Table of contents for July 2017 in Tech Advisor

AMD’s new Ryzen Balanced power plan is offering an answer for early performance woes with its new CPU. The power profile tweaks how Windows 10 handles power states of the individual CPU cores and can bump performance from 3 percent all the way to 21 percent in many popular games, AMD said in a blog post. To obtain and install the updated power plan, you can visit AMD’s blog (tinyurl.com/ mrpvq93 or download the zip file directly from AMD at tinyurl.com/mrpvq93. AMD said the power plan, which will soon be rolled into a chipset driver package, tweaks Windows 10’s treatment of virtual cores and physical cores. When Ryzen first arrived, many theorized that the Windows 10 scheduler – how an operating system doles out work to individual cores – was…

Three people from Illinois are taking Microsoft to court, claiming that the free Windows 10 upgrade they had installed on their PCs caused “data loss and damage to their computers”. Lawyers for the trio asked a Chicago federal court recently to grant the case class-action status, which would allow other Americans to join the litigation. “Many consumers have had their hard drives fail because of the Windows 10 installation,” alleged the complaint. “Many consumers have had their existing software and data rendered inoperable by the Windows 10 installation.” All three of the plaintiffs asserted that after accepting the free Windows 10 upgrade – a one-year deal that ran from 2015 to 2016 – some data on their Windows PCs had been destroyed. One said that she had had to purchase…

Intel’s reformulation of Moore’s Law metrics is an attempt by the company to make up for lost time and a messy move to the 14nm process from the previous 22nm process The landmark Moore’s Law observation, which is now more than 50 years old, keeps shape shifting as the physical challenges of making smaller chips mounts. Many scientists agree that Moore’s Law is dying (page 15), but Intel is clinging on to it for dear life. It has been its guiding light for making chips smaller, faster and cheaper. Now, the firm is changing the way it measures process technology advancements, which will help the company continue to boast about hitting key Moore’s Law metrics in terms of economics and the shrinking of chip sizes. Primarily, the company is changing…

Free upgrade Buy from tinyurl.com/j35vz34 Requirements Home (£119): 1GHz processor or faster; 1GB RAM for 32-bit; 2GB for 64-bit; up to 20GB available hard disk space; 800x600 screen resolution or higher. DirectX 9 graphics chip with WDDM driver; Microsoft account Professional (£219): 1GHz processor or faster; 1GB RAM for 32-bit; 2GB for 64-bit; up to 20GB available hard disk space; 800x600 screen resolution or higher. DirectX 9 graphics chip with WDDM driver; Microsoft account Microsoft’s Windows 10 Creators Update offers the most significant upgrade to Windows 10 since its launch, splashing a bright, cheery coat of fun over Windows 10’s productivity foundation. Price This free upgrade is available now – new users will need to pay £119 for Windows 10 Home or £219 for Windows 10 Pro. A cool new…

£2,099 inc VAT Buy from tinyurl.com/jvmmcs9 Specifications 15.6in (1920x1080, 141ppi) IPS LCD touchscreen; 2.7GHz Intel Core i7-7500 (3.5GHz boost) 2 cores, 4 threads; Windows 10 Home 64-bit; Intel HD Graphics 620; 16GB 2133MHz DDR4 RAM; 512GB SSD; 802.11b/g/n/ac dual-band; Bluetooth; 2x USB 3.0; 1x USB 2.0; 1x USB-C HDMI; Ethernet (via included USB-C to RJ45 adaptor) Kensington Security slot; Micro-SDXC card slot; stereo speakers; HD webcam; dual mic; 3.5mm headset jack with DTS Headphone X processing; tiled backlit keyboard with numberpad; two-button trackpad; 60Wh lithium-ion battery non-removable; 358x228x15mm; 1080g When you think about a full-size 15in laptop, the word portability doesn’t spring to mind, but LG has sought to change that with its latest incarnation of the gram 15, now with the seventh-generation Intel Kaby Lake processors for 2017. Price…

If you’re looking to host your own services instead of paying for or relying on those in the cloud, running your own home server is a great way to keep your files private Ask any Linux enthusiast, and they’ll tell you how fantastic an operating system Linux can be. For the desktop user, the freedom from worry about most viruses is a big plus, and not spending £100 upgrading Windows is a big plus too. As great as Linux is for desktop use, it truly shines as a server. While providing web-based services is one of those server-type options Linux does really well, the OS can do a lot more than host a blog about family outings. If you’re looking to host your own services instead of paying for or…

