Table of contents for May 2020 in PC Pro

SSSHH. I’M TYPING this in the Quiet Zone of one of Chiltern Railways’ posher trains, and I’m keenly aware of each sound produced by the keys. The reason I’m so aware sits opposite me: a city gent with his own laptop, and he’s not so much tapping the keyboard as bashing it like a bongo player who’s been told this is his last bongo session. No one in our hived-off area of supposed serenity has said anything, but then most people are too busy seeking dopamine thrills via their smartphones. Sadly, there’s no Debrett’s Etiquette Guide for Noisy Keyboard Users (yes, I checked). And all the train carriage sign says is: “Please turn any electronic devices to silent and keep any conversation to a low minimum”. Nothing about how hard…

1 Microsoft calls time on Windows10’sugly duckling Microsoft has told users on its much-maligned Windows 10 version 1809 to upgrade to newer versions, with the company planning to end support for the vexed version on 12 May 2020. Version 1809 landed like an uncooked sausage in 2018, when installation caused a rash of errors, including lost files and crashed PCs. The move sees Microsoft close the embarrassing chapter on an update that forced it to rethink its entire update process. 2 UK splashes £1.2 billion on forecasting supercomputer The UK is hoping to weather the storm of climate change by investing £1.2 billion in a supercomputer the government claims will be a world leader. The Met Office said it would replace its current trio of Cray XC40 machines and their…

Although everyone agrees the digital forensic system requires improvement, there are strong disagreements over how this is best achieved. The Forensic Science Regulator (FSR) has called for wider standards implementation and accreditation to provide clarity and consistency in court, but those working in digital forensics say that – aside from tangible protocols for ensuring data integrity or location – fixed protocols could hamper investigations. “My concern would be that in more complex digital (both computing and telecoms) forensics cases, standards may stifle the creative process,” Sam Raincock, an expert witness specialising in interpreting phone and computer evidence, told PC Pro. “This is a large part of a detailed forensic investigation and standards may limit what can be achieved. It is natural for digital investigations to go off on tangents and…

Nicole Kobie is PC Pro’s Futures editor. Whether her new pet has fixed Instagram depends on how many photos of fluffy dogs you like to see in a day, because that’s all she posts now. @njkobie After adopting a dog, there was a lot I expected to change about my life — more walks and a messier house — but I didn’t expect a rescue pooch to fix Facebook. Facebook and other social media are toxic messes, boosting the spread of misinformation, sowing political and cultural divisions, and making us feel worse about ourselves. Regulators should step in and we’d all be smarter for opting out. But in the meantime, having a dog has made Facebook kinder and more useful to me. I don’t really use the social network, but…

“Microsoft Edge… the Google-powered browser that’s better than Chrome.” It was a headline that raised my expectations and levels of excitement (see issue 306, p50). We use Chrome in our agency because it was (at one stage) the best browser, and we have a couple of clients that have Chrome-only extension apps that we need to use on a daily basis. So, it worked for us. Past tense. But Chrome has been getting worse, “heavy” and slow, and we often end up using two browsers to get the job done. That’s why, on reading the cover statement, I was diving straight into Tim’s review. PC Pro is my go-to adviser. So, seeing the review and reading that Edge supports Chrome extensions, it was hard to get to the end of…

If you’re troubleshooting a problem, it might be helpful to temporarily disable all startup items. You could do this by going through the Task Manager’s Start-up page and then hitting “Disable” on each item in turn, but there’s a quicker way – using a simple system tool that dates all the way back to Windows 98. To open it, press Win+R to open the Run command dialog, type “msconfig” and hit Return. In the window that opens, you’ll immediately see three radio buttons, giving you the choice of “Normal startup”, “Diagnostic startup” and “Selective startup”. Click the bottom option, then untick “Load startup items” and hit Apply. You’ll be asked if you want to restart immediately or later; whichever option you choose, the next time Windows boots up, no startup…

Gaming on a PC has always been a prickly affair. Making sure your rig matches up to the frequently fictitious “Recommended Spec” has never been an exact science, leaving many PC gamers wondering whether a console would be less hassle after all. A new breed of game-streaming services promises the metaphorical best of both worlds. Games just work, no matter whether you’re playing on your fabulously expensive desktop PC, a crummy five-year-old work laptop or even a smartphone, because all the heavy lifting is done on the service’s servers. You’re simply streaming the game in much the same way you stream movies from Netflix. Three of the industry’s big hitters – Google, Microsoft and Nvidia – are dabbling in the streaming market, eager to prove that they can sate the…

Although the current crop of PowerToys is rather thin, there are plenty more in the pipeline. One that’s of particular interest is called PowerLauncher: similar to the Spotlight feature on macOS, this will allow you to quickly find and launch apps from a clean, free-floating search bar that includes search suggestions and auto-completion with the Tab key. Another PowerToy we’re looking forward to is the Keyboard Shortcut Manager; this can change the key combinations that are baked into Windows, but it also enables you to set up entirely new shortcuts to run scripts and launch your favourite applications, all from a friendly graphical interface. Other projects being worked on include an add-on that can instantly kill processes without requiring a trip to Task Manager, and a tool that lets you record…

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…

PRICE £1,916 (£2,299 inc VAT) from uk-store.acer.com What does the “D” stand for in Acer’s ConceptD brand? Pretty much anything you like: dynamic, design, discovery, detail and development are among the ideas Acer has put forward. Strip away the marketing buzzwords, however, and you quickly realise that the ConceptD 7 is a mobile workstation targeted at creatives. And Acer backs that up with some bold choices of components. One of its biggest sells is its IPS display. Not simply that its 4K resolution stretches across a 15.6in diagonal, but that it’s Pantone Validated and capable of reproducing 100% of the Adobe RGB colour space. Perhaps “D” does stand for dynamic. Pantone plus Fortunately, it’s also an excellent screen. If you’re willing to round up your decimal points, it matched Acer’s…

