight to take advantage of cheap energy; a notification on my phone would therefore be worse…

With more than 30 years of experience in law enforcement, our retired cop gives a police officer’s perspective on the sticky subject of cybercrime letters@computershopper.co.uk THERE’S NEVER BEEN a better time to be emerging from university, like Bambi on a frozen pond, with an IT-related degree and not a clue how to use it. BT recently announced that it is creating 900 new jobs to tackle cybercrime, and as the UK’s biggest ISP – it currently boasts nearly eight million subscribers – the company clearly feels that this sort of recruitment is a good investment for the future. I guess this is due, in part, to the increase in cybercrime incidents that the telco giant is called on to deal with on a daily basis. Every year, the estimated global…

£569 • From www.carphonewarehouse.com VERDICT The HTC 10 is a huge improvement on the One M9, but a few minor flaws hold it back THE HTC ONE M9 played second fiddle to all its rivals last year. Its camera was dreadful, its battery life was sub-par and its almost identical design to its predecessor, the One M8, meant it was left standing in that phone’s shadow. There’s been a rethink for the new HTC 10. While borrowing the One A9’s (Shopper 338) slim lines, metal unibody and fingerprint sensor, it adds stunning chamfered edges that measure just 3mm at the thinnest point, as well as capacitive buttons, ditching the One A9’s display-hogging onscreen controls. It’s not lacking in power, either. With a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 chip and 4GB of RAM,…

£199 • From www.beoplay.com VERDICT The B&O Beoplay A1 not only looks gorgeous but it sounds wonderful, too B&O PLAY IS THE younger sub-brand of Bang & Olufsen, but it maintains many of the latter’s higher-end principles. This is certainly evident with the Beoplay A1 Bluetooth speaker. At £199, it’s on the pricier end of the Bluetooth speaker spectrum, but it’s still considerably less than competing options from the likes of Bowers & Wilkins and Riva. Even so, the Beoplay A1 is hands-down the best-looking Bluetooth speaker we’ve seen. It’s made of an aluminium dome that fits neatly against a moulded polymer base, which gives it a non-slip surface. There’s a choice of silver or green finishes and both have an attractive perforated patterning to the aluminium dome. All the…

825 VIBOX DEFCON 2 When we originally reviewed the Defcon 2 in 2015, one of our few qualms was the lack of an SSD. This has since been rectified, adding ultra-fast storage to the reasons to consider this glowing red rig – from the capable GTX 960 graphics card to the 8GB of fast 2,800MHz RAM and a lifetime labour warranty. It all comes in an open, versatile Corsair case, too. £1,049 SCAN 3XS Z170 PERFORMANCE GTK6 Its price has gone up slightly since our original five-star review last year, but the GTX 970 can still cope with high-fidelity gaming at 2,560x1,440. It comes in a lovely case with convenient tool-free drive bays, and includes a futureproof motherboard with USB3.1 and USB Type-C ports as well as an M.2 slot…

£499 • From www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk VERDICT Brilliantly fast and housed in a versatile case, the Infinity X33 SE is a stellar PC NO OFFENCE TO NZXT, makers of the Infinity X33 SE’s all-metal case, but it does make this PC look a little plain. As some of the other systems here show, you don’t need to spend a lot of money to get a PC with some visual flair. Yet the Infinity X33 SE’s looks are as deceptive as they are ordinary, because once this PC gets running it delivers a wonderfully high level of gaming performance, edging out most of its competitors at this price point. In Dirt Showdown, for instance, the Infinity X33 SE averaged a stellar 72fps, using the highest possible Ultra quality settings and at 1,920x1,080 resolution.…

£499 • From www.meshcomputers.com VERDICT It’s not the best gaming machine, but a superior processor and storage drive setup helps the Elite Icarus CS excel elsewhere IT’S PRETTY MUCH a given that at £500, any PC build is going to include compromise, and Mesh’s Elite Icarus CS (not to be confused with the Chillblast Fusion Nitro, which uses the same case) is no different. This rig includes a relatively old Nvidia GTX 750Ti graphics card, but savings made via its long-dropped price have clearly gone towards the Elite Icarus CS’s crown jewel: a quad-core Intel i5-6600 processor. Together with 8GB of 2,400MHz DDR4 RAM, this chip propelled the Elite Icarus CS to some truly outstanding 2D benchmark scores. These include 104 in our image-editing test as well as 98 in…

£500 • From www.yoyotech.co.uk VERDICT The Warbird RS11 lives up to its pedigree with dependable gaming performance YOYOTECH IS ON a winning streak with its Warbird series. The premium Warbird RS12 (Shopper 340) is a fine machine for 4K and VR gaming, while seasoned readers will recall that the Warbird RS10 was the victor of our last big PC group test (Shopper 333), delivering a brilliantly capable system plus a mouse, keyboard and quality monitor all for £700. The RS11 is the most budget-friendly Warbird we’ve tested yet, and with that comes good news and bad news. The bad news is that this isn’t an exceptional rig in the vein of the RS10; the good news is that it’s still a respectable all-rounder that does pretty much everything you’d want…

