Table of contents for September 2021 in PC Pro

“We strive to make computing more personal by putting users at the core of the experience… In support of this, we are bringing Office, Windows, and devices together for an enhanced and more cohesive customer experience.” Those are the words of Satya Nadella in Microsoft’s 2020 Annual Report for shareholders, although the italics are mine. Because while Satya has delivered astonishingly good returns for those who have invested in the company, I question whether he’s rewarded its loyal customers with a cohesive experience. I understand that Microsoft is in the business of making profit rather than friends, but let’s be clear: the most obvious experience that users are “at the core of” involves them giving Microsoft more money. If Microsoft really values its users, who are currently being lured way…

There’s little data more sensitive than your medical records. This is perhaps why numerous viral social media posts have sought to raise the alarm: the NHS is planning to share our data, we’re told, and therefore we should opt out of the new system before it’s too late. Is it time to worry? What’s actually going to happen to our data? We spoke to both sides of the debate to disentangle the controversy. ■ The reality of the plans Let’s start with what the new system is intended for: NHS “research and planning”. Doctors are already allowed to share your data if it is for the direct purpose of providing you with care, as that’s how the medical system functions. Research and planning, on the other hand, is about giving…

@njkobie Health data, properly collected and gathered in a central database, could be used to better manage treatment, uncover key findings about what works and what doesn’t, and improve the NHS. But every time the government attempts to pull off this feat, it fails. This time around, it’s come up with a project called General Practice Data for Planning and Research, giving us the horribly confusing abbreviation GPDPR. But no one is calling it that anyway: the headlines have instead declared it the “GP data grab”, which is much catchier but rather less useful for marketing the project. If GPDPR had gone ahead, and it still may, it would have seen your medical records from your GP hoovered up into a central repository to be used for research. That includes…

I got caught by the Qlocker Qnap ransomware, which used 7-Zip to encrypt NAS files. Why am I owning up when I should know better? Because sharing might just help others in the future. I use a Qnap TS-231P two-disk NAS at home for “non-essential” files. It would be an inconvenience if I lost them, but they aren’t business related/mission-critical. The NAS is online so that my family across the world can access photos. I had what I thought was solid security: 1) regular updates of user passwords, 2) daily backups with Qnap’s Hybrid Backup Sync (HBS), 3) malware removal software, 4) antivirus software, 5) forced logon protection, blocking IP addresses forever on two failed login attempts. But I was wrong. The ransomware came in through a backdoor in HBS.…

The publishing industry has proven strangely resilient to the march of new technology, with only ebooks significantly disrupting a business that’s been going along in much the same way for hundreds of years. That could be about to change, however. Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3(GPT-3) is a deep-learning neural network that its creators are teaching to write like a human being. It’s not the first time AI has been tasked with churning out fiction. Publisher JBE Books released 1 the Road in 2018, which was entirely written by a neural network, while AI-generated Harry Potter fan fiction has kept Twitter amused for years. But as anybody familiar with these works will know, AI copy is often clunky and, at times, ridiculous. GPT-3’s big claim is that it’s more naturalistic, capable of…

SCORE PRICE From £1,330 (£1,596 inc VAT) from lenovo.com How serendipitous that we review the latest ThinkP ad X1 Yoga in the same issue as the Apple iPad Pro 12.9in (see p62): if one of your criteria is pen-on-screen capability, both Lenovo and Apple make a compelling argument for your money. In other ways, these are two very different beasts. The X1 Yoga is a serious business tool dressed in grey aluminium, with the only notes of relief being the red trackpoint in the centre of the keyboard and a backlit dot over the “i” in ThinkPad on the lid. It’s understated, classy and a little boring. It’s also incredibly well made, with no hint of flex in the metal lid or the chassis. Lenovo backs this up with MIL-STD-810H…

SCORE PRICE £833 (£1,000 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/323nitro It was bound to happen: an AAA game would launch that demands ray tracing capabilities, and so it came to pass with Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition. With a good chance that other games will follow the same route, Acer has come to the rescue of impecunious gamers with the Nitro 5 AN515-45. This latest iteration of the Nitro 5 gaming laptop family comes with an Nvidia RTX 30-series GPU and remarkably its lowest-priced model costs £950. That’s with a Ryzen 5 5600H and RTX 3060 graphics, but for a mere £50 more you can upgrade the CPU to a Ryzen 7 5800H – and that’s exactly what I test here. Both models come with 8GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD and a…