PRICE £500 (£600 inc VAT) from argos.co.uk In a sea of luxurious, convertible 13.3in laptops, this 15in machine is a welcome relief. It’s unpretentious – there’s no cutting-edge processor, touchscreen or backlit keyboard – but it sets out to be a good-quality laptop for a low price. And does so exceptionally well. For a start, it’s made from an all-metal chassis rather than the plastic you would expect for £600. This gives the MateBook a solidity most of its rivals can’t match. When you consider that metallic build and a 15.6in screen, it’s light at 1.53kg; match that to a sleek 16.9mm height and this machine is surprisingly portable. Huawei even keeps the weight of the power adapter down to 159g, and it’s a slimline affair that’s more akin to…

1 Visit the PC Pro download site at pcprodownload.co.uk. You’ll need to enter the coupon code printed on the card, along with your email address. We’ll send you an email to confirm that your code has been registered. On subsequent visits, you’ll be able to access the download area by entering only your email address. 2 Once you’re into 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 read these carefully). 3 If the software needs registering, click the purple Register button, or follow the instructions on the left of the product page (again, please…

PRICE £233 (£280 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/307real Realme is a Chinese brand attempting to follow in the footsteps of OnePlus and Xiaomi. Created in 2018, it knows its pricing must be aggressive if it’s going to have an impact, which is why the X2 packs so much in for £279: there’s a 64-megapixel main camera, 6.4in AMOLED screen, in-display fingerprint reader and a large 4,000mAh battery. Realme, you have our attention. While the Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G processor may not be top of the range, it’s still a fast chip: it has two 2.2GHz Kryo 470 Gold and six 1.8GHz Kryo 470 Silver cores. And it helps that Realme backs it up with 8GB of RAM. The Realme X2’s scores of 2,512 (single-core) and 6,905 (multicore) in Geekbench 4 are significantly…

PRICE £150 (£180 inc VAT) from harmankardon.co.uk Harman Kardon’s Citation range of smart home speakers keeps growing. It launched the first Citation One back at CES 2019, and this MKII revamp adds support for Apple AirPlay along with two new colour options of dusty pink and royal blue. So, with Google Assistant providing the AI, can the Citation One – the cheapest member of HK’s Citation range – justify a similar price to the Amazon Echo Studio (see issue 304, p68)? It certainly looks the part. An attractive woollen fabric wraps around the majority of the exterior and, while our review sample came in grey, reflective silver detailing around the top of the speaker and a small Harman Kardon logo set in to the woollen sheath add touches of finesse.…

While the number of graphs on show here may look impressive, they only illustrate around half the tests we performed. There simply isn’t room for every result from every machine. As ever, we ran our standard PC Pro benchmark suite to assess image-processing and video-encoding abilities, and then multitasking (see the results on p93). Each of these categories has an individual score, which indicates relative speed compared to a Core i7-4760K desktop PC with 8GB of RAM. If a machine scores 150 in a test, it’s 50% faster than the reference PC. On top of our regular benchmark suite, we added tests specifically aimed at a range of higher-end workstation tasks. To test 3D modelling in all the main content types, we added SPECviewperf 13, which runs OpenGL viewsets (and…

PRICE £6,298 (£7,558 inc VAT) from pcspecialist.co.uk PC Specialist’s more expensive system is the most unusual entry this month. Not only is it using Intel processor, but it also comes gobsmacking four graphics This makes it a very good workstation for one particular task, also means it’s much less well rounded than ther workstations in price bracket. A year ago, PC Specialist’s choice of an Intel Core i9-10980XE (had it been available then) would have been quite valid, as this 18-core processor would still have stacked up well against even the 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX. This year is a different matter. Even though the 10980XE has a Turbo Boost frequency of 4.8GHz, and the non-overclocked maximum for all cores is 3.8GHz, it can’t provide serious competition to a Threadripper…

PRICE £5,000 (£6,000 inc VAT) from chillblast.com Chillblast’s second system is another eye-catching design. This one is still black, like most workstations, but the Corsair Crystal Series 680X is a Borg-like cube in shape, which really makes it feel like a supercomputer. With a 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X inside, this system lives up to that image as well. The supplied 64GB of 3,200MHz DDR4 RAM sounds ample, but our benchmarks suggest 128GB is better for a system with 32 cores or more. Like most of the other systems in this category, Nvidia’s Quadro RTX 5000 matches the processor well for modelling capability. The generous storage provision includes a 2TB Seagate Firecuda 520 SSD for operating system and apps. This PCI Express 4 NVMe M.2 device provides fast sustained reading…

Visual effects work has traditionally involved an iterative process of design activity, followed by rendering, followed by review, followed by further design tweaks. This cycle can repeat as much as 30 times for each shot before it’s sent to be finally rendered out for the movie. If that sounds inefficient, it’s because it is: either the artist sends their shot to a render farm, where it might wait for hours or even days for a processing slot, or they can try to run it locally on their own machine. Neither scenario is optimal. If the artist uses a render farm, they will need to find something else to work on while they wait for their render to complete. If they process the shot on their local machine, they probably won’t…

This year’s workstation Labs has been a near whitewash for AMD processors, but it’s business as usual when it comes to graphics acceleration: every single system came with an Nvidia Quadro or GeForce GPU. Where AMD’s early adoption of 7nm technology and clever, efficient CPU architecture have given it an insurmountable dominance in the workstation processor market, the company has failed to make a dent in professional graphics so far. The question is: why? After all, the 7nm Radeon 5700, 5700XT and recently arrived 5500 are strong contenders for consumers. One problem is that Nvidia’s CUDA is an integral part of the workflow for many content-creation companies, and you don’t get that with AMD cards. OpenCL, which AMD offers instead, is a good alternative but hasn’t met with such strong…

PRICE Wave 100: from £10 exc VAT per user per month from gradwell.com UK-based Gradwell has been in the business communications market for over 20 years, and at the end of 2019 it launched its own cloud-hosted VoIP service. Wave has been designed from the ground up to address the needs of busy SMBs: it’s simple to deploy, easy to manage and packed with call-handling features, while offering per-user pricing that’s ideal for growing businesses. Wave is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), so it offers good reliability and can scale easily to cope with heavy demand. And in case you’re worried about having all your eggs in one basket, be assured that Gradwell has deployed Wave across two different AWS sites as protection against unplanned outages. Costs are easily…