Thanks to the speed of USB 3.1 and USB-C connections, it’s now possible for an external hard drive to match the read and write speeds of an internal drive. Combine that with a proliferation of external SSDs, and for the first time running Windows off an external drive is viable. Before we start, let’s get the bad news out of the way: Windows will refuse to install on an external drive if it knows that’s what you’re doing. But there are a few ways around this, including emulation via tools such as VMware. The easiest workaround is an application called WinToUSB (tinyurl.com/oaqx29q). WinToUSB serves the same function as Windows To Go, an enterprise-only tool from Microsoft that doesn’t work with most consumer versions of Windows. It’s intended for use with…

As part of the blitz of new features in the Windows 10 Creators Update (read our review on page 20), Microsoft has added e-reading capabilities to its Edge browser. It’s a bit quirky, given its infancy, but with a bit of practice you can be lounging by the pool with an electronic novel in no time. The first question you’ll ask: Does it surpass Amazon’s Kindle app. Well, sort of: the Kindle app available for Windows tablets rejected my (correct) Amazon password, a bug that numerous other users have reported. (The Kindle for PC app buried within Amazon’s site works, however). Edge offers pretty much what you want from an e-reader app anyway: a progress bar, the ability to resume where you left off (mostly), and solid text-formatting options. Reading…

Use Search for Friends One of the most comprehensive ways to search on Facebook is to use the Search for Friends feature. To access this, open Facebook on your PC and click on the icon of two silhouetted people that you’ll see in the upper right corner. When the drop-down menu appears you’ll see the option to Find Friends appear just below where you clicked. Select this and you’ll be taken to a new page that lists a number of people Facebook thinks you might know. Obviously it’s a good idea to look through this, as Facebook uses its algorithm magic to try and match up users. On the right side of the page you’ll also find the Search for Friends section. This allows you not only to search for…

Today’s processors, made using a single continuous slab of silicon, may soon give way to multiple chips interconnected at high speeds, Intel recently reported. The chipmaker said that its new Embedded Multi-die Interconnect Bridge, or EMIB, technology would let a 22nm chip connect to a 10nm processor and a 14nm one, all on the same processor. “For example, we can mix high-performance blocks of silicon and IP together with low-power elements made from different nodes for extreme optimisation,” said Intel’s Murthy Renduchintala, who heads the Client, IoT and Systems Architecture Group. That’s a radical departure from how the company has constructed most CPUs and SoCs, where all components of a CPU or SoC are built on the same process. Renduchintala didn’t commit EMIB to any particular upcoming SoC or CPU,…

Four years ago, Google was faced with a conundrum: if all its users hit its voice-recognition services for three minutes a day, it would need to double the number of data centres just to handle all of the requests to the machine learning system powering those services. Rather than buy a bunch of new real estate and servers just for that purpose, the company embarked on a journey to create dedicated hardware for running machine-learning applications like voice recognition. The result was the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), a chip that is designed to accelerate the inference stage of deep neural networks. Google published a paper recently laying out the performance gains the company saw over comparable CPUs and GPUs, both in terms of raw power and the performance per watt…

Researchers have built a primitive microprocessor out of a two-dimensional material similar to graphene, the flexible conductive wonder material that some believe will revolutionise the design and manufacture of batteries, sensors and chips. With only 115 transistors, their processor isn’t going to top any benchmark rankings, but it’s “a first step towards the development of microprocessors based on 2D semiconductors,” the researchers at Vienna University of Technology said in a paper published in the journal Nature. Two-dimensional materials have the benefit of flexibility, meaning that they can be incorporated more easily into wearable devices or connected sensors, and potentially making them less breakable: Picture a smartphone that bends rather than breaks if you drop it. Today’s semiconductors and screens are already pretty thin, but they still rely on the three-dimensional…

When the source code to a suspected Russian-made malware leaked online in 2013, guess who used it? A recent release from WikiLeaks claims the US CIA borrowed some of the code to bolster its own hacking operations. In April, WikiLeaks released 27 documents that allegedly detail how the CIA customised its malware for Windows systems. The CIA borrowed a few elements from the Carberp financial malware when developing its own hacking tool known as Grasshopper, according to those documents. Carberp gained infamy as a Trojan program that can steal online banking credentials and other financial information from its victims’ computers. The malware, which likely came from the criminal underground, was particularly problematic in Russia and other former Soviet states. In 2013, the source code was leaked, sparking worries in the…

