Table of contents for July 2022 in PC Pro

Email engulfs me. I have my personal email, my PC Pro email, my Future Publishing email, my own company email, and numerous others that I auto-forward to the most relevant address. That’s quite aside from all the other ways that people get in touch. Perhaps in a throwback to Google+, one of Google’s many failed attempts to create a social network, I think of messaging as a trio of circles. There’s my personal, inner circle that communicates via messaging apps – primarily WhatsApp, that curse and blessing of modern times. Then I have a middle, professional, day-to-day circle centred on Slack. But my third circle, email, is the big challenge. Because editor@pcpro.co.uk has been around for all 28 years of this magazine’s existence, it’s on every database known to man,…

Can there be such as thing as too much competition? The UK having four major mobile networks might be one too many, if Three CEO Robert Finnegan is to be believed. In a recent financial results announcement, he characterised the UK market as “dysfunctional”. Why? Because the fierce competition between networks is making it harder to roll out 5G and improve Britain’s mobile infrastructure. “As things stand, the UK does not have the quality of mobile infrastructure it deserves,” said Finnegan, in a statement provided to PC Pro by Three. “Investment is spread too thinly across too many players, meaning our networks are sub-par by international standards.” Finnegan has a ready-made solution: consolidation. In his view, government regulators should allow two of the four major networks to merge. “Moving from…

Dick Pountain is editorial fellow of PC Pro. He has a picture of the Hindenburg disaster on his spare room wall. Email dick@dickpountain.co.uk I frequently write about energy in this column, mainly in the context of CPU efficiency or the foibles of mobile batteries, but now seems the time for a wider look. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has thrown global fossil markets into chaos, while the UK government has revealed its longterm (not entirely feeble) strategy for increasing nuclear and wind power over the next eight years. So this time I’m talking about the long run. I've been a supporter of both nuclear power – fission and ultimately fusion – and the “hydrogen economy” for around 50 years when neither was at all fashionable. I won’t rehash all the problems…

@PCPRO FACEBOOK.COM/PCPRO XEROX ALTO The cabinet-sized Alto may have stretched the definition of “personal computer” (only its portrait screen and keyboard are shown here), but it also defined many of the things we take for granted today. It ran the first GUI-based OS controlled by a mouse, it hosted the first WYSIWYG document system, the first email client, the first network-based games. When Steve Jobs was shown its latest features in 1979, he described it as a “veil being lifted from my eyes”. APPLE II Compare and contrast the Apple II with the MITS Altair 8800 below. Only three years separated them, yet the Apple II looked stylish – by contemporary standards, at least – and still included all the expansion slots demanded by the enthusiasts expected to buy it.…

PRICE £2,499 (£2,999 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk Of all the big multinational companies, HP makes the best gaming PCs. Controversial? Perhaps, but where its rivals lean towards alien-like creations with complicated internal layouts, HP takes the route of a stylish yet understated case and easy-toupgrade components. The Omen 45L marks a slight departure from the norm by including a Cryo Chamber. This isn’t somewhere to store your brain when your body goes south, but a separate section at the top of the PC where the liquid from the CPU cooling system circulates. The idea is to suck in colder air from the room to cool the liquid, rather than rely on already warm air that circulates within a PC case. This extra chamber means that the Omen 45L towers over…

PRICE £1,508 (£1,810 inc VAT) from box.co.uk Head to box.co.uk and it might not be immediately obvious the company, best known as an online electronics retailer, also custom-builds its own PCs. But it has done exactly that for more than 20 years, backing it up with a generous three-year warranty that covers parts, labour and courier collection/delivery costs. Perhaps best of all, though, is its high level of customisation. The Box Cube Legendary Elite on review here includes a Ryzen 7 5700X processor and GeForce RTX 3070 Ti graphics, but at the time of going to press you could upgrade to a 5800X for £30, save £200 by dropping to a 3060 Ti or upgrade to the same GeForce RTX 3080 Ti in the HP Omen 45L (see p50) for…