PRICE £161 exc VAT from ballicom.co.uk Netgear touts its WAC564 as the first business-class mesh system: it’s designed for offices where network cabling is impractical, or for scenarios where you might want to quickly provision temporary wireless services over a large area. You don’t need to tear up your existing infrastructure either, as it will work with existing Netgear WAC540 APs (access points) – or you can create a mesh network entirely out of WAC564 units, or use one as a standalone AP. Performance-wise, the WAC564 boasts an AC3000 wireless rating, representing 400Mbits/sec on the 2.4GHz band and 867Mbits/sec on the main 2x2 5GHz radio, along with 1,733Mbits/sec on a second 4x4 5GHz radio, which functions as a backhaul link for meshing duties. There are four Gigabit Ethernet ports too,…

“When hiring a developer, it’s tempting to focus on the skills they have today since a developer who can’t write code is useless to your team. Programming is a well-established discipline, with extensive best practices: seven of the top ten programming languages are more than 20 years old (according to the TIOBE index), and senior developers have typically eight to 12 years of programming experience. But modern programming is about re-using code, moving faster by building on what came before, and we do that using frameworks (such as Facebook’s React), where developers spend most of their actual coding time. These change significantly every year or two, requiring us to actively retrain, learn new features, new practices – or fall behind. Developers are hard to attract, but when you find the…

“Here’s some free advice: run away from anyone referring to themselves as a ‘computer expert’” To begin, I’d like to bring you behind the counter and into our workshop so we can talk about a recent problem that our customers don’t get to see. Aside from troubleshooting problematic computers, we also build systems. Some could be classified as custom builds, because the buyer specifies which flavour of components they would like or the task that the machine is going to fulfil. The sales volume of “customs” is drowned by what we call our “usual builds”. These are a range of five units, each with an obvious step change in performance and price, covering the wide range of needs for home users. We review the composition of each system every month,…

Think of an artificial human and you might start wondering whether Rick Deckard was human or a replicant. Which is arguably more interesting than what Samsung subsidiary Star Labs unveiled at the annual CES tech show in Las Vegas: Neon, its so-called artificial humans. Lifelike robots did not run the Star Labs booth at the conference centre. Instead, it turns out “artificial human” is how to describe an avatar in a way that will guarantee annoyed journalists write about your launch, although not necessarily with kind words. What is an artificial human? It’s not Harrison Ford having an existential crisis about the nature of what it is to be human. Instead, Star Labs’ Neons are high-end avatars, designed to be a friendly face for chatbots, characters in games or to…

Darien Graham-Smith Chances are that your Windows startup routine is full of clutter that’s slowing you down. Darien reveals how to take back control on p28 Carly Page While Tim’s predictions about the future shape of PCs are pure guesswork, Carly spoke to the experts and analysts for a more educated view. See p34 Barry Collins Barry tells us he’s been “researching” games-streaming services these past few months, and he finally delivers his verdict on the big four from p40 Davey Winder Remote support offers many benefits to workers and to businesses but, as Davey explains from p104, there are plenty of dangers too…

Honor 9X Pro PRICE To be confirmed AVAILABLE To be confirmed As with its parent brand Huawei, Honor isn’t allowed access to the Play Store on its phones – despite the fact they run Android. This “Pro” model is actually a midrange offering, with a Kirin 810 chip, 6GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. It’s also an IPS rather than AMOLED screen, but our first impressions are that it’s no worse for that – and note the triple-camera array on the rear. Add what’s likely to be an aggressive price and this phone could still tempt, despite the lack of Play Store support. Sony Xperia L4 PRICE Around £200 AVAILABLE Early spring Sony’s “MWC” announcements covered all price ranges, thanks to this budget phone. Replacing the £169 L3, we…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Apple MacBook Pro 16in Powerhouse laptop with a price to match, from £2,399 from apple.com/uk Most people don’t need this much power, but if you know that you’ll take advantage of what the MacBook Pro offers, you won’t regret buying it. The only question is where you draw the line, with options right up to 8TB SSDs and 64GB of RAM. Whichever version you choose, you’ll benefit from an improved keyboard, spectacular screen and the best audio setup on a laptop. REVIEW Issue 305, p52 ALTERNATIVES Lenovo ThinkPad T490s Lenovo updates its T series with this thin yet powerful laptop. With battery life over 11 hours in our tests, it’s truly business class. From £1,105 from lenovo.com REVIEW Issue 301, p46 Razer Blade 15 Mercury White A beautifully…

Barry Collins is a former editor of PC Pro and is waiting for his chance on Crimewatch. Don’t have nightmares. Do sleep well. @bazzacollins I’ve had a few Friday afternoon, “off-site strategy meetings” with the editor-in-chief. None has ended quite as badly as this. Even the one where we decided to hire Darien. It was as I returned from the meeting refreshment station that I noticed I had a problem. My rucksack – containing my iPad Pro, two sets of expensive headphones (don’t ask) and all manner of other pricy accessories – was gone. In the time it had taken the barman to pour two pints of bitter, I was now well and truly in the brown stuff. Immediately, I rang home and asked my other half to fire up…

Via Twitter and Facebook, we asked our readers which change they think PCs are most likely to undergo over the next ten years? (Turn to p34 to see our predictions) 9% We’ll solely use voice rather than physical interfaces 34% Local storage will be obsolete – everything will be in the cloud 39% Something else 20% Laptops and desktops will disappear – we will connect our phones to keyboards, monitors and mice Of those who replied “something else” to our survey, most people thought that barely anything would change. We would carry on using keyboards, mice, desktops and laptops – as well as storing our files locally – and wouldn’t use voice any more than we do today. However, Matthew said “we will have computers implanted in our brains and…

You’ve probably noticed that, in addition to your specified startup items, Windows 10 will try to automatically reopen various desktop apps if they were running when you restarted the system. It’s fair to say that not everyone appreciates this behaviour – but when the feature was introduced back in 2018 Microsoft unhelpfully didn’t offer any way to disable it. Thankfully, in the latest version of Windows 10 you can prevent apps from reopening at startup by opening the Settings app, clicking on Accounts | Sign-in options, then scrolling down and disabling the option to “use my sign-in info to automatically finish setting up my device and reopen my apps after an update or restart”. The only downside is that, as you can see, you might also have to wait a…

