Tabla de contenidos para August 2021 en PC Pro

It’s difficult to imagine me annoying my PC Pro colleagues more than usual, but this month I’ve excelled myself. I don’t mean to. But, like a nervous tick, I’ve found cause to mention my new book – The Computers That Made Britain, a hardback bargain at £12 since you ask – in podcasts, Slack chats, calls and columns. I blame the stark contrast between computing today and in the 1980s, the decade the book chronicles; for every event today I can point to a far more interesting one from two generations ago. Take the birth of the new Apple iMac (see p48) versus the original Apple Macintosh. The story behind the very first Mac is one of politics and personality clashes, with Steve Jobs ousting the original project leader when…

There’s never been a better time to be a digital artist. Last night, Channel 4 News had David Hockney talking about his new show of spring landscapes painted on his iPad at the Royal Academy. And back in March, Michael Winkelman, aka “Beeple”, sold a non-fungible token (NFT) to his work Everydays: The First 5000 Days, a collage of 5,000 digital images, for $69,400,000. It was bought by Vignesh Sundaresan, or “MetaKovan”, who paid for it with 42,329 Ether digital currency. I don’t claim to be in Beeple’s class, but I do consider myself a digital artist, and it must be true because I’ve put it on my business cards. It’s not just that I take digital photos. I’ve also written here, a few years ago, about the way I…

PRICE £192 (£230 inc VAT) from shop.bt.com It’s telling that this Chromebox went out of stock whilst we were writing this feature – and that there’s nothing to directly replace it. So, if the Chromebox 3 does become available again, should you buy it? As we discussed in our original review in 2018 (see issue 287, p64), there’s much to like about a mini PC that runs almost silently – this is in stark contrast to Lee’s machine with its steady hum of fans. Nor will Chrome OS interrupt you with security updates, instead installing them silently in the background when it knows you aren’t working. It’s a well-connected little machine too, with 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth (albeit 4.2), an RJ-45 port, a microSD card reader and four USB-A ports. When…

PRICE Personal Computer Kit, £83 (£99 inc VAT) from okdo.com Late in 2020, Raspberry Pi invited us to rethink what a computer actually is. With a sidelong glance in the direction of the 1980s, it packed all the compute components you need into a compact keyboard – one that measures 286mm wide and weighs under 400g. You then connect it to a monitor via micro-HDMI, boot up Raspberry Pi OS, attach a mouse and you’re ready to go. You can buy the Raspberry Pi 400 without the mouse, bootable microSD card and requisite cables (and power supply) for £67, but that’s surely more hassle than it’s worth. The beauty of the “kit” package, for £99, is that it includes everything you need aside from the monitor. As with any Linux-based…

PRICE £204 (£246 inc VAT) from Lee… but this was a one-off If Dr Frankenstein was alive today, and a real person rather than the creation of Mary Shelley, I suspect this is the PC he would create. As Lee described on the previous two pages, it was pieced together from the remnants of two computers before being enhanced with extra memory and the fastest secondhand components Lee could afford. Switch it on and there’s no doubt that this PC is alive. Its fans whirr with a volume that serves as a helpful reminder of how much more power-efficient processors have become over the past decade: the Core i5-4460 dates from 2014 and uses a 22nm architecture. Still, I was pleasantly surprised to see that this PC draws around 65W…

A common misperception about the big switch-off is that this means the end of copper cabling. If only that were true… While Openreach and others are pressing ahead with fibre-to-the-premises rollouts across the country, there’s zero chance that every UK home and business will be fully fibred by 2025. The fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) products, which use copper for the final stretch between cabinet and your home/business, will still be used long after 2025. Openreach has a product called single order generic Ethernet access (SoGEA) that James Lilley describes as “naked broadband”, which will replace today’s two-product system of data and voice. The broadband providers will offer their own digital voice services over SoGEA. Peering into his crystal ball, Andrews & Arnold’s Alex Bloor does wonder if the PSTN switch off will…

Looking for aparticular past review? Visit our index at pcpro.link/index SCORE PRICE From £1,041 (£1,249 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk It speaks to the iMac’s lack of importance to Apple’s bottom line that, after the move to the “slim unibody” design way back in 2012, everyone’s favourite all-in-one desktop didn’t receive a physical redesign for another nine years. Back then, if you’d told me that Apple would take almost a decade to overhaul the iMac’s chassis, I’d have laughed you out of the room. If you had then informed me it would be powered by the same technology as a smartphone, my only rational action would have been to call for the nearest doctor. Of course, that’s exactly what has happened here. And if you have read this magazine at all this…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £537 (£644 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com Intel’s Next Unit of Computing computers have been with us for almost a decade, with the NUC acronym now attached to its range of mini PCs. They’re consistently among the most compelling small-formfactor PCs, thanks to their habit of cramming surprising power into tiny and feature-packed enclosures. With 11th-generation Core chips in place – as the name indicates – Intel has repeated the trick to great effect. This latest NUC is tiny: 117mm wide, 112mm deep and 37mm tall, while weighing 504g. It’s so small that it’s easy to lose underneath a couple of sheets of paper, and VESA mount support means it seamlessly attaches to the back of a display. The sides and lid are made of plastic, with…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed (laptop only), £1,317 (£1,580 inc VAT) from razer.com The Razer Book 13 is the company’s first laptop targeted at productivity instead of gaming, and if you were expecting to see a discrete graphics chip inside then prepare for disappointment. Just like the Dell XPS 13 (see issue 317, p50) so clearly in the Razer Book’s sights, Intel’s Iris Xe graphics are in charge of acceleration. But there’s a twist: alongside the optional Razer-branded monitor, keyboard, headset, stand, mouse, backpack, gaming chair, face mask and T-shirt, it also offers an external GPU (eGPU). For £260 plus the cost of a PCIe graphics card, the eGPU can turn your ultraportable into a gaming monster. All those peripherals will work just as well with any good laptop (you need…

