Содержание выпуска: July 2018 — Tech Advisor

If your PC is infected with ransomware, it will spread from file to file, encrypting them until you pay the bad guys for the digital key. But ransomware can also spread to your files stored in the cloud, and that’s what Microsoft’s new OneDrive protections are designed to address. The firm has announced the ability to ‘roll back’ the files stored in OneDrive to versions stored up to a month ago, to help you return to a point before you were infected by malware. The company also said it will use its automated threat-detection systems to figure out when the ransomware began infecting those files and alert you via your phone that an infection has taken place. Microsoft announced additional protections for sharing and reading files stored on OneDrive and…

Your laptop’s built-in speakers aren’t doing any favours for the gigabytes and gigabytes of music and movies on your hard drive. Even the best ones can leave your audio sounding thin and lifeless. External speakers – along with a good set of headphones – are a must for getting the best fidelity from your media files. A trip online or to your favourite electronics store will reveal a head-spinning variety of options in this category, with some systems costing as much or more than you paid for your laptop. You don’t need to take out a personal loan to upgrade your audio, though. Quality speakers can be found even with a budget of around £50. And while there is a certain degree of ‘you get what you pay for’ at…

For most people, running one operating system on their PC or laptop is enough, but in some instances it can come in handy to have two separate versions on a PC. This may be due to specific software that only works with an older release of Windows, or maybe you want to compare the differences between Windows 7 and 10 before committing to an upgrade. Thankfully, the OS is designed with dual booting in mind. You can create a dual-boot system from pretty much any version of Windows, but here we will add Windows 10 to a PC running Windows 7. System requirements You’ll need a copy of Windows to install, and this should be burned onto a CD or written to a USB stick. Microsoft provides a downloadable version…

Windows PCs that use the battery-sipping Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM processor are just beginning to roll out, but they include some major caveats. One of them, the inability to run 64-bit apps, doesn’t appear to be going away anytime soon. According to a Microsoft representative, the company will “share more details” on a preview of its ARM64 software development kit (SDK) at its Build developer conference at the beginning of May. It’s unclear when the preview version of the SDK will be released, when a final version will debut, or when apps based upon it will roll out to end users. A roadblock for users PCs such as the Asus NovaGo currently include a 64-bit version of the Windows operating system, but will only run 32-bit apps. (Virtually all of today’s…

Microsoft’s next Windows 10 upgrade – informally known as the Spring Creators Update and set to be available in the coming weeks – improves Windows in numerous ways. But the firm has also added innumerable under-the-hood adjustments. That’s why we’ve put together this preview to underscore smaller additions you might miss, or explain subtle changes in how Windows 10 works. Unlike previous lists we’ve compiled, though, some of these hidden features seem tentative, with more work clearly needed. Fortunately, Microsoft seems inclined to keep developing Windows 10, with no major replacement on the radar. (We’ll highlight the very best features as part of our review.) One-click data deletion One of the continued complaints about using Windows 10 is Microsoft’s use of telemetry – collecting information about you as you use…

Razer creates virtually every type of PC peripheral you can think of, from headsets to mice to keyboards, but it’s now taken on a new challenge: Steam. Yes, Razer has launched a gaming store of its own. Aptly called the Razer Game Store, the new marketplace taps into the zVault rewards system that Razer debuted last year to give loyal customers free games and gear. The Razer Game Store (fave.co/2uM0dPS) behaves similarly to the Humble Store. When you buy a game, you’ll receive a key to activate it on a platform like Steam or Uplay. The company says you’ll see titles from Ubisoft, Bethesda, Bandai Namco, Sega, and Rockstar, as well as other publishers. It won’t be B-tier dregs either; Dragon Ball FighterZ, Assassin’s Creed: Origins, Grand Theft Auto V,…

VPN (virtual private network) technology lets a computer using a public internet connection join a private network by way of a secure ‘tunnel’ between that machine and the network. This protects the data from being seen or tampered with. The two most common use cases are consumer VPN services that allow individuals to surf privately from home or a public setting, and business-oriented solutions that allow employees to securely connect to a corporate network remotely. For the most part, VPN connections are handled by custom software, or by third-party generic software such as the OpenVPN client or Cisco AnyConnect. Another option that’s generally supported by most virtual private networks is to use Microsoft’s built-in VPN client. This is useful when some VPNs don’t provide their own client or if you…