If you’re considering signing up for a game-streaming service, here are a few tips to help you get the most out for your money. Use Ethernet where possible. Unless you’ve got a top-notch home router with QoS settings, other traffic on the network will cause occasional glitches in games, marring the experience. Use 5GHz rather than 2.4GHz if you’re stuck on Wi-Fi. All the streaming services recommend using the 5GHz band. If your router auto-assigns bands, then you might have to manually separate the bands in your router’s settings so you can be sure your client device is on 5GHz. Curb your expectations. If you like to tweak your rig to eliminate the slightest trace of lag or dropped frames, streaming isn’t for you. It works best for people who…

PRICE £691 (£829 inc VAT) from store.google.com Add “Go”, “Lite” or “LE” to a product’s name and most people assume that its function or appearance has been curtailed in some way. That’s why I was surprised that Google called its latest flagship Chromebook the Pixelbook Go: while most manufacturers target the low-end with their Chromebooks, Google has always promoted its own-brand products as standard-bearers. Cut-down to go? So is the Pixelbook Go a cut-down product? In most ways, absolutely not. It’s slim, light, very nicely put together and has a big, bright 13.3in screen. With a comfy keyboard and large touchpad, it’s a great all-round machine. And it houses not an Intel Celeron, as so many of its Chromebook brethren do, but a Core i5 CPU – this is a…

PRICE £1,459 (£1,751 inc VAT) from store.hp.com There’s something both absurd and absurdly wonderful about the HP Elite Dragonfly. This is a convertible laptop that weighs less than 1kg, one that’s tuned for businesses rather than consumers, and it looks and feels great. It has quality in all the right places, with one of the best combinations of keyboard and screen I’ve ever used. And it’s fast enough for almost everyone’s needs. Still, though, it’s impossible not to ask: is it worth this much money? Rivals, where art thou? The first difficulty is finding a comparable machine. The Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 (see issue 305, p60) doesn’t quite make the cut as it weighs 1.33kg. The Dragonfly’s closest Lenovo rival is the ThinkPad X1 Yoga, but that includes a 14in…

PRICE £1,499 (£1,799 inc VAT) from store.hp.com It’s not often that I take a laptop to America as part of the review process, but the Spectre x360 is an exception. Ironically, it’s because the early sample HP sent me was only available in the supplied specification in the US; hang on to it, HP suggested after I pointed this out, and give it a road trip before we send you a UK spec that’s actually available to buy. That means I have two HP Spectres sitting in front of me: one with a 4K AMOLED screen and top-end specification (1TB SSD and 16GB of RAM) that you can order today from HP’s UK store for £1,799; and one with a Full HD IPS screen and top-end specification that you can’t.…

PRICE £2,403 (£2,884 inc VAT) from transparent-uk.com As a price of almost £3,000 indicates, this is a serious monitor for serious applications. If you don’t have the need for supreme colour accuracy as part of your workflow, it makes no sense to buy the MultiSync PA311D. Indeed, it makes little sense unless you’re a professional video editor needing absolute accuracy as part of your craft. If that does sound like you, take note of the NEC’s opposition: the Eizo ColorEdge CG319X (see issue 297, p63). Both 31in monitors share much in common, from their 4,096 x 2,160 resolution to their 10-bit IPS panels, all the way to their ability to instantly switch between six pre-calibrated colour spaces: sRGB, Adobe RGB, DCI-P3, Rec.709, Rec.2100 (HLG) and Rec.2100 (PQ). As the HLG…

AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT PRICE £158 (£190 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk The RX 5500 XT comes in two variants: the 8GB model here the GTX 1660 Super (£180) and the GTX 1650 Super (£150). Both RX 5500 XT variants share the same spec, with 1,408 stream processors, a base clock of 1,670MHz and game and boost speeds of 1,717MHz and 1,845MHz. Memory runs at a robust 14GHz, which matches the GTX 1660 Super and Radeon RX 5600 XT. AMD’s card has a TDP of 130W, which is 30W higher than the GTX 1650 Super. That matters because the Radeon isn’t as versatile: most cards are larger than the GTX 1650 Super options and the AMD card requires an eight-pin power connector. What you get, though, is great performance at…

PRICE 46mm, £133 (£160 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/307magic If you have a strong sense of déjà vu, there’s a good reason: the Honor MagicWatch 2 is, essentially, the same as the Huawei Watch GT 2 (see issue 303, p74). It even runs the same LiteOS software and syncs to your phone with Huawei’s Health app. Its big sell is up to 14 days of battery life. Even when using the GPS to track my running, I found it lasted a good ten days. For a watch with a bright OLED screen, that’s a great result. Note, though, that the 14 days only applies to the 46mm model I tested; drop down to Honor’s 42mm version and expect seven days. Both watches are made from stainless steel and plastic, with two…

After an extended period of unchallenged Intel dominance, our past two workstations Labs have seen successively more pugnacious possibilities from AMD. We’re now on the third generation of Ryzen and Ryzen Threadripper, and with each iteration the maximum core count has doubled. This month, we see the arrival of a single-socket workstation with a whopping 64 cores. However, to see how this CPU performs you’ll need to turn to our “Cores or cloud?” article on p91. Although we set the top price to £8,000 inc VAT to enable the inclusion of this processor, the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X, manufacturers plumped for the more versatile 3970X with 32 cores. And for good reason, as this is a hugely capable CPU. We kept the lower-end price to £3,000 inc VAT, which is…

PRICE £5,597 (£6,716 inc VAT) from armari.com Armari is the only manufacturer here to supply a chassis that it designed itself, rather than taking something high quality off the shelf. This enclosure is intended specifically to get the most out of the 64-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X and comes with a 420mm radiator, plus a trio of 140mm Cors air fans. However, Armari has chosen to supply our sample with the 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X, rather than the 64-core monster. This is most likely because the 3970X has a base clock of 3.7GHz, whereas the 3990X starts at 2.9GHz. Although the 3990X’s top Turbo mode is still an impressive 4.3GHz, the chip is more skewed towards dominance with multithreaded tasks than the all-round brilliance of the 3970X (see “Cores…