SCORE PRICE £319 (£383 inc VAT) from hp.com/uk With tiny bezels, a slim stand and solid build quality, the HP Z27u G3 makes a great first impression. The screen is only 38mm thick, and the entire unit takes up just 230mm of space from front to back. There’s even 150mm of height adjustment, alongside portrait mode pivoting, and generous amounts of tilt and swivel. The HP has DisplayPort 1.4 input and output connectors, so you can daisy-chain secondary screens. It also has four USB-A 3 ports, with two on the side, and its USB-C port supports DisplayPort and a whopping 100W of power delivery. You also get Gigabit Ethernet and HDMI ports. The attractive design pairs with a solid spec. It’s a 27in IPS screen with a resolution of 2,560…

Total value this month £164 novaPDF11Lite This powerful PDF creation software equips your PC with a virtual printer driver, with which you can create PDFs from any Windows application. Just open your target document, choose the Print option, select the novaPDF printer and the program will convert it for you. The program also provides its own console within which you can choose a document for direct conversion to PDF. novaPDF directly integrates with Microsoft Office applications too: open a document, click the novaPDF tab and you can convert it to a PDF in a couple of clicks. However you start the conversion process, your finished document can be customised in many different ways. Bookmarks, metadata, font embedding, link detection, text optimisation, layout PDF/A and Linear PDF options are all customisable,…

SCORE PRICE 64GB, £208 (£249 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/322red Xiaomi makes no secret of the fact that it’s hunting after the huge chunk of the Western market that Huawei ceded when it lost access to Google apps. Written proudly on the Redmi Note 10 Pro’s box, just under the phone’s name, is the phrase “with easy access to the Google apps you use the most”. Ouch, Xiaomi, ouch. It’s a little harder to understand Xiaomi’s naming strategy. This Note 10 Pro isn’t a suspiciously cheap version of the £459 Xiaomi Mi Note 10 (see issue 306, p74), although it does inherit that handset’s 108MP camera. The key difference is Redmi (entry level) versus Mi (flagship) – although why Xiaomi kept the rest of the name the same is a mystery.…

SCORE PRICE £24 (£29 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk It’s odd that Apple’s AirTags have garnered so many headlines; after all, Bluetooth trackers are nothing new. Companies such as Tile and Chipolo have been making similar devices for years, allowing you to locate items in two ways. For items within Bluetooth range, you tap a button in the companion app, at which point they will emit a beep. To track down items lost further afield, they use community-generated tracking data. Whenever a user of that particular tracking system is in the vicinity of your lost item, you get an alert telling you when and where your tracker was last seen. Apple’s AirTags do essentially the same thing but with the bonus of a far larger community – nigh on a billion…

When we talk about viruses, we’re really referring to a complex of online dangers. There are drive-by downloads, keyloggers, phishing attacks, webcam hijackers, and the insidious threat of ransomware. The 14 security suites on test this month include measures to defeat them all, and some bundle in valuable extras such as parental controls, backup modules and even VPN services to protect your privacy as well as your security. If your budget is tight, that’s no problem: one of our award-winners this month is Avira Antivirus Free, which is as affordable as its name suggests. Numerous other excellent suites can be had for between £10 and £20 a year, while at the top of the table G Data Total Security costs £36, but goes a long way to justifying it with…

SCORE PRICE 1 PC, 1yr, £10 (£12 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/322safe Protection rating 100% False positives 0 Performance rating 93.9% Scan time 27secs Some people want an all-encompassing security suite with dozens of configurable modules; others are just looking for an unfussy tool that will keep them safe, stay out of their way and not cost too much. F-Secure Safe is aimed at the latter constituency, offering faultless protection in a simple and affordable package. First, let’s be clear about the pricing. The F-Secure site will charge you a steep £60 per annum for Safe, but if you hop over to Amazon via our link above, you can get a year-long, single-device Safe licence for just £12 (although it did increase to £15 at one point during our testing). Once…

We’ve given full reviews to two free security solutions in this month’s Labs, namely Avast Antivirus Free (see p82) and the collected protections built into Windows 10 (see p85). Those aren’t your only options for zero-budget security, however: five of the commercial suites on test are also available in free editions. They generally use the same scanning engines as the paid-for products, so you can expect excellent levels of protection – the difference comes down to the range of features included in the package. Here’s the lowdown on what to expect if you opt for the free edition of one of this month’s security suites. AVG AntiVirus Free SCORE The free AVG AntiVirus suite comes from the same stable as Avast Antivirus Free, and offers the same fundamental protections, including…

SCORE PRICE 3 PCs, 1yr, £13 (£15 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/322bit Protection rating 100% False positives 5 Performance rating 89.8% Scan time 5m5s We’ve recommended Bitdefender many times in the past, not to mention in our roundup of freebies on p86, and there’s no question that Bitdefender Internet Security is still a contender. With 100% protection ratings from both AV-Comparatives and AV-Test, it’s effective, and licensing starts at an attractive £15 for three devices. It’s a strong all-rounder too, matching all the core features of Bitdefender’s premium Total Security suite, save for the performance optimiser. A custom firewall makes it easy to track and block internet access for applications and processes, while the ingenious ransomware remediation module doesn’t prevent apps from writing to your personal folders – since this can…

SCORE PRICE 1 PC, 1yr, $50 (around £36) from gdatasoftware.co.uk Protection rating 99.8% False positives 2 Performance rating 90.9% Scan time 15m37s It’s called Total Security, and G Data has certainly tried to build in every feature you might conceivably ask for. The interface greets you with a daunting lineup of ten unlabelled top-level icons, each of which opens a pane containing further controls and sub-icons. Learning what’s where involves a certain amount of exploration. Some of the features you’ll find are very welcome. The bootable recovery media builder is easy to access from the Virus Protection page, and it’s great that the integrated backup module not only duplicates files and folders, but can also create images of entire partitions and disks. We also like the Browser Cleaner. This provides…

SCORE PRICE 1 PC, 1yr, £11 (£13 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/322nort Protection rating 100% False positives 22 Performance rating 91% Scan time 1m45s Veteran security publisher Symantec is now known as NortonLifeLock, but the Norton 360 security suite hasn’t changed much in recent years and retains two standout features from our last security suite Labs. The first is an integrated backup module. This only covers files and folders, and unlike G Data Internet Security can’t create disk images, but it has something G Data can’t match: 10GB of bundled cloud storage. Opt for the Deluxe edition and that goes up to 50GB, while the Premium edition ups your allocation to 75GB. Norton 360 also includes a VPN. It’s not a terrifically advanced service: it won’t automatically turn on when you…

