Computeractive -julkaisun 589 -irtonumeron sisällysluettelo

Dropbox. Audible. Spotify. CCleaner. Malwarebytes. It’s taken me just 30 seconds to think of five services that I forgot to cancel after I finished using them. It’s easily done. You sign up for a free trial, use the service enthusiastically every day for a few weeks, then gradually lose interest. But the service doesn’t know that. It just lingers in the background sucking money out of your bank account. Cancelling services comes in two parts. First, you have to actually remember what you’ve signed up to. That’s easy compared with the second part, which is to work through the labyrinth of deliberately confusing links, headings and options to find the hidden ‘Yes, I really, really, really want to cancel so stop trying to trick me into staying’ button. Theseus had…

Thousands of BT and EE customers will be hit with bill increases higher than the rate of inflation after BT changed its payment terms and conditions. Last year the company said it would link future prices to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rate of inflation, which was expected to reduce annual price rises. Then, in February, BT confirmed it would increase prices by 1.3 per cent, in line with inflation. This followed two price rises in 2018, and none in 2019. However, on 1 September it updated its policy (www.snipca.com/35983) to increase prices by 3.9 per cent on top of the rate of inflation. The increase will be based on January 2021’s inflation rate, and kick in from 31 March. If the rate is 1.5 per cent, for instance, BT…

MICROSOFT FIXES FLAWS IN FLIGHT SIM 2020 Microsoft has released an update to Flight Simulator 2020 to fix problems with the first release, including crashing and difficulties installing the game. You should be updated to version 1.7.14.0 (or higher) the next time you relaunch it. However, if you continue to have problems, you’ll need to do a clean install of the game by following Microsoft’s advice at www.snipca.com/35940. Read our review on page 28. UK FALLS DOWN BROADBAND TABLE The UK has fallen 13 places to 47th in a survey of average broadband speeds around the world. Research from comparison site Cable.co.uk shows an average speed of 37.82Mbps, which also places it 22nd out of 29 countries in western Europe. Lichenstein has the world’s fastest speeds at nearly 230Mbps. See…

Build 5G masts so they suit the area I am in a fairly unique position compared with most of your readers because I’ve worked both in the mobile-phone industry and for local authorities in deciding upon applications for phone masts (‘Mobile firms: let us build 5G masts faster’, Issue 587, page 6). Over the years, I’ve seen planning regulations weaken in favour of the phone networks – and now it would appear they are going to be weakened even more. You could argue this is a weakening of the democratic process, where local people consider that masts are being imposed upon them, leaving them feeling ignored, powerless and without influence. However, we’ve all seen the benefits that good connectivity brings, especially in times of crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. The…

I must commend Dell for their after-sales service. I recently had a problem with my 12-year-old Dell XPS 420 PC (pictured). Everything on screen had become scrambled and unreadable. Nothing would cure the problem. I even deleted everything and downloaded a new copy of Windows 10. Even though my Dell warranty expired back in 2012, I was able to download its SupportAssist tool from its website (www.snipca.com/35818). Using this I was able to scan my PC. It found that the offender was a misconfigured USB, which I’ve now fixed. The PC is now working perfectly. The fault was mine, not Dell’s, but I think there’s every chance that my PC will last a further 12 years. Derek Dawson Has a company impressed you with its customer service? Please let us…

How can I extract files from my iPhone backups? Q I’m looking for software I can use to browse my iPhone backups saved through iTunes. I want to be able to extract files and messages from the backup file and save them to my PC. Tracy Ansel A If you only need to extract one or two specific files, try EaseUS MobiSaver Free (www.snipca.com/35846). You’ll need iTunes installed for it to work. Make sure you untick the ‘Participate in the Customer Experience Improvement Program’ option when prompted during installation to avoid sharing your user data, then launch MobiSaver Free and click the ‘Recover from iTunes’ button. On the right, you’ll see a list of all the iOS backup files stored on your PC. Select one, then click ‘Scan now’. When…

PC MONITOR | £187 from Amazon www.snipca.com/35905 Monitors made for offices rather than homes tend to be dull, and by that we mean both boring and with not particularly great picture quality. In the first respect, we can’t say this 24in model breaks the mould. In fact, you can just about see where they took the mould off the recycled plastic case. However, it has elegantly slim borders around three sides of the screen, and combined with the 24in format, that makes the whole thing compact enough for the smallest workspace. A practical monitor with near-perfect colour accuracy There’s something slightly depressing about the slight depression at the front of the stand, presumably intended as a handy receptacle for your whiteboard markers or spare change for colleagues’ sponsored swims. But…