SCORE PRICE Without ads, 64GB, £167 (£200 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/323fire10 Amazon’s Fire HD tablets are never the last word in luxury or horsepower, but they do a great job for the price – and improve with every generation. This year’s Fire HD 10 is thinner and lighter, with a brighter screen and 3GB of RAM versus 2GB. There’s also a Plus model to consider, replete with 4GB of RAM and wireless charging via Amazon’s charging dock (sold separately) or any Qi-compatible charger. The Fire HD 10 and Fire HD 10 Plus cost £150 and £180 with 32GB of storage, while 64GB models cost £190 and £220. If you want to avoid Amazon’s lockscreen adverts, you’ll have to pay an extra £10. There’s also a new Productivity Bundle available for…

SCORE PRICE £196 (£235 inc VAT) from store.canon.co.uk The Canon Pixma G650 is the newest addition to Canon’s G-series of MegaTank printers that use bottles of ink poured into large tanks, rather than cartridges. And where previously you had to choose between low running costs of Canon’s MegaTanks or the superb photo print quality of its cartridge-based printers, the Pixma G650 promises to deliver both. It achieves this trick by adding two more inks (red and grey) to the usual quartet of black, cyan, magenta and yellow. Despite this, it’s more compact and lighter than previous ink tank models. How? First, the G650 doesn’t come with a secondary paper tray – only a 100-sheet capacity rear paper feeder – and the copier is missing an automatic sheet feeder. Note there’s…

SCORE PRICE £77 (£92 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk Released at the same time as AVerMedia’s Nexus streamer (see below), the Live Streamer Mic 330 is designed to be its natural partner. Its key feature is the XLR output; unlike the Shure MV7 opposite, there’s no USB connection. That means you will need a preamp or a mixer such as the Nexus, and as there’s no stand in the box you’ll also need to factor that into your costs. Expect to pay around £40 for a good-quality boom arm. Fortunately, at £92, the Mic 330 is relatively affordable for a dynamic XLR microphone so you should have enough budget left over. Don’t be fooled by its modest price, however, as the Live Mic 330 has the heft and design of a…

SCORE PRICE £50 (£60 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com Anyone looking to flood their home or office in Wi-Fi has never had so much choice. A single Wi-Fi 6 router will suffice for many, while there are excellent mesh systems (in Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 varieties) where it doesn’t. What’s more, if you just need to stretch your network to a distant back bedroom, an endless stream of wireless extenders are on hand. The TP-Link RE505X is a little different. Not only is it one of the first wireless extenders to support Wi-Fi 6, but when used with one of TP-Link’s OneMesh routers – such as the Archer AX50 (see issue 318, p91) – it can work as part of that mesh system, spreading seamless connectivity anywhere around the home.…

SCORE PRICE £417 (£500 inc VAT) from chillblast.com Chillblast takes a refreshingly different approach to this low-cost entry. With a target buyer who is simply interested in a computer that works, it’s put together a special “PC Pro Edition” version of its barebones WAP 2500U Micro PC. And it really is tiny compared to everything else on test, with a 130 x 128mm footprint that isn’t much bigger than a coaster. You can access the Chillblast’s innards by removing four crosshead screws from its base. This reveals two SODIMM RAM sockets (both occupied), a heatsink-covered M.2 SSD and a Wi-Fi card. All these are easy for you to replace, and there’s a SATA socket free if you want to add an extra SSD; the base includes holders for you to…

SCORE PRICE £833 (£1,000 inc VAT) from chillblast.com Chillblast is unique in this month’s Labs, taking the decision to install a water cooler rather than an air cooler. And not just in its most expensive PC, the Fusion Cruiser (see p91), but also this sub-£1,000 system. Technically, it costs £999.99 inc VAT, although we round up the 99p to a pound. While its more expensive sibling includes an eight-core Ryzen 7 5800X, the Fusion Frigate employs a Core i5-11600K chip. As the “K” suffix indicates, this can be overclocked, but the main benefit of the water cooler in this case is that the i5-11600K is a chip that likes to run hot. If Chillblast had opted for an air cooler, we suspect this PC would be much noisier: it barely…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £1,250 (£1,500 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk On the surface, there are many similarities between Acer’s gaming PC and the HP Omen 25L. They both benefit from a custom-designed case, giving them a style lift over their British rivals, and as they aren’t built to order you can buy them near-instantly – if they’re in stock. Curiously, Acer supplies the Orion 3000 with a metal side but includes a glass side in the box. It’s easy to swap these, but you will need a crosshead screw driver to do so. Perhaps Acer defaulted to the metal side because the insides look so cramped: the huge RTX 3070 graphics card dominates, but we found our eyes continually drawn to the plethora of cables. A lack of space compounded…