The graph is an incredibly powerful informational tool. With a simple row of columns you can convey an entire dimension of relational information in a way that can be understood in seconds. Peer at the opposite page, though, and you might get a sense that such visualisations have their limits. Our first graph this month represents a particularly tight spread of values from 99.5% to 100%, and the second is almost as narrow, ranging from 87.5% to 93.9%. Far from being readable at a glance, these graphs almost oblige you to get out the magnifying glass to see how the contenders stack up. With numbers like this, it’s tempting to compress the graph so it starts at, say, 85%. That can be misleading, though, as it creates the visual impression…

SCORE PRICE 16SC Pro with 1yr maintenance, £554 exc VAT from 3cx.com Any business looking for an on-premises IP PBX needs to check out 3CX’s Phone System. It provides a remarkable range of features and terrific platform support, yet it’s very affordable. There’s a variety of packages on offer, but all of them support an unlimited number of extensions and include all mobile apps. In fact, the standard service is free for the first year, which should give you more than ample opportunity to try it out. After that, licensing is based on the number of simultaneous calls you want supported. Small businesses may get by with the free-forever 8SC version, which, as the name hints, handles up to eight calls at once; for mid-sized offices, the 16SC Pro package…

SCORE PRICE From £8.50 exc VAT per user per month from voip-unlimited.net Switching VoIP providers seems like something that would be complicated and disruptive, but Voip Unlimited’s hosted Voip Exchange service provides a simple onboarding process, along with a friendly cloud management portal and great value. There’s a wide choice of plans to choose from, with the basic pay-as-you-go option starting at £8.50 per user per month. That includes all of the call-handling features apart from voice recording, which will cost you an extra £1 per month. Monthly call packages start at £3.50 per user, which covers up to 3,000 minutes of calls to landlines and mobiles. Unusually, Voip Exchange also offers a low-cost mobile-only licence, for homeworkers and travellers who don’t need handsets and are happy to rely on…

This month, I’m going to show you the final part of the LoRaWAN jigsaw: decoding the data that we uploaded to The Things Network (TTN) last month and then extracting that data to use in other systems. Oh, and thank you for the feedback on this mini-series so far – it’s always good to know that I’m not shouting into a bucket! To jog your memory, last month we configured The Things Node and connected it to TTN via a LoRaWAN gateway. At the point where I left things, you’ll have seen an icon turn green in the TTN console, meaning that the TTN servers were seeing data from your node. Let’s take a look at that data and see how we can put it to use. Head over to…

When I switched from being primarily an Android smartphone user to an iPhone user in late 2020, I didn’t foresee that it would cause quite such a furore in my email and messaging inboxes. I’ve been slated for becoming an Apple “fanboy” and congratulated for seeing the light in equal measure. This reminds me of the early 1990s when I used to contribute to Amiga magazines and was continually harangued by Atari users for being a complete idiot. Of course, that may have been more to do with my writing style than brand loyalty, but I digress. The funny thing is that I have more Android phones than I do iPhones, but I now use the former as security testbeds and burner phones. As for becoming an Apple fanboy, nothing…

Building up a mountain of hardware and software is easy, particularly if you have the unfortunate habit – as I do – of succumbing to the latest tech. At some point, you’ll look at what you have and realise you’ve spent a sizeable chunk of cash on devices and discs. Remember that old Ouya console you bought on Kickstarter? I do and cringe. Sitting on the desk in front of me is an i-Cheat device and I don’t even know what console it’s for. That’s next to an original Apple Watch, an iPod Shuffle from 2005 and Chuckie Egg for the BBC Micro – a computer I don’t even own. Behind me is a box filled with old controllers. Shelves groan with DVDs and random merchandise. I can see a…

In 2019, campaign group Liberty sent out 90 freedom of information act requests to every police force in the UK, asking for data on predictive policing plans. The research revealed that 14 forces had already used, or were planning to use, algorithms that they believed could churn through police data to predict who would commit a crime and who would become a victim of one. That included Avon and Somerset Police, Greater Manchester Police and Kent Police. For example, Durham Police developed a “Harm Assessment Risk Tool” (HART) alongside academics at the University of Cambridge that uses machine learning to predict whether someone would commit a crime in the next two years, doling out a score of low, medium or high. To make that prediction, HART churns through 34 pieces…

@njkobie After a dozen years on Android, I’ve finally made the switch to an iPhone. And it has less to do with Apple than what’s happened to the rest of the smartphone market. With the exception of a Nokia E71 running Symbian back in the late 2000s, every smartphone I’ve bought has run Android. I adored the early Moto G – it was cheap and cheerful and did its job well, just like me. But my all-time favourite was the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact, a tiny, green, waterproof delight that I’d argue is the finest Android handset of all time. That Sony was everything I wanted: small in size but with high-end specs, plus a stonking camera for the time, although it did have a funny tendency to slide off…

Over the last few months, a local charity I voluntee with has been refurbishing donated laptops for use by disadvantaged schoolkids. We’ve fitted each device with an SSD, upgraded it to 4GB RAM where it came with less and installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 or CloudReady for the less capable devices, making them into very useful machines. But this left us with numerous hard disks that possibly contained the personal data of previous owners. So I was interested to read Lee Grant’s reminder last month (see issue 321, p114) of a 3,000-year-old technology that can be effectively applied to the problem of secure data destruction. However, I would like to report to Lee that I’ve recently refined that technology in important ways. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) recommends…

PRICE $279 (approx £205) from store.chuwi.com The world’s fastest laptop? Absolutely not. Its Intel Celeron J3455 chip dates back to 2016, and that showed in its PC Pro benchmark result of 20 – that’s two-fifths as fast as Lee’s mean machine with its result of 49, and even slower than the Raspberry Pi 400. And whilst I’d love to write “ignore the benchmarks, it speeds along in general use”, that isn’t the case. Whereas Lee’s system is snappy, in part because it runs on Windows 8.1, I had to switch off Windows 10’s advanced graphics effects to make the Chuwi responsive enough for everyday tasks. This done, however, it becomes usable rather than frustrating. It’s a case of managing your expectations, and that extends to all aspects of the HeroBook…