PRICE £374 (£449 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk Some mesh systems focus on high-end performance, others prioritise affordability. The Deco X90 finds its own balance: it’s hardly a budget system, but it’s competitively priced considering it promises to deliver Wi-Fi 6 for up to 200 devices, throughout a home of up to six bedrooms. Despite those ambitious claims, the kit contains only two stations. They’re not much to look at, but they’re tasteful, with a single status LED near the base of each one. If you need to extend the system’s footprint, an additional unit costs £245. The X90 doesn’t support Wi-Fi 6E, but it works so well over regular Wi-Fi 6 that may not matter. It’s a regular tri-band design, with each unit containing a legacy 2.4GHz radio plus two…

SCORE PRICE £633 (£760 inc VAT) from philips.co.uk It’s no surprise that Philips is one of the first companies to produce a 32in 4K gaming monitor for a reasonable price. As a brand, it’s always strived to deliver value in areas where others struggle. For instance, the last time we reviewed a 32in 4K gaming screen – the magnificent ViewSonic Elite XG320U (see issue 327, p91) – it had a list price of £1,079. Its street price has since dropped to around £950, but until now gamers who sought 4K on larger screens were being asked to pay a hefty premium for the features they demand. Top of that feature list is a high refresh rate, with this Philips Momentum pushing up to 144Hz. That isn’t the 240Hz or even 360Hz…

SCORE PRICE £874 (£1,049 inc VAT) from oppostore.co.uk Oppo aims to become one of the big names in smartphone photography, and for its latest phone it has worked with legendary camera brand Hasselblad. That’s not the only thing the Find X5 Pro phone has going for it, though, which is fortunate with a price of £1,049. If you see a much cheaper model, you may have stumbled across the standard Oppo Find X5 or its Lite sibling. Their prices start at £749 and £419 respectively, but they’re not the same thing at all, with different chassis, screens and processors. Nor do they have the generous 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage found in the X5 Pro. This top-tier model exudes quality, in both look and feel. Weighing 195g, it…

SCORE PRICE Range starts at £694 (£833 inc VAT) from box.co.uk Technically, the Acer TravelMate Spin P4 sits in the same genre as the HP Elite Dragonfly G2: they’re both 2-in-1 convertibles that target business buyers. In the hand, however, they couldn’t be more different. The Spin P4 feels every gram of its 1.55kg weight, and we measured it at 18.5mm thick: a shade more than Acer’s 17.99mm claim and notably thicker than the Dragonfly’s 16.1mm. Another obvious difference is the size of their screen and bezels, with the 14in Spin P4 measuring 236mm from front to back compared to the 198mm of the 13.3in Dragonfly. The P4 is far chunkier, a fact that becomes even more obvious when you use it in tablet form and the thick bezels dominate…

SCORE PRICE Tecra A40 range starts at £699 (£839 inc VAT) from misco.co.uk It wasn’t long ago that a business laptop costing under a grand was a lumpy object that brought gasps of dismay from anyone unfortunate enough to be saddled with it. Not so this Tecra A40. While it inevitably has shortcomings when compared to more expensive rivals such as the Surface Laptop 4, there’s only one winner when it comes to value. The A40’s greatest strength is the quality and design of its chassis. It’s made from plastic, but this is tough ABS that exudes durability, and the Tecra has been tested to MIL STD 810-H standards. The one-year warranty could be more generous, but it’s easy enough to extend via your chosen reseller, and covers EMEA rather…

SCORE PRICE Range starts at £899 (£1,079 inc VAT) from microsoft.com/uk Microsoft describes the Surface Laptop 4 as “ultra-thin” and, much as we hate to approve the use of “ultra” in any sentence, we can’t argue here. On paper, a 14.5mm thickness sounds similar to the 19mm of a typical laptop, but the difference is obvious as soon as you clap eyes on it. If anything, the Surface Laptop 4 looks even slimmer, thanks to a design that tapers to 10mm at the front. An all-metal chassis means that others beat it for lightness, but at 1.3kg the Surface Laptop won’t weigh you down. And we don’t think you’ll bother carrying the 340g charger with you either, as battery life is superb: almost 12 hours for office tasks, just shy…