The Network Practical buying and strategic advice for IT managers and decision makers For SMBs struggling to manage their print, copy, scan and fax services, a multifunction printer (MFP) is the perfect solution. Combining all of these functions into a single device allows businesses to consolidate their assets, reduce costs and streamline their document workflows. There are benefits for security and cost control too. The complexity of administering multiple devices means that access controls are often left wide open; with a single MFP, it’s much easier to manage all printing and processing services from a single central console. Only having a single device to work with also makes it easier for staff to digitise documents, which can cut paper usage and promote more efficient document management. And with less equipment…

SCORE PRICE £696 exc VAT from printerland.co.uk Busy workgroups looking for a workhorse laser MFP need look no further. Kyocera’s Ecosys M6235cidn is designed for huge duty cycles, with a quoted maximum of 100,000 pages a month. It’s cost-effective, too. The ceramic print drum and developer are designed to last the life of the MFP, so toner is the only consumable. You’ll find 6,000-page black and 5,000-page colour cartridges supplied in the box, after which Kyocera’s high-capacity black toner cartridges last 13,000 pages, while colour ones are good for 11,000 pages. That works out to a very reasonable 1p per mono page and 5.4p for colour. The M6235cidn is a versatile creature, thanks to Kyocera’s HyPAS (Hybrid Platform for Advanced Solutions) app library. There’s a good range to choose from,…

SCORE PRICE Appliance with 1yr UTM subscription, £569 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com Zyxel’s USG Flex appliances are ideal for SMBs with a geographically spread-out workforce. They deliver strong network protection at affordable prices, with easy support for remote offices and home workers – and since Zyxel recently extended its Nebula Control Centre (NCC) service, all Flex models can now be cloud-managed. We tested the USG Flex 200, which costs £569 exc VAT and comes with a first-year subscription to Zyxel’s UTM security pack. This provides web filtering, application and email security, IPS and anti-malware services, plus Zyxel’s SecuReporter web-based analytics and reporting service; subsequent subscription renewals cost £234 per annum. Enabling cloud management is simple. You just need to register for an NCC account, then create a top-level organisation and…

A number of scientific publications, most notably “The global landscape of AI ethics guidelines” that was published in Nature Machine Intelligence in 2019, have looked at the ethical principles of AI from a global consensus perspective. There are five themes that have emerged with that global convergence: 1 Transparency, including understandability and explainability of AI decision-making. Transparency also means user consent when interacting with any AI that would otherwise be transparent to that user. 2 Justice and fairness – this is where consistency and equality enter the debate, with non-bias and non-discriminationcentre stage. Beyond algorithmical bias, though, AI systems should ensure accessibility for all genders, races and sexualities. AI outcomes should also be reversible if harm has been caused. 3 Non-maleficence. Non-maleficence is usually found in the medical realm and…

Since the first Internet of Things (IoT) devices first emerged a decade or so ago, the promise has been that eventually we would live in fully “smart” homes. Everything from lights to locks and thermostats would be connected and controllable. Today, the vast majority of homes remain dumb rather than smart. The numerous, mutually incompatible ecosystems and IoT standards meant homeowners could never be confident that their devices would actually work together. At least, until now. Maybe. In May, the Connectivity Standards Alliance (which was previously known as the Zigbee Association) announced a major peace treaty between all of the manufacturers who matter, and the creation of a new connected devices standard that should result in IoT devices all talking the same language. “I was very surprised and excited,” said…

PREMIUM LAPTOPS Apple MacBook Air Affordable Apple M1 ultraportable from £999 from apple.com/uk Apple’s ARM-based M1 chip is blasting away its AMD and Intel x 86 opposition with truly extraordinary speeds. Even the low-end model with 8GB of RAM is ludicrously fast. Apple makes no changes to the Air’s design, but it still looks fabulous and now supports both USB 4 and Wi-Fi 6. Add battery life into the teens and its biggest threat comes from the updated M1 MacBook Pro 13in. REVIEW Issue 316, p40 ALTERNATIVES NEW ENTRY Apple MacBook Pro 13in (M1) Apple has replaced Intel’s Core processors with its own M1 chip and the results are sensational: the MacBook Pro 13in is fast with an incredible battery life. From £1,299 from apple.com/uk REVIEW Issue 316, p44 Samsung…