Although this has been a lot of fun, there are some serious points to consider. Buying new products brings the latest innovations into our homes and offices with the re-assurance of a warranty if things go wrong. They often score over older tech with crisper displays, lower energy use or near silent running. Each month, PC Pro highlights devices that are deserving of your cash because – and I hope you’re sitting down – every manufacturer’s aim is to maximise profit. Remember the three principles of fast, good and cheap. Buying new allows us to choose two at the expense of the third. We can have fast and good, but it won’t be cheap; whereas good and cheap won’t be fast. Secondhand products are the hack to this rule and,…

If all you do with your Amazon Fire TV Stick is switch on and start streaming, you’re missing a trick. Several tricks, in fact. Inside the diminutive dongle, there’s a fully fledged computer running a customised version of Android and a small amount of storage. It’s not immediately obvious that you can use these to customise the experience, but by poking around in the right places, you can do far more with it than you might imagine. Stream a network camera to your TV It’s becoming increasingly common to have a camera outside your home – not necessarily because the world is becoming a more dangerous place; more because everyone else is doing it, so why not? As Ring’s owner, Amazon already has a lead in this market, with a…

Laptops and PCs We run our own benchmarks on every Windows and macOS system we test. These are based around image editing, video editing and multitasking (where we run the video-editing benchmark while simultaneously playing back a 4K video). At the bottom of each laptop and PC review, you’ll find the system’s score in each of these tests, plus an overall score. If a laptop scores 70, say, then it’s 30% slower than our reference system – a PC with a Core i7-4670K and 8GB of RAM. If it scores 160, then it’s 60% faster. We test laptop battery life by playing back a full-screen video until the battery runs out. We set the screen brightness to 170cd/m2, or as close as we can get using its settings, and switch…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £1,441 (£1,729 inc VAT) from microsoft.com Say what you like about Microsoft, but it knows how to design a laptop. The Surface Laptop 4 is not only a sleek and gorgeous thing to behold, it also extracts every last ounce of power from the components inside. As a package, it’s mighty impressive. I didn’t feel the same about the Surface Laptop 3, which was overpriced and underpowered compared to the opposition in our recent laptops Labs (see issue 319, p72). One of my big complaints there was the starting price of the range: Microsoft lured people in with £999, but that only included a 128GB SSD. This time around, the entry-level model looks much more appealing. That’s in part due to Microsoft welcoming AMD into its…

SCORE PRICE With keyboard and pen, £499 (£599 inc VAT) from lenovo.com In this month’s main feature (see p26), we gave Lee Grant £250 to build PC and also looked at what you could buy new for that money. One of the more interesting devices is the Lenovo Duet, a Chrome OS device that followed an almost identical design to this far classier Android tablet – right down to a bundled keyboard and a magnetic rear cover with an integral kickstand. It’s a clever design. With everything attached, the Tab P11 Pro weighs a travel-friendly 920g. Lenovo even bundles a full-size stylus in this package, complete with a snug travel case. The obvious question when manufacturers put these deals together is whether or not they can adequately replace a laptop, and…

SCORE PRICE £182 (£219 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/322rpro The Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2 delivers a list of new and improved features almost as long as its name. It’s the nicest-looking doorbell Ring has yet produced, with a slimmer, less boxy shape than usual and a doorbell button that has more travel. Just note that it’s powered by the mains rather than a battery. You have two options here: buying a self-explanatory plug-in version or choosing the hardwired model. For the latter, Ring provides a 24V DIN rail transformer in the box, complete with a plastic mounting bracket. Ring recommends professional installation, but if you already have the necessary electrics in place you can set it up yourself. All you need to do is attach a pair of wires –…

1 Visit pcprodownload.co.uk. You’ll need to enter the coupon code printed on the spine of the cover (or directly on the cover if you’re a digital subscriber). If there’s no code on the spine, you have bought the £4.99 version of PC Pro, which doesn’t include a code. Also enter your email address. We’ll then send an email to confirm that your code has been registered. 2 Once you’re in the download area, you can access this month’s bonus software by navigating to the relevant product page and clicking the red Install button. For trial software, freeware and other downloads, click the Install button below the product description, or follow the onscreen instructions (please make sure to read these carefully). 3 If the software needs registering, click the purple Register…

SCORE PRICE 8GB, £267 (£320 incV) from nokia.com Nokia finds itself in familiar low-cost territory with the Nokia X20. Here it hopes to attract people who want the speed of 5G without a hefty outlay, and that’s reflected in a modest list of specs: a Qualcomm Snapdragon4 480, either 6GB or 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage and a large IPS display. The Nokia X20 comes installed with a stock version of An of Android 11, plus the promise of three years of security updates and a three-year warranty. Nokia is also flying the green flag: there’s no wall charger in the box, just a USB-C charging cable, and it provides a compostable case. Plus, you can register your X20’s IMEI number and tree-planting charity Ecologi will plant 20 trees…

SCORE PRICE £124 (£149 inc VAT) from oneplus.com OnePlus’ reputation for making top-quality hardware at reasonable prices means that it’s always a red-letter day when the company launches into an entirely new product category. And so it is with the OnePlus Watch, one of the most attractive and well-made smartwatches we’ve seen. With a sharp, 1.39in, 454 x 454 AMOLED touch display, the OnePlus Watch comes in black, silver or limited-edition “Cobalt”. Made from polished stainless steel (or cobalt alloy), it’s topped with hard, scratch-resistant, sapphire crystal glass and ships with a, pin-and-tuck silicone-rubber strap. It’s 5ATM waterproof (50m) and IP68-rated as well. The result is one of the most luxurious and attractive smartwatches I’ve tested, which makes its £149 price all the more remarkable. My only twinge of disappointment…

1 Do you need to pay? Not necessarily. Several security suites are available in both paid-for and cut-down free editions. Indeed, Windows’ built-in antivirus measures have been getting smarter over the years to the point where they now provide protection that’s at least on par with third-party solutions. If you do choose to pay, though, most integrated suites are more lightweight and easier to use than the clunky Windows Security app. Some also include extra features, such as a VPN or a password manager – the value of which we’ll discuss below. If you’re tempted by a commercial package, you can often save money by buying from an independent retailer, rather than from the publisher’s website, and the prices shown in our feature table overleaf assume that’s what you’ll do.…

