Table of contents for September 2015 in Computer Shopper

UNLESS YOU WERE copying huge files across your network, wireless speed didn’t used to be much of an issue. Most wireless routers were as quick as a broadband connection, so you knew your network wasn’t slowing down your internet access. Now, with 150Mbit/s connections available, there’s a good chance your wireless router has become your internet connection’s limiting factor. Even if you don’t have such a hugely fast connection, you may suffer from blackspots in the home, stopping you streaming iPlayer to a bedroom or listening to The News Quiz at the bottom of the garden. To help you get the wireless speeds you need and eliminate dead spots forever, this month we’ve put 11 of the best third-party routers up against those supplied by the UK’s biggest ISPs, to…

WORRYING DEVELOPMENTS Readers may be interested in a form of hacking that I was previously unaware of and which recently affected my internet connection. This may also be relevant to David Robinson’s and Gordon Holmes’ pages (Under Development and Cybercop, Shopper 330) and to one of the promotions advertised for this issue: ‘Unleash your router with DD-WRT’. My ADSL router was hacked. The IP address was changed from its ‘Fixed’ setting to ‘Dynamic’, and the router’s DNS lookup addresses changed from the ISP’s defaults (with which I have never had any problems) to a pair of ‘foreign’ ones. These turned out to be hosted by a firm in Bulgaria owned by a company registered in Belize with a user account owned by a person in Khartoum – at least, that’s…

Software and systems developer letters@computershopper.co.uk I’VE RECEIVED AN increasing number of scam emails recently. They’re usually easy to spot given their common characteristics. Chief among these is that each scam mail is part of a sequence of messages, all purporting to come from different people, but having the same or very similar subjects. In the space of two hours, for instance, I received nine notifications of a credit note from sales@scspackaging.co.uk. All the messages were identical and had what purported to be CreditNote.doc attached to them. Mrs R received the same emails. I’m amazed that anybody who has the intelligence and capability to put together a digital attack is simultaneously too thick to understand that sending 18 copies to two people in the same office will set off alarm bells.…

STAR WARS BATTLEFRONT After much secrecy, EA showed the first glimpse of Battlefront’s multiplayer mode. Featuring a massive 40-player battle on Hoth, players can play in first or third person view for either side. EA also showed its coop horde mode, which lets you hop across the Star Wars universe to take on classic scenarios such as holding off an Imperial assault on Tatooine. There’s no single-player mode, sadly, but it looks to be a must buy for Star Wars fans. Out on 20th November 2015 RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER Lara Croft is to face her toughest challenge yet in Rise of the Tomb Raider, as Microsoft’s live demo showed our intrepid adventurer climbing a snowy mountain peak before plummeting back down in an avalanche as she and expedition…

£737 inc VAT • From www.vibox.co.uk VERDICT A good-value, if slightly noisy, gaming PC with powerful components and a generous warranty THE BEST MID-RANGE gaming PCs should be a competitive mix of processing power and Full HD gaming without scrimping on other areas of the build. In the hotly competitive desktop market, finding that balance can sometimes be a major stumbling block. The Vibox Defcon 2 reveals its mid-range origins immediately. Corsair’s Carbide SPEC-01 case lacks any subtlety, with aggressive front panel styling, a large plastic window and bright red LEDs, including an extra LED strip light fitted by Vibox to illuminate the case interior. It isn’t hideous by any means, but for mid-range desktops, less is often more. The two 120mm BitFenix fans at the front are another cause…

£300 inc VAT • From www.three.co.uk VERDICT A great screen, decent battery life and a flexible camera, but the UI prevents it being truly great YOU MIGHT MISTAKE Honor’s latest smartphone for a big-screen version of the flagship Honor 6. The Honor 6+ looks very similar from the front, with a practically identical metal frame and rounded corners. Flip it over, though, and you’ll find a parallel camera. It’s a similar idea to the HTC One M8’s Duo Camera, but whereas HTC’s camera only produced 4-megapixel images, the Honor 6+ combines two 8-megapixel sensors to create 13-megapixel shots. The dual camera lets you adjust the focal point of your photos once you’ve taken them. Tap the area of the photo you want to blur or bring into focus and an…