@bazzacollins On the morning of 8 June, a good chunk of the internet decided to take a little nap. The Guardian, the Financial Times, The Verge, Forbes, PayPal, Vimeo, HBO Max and plenty of others were all knocked offline. The first I became aware of a problem was when I went to visit The Verge and was confronted by a rather odd error message: Error 503 Service Unavailable Service Unavailable Guru Mediation: Details: [a meaningless, long string of digits appeared here] Varnish cache server Oh, those wags at The Verge, I thought. Although the cache server had vanished, not varnished from what I could make out… Turns out it wasn’t just The Verge’s dry humour. This was the message appearing on all the sites that had been struck down by…

So Microsoft has finally shown its future direction for Windows 10 – and, if I’m allowed to use the well-worn line from Nigel Tufnel in Spinal Tap, “these go to 11!” Indeed, Microsoft seemed to tap into its inner Nigel for the online presentation where it announced Windows 11. If you have a few minutes to spare, rush to YouTube and watch Microsoft senior staff get extremely emotional about family, pets and how Windows is the glue that brings everything together. Bring a hanky. Before I go any further, a little background. Microsoft clearly viewed Windows 10 as being an end point in its development work. It even announced that it would not go further, but that there would be bug fixes and features coming down the line, usually at…

To put Sudowrite to the test, we fed the AI an extract from The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton, which is out now in paperback. That name will be familiar to long-time PC Pro readers – Stuart was our news editor before he selfishly decided to become a bestselling author. Here you’ll see the extract from Stuart’s book that was given to Sudowrite, where the software took the story next and finally Stuart’s verdict on what the AI did to his writing. Extract from The Devil and the Dark Water Arent Hayes howled in pain as a rock slammed into his massive back. Another whistled by his ear; a third striking his knee, causing him to stumble, bringing jeers from the pitiless mob, who were already searching…

SCORE PRICE £2,326 (£2,792 inc VAT) from laptopsdirect.co.uk Asus is pitching the new ROG Zephyrus G15-series laptops at two types of people: the serious gamer and the content creator. It certainly has the spec to match. I tested the top-end machine, part code GA503QS-HQ003T, which comes with an AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS CPU, Nvidia RTX 3080 graphics, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and a 165Hz 2,560 x 1,440 display. The Ryzen 9 5900HS belongs to the upper echelons of the Ryzen family. Its eight cores have a base frequency of 3GHz but this increases to 4.6GHz under load in Turbo mode. Little wonder, then, that this thing is quick. It scored 323 in the PC Pro benchmarks, which is up with the very best, although the £999 Acer Nitro…

SCORE PRICE £100 (£120 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/323show The original Echo Show 8 was released in the times before Covid, when video calls would have been, for most right-thinking people, a last resort. This 2021 version matches our new reality as the main change is a substantial upgrade to the front-facing camera. When I say substantial, I mean it’s jumped from a measly 1MP sensor to a mighty 13MP unit. It’s also been upgraded to include automatic panning and zooming, so the camera will follow you around the room as you move about. If that sounds familiar it’s because we saw the same features on the new Echo Show 10 (see issue 320, p58). While the Show 8 doesn’t physically move to follow the person speaking like its 10in sibling,…

SCORE PRICE £266 (£320 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk In a world where everyone appears to have something to say, the challenge for any streamer is how to make yourself stand out. To which we have one word: professionalism. If you’re live streaming that means instant sound effects, high-quality audio and live insights into your audience. The Nexus aims to give you all three. Its key attraction is a 5in touch panel that you can configure in software. Let’s say you have five prerecorded sound effects: drop in five shortcuts, associate them each with a sound, customise the images and you have a ready-made selection of effects to choose between during your broadcast. You can also drop in simple buttons, such as setting the input mic to mute. You may prefer…

SCORE PRICE £167 (£200 inc VAT) from motorola.co.uk Not content with having a Play, Plus and Power variant of the Moto G, Motorola has now gone into double and triple figures with its numbering system. The Moto G50 sits between the G10, G30 and G100 within the Moto G family, and that means you’re also getting middle-child performance. £200 buys you an eight-core 2GHz/1.8GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 480 chipset backed with 4GB of RAM. That’s a similar spec to the Nokia X20 (see issue 322, p71) we reviewed last month but for £100 less, and it means the G50 competes well against sub-£200 opposition. Scores of 504 and 1,637 in Geekbench 5 are never going to make jaws drop, but this is a speedy phone – and it’s made to feel…