SCORE PRICE 1 PC, 1yr, £11 (£13 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/322kasp Protection rating 100% False positives 2 Performance rating 92.4% Scan time 36secs Kaspersky has received plenty of plaudits in Labs gone by, and this latest release sticks to the winning formula. That begins with superlative protection: we’re accustomed to seeing this security suite rack up 100% scores in anti-malware tests, and in the latest independent tests it once again did just that. Nor did Kaspersky throw the baby out with the bathwater, racking up a mere two false positives. That’s not quite as forensically perfect as Eset or F-Secure, but it’s still sharper than this month’s average count of 6.6 (or 3.2 if you exclude Malwarebytes). Most encouragingly, Kaspersky did all this with an exceptionally nimble touch, achieving an…

SCORE PRICE 1 PC, 1yr, £8 (£10 inc VAT) from store.pcpro.co.uk Protection rating 100% False positives 3 Performance rating 91.5% Scan time 25m42s AVG is known for its basic, free antivirus tool, but when you can upgrade to the full security suite for less than a quid a month, it’s tempting to at least look into what you get for the money. Sadly, it’s not a transformative step up. Both the free and paid-for editions use the same antivirus engine – as does Avast, which is developed by the same company – so headline protection levels are identical. The bonus features aren’t entirely persuasive, either. AVG Internet Security does include a custom firewall, but while this might be a bit easier to configure than the standard Windows one, we have…

SCORE PRICE 6 PCs, 1yr, £13 (£16 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/322bull Protection rating 99.8% False positives 1 Performance rating 91.5% Scan time 2m48s It’s weird that, in 2021, BullGuard doesn’t render properly on modern, high-DPI screens. On our test laptop, the icons and even the company’s logo take on an ugly pixelated appearance, drawing attention to the fact that the frontend hasn’t had a refresh since 2013. The feature set also feels dated. Nothing here directly addresses the rise of ransomware or webcam exploits in recent years (to be fair, an effective antivirus component ought to cut off such attacks at the source). The suite also still bundles a classic standalone secure browser; there’s nothing exactly wrong with that, but it’s not as elegantly evolved as the way that F-Secure…

SCORE PRICE 1 PC, 1yr, £16 (£19 inc VAT) from store.pcpro.co.uk Protection rating 100% False positives 50 Performance rating 90.9% Scan time 6m25s Malwarebytes’s free antivirus tool can be a lifesaver if you’re facing a suspected infection. However, it only performs on-demand scanning: for active, always-on protection you need to step up to the Premium package. That costs £30 from Malwarebytes and £19 from the PC Pro store, but even with that discount we’d steer clear. Malwarebytes Premium is one of this month’s priciest propositions, yet it barely does anything more than the free edition. Yes, you get real-time malware detection and scheduled scanning, but in-browser protection is merely as provided by the free Malwarebytes Browser Guard extension, and you’ll look in vain for fancy accoutrements such as a bespoke…

SCORE PRICE 3 PCs, 1yr, £21 (£25 inc VAT) from trendmicro.com Protection rating 99.5% False positives 6 Performance rating 91.1% Scan time 41secs With an overall protection rating of 99.5%, Trend Micro Internet Security is – believe it or not – the lowest-scoring suite this month. That shouldn’t necessarily rule it out of contention, though, as the functional difference in effectiveness between this and our winners is very small indeed. Sadly, that’s not the only way in which Trend Micro proved slightly off the pace in recent tests. It registered three false positives in AV-Comparatives’ tests, and a further three for AV-Test, putting it near the bottom of the table for accuracy. And while the scanner raced through our hard disk in a brisk 41 seconds, the suite had a…

One of the fastest-growing threats of recent years is so-called cryptomining malware. If anything’s going to land on your computer, there’s a good chance it will be this type of exploit. In a way, that’s a blessing. Cryptominers are sneaky little programs that run quietly in the background, performing calculations on your hardware to generate bitcoins or other digital currencies for the operator of the malware. The longer the code remains undetected, the more money it generates – so it’s not in the creator’s interest to attract attention by doing destructive things like trashing your files or messing with your system settings. Even so, cryptomining malware isn’t something to be taken lightly. The mining process hammers your CPU, making other programs on your PC feel slow and unresponsive, and potentially…

SCORE PRICE Wave 100, from £10 exc VAT per user per month from gradwell.com Gradwell is an established name in the UK communications market, but its Wave VoIP service is a recent arrival. We first reviewed it back in issue 307 and were impressed with its smartly chosen set of call-handling capabilities; since then, Gradwell has added several new features, making it a pleasingly well-rounded service. Onboarding is swift. On setting up our test account, we provided an initial list of users and Gradwell created these for us, allowing us to hit the ground running. We opted for Yealink T42S handsets – the company also offers alternatives from Poly and Snom – and these too arrived rapidly, with their MAC addresses already added to our account. Provisioning was a breeze.…

SCORE PRICE £163 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.co.uk DrayTek specialises in business-class networking at SMB-friendly prices, and the VigorAP 960C fits the bill perfectly. It offers impressive performance, thanks to dual-band Wi-Fi 6 radios, and also supports three operational modes and no fewer than four management modes – all for £163. On its own, the 960C will work as either a standalone access point (AP) or a Wi-Fi 6 range extender for an existing network – or it can serve as part of a self-healing wireless mesh network. It can be managed from its own web console, auto-provisioned using any DrayTek router that supports the Central AP Management (CAM) feature, centrally administered with the free VigorConnect Windows app, or managed in the cloud with the optional VigorACS 3 service. It’s a…

It’s 1985 and you’re steaming down the road in your brand-new Ford Escort XR3i. The top is down, the music is loud and the neon-lit Skegness skyline sparkles off your mirrored shades. At the lights, an identical XR3i pulls alongside. Your eyes lock onto the fluffy dice hanging near the driver’s head as the car roars away, leaving you weeping at the pitiful piña colada air freshener swaying from your own mirror. It stinks of failure. Honestly, reader, this is about computers. The next day, the dealer explains that your XR3i was factory fitted with an air freshener. You demand fluffy dice like that other XR3i and what’s more, you’ve bought your own. The dealer jabs the bag and mocks the £10 price label. He moans that your dice are…