£408 inc VAT • From www.dabs.com VERDICT A huge tablet with many uses – we just wish it was a little faster THE VERSATILE YOGA Tablet 2 Pro stands out from the crowd, with a characteristic bulge at the bottom that contains a pair of stereo speakers and a hinge that enables your tablet to stand up by itself. This arrangement is useful for watching films hands-free or displaying recipes in the kitchen, for example, but you can also open it flat to hang the tablet on a hook, or fold the hinge in and hold the tablet like a magazine. Its size and near-1kg weight make it unlikely that you’ll use it one-handed for long, however. The 13.3in Tablet 2 Pro is the largest Yoga model we’ve seen, and…

£279 inc VAT • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT Not much good for video, but an excellent balance between image quality, size and price IT MAY LOOK like a run-of-the-mill compact camera, but the Fujifilm XQ2 shouldn’t be underestimated. The two most significant specifications to influence image quality are sensor size and lens aperture, and the XQ2 ups the ante on both fronts. The sensor measures ⅔in from corner to corner, giving it double the surface area of the usual ½.3in sensors found in compact cameras. Meanwhile, the f/1.8 lens is four times brighter than a typical f/3.3 lens. That means the XQ2 has eight times the lightgathering ability of a conventional compact. The caveat is that the XQ2’s aperture quickly narrows as it zooms in: f/1.8 at 25mm is remarkable but…

£799 inc VAT • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICT A keenly priced Full HD Smart TV with good image quality, but there aren’t enough HDMI ports PANASONIC’S ENTRY-LEVEL CS520 range comprises some of the cheapest Full HD Smart TVs available today. They all look like impressive value, but the 55in TX-55CS520 hits the sweet spot for screen size and price. This is a budget TV, though, so if you’re after something stylish you should probably look elsewhere. It’s not ugly by any means, but the CS520 looks more functional than attractive, with no real design flare. It feels reasonably well put together and the stand is stable enough to withstand minor knocks. Image quality at the default settings is fine, although it’s well worth delving into the many adjustment options to get…

£259 inc VAT • From www.audioaffair.co.uk VERDICT A supremely classy headphone amplifier, but it will put a hole in your pocket THE HA-2 IS one of the most attractive headphone amplifiers we’ve seen. It’s about the size of a 5in smartphone and twice as thick; the pack includes two black elastic bands for attaching phone and amplifier together for easier transportation. It can drive headphones up to 300 ohms, which isn’t quite as powerful as other headphone amplifiers we’ve tested, but should be sufficient for all but the most specialist headphones. There’s only a 3.5mm headphone jack and no option for 6.3mm, which you might find on some of the more demanding headphones. A 6.3-to-3.5mm adaptor can be picked up cheaply, however. The HA-2 acts a DAC as well as…

£360 inc VAT • From www.lambda-tek.com VERDICT A superb A3+ printer for pro and semi-pro photographers CANON’S PIXMA PRO-100S is an update to 2013’s Pixma PRO-100. Once we saw the new model, however, it became clear that changes extend only to compatibility with Canon’s Pixma Cloud Link service. You need to print a code to register as a new user, but to do so you’ll need a screen, which the Pixma PRO-100S doesn’t have, rather undermining the feature. Like its predecessor, the Pixma PRO-100S is one of the cheapest A3+ photo printers around, yet with an engine using eight inks it promises print quality to satisfy professional photographers, without costing the earth. While rival products from Epson and those from higher up the Pixma PRO range use pigmented inks, the…

£550 inc VAT • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT The undisputed gaming champion and will play all current titles at 4K resolutions NVIDIA ALREADY HAS one of the fastest graphics cards on the planet in the GeForce Titan X, but it’s very much the Bugatti Veyron of GPUs – insanely fast, ludicrously expensive and overkill for almost everyone. Unless you’re in serious need of graphics memory, which the Titan X has in spades, the incredible £800+ price is difficult to justify. Nvidia has sensibly left enough of a price gap between the Titan X and the £400 GTX 980 to fit in a card that can compete with AMD’s impending Fury X: the GTX 980 Ti. The GTX 980 Ti is essentially a scaleddown GeForce Titan X, although there’s hardly a massive…

£70 inc VAT • From www.xara.com/uk VERDICT Web Designer was already excellent, and incremental updates keep version 11 at the top THERE’S OFTEN ACRES of HTML, JavaScript and other arcane code behind even the most minimal websites, but many of us would probably rather not peek behind the curtain. Xara’s Web Designer provides a great way to build websites with a simple WYSIWG editor. Web Designer 11 comes in a standard version, with a generous set of core features, and a Premium version, which we’re reviewing here. Prices have fallen slightly since our last review: the standard software costs £35, Premium is £70 and upgrades to the latter from earlier releases cost £30-£45. There are no dramatic changes, but several new features reflect trends in web design towards fewer pages…