SCORE PRICE £333 (£399 inc VAT) from currys.co.uk This is not the Acer Aspire XC-895’s first rodeo. We featured this exact machine in our previous desktop PCs group test (see issue 317, p76), and despite advances in technology elsewhere it holds its three-star rating. The TL; DR version is this: if you genuinely have only £399 to spend on a new desktop PC, the Aspire XC-895 will do. But we have many caveats. The first is this: Windows 10 really doesn’t like hard disks, and Acer supplies the XC-895 with exactly that. It provides a 1TB Toshiba hard disk that feels far slower than the graphs on p93 suggest: sequential reads and writes of 175MB/sec and 151MB/sec might not sound too bad, but this system is sluggish. In fact, this…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £474 (£569 inc VAT) from dell.co.uk If we could pick one system to explain the difference between the PCs sold by multinationals and British PC makers, this would be it. Everything here is pared down to the bone to ensure that not a penny is wasted, right down to connectors on the motherboard, which makes a lot of sense when you’re selling millions of them. You can almost hear Dell’s accountants hug themselves with joy. Let’s start with the motherboard. Despite having room for four DIMM sockets, and spaces for four of them being marked out, Dell only includes two – one of which is filled with a stick of 8GB Samsung memory. Storage expansion is equally limited, with the sole M.2 slot filled and one…

SCORE PRICE As reviewed, £917 (£1,100 inc VAT) from hp.com/uk HP may not be the first name you think of when it comes to gaming PCs, but at some point in the past couple of years it’s become rather good at designing them. And we use the “d” word quite deliberately, for this is a designer PC in a way that only a multinational company with a huge R&D budget can create. From the clearly labelled ports to a magic button that releases the near bezel-less glass side, it exudes quality. That extends to the case design, with a stylish brushed metal effect at the front (although it’s actually plastic) and an unobstructed view of what’s inside courtesy of that glass side. Out of the box, HP defaults to a…

SCORE PRICE £1,250 (£1,500 inc VAT) from chillblast.com If you put the Fusion Cruiser Gaming PC in a boxing ring next to the PCSpecialist Opal R then the crowd would pick the latter as the winner. It looms over its similarly priced opposition in a way that isn’t at all obvious from their respective on-paper dimensions, and if we were the promoters of the match we’d call it “the Bruiser vs the Cruiser”. For the Chillblast does look refined by comparison. With tempered glass at both the front and the left, you can set an even more demure tone by choosing your own colour scheme for the three front-mounted 120mm RGB fans: for example, white rather than the pulsing rainbow effect Chillblast opted for. As with the Fusion Frigate, we…

SCORE PRICE £335 exc VAT from printerland.co.uk This serious-looking MFP is aimed at busy workgroups with established workflows. That doesn’t mean it’s limited in its capabilities, however: it works with Canon’s Application Library, which provides a range of customisable apps, all easily accessible from the generous 12.7cm colour touchscreen. The apps include tools for one-touch scanning to particular destinations – such as email addresses and network shares – copying ID cards and scanning directly to a fax destination. If you have standard forms that need to be printed regularly, the Print Template app can churn them out on demand. And best of all, unlike Kyocera’s HyPAS extensions, these apps are all free and preinstalled – you just need to activate and configure them from the MFP’s web console. The hardware,…

SCORE PRICE £236 exc VAT from printerbase.co.uk Lexmark’s MC3326i is one of the cheapest colour laser MFPs we’ve seen, yet it offers a great range of features. It brings together print, copy, scan and digital fax services for both wired and wireless networks, and does it all in a desktop-friendly package. It even offers double-sided printing, and the scanner is topped off with a capacious 50-page document feeder. With a quoted print speed of 24ppm, the MC3326i’s print engine isn’t the fastest around, but it will be fine for small offices. And it delivers on its promises: our mono 24-page test Word document was delivered in 59 seconds, after a wait of 11 seconds for the first page. Switching to colour didn’t slow the printer down, either; our 24-page DTP-style…