We live lonely lives here sometimes. The type of critic who sees patterns in everything loves to tell me that I’m in the pockets of PC Pro advertisers, and that we all toe the party line – most recently over systems such as the Raspberry Pi 400 or anti-Zoomness. All I can do is shake my head and say it simply can’t work that way. Deadlines rule, okay? When you see me and Jon Honeyball talking about NAS firmware in the same month, it’s because the issue has hit both of us in the real world over that period. What’s this about? I wanted to soften you up for a bit of self-regard, really. I want you to go through your back issues and find Nicole Kobie’s Futures piece about…

Thursday 8 July 2021 LABS Desktop PCs for all budgets What can you buy for £500, £1,000 or £1,500? We challenge the UK’s best PCmakers, and their international rivals, to find out. Subscribe today Start your subscription today and claim a free 32GB memory stick emblazoned with the logo of your favourite magazine. You can read PC Pro in print, on an iPad, iPhone or Android device. See p106 for more details. FEATURES Broadb and in subspace If Elon Musk has his way, your next broad band will rely on satellites. We investigate if this could be a realistic choice–and how soon. The AI that thinks it can write Is GPT-3 the natural writing break through its creators claim? With the help of a best-selling novelist, we revealits prose and…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Apple MacBook Air Affordable Apple M1 ultraportable from £999 from apple.com/uk Apple’s ARM-based M1 chip is blasting away its AMD and Intel x86 opposition with truly extraordinary speeds. Even the low-end model with 8GB of RAM is ludicrously fast. Apple makes no changes to the Air’s design, but it still looks fabulous and now supports both USB 4 and Wi-Fi 6. Add battery life into the teens and its biggest threat comes from the updated M1 MacBook Pro 13in. REVIEW Issue 316, p40 ALTERNATIVES Dell XPS 17 (2020) The XPS 17 is an excellent alternative to the 16in MacBook Pro, thanks to a 17in IPS screen, plenty of power, all-round quality and a great range of specifications. From £2,299 from dell.co.uk REVIEW Issue 315, p48 Apple MacBook Pro…

@bazzacollins I’ve written some lines in my time where I’ve sucked the end of my Biro and thought “can I really get away with that?” Well, the folk at the NSPCC need chewier Biros because they’re not giving enough thought to their current output. Take this quote from NSPCC chief executive, Sir Peter Wanless, which appeared on the charity’s homepage recently: “The public wants an end to the rhetoric that heats up the issue [of end-to-end encryption] but shines little light on the solution”. That very quote appeared two sentences before a headline shouting: “Help us end the Wild West Web.” I know we live in the post-truth age, but even cabinet ministers leave it more than 18 words before they contradict themselves. That very quote appeared two sentences before…

Even when PC Pro first smashed its way onto the newsagents’ shelves in 1994, £250 wouldn’t get you very far when buying a new PC. Today, and despite inflation, there are several new computers you can buy despite that limited budget. But would a new machine – and all the compromises they involve at a bargain price – be the best use of your cash? Or would you be better off buying secondhand or even building yourself? To find out the answer, we asked PC Pro editor-in-chief Tim Danton to review four varied new machines that you can buy for £250 or less. We then asked our resident PC repairman Lee Grant to tell us how he would spend £250 on a secondhand machine, before challenging him to build a…

PRICE £208 (£249 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com Adozen machines competed in our Chromebooks Labs (see issue 321, p76), but the Lenovo Chromebook Duet was exceptional. This was in part due to its low price; while Chromebooks have a reputation for being cheap, the Duet was one of only four to dip below £250. The real reason it separated itself from the pack was that it, well, separated itself: the keyboard and rear case/stand can be removed from the display to create a standalone tablet, much like the Lenovo Tab P11 Pro I review on p51. It’s a clever design no doubt inspired by Microsoft’s Surface tablets, and even with keyboard and stand in place it only measures 18.2mm thick and weighs 920g. Without them, it’s 7mm thick and weighs 450g.…

The telephone network that we’ve relied on for decades is coming to an end. The UK’s public switched telephone network (PSTN) is being shut down in 2025, and traditional telephony products will stop being sold in as little as 18 months’ time. The PSTN closure puts on notice everything from your home landline to the office phone system, from burglar alarms to traffic lights. They’ll all need to be migrated to more modern, digital technology within the next few years or they’ll stop working. ISDN lines are another casualty. We’ve spoken to the person responsible for managing the switch-off and other industry experts to find out precisely what effect this will have on consumers and businesses – and why you need to start planning now for the great British switch-off.…

The BBC micro:bit is a very versatile little computer. Although it’s designed and marketed with a focus on introducing kids to coding, it’s capable of far more than mere programming exercises. The second-generation hardware, released last October, has an impressive range of onboard sensors, including a three-axis accelerometer for detecting motion, a magnetometer for orientation, a temperature sensor, a microphone and a speaker. Bluetooth is also built in, so you can program it using mobile apps and transfer your code wirelessly – and the board can be bought from Pimoroni for just £13.50 (pcpro.link/322microbit). With all that onboard, it might sound like a rival to the Raspberry Pi, but it’s not powerful enough to run a graphical operating system: it uses a 32-bit processor running at 64MHz and has a…

Recommended This, quite simply, is a product we would recommend you buy – if it meets your needs. A-List The best buy in its category right now. The product will also feature on our A-List, starting on p14. It’s updated each month. Labs Winner Each month we run a group test, or Labs. This product has managed to beat all others to top position. The pcpro.link Throughout the magazine you’ll see pcpro.link shortcuts. Enter these into the address bar of your browser and it will take you to a particular page, which will either be too long or awkward for us to publish or will take you to the precise shop from which to buy. If it’s Amazon, note that we have an affiliate deal in place so we will…