PRICE £2,500 (£3,000 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk/3xs Our workstation Labs are always split into two price brands, with this year’s cut-off points being £3,000 and £8,000 inc VAT. Last year, workstations in the lower price band were dominated by the Intel Core i9, but it’s a sign of the times that of all the machines in this class in 2020 we’ve only seen one Intel CPU. It’s not hard to see why when you appreciate what the Scan 3XS GWP-ME Q132R can do. Based around the top AMD Ryzen 9 3950X processor, you get 16 cores and 32 threads, which will storm through multithreaded CPU-intensive tasks. The top 4.7GHz Turbo mode will also make light work of anything single-threaded. Scan has partnered this potent processor with a generous 64GB of…

PRICE £2,500 (£3,000 inc VAT) from ipworkstations.com We normally expect InterPro to supply systems in both categories for our annual workstation Labs, but this time the company chose just to contest the lower price band. However, since the IPW-R9 sports the 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 3950X, it’s still got some major grunt available. The 3950X only offers a dual channel memory controller, but manages to outperform the Threadripper 1950X and 2950X CPUs that were AMD’s previous 16-core offerings. InterPro has supplied 3,600MHz-capable DDR DIMMs to take advantage of the Ryzen 9’s support for 3,200MHz memory, although only two 16GB modules are supplied for a 32GB total, while Scan provided 64GB in this price category. It’s no surprise to see Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 graphics in place for this price, offering…

PRICE £6,667 (£8,000 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk/3xs When we told manufacturers that the top price was going to be £8,000 inc VAT, only PC Specialist and Scan decided to take full advantage. However, in the case of the 3XS GWP-ME Q164T, Scan has opted for a more balanced all-round specification, and crucially opted for the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X. This 32-core monster is truly cementing AMD’s resurgence. Scan partners it with a 128GB of 3,600MHz memory in four 32GB DIMMs, taking full advantage of the Threadripper’s 3,200MHz quad-channel memory controller, whilst leaving four DIMM slots free for upgrade. Although RAM is expensive, the main area where Scan has spent its eight grand budget is in the graphics department. This is the only workstation this month to opt for Nvidia’s hugely…

PRICE From £14.95 exc VAT per month from sipgateteam.co.uk If you’re looking for a simple, practical, cloud-hosted VoIP service, Sipgate Team could be your perfect solution. It comes with a solid track-record too, as Sipgate has been going strong since 2004. One reason it’s lasted so long is value. A Light contract starts at £14.95 per month for three users, and can be upgraded in small increments, so your VoIP outgoings can scale organically with your business. To be clear, the headline price doesn’t include calls, which are charged on a pay-as-you-go basis; if you anticipate heavy usage, optional UK or EU add-on call packages can be added, with prices starting at £44.95 per month. Another extra to consider is the £20 porting service, which migrates your existing landline numbers…

PRICE 8GB, diskless, £615 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com Over the years, we’ve seen all sorts of innovations in the NAS appliance market, but the Guardian QGD-1600P is something new. This 1U rack-mounter not only delivers all the goodness of Qnap’s QTS NAS software, it also serves as a 16-port managed PoE switch. This makes it the ideal all-in-one platform for services such as IP surveillance, network security and wireless LAN management. Even better, the first four Gigabit Ethernet ports pump out a full 60W of PoE++, so it’s ready to handle the latest Wi-Fi 6 access points and PTZ IP cameras. Thanks to Qnap’s QTS software, you’re not limited to basic NAS services, either. The QGD-1600P can run Qnap’s Container Station and Virtualisation Station apps, allowing it to host virtual…

NOW YOU NEED TO DEALWITH THE SECURITY RISK I don’t think anyone would dispute that the way we do business has changed pretty radically over the last few years, especially when it comes to remote working. Companies of all sizes have become accustomed to the idea of their employees not all working at the same office locations, and indeed often not working from physical offices at all. There are good reasons to embrace this transformation: a study last year by the International Workplace Group found that flexible working can improve productivity by as much as 85%. But, from a security standpoint, it raises challenges that you must be ready to address. Many of those challenges are to do with support. Even if your employees are all based on-site, remote support…

“Just give Linux Minta try. I think you might be pleasantly surprised. I was. And still am” Jon gives Linux Mint a spin on his six-year-old Dell PC, discovers the secret to eternal iPhone battery life and wonders what’s gone wrong at Travelex I promised I would update you on my experiences with the latest Linux Mint Cinnamon desktop operating system after the issues I had with the Windows 10 updater on my six-year-old Dell desktop computer (see issue 306, p110). To recap, I replaced the failing hard disk in the computer and decided to reinstall Windows 10 using a USB installer key I’d bought from Microsoft. I installed that with no issues, and then attempted to get it to update to a more recent build. Everything I tried failed,…

“I remain, to this day, a firm believer in the good that social media serves up – even amidst the evil crap” It will probably come as no great surprise, at least to long-term readers, that I’ve been a very active user of social media since long before that term even existed. Back in the day, and the kind if day I’m talking about is 30 years or so ago now, we simply called all of this stuff “comms”. Short for communication technology, comms encompassed everything from the shoebox-sized and snail-paced modems through to the bulletin boards they connected us to. FidoNet BBS was my initial playground, along with the likes of Prestel Micronet and, of course, the Compulink Information eXchange, better known as CiX. The thread that bound these…

Given the idea central to quantum computing is that bits can be in multiple states at the same time, perhaps it’s no surprise that Google’s quantum supremacy claims are disputed – as is the importance of the milestone itself. Last October, Google released a paper claiming its quantum computer had hit that milestone, only for IBM to counter with a paper disagreeing supremacy had been reached. Both sides have a point, but either way, we’re on our way to quantum computing – although don’t expect a quantum laptop anytime soon, if ever. Indeed, we’re not really sure what architecture quantum computing will take, or how we’ll use it. Here’s why the quantum supremacy milestone is much less dramatic – and more compelling – than you may realise. ■ What is…