SCORE PRICE Range starts at £1,259 (£1,511 inc VAT) from store.hp.com The Dragonfly is in that awkward period of gestation between G2 and G3. That means the G2 is coming to the end of its life – models can be found in the channel but not directly from HP – but the G3 is yet to actually flutter its wings. Nor is it a straightforward evolution from one generation to the next. One area where the G3 clearly wins is its inclusion of 12th gen Intel Core chips, but it loses the G2’s touchscreen and its convertible design. That’s a shame but, in most scenarios, it isn’t fatal. HP bundles a stylus with the G2, and it certainly benefits from being light at 1.1kg, but a 16:9 aspect ratio screen…

We measure speed using a range of tests. PC Pro’s own assess how quickly each system can process a set of image and video files, and handle multiple workloads while simultaneously playing high-definition video. We also test using the industry standard PCMark 10 benchmark, and use the synthetic Cinebench R23 and Geekbench 5 to assess the laptops’ single-core and multicore performance. We test the performance of the internal SSD using the AS SSD tool, which determines maximum sequential read and write speeds. We then test 3D performance, again using both real-world and synthetic software. In this case we run Dirt: Showdown on each system at 1080p with 4 x MSAA and High detail settings, Metro: Last Light at 1080p with High detail settings, plus 3DMark Time Spy. Our next stop…

SCORE PRICE 16SC Enterprise, £615 per year exc VAT from 3cx.com Businesses that want to host their own IP PBX should put 3CX’s Phone System 18 at the top of their list: it offers a stunning range of call-handling features at affordable prices. Licensing is based on the number of simultaneous calls, with a 16SC licence for the Enterprise version on review sufficient for up to 50 users costing £615 per year. Phone System Enterprise enables everything 3CX has to offer, including web conferencing, call queues, call reports, recording services and integration with Facebook, WordPress and Microsoft 365, plus CRM and helpdesk solutions such as Salesforce and Zendesk. All three editions offer a 4SC version, which is free for the first year, with a Standard 4SC licence free forever. On-premises…

SCORE PRICE From £8.50 per seat per month (exc VAT) from voip-unlimited.net SMBs that want a cloud telephony system they can rely on will find the Voip Exchange (VE) service from UK-based Voip Unlimited offers many compelling features. Unlike providers that use third-party cloud platforms, it’s hosted on Voip Unlimited’s own dedicated network in three UK data centres for resiliency and optimised for voice traffic, making it ideal for home workers with limited broadband speeds. Costs are easily managed with the base licence starting at £8.50 a month per seat with a minimum one-year contract. This package requires each user to have a desk phone, which VoIP Unlimited can supply, but if you already have compatible phones, it will re-provision them for its service. Two separate packages are aimed at…

There’s a really neat feature in the new 12.3 version of macOS Monterey, which has just landed after a lengthy beta period. It’s called Universal Control, and it offers a host of useful features. The first is the use of one keyboard and trackpad across a number of devices. For example, I have my 12.9in iPad Pro sat to the right of my MacBook Pro: if I slide the mouse pointer over to the right, it automatically moves onto the iPad. I can type there, do anything that I would do with the Magic Keyboard stand, but I don’t need to move my hands from the MacBook itself. If I had a second laptop or iMac to my left, I could move across to that, too. To make this work,…

The news that Insteon, purveyors of IoT smart home products, has suddenly shut down will come as an unpleasant surprise to its erstwhile customers. The servers are gone, as are the website’s support pages. There is some hope that it will be possible to resuscitate the service to a minimal level, if only to allow customers to migrate data to a different service, but that remains a hope at this stage. Sadly, I’m not surprised it has come to this. Any product that relies on an intimate relationship with a cloud service to function is at continual risk of that service failing or disappearing altogether. But we might wonder how this situation has come about. There’s no intrinsic need for a cloud service to be involved with the core operation…

Nicole Kobie is PC Pro’s Futures editor and she has deleted most of her tweets. It’s for the best. @njkobie Twelve years ago, Paul Chambers was frustrated by flight cancellations that threatened to keep him apart from his girlfriend. To vent, he posted the following message to Twitter: “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!” No-one in their right mind would have read that tweet and thought Chambers was going to do any such thing, and indeed when the message was spotted by an airport manager a week later, the threat was deemed “not credible”. Despite that, the airport called the police, sparking a two-year long legal battle. Chambers was initially found…