MEET THE TEAM Chris Finnamore “A 1991 Sony digital camera that records 320-line images to floppy disks. Actually I kept it as it’s awesome ” David Ludlow “A speaker dock fitted with the hateful Apple 30-pin connector” Katharine Byrne “My entire home PC, because Batman: Arkham Knight requires an actual Batcomputer to play it” Richard Easton “I found an old Nokia 6310 in a drawer. It was rubbish in 2002 and it’s no better now” Seth Barton “All my kit is top-notch, so I went to Chris’s house and threw away his 10-year-old Xbox 360 to make him upgrade” Tom Morgan “The tenth pair of in-ear headphones that have failed in the last year. I think I’m just not meant to listen to music” Michael Passingham “I switched to Firefox…

Do you wish your computer was faster when booting and loading applications? Thanks to Crucial, you can achieve your dream of a faster PC or laptop with the BX100 SSD. The writer of our Star Letter will be awarded one of these solid-state devices, which can be installed in a desktop PC or a laptop. This fast SSD is 15x faster than a hard disk, and will make your computer boot incredibly quickly and make applications faster to load. With 500GB of storage, there’s plenty of room for Windows and all your applications, too. STAR PRIZE 500GB SSD PLUS We’re offering every reader who has a letter published and supplies their address a Computer Shopper ‘Ranter’ or ‘Raver’ mug.…

With more than 30 years of experience in law enforcement, our retired cop gives a police officer’s perspective on the sticky subject of cybercrime letters@computershopper.co.uk THIS MONTH, I’M after your opinion. I recently witnessed a cyber-security demonstration, and I’ll confess to being torn as to whether I approve of the techniques shown. I’ll outline the details and my opinions below, and would appreciate it if you’d let me know what you think. During this demo a legitimate company showed its capability to infect a target laptop with an ‘agent’, allowing full control over that machine without the user’s knowledge. The camera and microphone could be activated to provide real-time surveillance, and all emails, social-networking communication and Skype calls could be recorded. The full file structure of the machine could be…

APPLE UNVEILED THE latest versions of its iOS and Mac OS X operating systems at its WWDC conference in San Francisco. Due for release in the autumn as free upgrades, iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan are set to introduce several new features to Apple’s mobile and desktop operating systems, including brand-new apps and multitasking capabilities for iPhone and iPad, and enhanced search and web browsing tools for Macs. WHY SO SIRI-OUS? Apple was keen to stress the improvements it has made to its smart digital assistant, Siri. The company said it will be 40% faster and up to 40% more accurate in iOS 9, and that it will even be able to anticipate your actions before you ask it a question. Plug in a pair of headphones, for…

£179 inc VAT • Pre-order from getpebble.com VERDICT The antithesis of the Apple Watch: there are a few teething problems, but it’s still a great smartwatch SMARTWATCHES ARE THIS year’s hot new thing. At their most basic, they put notifications from your smartphone on your wrist, saving you from pulling it out of your pocket every time you get an email or text message. Battery life and smartphone compatibility are still a major stumbling block, but the Pebble Time’s colour E-Paper display, ‘week-long’ battery life and willingness to pair with both iOS and Android devices make it the polar opposite to Apple’s luxury Watch and the rest of the mushrooming smartwatch crowd. PLASTIC FANTASTIC As with the monochrome Pebble watches that preceded it, the Pebble Time family has two tiers…

£799 inc VAT • From store.google.com VERDICT By far the best Chromebook available, but you’ll need to be sure Chrome OS meets your needs to justify the cost THE CHROMEBOOK PIXEL was a torchbearer for all Chromebooks, a shining example of how stunning Chrome OS-powered laptops can be. Yet it was available only directly from Google, as if the company knew it didn’t fit with the typical barebones Chromebook mantra. This follow-up builds on what made the first Pixel so desirable, and tackles many of the issues we had with the original. While at 15mm it’s not the thinnest laptop, the Pixel is still slim, and 1mm thinner than its predecessor. Weight has remained the same at a shoulder-friendly 1.5kg, making it comfortable to carry around. The sharp edges and…