Now is the time to invest in artificial intelligence, genomics, automation and other cutting-edge tech in the NHS. Few people would argue with that, although health secretary Matt Hancock seems to believe the future of healthcare is being held up by critics who argue we need to boost funding for staff and upgrade basic IT before we leap into AI and automation. “So let me start by addressing the cynics, the people who think my obsession with tech is a load of old blockchain,” began his speech, referencing a tech with no known use case yet. Hancock says there are two types of tech-sceptics. First, the ones who say there are more pressing priorities: “According to them, tech is a luxury item, a midlife-crisis Ferrari that we don’t need and…

On sale Thursday 9 April 2020 LABS Windows 7 replacements Friendly and powerful Linux distributions that are perfect for loading onto older machines. Subscribe today Start your subscription today and claim your very own 26-piece PC repair kit. You can read PC Pro in print, on your iPad, iPhone or Android device. See p108 for details. FEATURES Best new features in Alexa Amazon’s voice assistant keeps quietly gaining new skills – we explore the latest features that make Alexa smarter and more useful than ever. Teach yourself Python What’s the best way to learn how to code? Whether you need a refresh or want to start from scratch, follow Barry’s example as he learns his lessons. Deep Dive: Google Chrome Far more than just a browser, Chrome is a fully…

PARENTS, CAMPAIGNERS AND politicians have hit out at Google for incentivising schools so that the company can collect data from primary schoolchildren. Google’s data grab came to light when a parent of an eight-year-old child at Rokesly Junior School in Haringey, London, queried whether they should sign a permission agreement that came home from the school about upcoming events. The documentation provided little information about the specifics of the project, but asked parents to allow children to take part in a workshop that would film pupils interacting with a prototype, with any footage belonging to Google, globally and in perpetuity. “Parents have contacted me concerning the release of their children’s data to Google for educational purposes,” said Catherine West, the Labour MP for Hornsey and Wood Green. “The intrusion of…

Stringent funding cuts are threatening the safety of prosecutions based on digital evidence, experts have told PC Pro. Police officers failing to understand complex digital evidence, a huge backlog in evidence processing and a lack of legal aid for expert defence witnesses are all contributing to miscarriages of justice. Digital devices, particularly mobile phones and PCs, are routinely used in criminal cases and can provide detailed, time-stamped evidence that’s useful to prosecutors and defence teams, but what happens when the system fails? “Simultaneous budget cuts and reorganisation, together with exponential growth in the need for new services such as digital evidence, have put forensic science providers under extreme pressure,” a House of Lords select committee said in its Forensic science and the criminal justice system: a blueprint for change report…

Dick Pountain is editorial fellow of PC Pro. He ain’t scared of no nucular radiashun. Those horrific wild fires in Australia may prove to be the tipping point that makes people take the threat of climate change seriously. IT isn’t the industry most responsible for CO₂ emissions, but that’s no reason for complacency. On the plus side, IT can reduce fossil fuel usage, when people email or teleconference rather than travelling; on the minus side, the electrical power consumed by all the world’s social media data centres is significant and growing (not to mention what’s scoffed up mining cryptocurrencies). Indeed, IT, along with carbon-reducing measures such as switching to electric vehicles, vastly increases the demand for electricity, and I’m not confident that all this can be met by renewable solar,…

Why VPN? In issue 306, you asked if we run a VPN when out and about (see p104), which prompts me to ask a question I’ve been pondering… why should I? You mention that you hope everything would be secured using HTTPS, but it is. I can’t remember the last time I logged on to a site with any credentials or information of even the slightest sensitivity that wasn’t HTTPS-secured. And that’s as it must be, no matter where I am; just because I’m in my office, I don’t want my online banking traffic to be handled with any less security than if I am in a hotel lobby, do I? Many other traditionally non-HTTP services – such as Outlook, POP3, FTP and RDP – now also use SSL/TLS to…

Every time Windows starts up, numerous third-party programs and processes start with it. Even a brand-new PC will invariably come with various vendor-specific apps and add-ons preinstalled. And as you use your computer and install the applications and tools you actually require, these too will drop startup items onto your PC, to the point where there might be literally dozens of programs firing up in the background before you’ve even logged in. Is this a problem? Not to the extent it used to be. A modern computer with an SSD can launch a whole batch of programs at once with relatively little impact on performance, and in an age when even entry-level laptops have 8GB of RAM, you’d need an enormous number of startup items chugging away in the background…

You might look at a ten-year old laptop, take a glance at today’s models and wonder: what’s really changed? The answer, counter-intuitively, is quite a lot. If you touched a laptop screen ten years ago, you’d likely be scolded for smudging your fingerprints on it. Today, touchscreen laptops are the norm, and they’ve given birth to a whole genre of flippy-flappy hybrid designs such as Microsoft’s Surface family. Solid-state storage is now dominant; traditional USB ports are fast becoming a thing of the past; and the slenderness of today’s devices sits in stark contrast to their chubby predecessors. Much has changed, but the next decade already promises to deliver even greater innovation, if this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is anything to go by. We’re going to explore what’s in…

Old-school PC users will fondly remember PowerToys for Windows 95 and XP – a set of semi-official utilities that let you tweak operating system features and behaviours that weren’t normally customisable. Now, Windows 10 has its own set of PowerToys. There are currently just three toys available, compared to the 15 that launched for Windows 95, but the collection is growing over time – and rather than developing PowerToys as an in-house project, Microsoft is hosting them on GitHub and allowing third-party contributors to develop and contribute their own. Here’s our guide to the first tranche of Windows 10 PowerToys, with a look ahead to what’s coming soon. Installing PowerToys To run PowerToys, you’ll need to be using Windows 10 build 17134 or later. This was released back in early…

Google isn’t the only company making high-spec Chromebooks; the Asus Chromebook Flip (see issue 299, p82) and Dell Inspiron Chromebook 14 are strong rivals to the Go. Both have slightly larger 14in 1080p touchscreen displays that fold over so you can use them like a tablet. They’re available in similar configurations to the Pixelbook Go as well. The Core m3 Asus Chromebook Flip C434TA can be bought for a mere £550 from Argos; this has 4GB of RAM and 128GB of eMMC storage. If you want more power, you can buy a Core i5 model with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of eMMC storage for £749. The Dell Inspiron Chromebook 14 comes with a Core i3 CPU, 4GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD and is great value at £550.…