£1,349 inc VAT Buy from tinyurl.com/mxa5kpt Specifications 13.3in (1920x1080, 165ppi) IPS LCD glossy; 1.3GHz Intel Core i7-7y75 (3.6GHz boost) 2 cores, 4 threads; Windows 10 Home 64-bit; Intel HD 615 GPU; 8GB 1866MHz DDR3 RAM; up to 512GB SSD; 802.11b/g/n/ac single-band 2x2 MIMO; Bluetooth 4.2; 2x USB-C 3.1; microSD slot; Kensington Security Slot; stereo speakers; HD webcam; single mic; 3.5mm headset jack; UK tiled keyboard with numberpad; two-button trackpad; 46Wh lithium-ion battery, removable; 304x199x13.7mm; 1.24kg; 1-year onsite warranty Dell is no stranger to peaks and troughs when it comes to being in fashion. Luckily, it’s a brand that’s in the ascension once more, helped by a subtle rebranding and excellent products to match. This rise has been greatly helped by the excellent XPS 13, one of the best Windows laptops…

You won’t need to feel embarrassed should you take it out to a Starbucks, but it has a few more design flourishes than a dull office-bound machine £1,099 inc VAT Buy from tinyurl.com/Lctvyf2 Specifications 15.6in (1920x1080, 141ppi) TN LCD anti-glare; Windows 10 Home 64-bit; 2.8GHz Intel Core i7-7700HQ (3.8GHz boost) 4 cores, 8 threads; Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti GPU with 4GB RAM; 16GB 2400MHz DDR4 RAM; 256GB SSD; 1TB 5400rpm HDD; 802.11b/g/n/ac single-band 2x2 MIMO; Bluetooth 4.1; 3x USB 3.0; HDMI; Kensington Security slot; SDXC card slot; stereo speakers; HD webcam; single mic; 3.5mm headset jack; UK-tiled keyboard with numberpad; two-button trackpad; 74Wh lithium-ion battery non-removable; 384.9x274.73x25mm; 2650g The Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming is a mid-price gaming laptop. It doesn’t offer the most powerful graphics processors around, but does…

£699 inc VAT Buy from tinyurl.com/kLw3w3g Specifications Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GPU; codename Pascal GP102; 16nm process; 1480MHz (base) 1582MHz (boost) core clock; 11,000MHz memory clock; 352-bit memory bus width; 3854 processor cores; 224 texture units; 88 ROPs; DirectX 12, Vulkan APIs; GDDR5X 11GB RAM; Nvidia NVTTM Cooler; 1x 8-pin PCIe, 1x 6-pin PCIe 3x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x HDMI 2.0b; 16 simultaneous outputs; 2 card slots; 267x42x111mm; 3-year warranty Before Nvidia announced the 1080 Ti, the performance king was the Titan X. That’s no longer the case. The 1080 Ti is the fastest consumer graphics card you can buy right now, soundly beating the GTX 1080, too. Here we review the EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition. So what is the GTX 1080 Ti? Well, it’s the pinnacle…

To ensure the smoothest possible gameplay, you generally want to achieve a minimum of 60 frames per second (fps) in your game, which is the limiting speed of most PC displays In March, AMD launched its much-anticipated Ryzen processors. We’ve written plenty about them over the past couple of issues, but now we’re in a position to see how they fare when viewed as part of a whole PC. For this group test, we asked some PC builders to send us their best system based around a Ryzen chip and others to use something from Intel’s seventh generation Kaby Lake range. It’s no secret that games run better on Intel processors at the moment, despite Ryzen’s better performance in many CPUbased tests. The fact is that although you get more…

Mobile START If you have the Twitter app on your phone, you can change only the name on your profile, not your username. To do so, first open the app, open the side bar by tapping your picture in the top left of the screen and press Profile. 2 Next, press Edit profile – here you will be able to change the name that appears on your profile. Finally, press Save. 3 If you want to change your username, you will have to log into Twitter through a mobile browser. Next, press your picture in the top left. This will open up the side bar. Once here, press Settings and privacy. Another list will appear and from here tap Username. 4 Log in and go to your profile. Press Edit…