£225 inc VAT • From www.carphonewarehouse.com SAMSUNG FINALLY EMBRACED metal smartphones with the Galaxy Alpha, and has now started bringing the same level of durability and excellent built quality to its cheaper phones with the Galaxy A series. The Galaxy A3 – the smallest and cheapest in the range – is particularly gorgeous. The fact that so many competitors in this price range are still swaddled in cheap plastic makes the full metal unibody of the A3 a revelation. It’s one of the lightest and slimmest phones Samsung has ever made, and the shimmering, almost glitter-like finish adds an extra level of class. The straight edges aren’t as interesting to look at as the angular indentations you’ll find on the Alpha, but we much prefer the smooth finish on the…

£145 inc VAT • From www.jessops.com VERDICT Keenly priced for a rugged, waterproof camera, but the Fujifilm XP80’s image quality is below par THE FUJIFILM XP80 is built for use in challenging environments. It can withstand water to depths of 15m, cold to -10°C and falls from 1.75m. Waterproof also means dustproof, mud-proof and sticky finger-proof, making it a prime candidate for everyone from outdoor adventurers to young children to the perpetually clumsy. The XP80 looks the part, with its sweeping curves and splashes of green. It’s also available in blue, yellow or purple, so there’s plenty of scope to coordinate it with your beachwear. The curvy design helps prevent damage, too, and there’s no hint of flex to its plastic shell. The card slot and USB and HDMI ports…

£251 inc VAT • From www.nigelohara.com VERDICT Great image quality from a 25in panel, but a lack of USB ports limits its practical appeal THE Q2577PWQ FITS a 2,560x1,440-pixel panel into an unusual 25in format, which places it between desk-friendly 23in monitors and slightly oversized 27in screens. As it’s a professional display, it has all the ergonomic bells and onscreen adjustment whistles you’d expect, along with a price to match. The WQHD resolution gives you nearly twice the number of pixels of a Full HD monitor, but more pixels doesn’t always mean a better viewing experience. High resolutions on smaller monitors can sometimes result in illegible text and tiny icons, particularly in Windows. The 25in panel is just large enough for us to read size-11 text without having to resort…

£650 inc VAT • From shop.libratone.com VERDICT The Libratone Diva is a rather chunky soundbar but its sound quality is decent THERE’S A STRONG correlation between speaker size and sound quality in any audio product, but it’s especially true of soundbars. When you’re buying something to give your TV’s weedy audio a boost, you want to be sure it’s actually capable of delivering a bigger sound. Libratone’s Diva is at the larger end of the scale in terms of dimensions, but it creates an impressive audio presence. With two 1in ribbon tweeters, two 3in mid-range drivers and a 5in subwoofer, the Diva delivers 225W of 2.1 stereo sound, and although we’d have liked a little more punch in the lower frequencies to give explosions in our Star Trek Blu-ray some…

£117 inc VAT • From www.cclonline.com VERDICT Incredibly fast, but the EA-AC87 is undeniably expensive IF YOU’RE INVESTING in an 802.11ac wireless router you should make sure the rest of your networking setup is able to match its Wi-Fi speed, or you won’t be able to make the most of all that bandwidth. The Asus EA-AC87 wireless bridge/access point has a maximum theoretical data rate of 1,734Mbit/s, so should be quick enough for the fastest of routers. By default the EA-AC87 works in Media Bridge mode, to let you connect wired devices to your wireless network. The five Gigabit Ethernet ports mean you could connect a few games consoles, a PC and a set-top box. Setup was a breeze using WPS pushbutton security, but you can also configure the extender…

£263 inc VAT • From www.dell.co.uk VERDICT Results are good, but this boxy MFP is more expensive to run than much of the competition DELL’S NEW MFP isn’t pretty, but it feels solidly built and can print, scan, copy or fax, and you can connect it via USB, wired or wireless networking. The biggest omission is automatic double-sided (duplex) printing, but the driver talks you through it manually. It’s easy to set up. Dell’s new Printer Hub software integrates local print and scan features with cloud services, but this didn’t detect the scanner when we tried over a wired Ethernet. Fortunately, the TWAIN driver had been installed and worked correctly. Dell’s PC scan interface could do with an auto-exposure setting, but it’s otherwise simple and effective, as is the print…