HP includes an intriguing app called WorkWell with the Dragonfly. The idea is that it pushes you to work in a healthy fashion, including the ability to automatically adjust the height of desks. If you don’t have a compatible sit/stand desk, it can tell you to stand for, say, 15 minutes per hour. You can also set it to give you prompts to take breaks, and I like the “micropause” feature – a handy reminder that you should look away from the screen. It provides video exercises too. After a week, the app will give you a WorkWell score to improve upon. It’s an interesting idea, but it feels like something that will only appeal to people who are inclined to working well in the first place. People like me,…

PRICE $1,850 from lg.com (US only; available in UK from May 2020) It’s an immutable law of nature that you can’t fit a big screen into a small chassis – but the LG Gram 17 (2020) has a good go. It’s about as compact as a 17in laptop could be and at 1.35kg weighs a fraction less than a 13.3in Apple MacBook Pro. In keeping the size and weight down to a minimum, however, LG has made a few design trade-offs. The question is whether they matter to you. Slim body LG advertises the Gram 17 as a 17in laptop with a “15.6in-class body size”. That’s optimistic, but with a footprint of 381 x 267mm and a thickness of only 18mm, it’s trim. I was comfortable using the Gram 17…

Total value this month £138 Auslogics BoostSpeed 11 ■ One-year licence worth £45■ auslogics.com THIS POWERFUL UTILITY can improve the performance of your PC in almost every way. If it’s slow to boot, you can use the Startup Manager to find and disable unnecessary startup programs and extensions. It can also highlight programs that might be spyware. Then there are tools to remove junk and leftover files, clear your Windows and online histories and explore your drive to see which folders are hogging space. Other modules can undelete files, fix drive problems, securely shred data, or wipe entire hard drives to make sure any personal data is gone for good. Finally, the Disk Defrag module will reorder your files for the best possible performance. If all this sounds overwhelming, you…

PRICE £225 (£270 inc VAT) from lenovo.com Motorola seems intent on submerging the world with incarnations of its One range: visit John Lewis and you can buy the Motorola One Action (£220), Motorola One Macro (£160) and Motorola One Zoom (£360). Or head to Argos and pick up the Moto One Vision for £270. Do we really need another? Motorola’s answer is, of course, yes, because the One Hyper has one attribute that’s missing from the rest of the range: it’s capable of 45W fast charging. What a shame, then, that it doesn’t include a 45W charger in the box. Instead, it bundles a 27W charger that took 50 minutes to charge to full from 50%. Motorola claims a 45W charger would take it from zero to 75% in 30…

PRICE £100 (£120 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/307buds The Buds are the first headphones in Amazon’s extensive Echo family, and shells: not only do they support Siri and Google Assistant, but also Bose Active Noise Cancelling (ANC). And with IPX4 splash and sweat-resistance, they can withstand light rain showers and workouts. At £120, they’re also great value compared to rival in-ear headphones – before you buy, though, you should be aware of their drawbacks. Let’s start with the design. The Echo Buds are small, shiny black pearls of plastic with discreet ear tips that jut out from the front end. They look much like any old generic pair of wireless in-ear headphones, and there isn’t even Amazon branding on the Buds themselves. The distinctive “swoosh” is only found on the compact…

A workstation aimed at content creation and other high-end 3D-focused activities is the pinnacle of PC performance. It warrants the very best components at every level – a fast CPU with as many cores as possible, lots of RAM, high-end professional graphics and speedy, capacious storage. But few buyers can afford the best possible components in every category, so here are the main six features you should consider when specifying your perfect workstation. 1:PROCESSOR There used to be a clear divide between workstations offering fewer cores but a faster frequency versus more cores with a lower clock speed. Now, however, you can have your cake and eat it. Almost. There’s still a few hundred MHz difference between the top Turbo modes of processors with more than 16 cores and those…

PRICE £2,333 (£2,800 inc VAT) from chillblast.com The Chillblast Fusion Ryzen Render RTX 4000 sticks out in this month’s Labs like a sore thumb, thanks to its choice of a white Corsair Carbide 275R chassis. If this wasn’t enough to catch your eye, the Corsair H100i RGB watercooling radiator is up top behind a grille, meaning its multicoloured pulsating lighting will be in full view. But don’t let the bling deceive you into thinking this system is all bark and no bite, because inside is a serious collection of workstation hardware. This starts with the sensible choice of a Ryzen 9 3950X. With 16 cores that can all run at 3.5GHz or above, and a top 4.7GHz Boost mode, this is a great all-rounder. Chillblast only supplies 32GB of DDR4…

PRICE £2,915 (£3,498 inc VAT) from armari.com If someone had told us two years ago we would be seeing a 24-core workstation for under three grand exc VAT, we would have laughed and quickly walked away. But this is what Armari has sent us for the cheaper of its two systems this month. The processor in question is the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X, which has slipped under the radar in all the excitement about the 32-core 3970X. This is still a potent beast, though, with a base 3.8GHz clock and 4.5GHz Turbo mode. Armari has partnered this CPU with 64GB of 3,200MHz DDR4 SDRAM supplied as four 16GB modules to take advantage of the Threadripper’s quad-channel memory controller. Like all the systems aimed at the lower price, the Gravistar TCX…

PRICE £2,381 (£2,857 inc VAT) from pcspecialist.co.uk Last year, we saw five of our lower priced systems based on the Intel Core i9-9900K, and one even won a Recommended award. But only one of this month’s suppliers has opted for Intel at this price. Looking at how the PC Specialist performed in most of our tests, it’s easy to see why this change has occurred. Although the Intel Core i9-9900K was already available a year ago, it remains one of Intel’s top eight-core offerings, with only a KS version above it. Both have a top 5GHz Turbo mode, but whilst the KS can run all its cores at this speed, the K tops out at 4.7GHz for all cores. PC Specialist has backed the Core i9 with 32GB of 2,666MHz…