As a fellow ex-banking person, I agree entirely with Steve Cassidy on NFTs, Amazon and “open banking” (see issue 332, p120). I suspect that open banking is how criminals will describe it once they have broken into the system. But my issue is maybe deeper, in the potential increasing risk to our bank accounts from another direction. I have no issue with allowing variable direct debit access to certain utilities or government services, but draw the line at enabling variable amounts to be taken by companies. Yet certain companies (I’m looking at you, eBay) demand a variable direct debit to my bank account for me to be able to sell items – this despite over 20 years of membership and longestablished equivalent credit card authorisation. Once these companies’ systems are…

ACORN ATOM (1980) The Atom was the predecessor to the BBC Micro, and with 2022 goggles on, looked much more stylish than its successor. Neat fact: the manual for the computer was called Atomic Theory and Practice. DRAGON 32 (1982) We love the story of the Dragon 32 – a Welsh toy company deciding to build a computer is so mid-1980s – but it was basically a copy of the Tandy TRS-80. ACORN ELECTRON (1983) Acorn’s attempts to build a cut-down BBC Micro was beset with difficulty, leading to long delays. By the time it was available, the demand had gone. SINCLAIR QL (1984) This could have been the British Mac, based around a 16-bit Motorola processor and with a brilliant multitasking OS. Plus a full suite of office software!…

PRICE £833 (£1,000 inc VAT) from cyberpowersystem.co.uk Elsewhere this month we’ve shown what you can buy for around £2,000 in the Box Cube Legendary Elite (see p54) and around £3,000 in the HP Omen 45L (see p50). To complete the triumvirate, meet the more budget-friendly but still speedy Cyberpower Infinity X123 RTX. Despite its more affordable price, Cyberpower has its eye on gamers with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card. This remains a great choice for 1080p gaming, averaging above 60fps at High or Ultra settings in demanding games such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider (122fps, High), Hitman 3 (119fps, Ultra), Dirt 5 (79fps, High) and Metro Exodus (61fps, High). You’ll also find more than playable frame rates at 1440p, with scores of 82fps, 77fps, 62fps and 45fps in…

PRICE £833 (£1,000 inc VAT) from consumer.huawei.com/uk In our iconic PCs feature this month (see p26) we give praise to Microsoft for its Surface design. It’s no coincidence that every other major laptop maker has since copied its design in one form or other, with Huawei the latest to join in the fun. One area where Huawei differs from Microsoft is that it doesn’t charge extra for the keyboard. This attaches magnetically to the rear of the MateBook E, with a fold-down rear to lend support. It isn’t as elegant as Microsoft’s kickstand, but you can still choose pretty much any angle of repose. The keys have a pleasant 1.3mm of travel and are well spaced, but don’t expect luxuries such as backlighting. The trackpad is narrow and wide, and…

Norton AntiVirus Plus 2022 Total value this month£ 183 Norton AntiVirus Plus 2022 provides on-demand and real-time malware scanning, with behavioural monitoring, browsing protection and more. This latest release features improvements to the suite’s behavioural protection engine, with enhanced repair tools that use internet-connected resources to make a more reliable job of cleaning up after an infection has been removed. AntiVirus Plus also includes Norton’s Identity Safe password manager, which introduces an improved form filler with support for drag and drop and lets you search for logins directly from the toolbar. The intuitive interface puts core security functions just a click or two away, and there are plenty of advanced settings available should you need them. You also receive 2GB of online storage for backing up your most important files…

SCORE PRICE £288 (£346 inc VAT) from nec-displays.com NEC has designed the MultiSync E273F for the new – or at least, new-ish – world of working. One filled with laptop-based workers who hustle between home, office and coffee shop on any given day, and who would rather not bring their charger with them on their travels. That’s relevant here because the E273F features a USB-C input capable of delivering 65W to any connected machine. That’s enough power for all the business laptops in our Labs this month (see p74). In a hotdesking environment, it then makes sense for the USB-A ports at the monitor’s rear to be connected to a keyboard and mouse, with a third USB-A port easily accessible on the side. Naturally, if this monitor is to be…