£226 inc VAT • From www.scan.co.uk VERDICT Impressive performance from this great-value compact micro barebones PC MSI IS THE latest company we’ve seen to squeeze a complete PC into a case no larger than a lunch box. The Cubi goes further than the other mini PCs, however – including Intel’s tiny NUC – with a case the size of four slices of Mighty White. It’s not just the size that’s exciting, though: the Cubi is the first mini PC we’ve tested that’s based on Intel’s latest Broadwell architecture. The Cubi is available with a Broadwell Celeron, Pentium, Core i3 or Core i5 processor, and prices start from £99 for a barebones Celeron model, which needs RAM and storage to turn it into a usable PC. Our £226 review unit has…

Free • From eu.battle.net (micro-transactions available) VERDICT The perfect introduction to online battle arena games, with simple yet superb gameplay BLIZZARD ARGUABLY KICKED off the craze for multiplayer online battle arena games, otherwise known as MOBAs, when the Defence of the Ancients mod for Warcraft 3 became so popular that other developers started borrowing ideas from the community for their own titles. Blizzard is now returning to the fold with a MOBA of its own, bringing the biggest characters from the Warcraft, StarCraft and Diablo universes with it. Essentially an action real-time strategy game where you control one unit from a isometric perspective, rather than an entire army, Heroes of the Storm pits two teams of five against each other in a race to demolish the enemy’s well-defended Core base.…

Ashampoo Media Sync FILE MANAGEMENT CAN be a tedious business. Connect your phone, open an Explorer window, browse to the Camera folder, select the new pictures, copy them to the right location… then repeat, with suitable variations, for every device you ever use, every time you plug it in. Ashampoo Media Sync changes all that. Once set up, it automatically recognises a device as soon as it’s connected, then searches the appropriate folders, locates the files you’d like to transfer – documents, music, pictures or videos – and copies anything new to your chosen destination folders, without you having to do anything at all. A straightforward wizard makes it easy to get started. Connect a device, choose a source folder, select the type of files to be synced and the…

PUBLISHING WAS THE first creative industry to undergo a digital revolution, and today anyone can design a printed document with the humblest computer hardware. Desktop publishing (DTP) isn’t just a matter of having the right tools, though. Like any creative process, there’s a skill to getting great results, not to mention lots of rules and conventions involved in good design. You may wish to ignore them, but it’s nonetheless a good idea to get to grips with them first. In this month’s Multimedia Expert we bring you a bluffer’s guide to producing a newsletter or marketing brochure that looks like it’s been put together by a design professional. PACKAGING UP Our first tip for desktop publishing is to ditch Microsoft Word and other word processors. Word is perfect for writing…

CONTACT LETTERS letters@computershopper.co.uk London W1T 4JD ADEQUATE PRECAUTIONS I was interested but also a little surprised by some of the content in David Robinson’s article regarding credit-card security (Under Development, Shopper 330), how to protect your details to avoid fraud and the customer service offered by Visa. All the accounts I hold with banks and building societies use a system called ‘PIN sentry’. They issue you with a free device that generates a one-off login code that requires you to know not only the long number on the front of the debit card, but also the PIN code. Visa online security is less robust and uses a password and username as well as two characters from a memorable word, as David states. I also echo David’s frustration with Visa customer…

VIDEO-STREAMING SERVICES The online film rental market is bewildering, with a huge confusion over film availability, quality and supported platforms. To help you decide which service best replaces your local video shop, we’ve tested every videostreaming service, to see which is the best for quality, film selection and value, as well as best suits the hardware you already own WINDOWS 10 COMPLETE GUIDE It’s finally here: the operating system we’ve all been waiting for. With Windows 10, Microsoft has redesigned its operating system completely – and will make it available for free for millions of users. We’ve put together a complete guide to every aspect of Windows 10, to help you install, troubleshoot and get the most out of your brand-new OS BEYOND SILICON It looks like we can’t make…

Mel Crouche RAVES A contemplative visit to a Tokyo toilet provides Mel with a reassuring glimpse of our future robotic overlords I WAS ONCE a 1960s computer whizz-kid. Now I am an electronic curmudgeon, sitting in a Japanese lecture room, where my past embraces their future. My mission in Tokyo is to interview the world’s most advanced robot, then try to raise a few cheap laughs at its expense. Asimo is a hobbit-sized, gleaming white humanoid, made by Honda, born on 21st October 2000, and now into its umpteenth generation. Asimo says in gushing babydoll American that it only exists to care for senior citizens like me, but I already know the little bastard will end up on a scorched battlefield crushing the last wild orchid underfoot. But I admit…