It was another tough quarter for PC shipments, but there was good news for HP, which edged Lenovo to regain the title of world top’s PC maker, according to IDC. Worldwide PC shipments totalled 60.3 million units in the first quarter of 2017, growing by just 0.6 percent compared to the same quarter the previous year. IDC previously forecast a decline of 1.8 percent in PC shipments, so the positive growth was a sign the PC market is recovering. Quarterly PC shipments reported positive growth for the first time since the first quarter of 2012. Lenovo previously beat HP for the title of the world’s top maker in 2013 and has mostly held the position since then. HP regained the top spot this quarter boosted by strong laptop shipments worldwide.…

Qualcomm is seeking damages from Apple, alleging that the iPhone maker interfered with long-term agreements between the chip company and licensees that manufacture the iPhone and iPad, and encouraged actions by regulators against the company by giving government agencies “false and misleading information”. Apple did not use certain high-performance features of the Qualcomm chipsets for the iPhone 7, claims the chipmaker. When iPhones with the Qualcomm processor still outperformed iPhones that used a chipset from key rival Intel, Apple is said to have publicly claimed that there was “no discernible difference” between iPhones using Intel chipsets and those using Qualcomm processors, when it knew the opposite to be true, according to a recent filing by Qualcomm. Apple warned that if Qualcomm were to make or sponsor public comparisons of the…

Cars are turning into computers with a unique set of requirements. One of the more important components is a camera, which is a secondary feature in PCs. Cameras are aiding mirrors in allowing cars to self park, and they will serve as the eyes for autonomous cars, helping capture and analyse images. The number of cameras on cars will only grow as drivers seek a better view of the vehicle’s interiors and exteriors. For car makers, the next big goal is to bring context and understanding to those images. Combined with data from radar, lidar, GPS, and other sensors, cameras can help cars and drivers make better decisions. ARM has come up with a specialised camera chip for cars, with the goal of bringing context to images and improving driver…

£1,129 inc VAT Buy from tinyurl.com/myzwqmm Specifications 17.3in (1920x1080, 127dpi) IPS matt anti-glare; Windows 10 Home 64-bit; 2.3GHz Intel Core i5-6300HQ (3.2GHz boost) 4 cores, 4 threads; Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB GPU; 8GB 2133MHz DDR4 RAM; 1TB 5400rpm SATA HDD; 802.11b/g/n/ac single-band 2x2 MIMO; Bluetooth 4.1; USB 3.1-C port; 3x USB 3.0 port; RJ45 LAN Ethernet; HDMI; Thunderbolt compatible mini Display Port; SDXC card slot; stereo speakers; HD webcam; single mic; 3.5mm headset jack; backlit UK-tiled keyboard with numberpad; two-button trackpad; 76Wh lithium-ion battery, non-removable; 415x280x24mm; 2.7kg The Asus ROG Strix GL702VM is the kind of laptop you need if you’re a serious gamer, but don’t have the cash to spend on the very best processors and graphics cards. It’s not cheap, but is far less expensive than the latest…

Corsair custom-designed the One’s aluminium chassis to hold two low-profile 240mm radiators, one mounted to each interior side of the case £1,799 inc VAT Buy from tinyurl.com/nxpnqm8 Specifications Case Form Factor Mid-Tower; Windows 10 Home Edition; Intel Core i7-7700 Quad-Core Processor, Liquid Cooled CPU; GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080, Liquid Cooled GPU; 16GB 2400MHz DDR4 DRAM; Storage 960GB SSD; Z270 Mini-ITX motherboard; Gigabit Ethernet; 802.11ac; 400W SFX 80 Plus Gold power supply; 1x USB 3.1 Type-C; 3x USB 3.1 Type-A; 2x USB 2.0 Type A; PS/2 Port; 1x HDMI 2.0; 2x DisplayPort; S/PDIF; 380x200x176mm; 7.2kg; two-year warranty As Corsair’s first-ever PC, the One is impressive as hell. This tiny machine (which starts at £1,799) is fast, beautifully built, and perhaps more importantly – quiet, too. That’s no small feat for…

£169 inc VAT Buy from tinyurl.com/Lcwb9gq Specifications 5in (1080x920, 441ppi) touchscreen; Android Nougat 7.0; 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 octa-core processor; Adreno 505 graphics; 2- or 3GB RAM; 16GB storage; 13Mp main camera, LED flash, support for 1080p video at 30fps; 5Mp front camera; 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi (2.4 and 5GHz); Bluetooth 4.2; 4G LTE; Nano-SIM; 2800mAh removable battery; Micro-USB rapid charging; microSD support up to 128GB; water-repellent nano-coating; 144.3x73x9.5mm; 144.5g ‘Premium for All’ is Lenovo’s new motto for its G5 phones, the Moto G5 and G5 Plus, which aim to offer the build quality and feel of a flagship device at decidedly non-flagship prices. That’s especially true of the G5, which offers a metal body, rapid charging, and fingerprint sensor controls – all at a sub-£200 price. Design Design is where…