SCORE PRICE Range starts at £1,304 (£1,565 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk Of all the 2-in-1 convertibles in this group test, the Latitude 9420 2-in-1 is the Rolls-Royce. And we aren’t simply referring to its price: the all-metal chassis gives this laptop an air of solidity that lifts it above rivals. Most laptop lids wobble when you twist them, for instance, but the 9420 is, like a certain prime minister of yore, not for turning. Considering this solid construction it’s surprising to find that the Latitude 9420 is a few grams lighter than the Acer TravelMate Spin P4. What’s more, its battery life is excellent: we saw results of 15hrs 11mins in idle, 10hrs 45mins in our video-rundown test and exactly 11hrs in office tasks, and when you do need to…

SCORE PRICE Range starts at £899 (£1,079 inc VAT) from hp.com As we mention in our review of the HP ProBook, the EliteBook is HP’s premium range of laptops. That means you can buy in the confidence of receiving the best components, a three-year business warranty, a premium all-metal chassis and a few additional luxuries along the way. The drawback of all these extras is cost: the range starts at £899, which is almost £200 more than the Dynabook Tecra A40 despite offering exactly the same core components. That is, an 11th gen Core i5-1135G7 processor, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD. There’s little to choose between them in terms of speed, with the EliteBook quicker in some benchmarks but slower in others. Our test machine also had the…

SCORE PRICE Range starts at £833 (£999 inc VAT) from microsoft.com/uk Normally Microsoft tweaks the Surface Pro’s design from one generation to another, often upgrading the innards alone. The shift from Pro 7 to Pro 8 is more noticeable, with Microsoft bulking up the weight (891g versus 784g) and thickness (9.3mm versus 8.7mm). Those figures are for the tablet alone, note, so don’t include the optional keyboard or stylus. There are two main reasons why Microsoft has made these sacrifices: screen size and battery life. It’s now a 13in rather than 12.3in panel, and it’s as sharp as we’ve come to expect from Surface Pro machines thanks to a 2,880 x 1,920 resolution. It also has a 120Hz refresh rate, which shows itself in slick scrolling. It’s nice to have…

SCORE PRICE £816 (£979 inc VAT) from pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews PCSpecialist is the only British manufacturer in this Labs, and that means it doesn’t have the billion-dollar R&D budget of a Dell or HP to design its laptops from scratch. Instead, the Lafité Pro 15.6in is based around Clevo’s NS50MU chassis. There’s nothing wrong with that, especially when PCSpecialist backs up the hardware with a three-year warranty and uses its purchasing power to offer a cracking selection of components for the price. For £816 exc VAT, you’re buying a Core i7-1165G7, 16GB of Corsair DDR4-3200 memory, a 1TB SSD and support for Wi-Fi 6E via an Intel AX210 radio. In short, wherever PCSpecialist can make a difference it’s opted for both speed and quality. This is most obvious via its choice of…

What, my colleague wanted to know, is the point of a group test where all the products get a four out of five rating? He meant this as a criticism, but I should quickly say that it wasn’t a PC Pro test that earned his ire. It’s still a good question. I could easily have given every single product in this Labs four stars out of five. As it stands, I’m uncomfortable with the fact that nine get four stars, one gets three stars and one gets five. I could make a strong argument for both those outliers to earn four stars too. Or every machine here to get three stars. Where once there was a gulf between laptops, now there are slender margins. Margins that waver this way and…

SCORE PRICE Wave 100: from £7.50 per user per month (exc VAT) from gradwell.com SMBs that want uncomplicated cloud-hosted VoIP services may find Gradwell’s Wave ideal. It’s designed from the ground up to be easy to manage and use, but this simplicity doesn’t come at the cost of features as Wave offers all the call-handling services a growing business could possibly need. Gradwell has recently reduced the prices of all its plans. The entry-level Wave 100 option now costs £7.50 per user per month (down from £10) and supports 100 call minutes to landlines and mobiles. Wave 1000 starts from £10.50 per month and increases call minutes to 1,000, while Wave 3000 costs from £15 and releases 3,000 call minutes. Unlike some competitors, all three packages deliver exactly the same…