SCORE PRICE £916 (£1,099 inc VAT) from hihonor.com The 2020 Honor MagicBook 14 (see issue 319, p82) was a value champ, packing powerful AMD Ryzen 4000 processors into a solid metal chassis for less than £700. This 2021 edition shifts streams, with Honor opting for two Intel versions: one with a Core i5-1135G7, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD for £799, the other with a Core i7-1165G7, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for £1,099. Physically, this Intel-powered generation is indistinguishable from its predecessor. That means the same solid aluminium alloy body, the same 1.25kg weight and the same compact dimensions; and it still looks smart in its dark Space Grey livery. Honor doesn’t entirely sacrifice style for utility: undo the ten Torx screws holding the bottom panel…

SCORE PRICE £277 (£332 inc VAT) from uk.insight.com This isn’t the first cut-price 4K monitor to cross our paths. The 27in Iiyama XU2792UHSU-B1 (see issue 313, p79) impressed for £280, but had a basic stand and no USB hub. This 28in AOC monitor gives you an extra inch of space and a more refined experience, including four USB-A ports and 130mm of height adjustment. It also features a pair of weedy 3W speakers. As with the Iiyama, the U28P2A uses an IPS panel. An sRGB mode locks brightness to 180cd/m2, and in return AOC promises a Delta E of under two – it calibrates the displays before they leave the factory. The sheet with our unit stated an average of 0.56, but our tests returned 2.87. Not that I would…

SCORE PRICE £749 (£899 inc VAT) from store.dji.com Arriving only a year after the DJI Mavic Air 2, the Air 2S brings major improvements in several key areas: a fantastic camera, consistent and responsive flight controls and impressive object avoidance and tracking make this DJI’s best consumer drone to date. The downside is that it’s also £120 more than the Mavic Air 2 at launch – and this is only for the basic package with one battery, the remote control unit and a spare pair of propellers. If you want to fly for longer than 31 minutes at a time, you’re better off going for the Fly More Combo package for £1,169. In return, you get two more batteries and an extra pair of spare propellers, plus a host of…

SCORE PRICE 128GB, £274 (£329 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/322poco Xiaomi has returned with another Pocophone: the Poco F3. It’s the long-awaited follow-up to the excellent Pocophone F1 (see issue 304, p86), which offered flagship-level speeds for only £329. This is a gap in the market that the Poco F3 gleefully fills in the same way OnePlus handsets did before price inflation made them almost as expensive as everything else. While the Poco F3 doesn’t contain the high-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chipset, it offers significantly more than you could expect at its modest price. The Snapdragon 870 sits one rung below the 888, and it’s backed by 16GB of RAM and either 128GB or 256GB of internal storage (note that there’s no microSD card slot). It also supports 5G, should you…

SCORE PRICE £75 (£90 inc VAT) from nokia.com Budget smartphones rarely find themselves at the forefront of design innovation, but the Nokia 1.4 is eye-catching. Its robust plastic chassis doesn’t flex when you twist or bend the handset, and the two-tone “Fjord” model I was sent for review shifts between dark blue and purple, depending on where the light catches it. It certainly doesn’t feel cheap, with skinny bezels and a neat hole-punch notch in the top-middle edge of the display. The two rear-facing cameras are housed in a circular camera array on the back, sitting just above a sensibly placed fingerprint sensor, while a 3.5mm headphone jack sits on the top edge. However you can’t expect miracles: there’s no IP rating for dust or water ingress protection, nor a…

SCORE PRICE £38 (£45 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/322band When people ask me to recommend fitness trackers, I’ve tended to play it safe and say Fitbit. However, products such as the Honor Band 6 are shaking my faith. First, there’s the question of price; consider that the closest equivalent to the Honor Band 6 is the Fitbit Luxe, which costs £130. Second, Fitbit’s screens can be hard to read. I recently recommended the Fitbit Charge 4 (see issue 309, p71) to my septuagenarian stepfather, but he struggles to see its black-and-white AMOLED screen outdoors. Judged on those two metrics alone, the Band 6 is a stone-cold winner. The price speaks for itself, but the 194 x 368 AMOLED display deserves lavish praise. Not only is it vivid enough to see in…

SCORE PRICE Free from avast.com Protection rating 100% False positives 3 Performance rating 91.9% Scan time 16m 41s If you don’t want to pay for malware protection, there are several free options. The most obvious is what’s already built into Windows 10 (see p85), but big names such as Bitdefender and Kaspersky also offer free versions (see p86). In our view, Avast’s is the best free offering, providing strong protection and a feature set that goes beyond its rivals. It’s not quite impeccable: during AV-Comparatives’ malware tests, Avast dropped the ball just once. If our protection scores were extended to three decimal places, it would come away with an overall rating of 99.998%. That’s still an excellent result, and better than you can expect from the free editions of Avira…

SCORE PRICE Built into Windows 10 Protection rating 100% False positives 5 Performance rating 87.5% Scan time 9m54s Formerly known as Defender, Windows 10’s built-in antivirus tool now nestles among a whole suite of integrated security modules, within an umbrella app that’s simply called Windows Security (see issue 320, p42). Some of these other components extend your protection in quite clever ways: for example, the Controlled Folder Access feature can stop ransomware in its tracks by blocking unrecognised applications from writing to your personal folders. Microsoft’s SmartScreen technology has also evolved to take advantage of Windows 10’s extensive (and somewhat controversial) telemetry features, using them to identify and block programs with suspicious global usage patterns. Similar checks are built into the Edge browser and the Microsoft Store to help protect…

SCORE PRICE 1 PC, 1yr, £25 (£30 inc VAT) from avira.com Protection rating 99.8% False positives 2 Performance rating 92.8% Scan time 60secs Avira Antivirus Pro makes a great first impression. The console opens with a swish graphic promising not only to look after your security, but to protect your privacy and boost system performance as well. And, on the first count, it delivers. The raw rankings aren’t kind to Avira, placing it 12th this month – but that still represents an overall protection rating of 99.8%, including perfect 100% scores against AV-Test’s set of malware samples for February 2021. A score of two false positives isn’t bad, either: we’d have no hesitation in trusting it for everyday security. Sadly, the privacy side of things is much less comprehensive. It’s…