£120 inc VAT Buy from tinyurl.com/msmyd9x Specifications 24in (1920x1080, 92ppi) TN matte display; 16:9 aspect ratio; 60Hz refresh rate; 14ms response time; 250cd/m2 quoted brightness; 240.6cd/m2 tested brightness; 1000:1 static contract ratio: 1000:1; 750:1 tested contrast ratio: 750:1; 98 percent tested sRGB; 77 percent tested AdobeRGB; 1.98 tested Delta E; DisplayPort; HDMI; VGA; headphone out; 540x495x230mm (including stand); 100x100mm VESA mount; 3.3kg; 2-year warranty In recent years, AOC has been the go-to brand if you wanted a cheap IPS PC monitor. But other manufacturers have been quick to release their own models, and BenQ’s new GW2406Z should prove tempting at just £120. Design The GW2406Z isn’t aimed at gamers specifically – IPS screens don’t have the fast response rates of TN panels. But for casual gamers it will be fine.…

Many people know the everyday keyboard shortcuts, such as how to copy, cut and paste text with the keyboard… but there are even more powerful shortcuts lurking beyond the basics We’re big fans of keyboard shortcuts. Memorising key combinations takes some work, but once you have, shortcuts make using an operating system so much more efficient. Many people know the everyday keyboard shortcuts, such as how to copy, cut and paste text with the keyboard, how to close a window and how to lock a computer. That’s a solid start, but there are even more powerful shortcuts lurking beyond the basics. Here are some of our favourite less commonly used shortcuts. We’ve grouped these by operating system to make it easier for users of Windows 7, 8.1 and 10 to…

Unlike the film photography era, it doesn’t cost anything to take pictures, unless you count the price of your phone or DSLR. Not having to worry about how many shots you’re taking is a major advantage, because it allows for experimentation. The more of this you do, the greater understanding you’ll have of what your device can do, how the controls work, and how to get the best out of what technology is to hand. Most of our tips cost little or nothing, so you’ve no excuse for not trying them out. While our advice is primarily aimed at those with a digital SLR camera, many of the tips apply equally to any camera, including those on smartphones. Plus, phone cameras are getting surprisingly good these days. 1. Aperture priority…

Switching between multiple open windows of the same program is a problem we try to solve in several ways. Sometimes you have applications that use tabs to view multiple files in one window. For those that don’t, users often turn to Windows’ Snap function or multiple monitors. This tip uses a different solution by importing a longtime keyboard shortcut from the Mac, Alt + ` (back tick). (The Mac version uses Cmd instead of Alt.) This simple keyboard shortcut, which you can easily hit with the same hand, automatically switches between multiple windows in the same program. You can accomplish something similar with Windows’ tried-and-true Alt + Tab, but that shortcut switches between every open window on your desktop. There are several programs that offer the back tick solution, but…

The only problem with Google’s Gboard keyboard for Android is that we’re totally hooked on its best features. Number and symbol shortcuts above each key? Got to have them. One-handed mode? Ditto. Translate as you type? Love it, need it. Read on for the niftiest features, from dedicated number rows and an on-demand numeric keypad to ‘neural’ translations and a long-press shortcut for oft-used symbols. Note, there’s also an iOS version, but most of our favourite Gboard tricks only work on the Android edition. 1. Type with one hand Tapping a virtual keypad with a single thumb can be something of a stretch if your phone has a massive screen. Luckily, Gboard has a clever feature that makes it easier to tap with just one hand. Tap the little caret…

Hey, Ubuntu users: if you haven’t heard yet, Canonical killed off any hopes of releasing Unity 8 with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS next year. Instead, Ubuntu will release 18.04 with the GNOME desktop. While some die-hard Ubuntu fans may have a case of inconsolable angst, this is not as bad of a thing as it may seem. A brief history of Ubuntu desktops A long time ago (in internet time anyway), the Ubuntu OS shipped with the GNOME 2 desktop environment, which was beloved at the time. During that era, only a handful desktop environments were widely used. GNOME and KDE took the lion’s share of users, while the lighter-weight XFCE and LXDE desktops catered to users who wanted a speedier desktop and less pizzazz. When Ubuntu first shipped the Unity…