SCORE PRICE £408 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com Fibre optic 10GbE networks are becoming affordable for SMBs, and TP-Link’s TL-SX3016F switch intends to make them even more appealing. This slimline 1U chassis offers 16 SFP+ 10GbE ports for a shade over £400 to deliver an incredibly low cost per 10GbE port of only £26. You’ll need to factor in the cost of laser transceivers and fibre optic cabling, but a big advantage over copper 10GbE installations is they support much longer distances. Furthermore, unlike blue-chips that may lock you in with their own coded transceivers, the TL-SX3016F has no restrictions and happily accepted our PlusOptic 10GBase-SR models, which cost £35 each and support connections of up to 300 metres. The TL-SX3016F has the capacity to handle a high data throughput, as…

Every few months, a high-profile vulnerability comes along that grabs the media spotlight, but in many cases these aren’t the threats you need to be focusing on. As Lewis Pope, “head security nerd” at N-able, points out, a vulnerability with a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) rating of 10 but no proof-of-concept exploit poses less danger in that moment than one with a score of 7 that’s already in the wild. “The former is a big worry for researchers, but businesses should focus on the exploit that’s known to exist,” he advised. A good place to get guidance on such things is the US Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency catalogue of known exploited vulnerabilities (see pcpro.link/333cisa). “If your small business finds it too much of a challenge to discover, apply…

Drones deployed to spot weaknesses in columns of tanks. Presidential addresses via Instagram, ministers asking favours via Twitter. A military using crowdfunding and cryptocurrency to buy equipment. The mismatched military might of Russia and Ukraine has sparked creative uses of technology by the latter, hinting at the future of warfare. The Ukraine war is still dominated by traditional methods of massacre, be it missiles or tanks or even Molotov cocktails. But like the rest of our lives, war has been upended by the digital revolution. “I think this is the reality of war in the digital age, the world we live in now,” said Neil Ashdown, researcher in cyber security at Royal Holloway, University of London. Indeed, defence contractors and military organisations are often the first to shift to new…

The European Union has announced plans for a new Digital Markets Act that could tighten the screws on the big tech “gatekeepers” and force them to make their messaging apps talk to each other. Though the full details are not yet clear, the EU’s plan is that companies deemed “core platform services”, such as search engines and social networks (no prizes for guessing who they mean), could soon be forced to enable customers using one messaging app to send messages to users on other platforms. So, for example, it could make it possible to send a message on WhatsApp to iMessage, or a Google Chat message to someone on Facebook Messenger. “I think the principle is good,” said Amanda Brock, CEO of open technology advocacy group Open UK. “As a…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Apple MacBook Pro 14in Stunning creative power from £1,899 from apple.com/uk Alongside its 16in sibling, this is simply the world’s best laptop for demanding users. The amount of power on tap via the M1 Pro or M1 Max processor is staggering, and it’s backed up by a terrific screen and stunning battery life. With all the ports you could ask for, the only negatives are its relative bulk (especially compared to the Air) and high price. REVIEW Issue 328, p58 ALTERNATIVES Samsung Galaxy Book Pro (15.6in) A powerful laptop with a 15.6in AMOLED screen that weighs a mere 1.05kg? And with stonking battery life too? The Galaxy Book Pro is a winner. Core i7, £1,449 from johnlewis.com REVIEW Issue 323, p50 Apple MacBook Air If you don’t need…

Barry Collins is the co-editor of BigTechQuestion.com. He’d make a terrible hero in a ransom movie. @bazzacollins A message arrives from a pal. One of those regular messages we all get, when we’re the person in the WhatsApp contacts list who knows most about computers. “Sarah has a friend who’s a counsellor and she’s having difficulty migrating her Microsoft Professional data between two computers,” the messages reads. “She’s panicking as she can’t lose patient info etc and is looking for someone to help.” Two sentences in and it already sounds chewy. Microsoft Professional data? Well, that could be anything. Panicking about lost patient data? This doesn’t sound like someone with a comprehensive backup plan. I pick up the phone and call said counsellor. My friend is right: we’re in panic…