CAP IT Mobile operators can charge users up to €50 (around £44) in roaming fees before they have to cut off their service to prevent further spending. This is to avoid bill shock, forcing consumers to explicitly say that they are happy to spend more than that. If this £44 limit is greater than a bill cap you’ve set yourself, then the smaller cap will apply. SAVE DATA WHILE ROAMING There are a few simple tips you can follow to avoid getting stung by roaming costs if you don’t take advantage of your own provider’s roaming deals. The obvious one is to turn off mobile data roaming to stop apps from using up your mobile data while you’re abroad. You can do this on Android by going to Settings, Mobile…

£120 • From www.carphonewarehouse.com VERDICT It’s beautifully designed, but slow performance and a poor camera disappoint HTC HAS USED a specially designed nozzle to create a unique paint-speckled polycarbonate shell for the Desire 530. Its sleek, 8.3mm profile feels more modern and better made than, say, the 2nd Gen Motorola Moto E. With such a gorgeous design, it seems odd, then, that the Desire 530 is also available in plain old block grey and white models. The attention to detail extends to the main interface. HTC’s Sense 7, which runs on top of Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow, is one of the best Android UIs available. Its Theme Generator lets you tweak and adjust every aspect of your phone’s appearance, from the font right down to individual app icons. You can even…

£72 • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT The latest Moto E has a decent screen, speedy internals and excellent battery life THE MOTO E 2ND Gen retains the same ergonomic design as the original Moto E, and its strong unibody chassis makes it one of the best-made phones here. The only difference is the ability to detach the phone’s frame rather than just the back panel. Swapping it for different coloured bands or transparent grip shells adds an extra touch of personality. You’ll find slots for a micro SIM and microSD card under the band, which can expand the phone’s 8GB of storage to 32GB. We’re pleased to see some of Motorola’s premium features on the Moto E. Moto Display, for instance, shows the time and notification icons when the screen is…

£149 • From www.tesco.com/direct VERDICT The Xperia M4 Aqua has both the build quality and speed to shame its rivals THE XPERIA M4 Aqua riffs off Sony’s flagship Xperia Z3 almost note for note; it’s rated IP67/68 water- and dust-resistant and uses a near identical unibody metal frame with a glossy glass rear. The end result is a seriously stylish-looking handset, and the red coral variation is particularly gorgeous. Since it’s waterproof, you’ll be able to immerse the phone in up to a metre of water for 30 minutes without damaging the internals. You won’t have to make sure the USB port is sealed off each time you want to check Twitter in the bath, either, as the Xperia M4 Aqua has a capless USB port. The 5in M4 Aqua…

Touchscreen laptops and those that use pens, or styluses, have been on the increase, but until now Windows 10 hasn’t been particularly good at supporting them for natural writing and drawing. In fact, support has been provided through apps rather than being baked directly into the OS. That changes with the Anniversary Update and Ink, which makes pen input a core feature of the operating system. Crucially, it allows developers to enable pen support more easily, so you should see a big rise in the number of apps that support it. SMART RECOGNITION Part of Ink’s beauty is that it’s intelligent. For example, you can use pen input in the Sticky Notes app, writing down what you want to remember. Put a date or simple phrase, such as ‘tomorrow’, in…

Personal assistants are all the rage, with Apple’s Siri, Google Now and Microsoft’s Cortana all vying for our attention. With the Anniversary Update, Microsoft is making Cortana a lot smarter, helping you to integrate your Windows 10 computer with a smartphone. Cortana now recognises more contextual information, such as automatically putting events mentioned in an email into your calendar. It can also provide information depending on when you put an event in. For example, if you set a meeting at lunchtime, Cortana can ask if you want to book a table somewhere. BETTER REMINDERS Cortana is now better at reminding you about things, too. For example, if you sent an email telling someone you’d send them a document later, Cortana can remember this and will prompt you to do it.…

Not looking for a response Q In our office we’re trying to minimise the number of internal emails. One reason we get so many emails is that we have a lot of internal meetings, and all the people who are invited then respond to say whether or not they’re attending. We’ve tried not having any responses by setting up a meeting request form where the ‘Request Responses’ option is turned off by default, and that’s helped. However, in an ideal world I’d like a system where we get a response from the senior people invited to a meeting, but not from ordinary staff members. I’d like a way to send an invitation that only requests a response from people in a specific group, but is automatically accepted by everyone else…

Clive Webster has been tinkering with computers ever since Windows 98 forced him to manually install his drivers clive@computershopper.co.uk SUMMER MIGHT BRING long, sunny days and pretty gardens, but the downside is heat, especially when it comes to PCs. Whether you’re rocking an overclocking gaming rig bursting with performance or use a modest office PC, now is a good time to check the cooling is adequate. Crashes are the obvious symptom of overheating, but running components at a hotter temperature than necessary can shorten their lifespan. Clogged heatsinks, dust filters and fan intakes will also cause your fans to spin faster to achieve the same airflow, producing unnecessary noise. It really is worth keeping an eye on temperatures, even if your PC is behaving itself. THE HOTLIST Overheating is usually…

Graphics processors are all about performance. As such, they typically run hot and use loud coolers. These coolers can be tricky to clean out but a can of air duster can do a decent job. There might also be a free way to give your card a clean if you head to its graphics driver software. For example, MSI’s Afterburner (gaming.msi.com/features/afterburner) offers the ability to run your graphics card cooler’s fan at 100%. Once installed, click the Auto button of the Fan Speed section and ramp the slider to 100% before clicking Apply. After a minute or so you should have blown most of the dust out of your card’s cooler without have to remove it or buy a can of air duster. Click Auto and Apply again to revert…