SCORE PRICE 1 PC, 1yr, £25 (£30 inc VAT) from store.pcpro.co.uk Protection rating 99.8% False positives 0 Performance rating 92.2% Scan time 42secs When you first open up Eset Internet Security, you might feel a bit intimidated – and not just by the creepy android eyeballing you from the homepage. The interface is split into seven pages, each one containing further settings and links. But while the layout is byzantine, the feature set is sensible and straightforward. That set includes scanning files, websites and links, and if you’re running a local email client then Eset Internet Security will also scan for infected attachments, phishing links and spam. A secure browsing mode aims to defeat keyloggers and other spyware while you’re shopping and banking in your preferred browser; you can set…

SCORE PRICE 1 PC, 1yr, £10 (£12 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/322mac Protection rating 100% False positives 7 Performance rating 93.8% Scan time 1m37s McAfee’s reputation has jumped up and down over the years, but it was one of only four packages here to achieve a perfect 100% protection score from both AV-Test and AV-Comparatives. Its overall performance rating is excellent too, and we were pleased to see it chew through our 55GB of data in well under two minutes. Its only real stumble was an above-average seven false positives. There are plenty of supplementary features too, starting with a custom firewall. This can be fiddly to configure, but there’s a lot of power here to precisely manage how applications and services behave on different networks. You also get full access…

For our protection ratings this month we draw on real-world tests carried out by not one but two specialist antivirus testing labs – namely AV-Comparatives.org (pcpro.link/322comp) and AV-Test.org (pcpro.link/322test). The scores shown on the preceding pages, and in our graphs below, represent the average of the ratings reported by each lab in their latest reports, dated March 2021 and February 2021 respectively. The number of false positives represents the total number of incorrect alerts raised up by each package, across both labs’ tests. To measure the impact of each security product on system responsiveness, AV-Comparatives uses a combination of its own in-house test suite and the PCMark 10 benchmark, while AV-Test times a series of standardised tasks, including launching applications, opening websites and copying files, on both a typical and…

During the pandemic we’ve heard a lot about cloud-based file-sharing services and videoconferencing platforms, but one technology that hasn’t got the acknowledgement it deserves is VoIP. Companies using VoIP services have been easily able to keep their staff in touch wherever they’re located, while those clinging to outdated PSTN systems have faced headaches in maintaining contact. That’s not the only reason to make the switch. As always, VoIP offers huge savings over traditional phone services – which is great for SMBs who have seen their budgets disrupted in the past year. Calls are cheaper over VoIP than traditional landlines, and calls between offices are usually free. Anyone who is still unconvinced won’t have a choice soon anyway. BT stopped offering new PSTN services at the end of 2020, and is…

SCORE PRICE From £8 exc VAT per user per month from ringcentral.co.uk RingCentral Office is one of the best cloud-hosted VoIP services around, providing a wealth of enterprise-class communications features at a price that’s right for SMBs. Indeed, this latest version brings a raft of new features that turn the service into a bona fide unified communications solution. The video, team messaging, fax and cloud-phone services have been brought together. Before, you had to use separate apps for these, but now they have been integrated into one place, giving users a central hub for communication and collaboration. Indeed, you don’t even need to install the app, as the features can all be accessed via any browser with WebRTC enabled. Simply point it at RingCentral’s app URL, log in with your…

SCORE PRICE Diskless, £788 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com The DS1821+ represents a change of direction for Synology: it’s one of a new range of NAS appliances that ditch the familiar Intel processors and put AMD in the driving seat instead. This model replaces the old DS1819+, and comes with a quad-core 2.2GHz AMD Ryzen V1500B processor in place of the 2.1GHz Intel Atom C3538 CPU. There are other subtle upgrades too. Memory provision remains the same – 4GB of DDR4, upgradeable to 32GB – but the DS1821+ comes with server-grade ECC RAM to ensure business-class reliability. And while the DS1821+’s sturdy charcoal-black steel chassis may appear the same as its predecessor’s, its eight hot-swap drive bays are now joined by dual M.2 NVMe SSD slots – although these can only…

The news from Apple is as interesting as it is frustrating. It has released the AirTag, the new 24in iMac and an M1-powered iPad Pro. Each of them has some interesting factors that will impact the wider marketplace, even if only the AirTag was actually available to buy at the time of the announcement in late April. Let’s start with the easy one: the new iMac. Firstly, this isn’t a device I’m going to buy. There’s nothing wrong with its M1 processor, but I do have a problem with the available specification. The base product starts at £1,249, which isn’t exactly bargain basement. For this you get an eightcore CPU and seven-core GPU, 8GB of RAM and just 256GB of storage. There’s no Ethernet interface in this configuration. Jump to…

Last month, I was reviewing the relationship between a UK client and a US technology provider who stored personal data on behalf of my client. The provider’s terms stated that it “complies with the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework” for transfers of personal data from the EU to the US. I had a couple of problems with that. Firstly, the UK is no longer within the EU, so a commitment to comply with the Privacy Shield for transfers from the EU doesn’t help. Secondly, the EU-US Privacy Shield is no longer valid as a mechanism to permit transfers of data from the EU to the US. I started writing a long piece of advice to my client explaining the problems with data transfers to the US, the lack of ideal solutions…

Ron has appeared here before, when I got an invite to the Royal Albert Hall to see and hear its new sound system (see issue 298, p120). In early 2021, he was back in touch, wanting to tidy up his digitised music library. Unusually for someone in his position, he has the many hundreds of kilos of original vinyl records, which he would very much rather not carry to gigs (when such things resume entirely). His problem is that money is tight and spending thousands on an Apple MacBook isn’t going to solve his problem. We estimated that a basic working set of his digital performance assets rolls in at about 1TB, which completely overwhelms the MacBook’s entry spec of 256GB. At £1,249 for the very cheapest model with even…

“Following a year-long exploration and engaging in conversations with customers, we realised that the technology of Windows 10X could be useful in more ways and serve more customers than we originally imagined… Instead of bringing a product called Windows 10X to market in 2021 like we originally intended, we are leveraging learnings from our journey thus far and accelerating the integration of key foundational 10X technology into other parts of Windows and products at the company.” And with those words, buried deep in a blog entry about the May 2021 update, Windows 10X died. I confess, I had high hopes for 10X. It would finally be the product that allowed Microsoft to escape from the Win32/Intel history that has been holding it back. But it’s clear there were forces at…