1 What’s the RoI on that? Businesses exist to make money. Everything you do should be broadly aligned with that goal, and the same goes particularly for everything you spend money on. As you’re doubtless aware, return on investment – RoI to MBA types – is the notion that any given bit of kit, or service, ought to make a measurable contribution to the revenue-earning ability of the business. While coming up with a precise number may be tricky, it’s easy to recognise RoI in things such as vans, buildings or manufacturing-specific lumps of metal. It’s a lot less easy with a laptop, which is very likely running the same software as machines 10% cheaper and ones 50% more expensive. Expecting your IT team to fully price up its asset…

Have you ever noticed the link between technology and officiality? It’s akin to brand snobbery. I’ve watched people declare that using LibreOffice is inconceivable; it has to be Microsoft Word and nothing else. Similarly, we’re conditioned to believe that the professional dealer must service the car because an independent garage might use non-authorised parts. The electronics industry takes these insecurities to another level: it has a track record of actively shutting out independent repair. Some governments are fighting back. In another move for right to repair (R2R) legislation, the EU has introduced “ecodesign” measures to ensure that electrical appliances will be easier to repair and last longer. Part of the legislation states that producers will make spare parts and manuals available to professional repairers only, which sounds wholly sensible until…

Schadenfreude – the German term for “pleasure at the discomfort of others” – seems to be an endlessly satisfying emotion. I certainly cheered up when I heard that, having moved $1.5 billion into Bitcoin, Elon Musk performed an almost literal volte-face. Anything related to Bitcoin produces a storm of commentary, and likewise Mr Musk, so I didn’t expect a clear representation of his thinking – but when it did emerge, I discovered that he’d understood something I’d figured out ages ago. Mr SpaceX withdrew from BTC because he’d realised that, unlike any other means of payment or retention of wealth at any time in history, cryptocurrencies burn electricity just by existing. Musk decided that it’s not exactly green to require more electricity than the whole of Argentina, with only increases…

Thursday 12 August 2021 LABS Storage megatest We test SSDs in all forms and all sizes, as well as external drives, nextmonth. Whetheryou want to upgrade a laptop or PC, or simply bump up your local storage, we have the answer. Subscribe today Start your subscription today and claim a free 32GB memory stick emblazoned with the logo of your favourite magazine. You can read PC Pro in print, on an iPad, iPhone or Android device. See p106 for more details. FEATURES Cryptocurrency: invest, create or ignore? It’s crunch time for crypto currencies, with prices continuing to rise despite the doubts over its environmental cost and actual usefulness. Can you afford to do nothing? Why my CPU is better than yours AMD, ARM and Intel all believe (atleast in public)that…

We place far too much trust in cloud services. They can be there one minute and then gone in the blink of an eye. This is, of course, true of any server and it could be argued that cloud services are more reliable than the proverbial box in the corner (BITC). Cloud services usually use customdesigned systems, rack-mounted in data centres that have incredibly stable power and cooling systems. They’re hard to steal and monitored in real-time. That BITC, by contrast, might have blocked fans, a dodgy power supply, no UPS and the cat might get overly excited and pee into it at a most inopportune moment. However, even a BITC can be exceptionally reliable. Most hardware and software is these days. Like a nicely tended garden, it benefits from…

Recently, I read Quantum Computing: How it Works and Why it Could Change the World by Amit Katwala. It’s a great intro to the present state of and prospects for quantum computing – not too technical, wasting little space on the basics but avoiding the hieroglyphics of quantum algorithms. It’s also honest about the fact that quantum computers barely exist and that their prospects remain rather dim. Katwala offers a clear summary of the three major current research directions: laser-ion traps (as pursued by Amazon/IonQ), cryogenic Josephson junctions (Google and IBM), and “topological qubits” (Microsoft). As he goes, he points to their weaknesses: ion traps need too many lasers to be scalable; cooling to 0.01°K requires monstrous cryostats that consume lots of energy; and Microsoft’s trick for dodging decoherence would…

There was meant to be no such thing as Windows 11. Microsoft once proclaimed that Windows 10 would be the last desktop operating system it ever released, which would be updated into eternity. The big question, then, is this: is Windows 11 really anything more than a new theme pack for Windows 10? Over the next seven pages we’re going to explore all the major new features and design changes in Windows 11 so you can decide for yourself. We’ll walk you through the new desktop, the fresh delights buried in the settings menus and the features that are yet to come. We’ll also give you a guide to how you can test Windows 11 for yourself and what your PC will need to install the new operating system –…