WITH A RECORD number of press conferences, this year’s E3 games show in Los Angeles was a rollercoaster ride of announcements on everything from new games and hardware to virtual reality headsets. Here’s a quick digest of everything you need to know. XBOX GOES LARGE Microsoft stole the show early by announcing a new 1TB Xbox One. This adds another 500GB of storage over the existing model, giving players more room for game downloads. The console will also come with a new wireless controller, which (finally) has a 3.5mm headphone jack so players can connect their own headphones instead of having to buy an expensive adaptor or use headsets with Microsoft’s proprietary connector. Available now, the 1TB Xbox One costs £349. Microsoft has also dropped the price of the 500GB…

£1,800 inc VAT • From www.chillblast.com VERDICT Compact and powerful, the Chillblast Fusion Wolf can handle the latest games at 4K resolutions AS YOU CAN see in our review on page 56, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti is the new benchmark when it comes to Ultra HD gaming performance in a sub-£600 graphics card. No single GPU card can touch it, though it makes a considerably larger dent to your wallet than the £400 GTX 980. Either way, you’re looking at a card that can handle all the 4K and virtual reality gaming you can throw at it. The GPU is only one part of a dream PC build, though. Chillblast’s Fusion Wolf aims to complete the package, adding more top-spec components to a stylish Mini-ITX chassis. With its…

£670 inc VAT • From www.pcworld.co.uk VERDICT The Transformer Book T300 Chi is a rather large convertible that proves cumbersome to use as a tablet TABLETS ARE GREAT for web browsing and multimedia, but with no keyboard they aren’t ideal for productivity. If you don’t want to carry a laptop as well as a tablet, just in case you need to get some proper work done, a hybrid device is the way forward. The latest from Asus, the Transformer Book T300 Chi, makes the transition between laptop and tablet modes seamlessly, thanks to a clever magnetic hinge that keeps the tablet firmly secured to its keyboard base. Not having to fiddle with latches or locks is simpler than other convertible laptops. You just clip the two together when you want…

SeeKindle vs Kobo p120 £110 inc VAT • From www.kobo.com VERDICT A superb screen and lots of text options make this the best eReader for the money KOBO HAS WORKED its way through the pack to become the clear challenger to Amazon’s dominance in eBook readers. For a long time, Amazon had not only the best range of books at the lowest prices, but also a great range of hardware, also competitively priced. The Kobo Glo HD shakes all that up though, with an eReader that puts Amazon’s current mid-range Paperwhite to shame. The Glo HD’s E-Ink screen has almost double the resolution, with 1,448x1,072 pixels for a density of 300 pixels per inch. It’s more than 10% lighter than the Paperwhite and smaller too at 157x115x9.2mm, shaving 12mm off…

£237 inc VAT • From www.wexphotographic.com VERDICT It’s slow, but the WG-5’s competitive image quality and rugged credentials are appealing RUGGED WATERPROOF CAMERAS are often marketed for use in watersports and other feats of athleticism, but there are lots of other times when a tough camera is useful: on the beach, at festivals, on rowdy nights out and in the hands of children. The Ricoh WG-5 GPS is impervious to water, dust, sand, cold, crashes and crushes. It’s rated for underwater use to 14m and can survive drops from 2.2m. It certainly looks the part with a chunky, rounded shell. The lens sits safely behind a glass window but there’s no lens cap, so it’s worth carrying a lens cloth to keep it clean. The lack of protrusions means nothing…

£1,462 inc VAT • From projectorpoint.co.uk VERDICT A versatile ultra-short-throw projector with a useful optional interactivity module ULTRA SHORT-THROW projectors are great for rooms where space is tight, as they create a huge image without needing to be miles away from the projection surface. The Optoma EH320UST creates a 2m diagonal image from just 45cm away, which is one of the shortest throw distances we’ve seen. At the maximum throw distance of 59cm the projector produces a huge 2.54m image, and it looks super sharp at any size thanks to the 0.65in DLP chip’s 1,920x1,080 Full HD resolution. The 4,000 lumen lamp is incredibly bright and easily overcomes overhead lights. Colours aren’t particularly vibrant, however. The projector prioritises brightness and contrast for easy viewing in even the most difficult environments,…