PRICE £3,333 (£4,000 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk In recent years, Intel surrendered its long-held dominance in the workstation processor space to AMD. But now the regular Threadripper has been discontinued in favour of the feature-rich but more expensive Threadripper Pro, Intel is clawing its way back. The 12th generation of Intel Core processors, codenamed Alder Lake, has undeniably strong qualities – particularly for workstations and high-end desktops. And Scan’s 3XS GWP-ME A124C shows just how much Alder Lake has to offer content-creation professionals. The central element of the A124C is its Core i9-12900K processor, which is one rung below the top 12900KS model. The novelty with Alder Lake is that it has two types of cores: P highper-formance cores and E power-efficient cores. Only P cores support Hyper-Threading, so while…

PRICE £375 (£450 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk There were times while testing the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D that I had to look over my notes and mutter “this can’t be right” as I ran the benchmarks again. The numbers held up: AMD has delivered one of the best gaming processors I’ve ever tested. Some perspective. The 5800X3D is a rearguard action against a resurgent Intel and its Alder Lake architecture (see issue 328, p48). This is especially true with the Core i9-12900K, which is aimed right at the lizard brain of PC enthusiasts and gamers who measure the passage of time in fps. Show me the V-Cache What makes the Ryzen 7 5800X3D different from the Ryzen 7 5800X is the introduction of AMD’s 3D stacked cache, which it calls…

PRICE 2-pack, £209 (£251 inc VAT); 3-pack, £335 (£402 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk If you’re thinking you’ve seen these miniature towers somewhere before, you’re right: despite the new name, Linksys’ latest Wi-Fi 6 mesh is an evolution of its long-established Velop system. Unlike the original Velop, the Atlas Pro 6 is a dual-band design, operating a traditional 2.4GHz wireless network plus a faster 5GHz network. As there’s no third radio, the 5GHz channel ferries both backhaul and client data back and forth, a compromise that helps keep the price down. The units are tastefully designed, with square tops that gently round out towards the base. They’re dinkier than you might expect, standing 185mm tall with an 85 x 85mm footprint, but they have quite some range: Linksys claims the three-unit…

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 Xiaomi 12: 128GB, £624 (£749 inc VAT); Xiaomi 12 Pro: 256GB, £874 (£1,049 inc VAT) from mi.com/uk Xiaomi may not have the brand cachet of Apple or Samsung, but it’s a close competitor in terms of sales, and it knows how to make a decent smartphone. Its new offering comes in two variants: the regular Xiaomi 12 is a pocket-friendly design with a 6.28in display, while the larger Xiaomi 12 Pro brings a variety of upgrades and a bigger 6.73in panel. Winning looks The two handsets share the same basic design. The frosted finish is tasteful, with a choice of muted blue, grey and purple colours that give an air of refinement. Even the rectangular camera surround at the rear is elegant as well as functional. Both models…

SCORE PRICE Range starts at £1,330 (£1,596 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk It’s impossible to review the Dell Latitude 7320 Detachable without referencing the Surface Pro 8. Each has advantages over the other, but they share so much of the same DNA that they could be sister products. Once you sweep away Dell’s annoying Special Offer discounts – are we really meant to believe that we’re saving almost £1,000? – and Microsoft’s even more annoying approach of charging extra for the keyboard and mouse, the products are priced near identically, too. The obvious point of difference is the screen. Both include a 13in panel with a 3:2 aspect ratio, but Microsoft wins for sharpness thanks to its 2,880 x 1,920 resolution compared to the Dell’s 1,920 x 1,280. We aren’t convinced…

SCORE PRICE Range starts at £599 (£719 inc VAT) from box.co.uk HP’s naming strategy for its business laptops needs some explanation. What, for instance, is the difference between a ProBook and an EliteBook? That’s relatively easy to answer, with the ProBook using a mix of metal and plastic for its chassis whereas the EliteBook is all metal. And you’ll typically find a standard screen in a ProBook, but an EliteBook will include a premium-grade panel. Then there’s the numbering system. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that a 600 series laptop sits below an 800 series, but the 35 is another clue: if you see a 635 for sale, it’s a more recent model than a 625. And the final digit in any HP model name denotes whether…