SCORE PRICE Core i7, £1,208 (£1,449 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com Since returning to the UK laptop market in 2020 after an absence of six years, Samsung has had hit after hit. We are particular fans of its tiny Galaxy Book S (see issue 319, p87), a 13.3in laptop with integrated 4G that weighs less than 1kg. The new Galaxy Book Pro is further evidence that Samsung knows what it’s doing. The Galaxy Book Pro name covers far more than the 15.6in model we review this month. It’s a full range of 13.3in and 15.6in laptops, available in both conventional and 360° “convertible” forms, and all with Intel’s Evo certification to guarantee long battery life, slim dimensions and instant-on speed. The Galaxy Book Pro is undoubtedly the most exciting new laptop…

SCORE PRICE 12.9in, from £833 (£999 inc VAT) from apple.com/uk The iPad Pro has slowly matured into quite the powerhouse over the past few years, but it’s taken a giant leap forward in 2021. Adopting the much-lauded Apple M1 processor, it’s finally drawn level with its more “serious” MacBook counterparts when it comes to raw power. Coupled with the advances that Apple has made to iPadOS, the latest iPad Pro more closely resembles a full-blown laptop than ever before. The question is, can it live up to everyone’s high expectations? ■ The new and the old The M1 chip isn’t the only big upgrade for the 2021 iPad Pro. Next on the list is the new “Liquid Retina XDR” display, which employs Mini LED tech to boost its HDR capabilities,…

SCORE PRICE £1,295 (£1,554 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk In our most recent monitor Labs (see issue 315, p68), it was the curved LG UltraWide 38WN95C that proverbially blew our socks off. This giant had everything we could think of, whether that’s top-ranking image quality or an expansive working area. And I can’t understate the amount of space that a 37.5in curved IPS panel with a 3,840 x 1,600 resolution provides; it’s like having three “normal” monitors side by side, but the gentle 2300R curve means it doesn’t feel overwhelming. The Eizo FlexScan EV3895 also includes a 2300R curved 37.5in IPS panel with the same expansive resolution, but that’s where their similarity largely ends. If two monitors could be brothers, the LG would be the relaxed one kicking back on his…

Issue 115 of Cyclist is on sale now featuring a brand-new FREE 52-page Cyclist Junior supplement, the ultimate guide for parents who want to get their kids riding. Featuring reviews of 20 of the best bikes for toddlers to teens as well as helping you to plan the perfect family day out. Visit cyclist.co.uk/cyclistjunior to find out how to get your copy and to enter the competition to win a Specialized Jett kids bike* *Terms and Conditions apply, please visit website for full terms Scan this with your smartphone to find out more…

SCORE PRICE £185 (£222 inc VAT) from scan.co.uk Although it’s more than twice the price of the AVerMedia Live Mic 330 opposite, the Shure MV7 holds one obvious advantage: you don’t need to invest in a mixer to make it work. That’s because its XLR input is accompanied by a micro-USB connector, with a pair of 10ft cables in the box: one USB-A, one USB-C. This means you can connect the MV7 to a phone, PC, Mac or tablet, although older iPads will only work if you buy a micro-USB to Lightning cable (£23 direct from Shure). Shure provides an accompanying app for each platform, and its emphasis is on ease of use rather than fine control. For example, the equalizer is a choice of four presets rather than granular…

We suspect this question sounds familiar: “I’d like to buy a new PC. What do you recommend?” It’s hard not to respond with a grunt of despair because the answer depends on so many factors. Are they looking for a workhorse, a gaming PC or something in the middle? And most of all, what’s their budget? No, the real one. Because budget dictates everything: if you have less than £500 to spend, your options are severely limited. Of the ten systems in this month’s group test, three fall below that price and all display obvious signs of compromise. We don’t mean ignore these PCs, because they’re fast enough to tick the “daily workhorse” category; they may well be the best choice. Loosen the purse strings, however, and options expand in…

SCORE PRICE £416 (£499 inc VAT) from pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews We don’t normally comment on the weight of desktop PCs, but after heaving around the more expensive machines we confess to being taken aback by just how light the Aurora R is. You feel like a superhero, such is the ease with which this tower system lifts. There are two main reasons for this disconnect between brain and reality. First, it’s genuinely light, with a basic chassis with thin metal sides; there’s no tempered glass, nor shedloads of components weighing it down. And second, it’s a full-size tower chassis so it feels like it should be as heavy as the other systems from PCSpecialist. The plus point to having so little inside such a capacious case is the luxury of room. Any…