£799 inc VAT • From www.jessops.com VERDICT Fantastic 4K image quality and an HDR mode makes for wonderfully well-exposed scenes 4K TELEVISIONS AND displays aren’t the norm in our homes, but that hasn’t stopped manufacturers coming up with a raft of 4K-capable camcorders. It’s certainly not a bad idea to futureproof your video footage, though, and with Panasonic’s HC-WX970 you can put the extra resolution to good use – capturing still images from videos that are equivalent to those taken with an 8-megapixel camera. That’s easily good enough for sharing online, or even printing at reasonable sizes. The HC-WX970 is a medium-size camcorder but is still comfortable to hold in one hand. It’s surprisingly light at 360g, so we never felt overburdened while shooting. Like many of Panasonic’s other 4K-capable…

£280 inc VAT • From www.currys.co.uk VERDICTIncredibly flexible camera placement and great image quality, but the Arlo system is expensive NETGEAR’S LATEST SECURITY camera system completely cuts the cord, letting you put cameras virtually anywhere you like. Arlo’s cameras have built-in wireless networking and run on batteries, which the company claims should last up to six months – a small price to pay for such flexibility. The kit consists of two cameras and a base station that plugs into a router and uploads recordings to the cloud. The white plastic cameras are no larger than a tin of tuna, so it’s easy to hide them. Each one is weatherproof, built to survive temperatures from 50˚C down to –10˚C. The kit includes four magnetic ball mounts, so you can attach them…

£407 inc VAT • From www.amazon.co.uk VERDICT Incredibly flexible and very fast, but the TS-453mini-2G is expensive for a barebones NAS WE OFTEN ASSOCIATE NAS devices with home offices and small businesses, but QNAP’s TS-453mini-2G is as much designed for the living room as the study. With a sleek, glossy black finish, compact dimensions and near-silent operation, it’s a NAS you wouldn’t mind leaving on display next to your TV. The TS-453mini-2G is ideally suited to the living room, too, with an HDMI video output on the back of the device and a remote control included in the box, with all the playback controls you would need for watching video straight from the NAS. You don’t even need a PC to set it up; after attaching a mouse and keyboard…

Free • From photos.google.com VERDICT An excellent free service for those who simply want to upload and browse their pics GOOGLE’S NEW ONLINE service for storing, organising and editing your photos provides free unlimited storage for stills and videos. It’s open to everyone, too, with Android and iOS apps as well as a web version. The company’s previous attempts were something of a mess, particularly Google+, and while Google Photos is much better, it won’t please everyone. For a start, there are some caveats to that unlimited storage claim. Video is limited to 1080p resolution and stills to 16 megapixels. The latter shouldn’t bother smartphone photographers, but DSLR users might take issue. If you want to upload higher-resolution files, you’ll have to give up some of your Google Drive storage.…

Passwords are disliked by users for being an annoying barrier between them and the task they want to get done. These are of course the very same people who then wonder why their account that uses the password ‘letmein’ has been hacked. Of course, choosing an extremely complex password can also be a recipe for disaster. How many Post-it notes with password reminders have you seen stuck to the monitors of PCs in workplaces and at home? Surely there’s a better way? HOW PASSWORDS WORK Before covering the alternatives to your current password setup, it’s important to understand how passwords work and why this single security step can be the one weak point of your entire online life. At their most basic, passwords are stored alongside usernames in a database.…

NETWORKING CAN BE horribly confusing, even if you do know your NAT from your DHCP and are fully versed in the merits of IPv6. Part of the problem is typically the router, which often offers no help when diagnosing network issues, is so unreliable that it actually causes those issues or has such vague help text that the manufacturer may as well have not bothered. “Ticking this box enables TLA.” Well, fine, but what is TLA, what does it do and when should it be used? Of all the questions we might have regarding TLA, the one thing we could figure out for ourselves is that ticking a box enables it. Thankfully there’s an alternative: ditch the manufacturer’s awkward router software in favour of the reliable, helpful, extendable, open-source OpenWRT.…

DESIGNING YOUR OWN website was hard enough when sites were only viewed on Windows and Mac computers, but the challenges multiplied with the explosion of smartphones, tablets and other webconnected devices. Thankfully, there are content management systems (CMS) available to help people deal with these challenges, and many require no technical knowledge to get started. Building a website for tablets and smartphones is one thing, but creating one on a mobile device is another matter. Mobile operating systems aren’t the obvious choice for web development, but it is possible to use such a platform. There are apps available for all the major blogging platforms, including WordPress, Tumblr and Blogger. However, while they’re OK for very simple content, if you want to design anything with a bit of visual flair you’ll…