PRICE £4,998 (£5,998 inc VAT) from workstationspecialists.com Workstation Specialists is a small but focused UK-based manufacturer of systems for content creators. As in previous workstation Labs, the company’s entry shows that it has a good handle on hardware trends in this market. This is another system based around AMD’s stunning Threadripper 3970X. Although the CPU supports 3,200MHz memory, Workstation Specialists has only used 3,000MHz DDR4 SDRAM – but this means it can supply 128GB of it. It sensibly chooses Nvidia’s Quadro RTX 5000, which balances well with the high-end CPU. With 3,072 CUDA cores and 16GB of GDDR6 frame buffer providing 448GB/sec of bandwidth, this card will tackle any 3D modelling task with aplomb. The Antec P110 Luce chassis is particularly stylish, with a sleek unfussy exterior and tempered glass…

PRICE 16SC Pro: £554 exc VAT with first-year maintenance from 3cx.com Moving to an on-premises IP PBX might not be everyone’s idea of fun, but 3CX’s Phone System makes it as painless as possible. The installation procedure is kept simple, the feature set will satisfy everything on your wish list, and flexible licensing plans allow you to choose a version that’s suitable for your needs and budget. The software is versatile too. It supports both Windows and Linux, and will run on a standard PC or server, or in a virtual machine under VMware, Hyper-V or KVM. You can even cloud-host it on Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS/Lightsail or OVH. For our host we chose a low-cost HPE ProLiant ML110 Gen10 tower server running Windows Server 2019. Deployment was…

PRICE From £8.50 exc VAT per user per month from voip-unlimited.net Now into its third year, Voip Exchange is purpose-built as a complete cloud-hosted SMB service that can be rolled out with a minimum of training. Deployment is a breeze too: a project engineer was assigned to discuss our requirements, and then set up an account with preconfigured phone numbers and a base set of users as per our instructions. Voip Unlimited also supplies handsets, offering a choice of Snom and Yealink models. We opted for Yealink T48S and T23G sets, and these came preconfigured for each user, so we had only to connect them to the lab’s PoE switch and they were instantly provisioned. Don’t worry if you’re switching from a different VoIP provider: any IP phones you already…

Java?. NET? Python? What skills should you be looking for in a developer? The correct answer almost certainly isn’t the name of a programming language. When Rhona Kennedy of IT recruitment firm Cathcart Associates asked colleagues and clients what they thought were essential, “almost none of it was technical skills… they came back with flexibility, curiosity to tackle new stuff that they’ve maybe not seen before, being humble enough to admit what they don’t know, asking other developers for help when they need it or even just Googling stuff if they don’t know how to work it out… being able to learn stuff by having a go rather than needing specific training or lots of hand-holding.” ■ Attitude vs aptitude The answers were interesting, Kennedy said, and she had advice…

We’ve discussed above how remote-support systems raise different issues depending on whether they’re in the hands of your own IT staff or an authorised third party. But as Paul Ducklin, principal research scientist at Sophos, points out, there’s a third potential scenario – and this could easily be the one that’s responsible for a major breach. We’re talking about users taking matters into their own hands and installing their own unauthorised remote-access solutions. “Remote-access and remote-support tools are a double-edged sword,” Ducklin explained. “They are enormously convenient, even if you’re supporting someone in the same office as you because you don’t need to trek to their desk every time there’s a problem to fix. But they have been a security nightmare for decades, since long before internet access was commonplace.…

“No matter how many mains sockets you have, it will never be enoug hand you’ll always end up filling them” If you’ve invested in some smart home kit, or have a house full of Internet of Things things, you’ll know that by and large such products communicate wirelessly. And they do so using a variety of different standards. Most obviously, there’s Wi-Fi, which is great for things that need a lot of bandwidth such as wireless speakers and other forms of media streaming. You wouldn’t want to use Wi-Fi for something like standalone temperature or humidity sensors, though, because it’s a battery hog, best suited for devices that you plug into the mains or use with a power brick, rather than those that run on batteries. Older temperature sensors often…

“If Serguei is right, we are only now laying the bricks to make the universities that do the research” You know that you’re in for a hard time when the first post-speech question at an IT shindig kicks off with, “If we agree the universe has 11 dimensions, then…” That was just one of about five Q&A sessions during one long day in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, in the company of Acronis and the newly minted Schaffhausen Institute of Technology. Do not snigger while making up your own acronym: they refer to it as ess-eye-tee. My invite came from Acronis, which has successfully moved its product description from simple drive backup and restore to a wider portfolio of products that keep copies of things for you. Sometimes that’s locally, sometimes it’s in…

There are many different types of quantum computer – ion traps, superconducting circuits, optical lattices, quantum dots and measurement-based one-way systems – but which one will reign supreme remains to be seen. “It’s really hard to say what the equivalent of the silicon transistor is going to be for quantum,” Cubitt said. Indeed, Cubitt notes that ten years ago the good money would have been on ion traps, but they’ve given way to superconducting circuits used by Google’s Sycamore. “In ten years’ time, that may be completely different,” he said. “They hit obstacles at different points, so one is stuck for a while and the other pulls ahead.” Superconducting circuits are very fast but messy, while ion traps have cleaner qubits and can run quantum information for longer, meaning less…

RADAR AND CAMERAS are helping the car navigate through the street in London’s Woolwich, stopping when a pedestrian approaches the kerb and slipping around corners with ease. But not all the locals in the Royal Arsenal development are pleased to have the future of driving in front of them – in particular, the white van honking behind the test vehicle, constrained to the tight local speed limit of 5mph. The technology works, but that doesn’t mean driverless cars are ready for our roads. How, for instance, will insurance work? How can a car with no human at the wheel interact with standard vehicles? And what happens when you’re forced to stick to the agonisingly slow speed limit when all of the other vehicles around you consistently exceed it? Those are…

There are many signs of getting old. Various bodily functions stop working, things fall off, hair goes grey, and, at least in my case, you gradually turn into your dad. Hence an increased grumpiness and a clear view that the new upstarts have never had it so good. Best if you can spin in a line like “well, back in the early days of Demon Internet, you had to roll your own KA9Q TCP/IP stack and manhandle an app to get your email”. All of which is true, but not necessarily helpful. I was reminded of this last week when the frankly mind-boggling AMD Threadripper 3990X CPU went on sale. Unveiled at CES back in January, this is a computing behemoth the likes of which the desktop has never seen…