SCORE PRICE £832 (£999 inc VAT) from pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews The first thing that strikes you about the PCSpecialist Fusion R is that this is a big machine. It’s based around the Corsair 175R RGB chassis, but customised with a backlit RGB PCSpecialist logo on the front – size aside, this case leans towards the understated and classy portion of the chassis Venn diagram. It would also fall into the midrange circle, because that brushed metal finish on the front is actually plastic (on its own, the case costs around £60). It doesn’t feel cheap, though, and it benefits from a large tempered glass side window through which you can admire the full-size ATX motherboard. Combined with this PC’s large dimensions, this makes the Fusion R a pleasant machine to work inside.…

SCORE PRICE £1,249 (£1,499 inc VAT) from pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews Turn to the gaming graphs on p92 and this PC’s major appeal will become instantly clear: it’s the fastest gaming system we’ve seen for under £1,500, so if that’s your primary driver then there really is no need to continue reading this review. Head to the website and order it, then cross your fingers that others haven’t beaten you to the punch (see p93). The GeForce RTX 3070 dominates the inside of the case. But don’t be fooled into thinking this alone is enough to produce chart-topping frame rates, as Acer also includes the card in its Predator Orion 3000. As the gaming graphs indicate, the Opal R is significantly faster, and this isn’t due to magic but because PCSpecialist wisely partners…

You know you’re having an exciting conversation when the topic turns to concrete. “You just can’t get hold of it,” moaned a friend. “Or roof tiles. Had to wait weeks.” I muttered sympathetically and tried to turn the conversation to another topic. Any other topic. I steered clear of the most apt one, though, which is the endemic supply-chain problems faced by the IT industry. I invited several British PC makers into this group test, but three of them cited shortages – and difficulty in predicting future supplies – as their reason for saying no. The reasons are obvious. On the QT, those companies told me they are busier than ever before. Some of them have twice, three times as many PCs to make each month than is normal, and…

SCORE PRICE £1,076 exc VAT from epson.co.uk The days of overpriced ink cartridges are over. This clever A4 colour MFP uses Epson’s ink bottle system to deliver ultra-economical running costs, working out to just 0.2p per mono page and 0.8p for colour. The idea of refilling the reservoirs yourself might sound fiddly, but it really couldn’t be easier. The bottles have leak-free valves in their nozzles, and are keyed so they will only fit the correct port in the front-mounted ink tanks. Just slot each one in and let gravity do the rest: they will stop pouring when the tanks are full. The ET-5880 isn’t short on features, either. It’s easy to use, with a large 10.9cm colour touchscreen, it combines print, copy, scan and fax functions, and it can…

SCORE PRICE Diskless/8GB, £886 exc VAT from broadbandbuyer.com The TS-873A is all about choice: on first boot you’ll be asked whether you want to install Qnap’s standard QTS operating system or the more advanced QuTS hero platform. It’s worth thinking carefully about which you pick, as there are significant differences between the two, and if you later change your mind then the only way to switch is to back up your data and completely reinitialise the unit. For SMBs seeking a simple storage solution, QTS is the obvious choice. It provides all of the key services you would expect from a NAS appliance, and works with every app Qnap has to offer. It will also fit happily within the base 8GB of DDR4 memory that comes preinstalled on the TS-873A.…

We’ve come to rely on GPS. It’s one of those technologies that’s been utterly transformative during my lifetime. My late father’s desk, which sits behind me in the lab, has a drawer stuffed full of old Ordnance Survey maps. Today, they’re merely a curiosity. Google Maps does a better job in every way. And that’s before we start talking about the sheer usefulness of Street View. Whilst we can discuss the advantages of Waze running on a connected smartphone versus the overpriced and underperforming GPS that’s so often built into cars, and the somewhat rapacious price of map updates, the reality is that the built-in thing is still workable. Things get rather more exciting on a motorbike. A few vendors have implemented satnav directly into the digital dash of their…

In 2019, I was first introduced to Microsoft’s Azure DevOps (ADO) platform by a senior manager who had heard good things about it and wondered if it could help our team’s database upgrade project. We were a six-person IT team trying to upgrade a core CRM system along with its associated database and dependent systems. Technical debt was high and skill levels were siloed. We needed to find a way to collaborate better, track our work and progress, and pull our code into a single-source control system. I’d done exploratory work in Azure and I knew what DevOps was as a concept, so I thought I had a head start. However, I quickly found out that ADO isn’t in Azure and it doesn’t automatically deliver a DevOps approach. It didn’t…