SCORE PRICE Range starts from £367 (£440 inc VAT) from cclonline.com This is the second Geo laptop we’ve reviewed, with the 2-in-1 GeoFlex 340 (see issue 330, p83) surprising us with just how much quality hardware you could buy for £349. The GeoBook is a straightforward clamshell laptop, but once again we’re impressed by the value on offer. First, let’s consider the key specifications. Our review model, which costs £417 exc VAT, includes a Core i5-10210U processor, which is almost three years old but still more than capable of slicing through either Windows 10 Pro or 11 Pro (we tested it with the latter). That said, the graphs on p90 don’t lie: if your top priority is power then you should look elsewhere. And we suggest you don’t save £60…

The great British telephone switch-off has begun in earnest and the clock is ticking down for businesses still relying on their outdated public switched telephone network (PSTN) systems. OpenReach’s nationwide “stop sell” order comes into effect in September 2023, and all UK PSTN services will go end-of-life in December 2025 and be completely replaced by VoIP core networks. There’s no need for SMBs to delay their migration any longer as Voice over Internet Protocol is a mature technology and there are plenty of affordable products and services already on the market. One of the most compelling reasons for making the switch is that VoIP offers huge reductions in operating and call costs. SMBs are already tightening their belts after the pandemic, and VoIP offers big savings with cheaper local and…

SCORE PRICE Business S: from £9.95 per month (exc VAT) from sipgateteam.co.uk Small businesses looking for an affordable and flexible cloud VoIP service will love Sipgate Team. Monthly prices start as low as £9.95 per user and you have the option of upgrading or downgrading plans at any time so you don’t end up paying for services you don’t need. The starter Business S plan offers a simple pay-as-you-go service where you pay nothing for internal and VoIP-to-VoIP calls, 1p per minute for landlines calls and 9.9p for those to mobiles. For unlimited use, you can add a UK call package for £30 per month, while £50 covers all calls to the EU. The Business L plan costs £14.95 per month per user and includes the UK call package, while…

SCORE PRICE £358 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com As a member of Zyxel’s Extreme family of Wi-Fi 6 business access points (APs), the WAX610D has a sharp focus on wireless performance. It looks to have the right credentials: this AC3000 dual-band AP supports speeds of up to 2,400Mbits/sec on its 5GHz radio and 575Mbits/sec on the 2.4GHz radio. A feature that adds extra appeal is Zyxel’s latest firmware upgrade, which enables support for the Wi-Fi 6 high-performance 160MHz channels. And unlike Ubiqiuiti’s U6-LR AP, which only has a Gigabit network port, the WAX610D can realise these higher speeds through its faster 2.5GbE multi-gigabit PoE+ port. The WAX610D is solidly built and incorporates power surge protection, integral 4G/5G interference filters and internal smart aerials. The latter make it very accommodating for physical…

Among the chaotic headlines of 2021 were some footnotes on corporate acquisitions that sent chills up my spine. It began in February when NortonLifeLock (Norton’s parent company) acquired BullGuard and Avira, and concluded in October with Norton announcing its intention to merge with Avast. Billion-dollar deals don’t usually affect my business and customers directly, but this one is different. BullGuard, Avast and Avira are the most common security products that I see on users’ systems. The other is AVG, which was acquired by Avast in 2016, so should also now be considered part of the NortonLifeLock family. From now on, for the sake of clarity, I’ll simply call it Norton. We’ve been BullGuard resellers since 2008 and it’s a product I still use myself, as do a huge percentage of…

Features Windows 11: your problems solved Any OS comes with its own helping of annoyances and bugs. We help you squash them in this in-depth guide. Who can you trust for tech repairs? If you need a computer or phone fixed, how do you know if the repairer is up to the job? Lee Grant is here to help. Everything you need to know about RAM Channels, frequency, latency, timings… we go deep into the specifications of RAM to explain what they mean and why they matter. Labs Smart speakers First we tackle the big Alexa-or-Google-Assistant question, then we review all the latest and greatest hardware – and there’s a lot to enjoy. Retro Decoding the world’s first analogue computer Discovered in a shipwreck, the Antikythera mechanism is a 2,000-year-old…