Q At least 10 per cent of us are left-handed. Why, then, are almost all computer joysticks right-handed? And most aren’t even advertised as such. Could you recommend a basic joystick suitable for us lefties, for use with flight simulator programs, without spending silly money? David Allen A Depending on how you look at it, this might seem like a strange question. We all learn to drive with the car’s controls the same way round. Airline pilots learn both ways, swapping between the captain’s and first officer’s seats with mirrored controls. But we do sympathise: PC joysticks, like PC mice, tend to be sculpted to fit your right hand, with extra buttons positioned for your right thumb and fingers. If you prefer to use your left hand, they don’t make…

LAPTOP PRICE DROP Honor MagicBook 14 £500 from www.snipca.com/34688 Tested Issue 580 Using an AMD Ryzen 3500U processor, this lightweight metal laptop beat Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 3 with Intel’s i7-1065G7 in our tests. The 14in Full HD screen lacks colour accuracy but looks decent. For the money, it’s a great buy. ALTERNATIVE Dell XPS 13 New Intel CPUs and a taller screen make this a more powerful, all-round slim notebook, although prices now start at a steep £1,399. www.snipca.com/35349 ANDROID TABLET Samsung Galaxy S6 Lite £309 from www.snipca.com/35795 Tested Issue 582 Competing with Apple’s cheapest 10.2in iPad, this slim aluminium tablet comes with an S Pen stylus and a generous 64GB of storage at a reasonable price. It’s less powerful, but a great buy if you prefer Android. ALTERNATIVE Amazon…

Microsoft Money ✓ I know you can still install Microsoft Money in Windows 10, but the most recent version (Sunset Deluxe) hasn’t been updated for 10 years. What I use instead I treated the long, dull months of lockdown as a chance to learn another money-managing program that colleagues had recommended to me: HomeBank (http://homebank.free.fr). It’s a free tool, aimed more at home users than small businesses. Adding your accounts is simple. You just import a file, from which it takes the important details. What I need most are attractive charts that break down my expenses, and HomeBank does this in pie charts (see screenshot) and bar charts. You can see from the image that it doesn’t baffle you with too many options. Kedar Patel Tell us why you stopped…

Monopoly Poker Free* Android www.snipca.com/35858 iOS www.snipca.com/35857 This slick poker game lets you play online with up to four other players and gives you a generous stack of chips to get started. You can buy more if you want, but you’re given more chips every four hours if you want to play for free. Every player is on a timer, so games zip along, and as everything is virtual (there’s no real gambling) you won’t need to perfect your poker face. SwiftKey Free* iOS www.snipca.com/35860 Android www.snipca.com/35861 We’ve recommended SwiftKey several times, but that’s because it just keeps getting better. The latest update introduces the kind of cursor control that Apple has built into the default iOS keyboard. Hold down the space bar and, when the key caps disappear a…

Windows includes a hidden tablet mode that optimises your desktop for use on touchscreen laptops. Even if you don’t have a touchscreen laptop, you can give it a try (we find it works particularly well on laptops with small screens). First, open Settings (press the Windows key+I), then go to System and click the Tablet category followed by ‘Change additional tablet settings’. In the window that appears, click the ‘Tablet mode’ slider (see screenshot) to turn tablet mode on. You’ll notice that the Windows taskbar immediately changes, with more space between each icon. You’ll also see a new left-arrow button next to the Start button – you can click this to return to the window you were previously viewing (similar to switching between apps on a phone). All programs run…

Create shareable forms using Zoho Running a club involves communicating with members in a number of ways. Should you need answers to specific questions, then providing a form for them to fill in is probably the best solution. Forms can be used for other purposes too. Let’s say you manage a wildlife photography club and want to run a photo competition for members. You could create a form they can fill in with their contact details and use to upload their submission. Here we’ll explain how to use the excellent Zoho Forms (www.zoho.com/forms), which lets you create up to three customisable forms for free. If you need unlimited forms, as well as other features such as a payment system (so members can pay you for things), you can upgrade to…

Charities for the hard of hearing are asking YouTube to reconsider removing a tool that lets users add subtitles to videos uploaded by other people. YouTube wrote online (www.snipca.com/35982) that it will close its ‘Community captions’ tool on 28 September because “it’s rarely used and had problems with spam/abuse”. Action on Hearing Loss and the British Deaf Association called on YouTube to discuss the decision with the deaf community. Campaigners say YouTube hasn’t promoted the tool strongly enough, and that it’s too hard to find. The site, which is owned by Google, tried to ease concerns by saying that people who upload videos can still add their own captions, or ask YouTube to automatically add captions using speech-recognition software However, charities claim that auto-captioning tools are often inaccurate. The British…

Microsoft is working on an improved dictation tool that lets you ‘type’ with your voice, claiming it’s the most reliable ever for Windows. The new Voice Typing option is included in Build 20206 of Windows 10, available to users signed up to the Windows Insider Program (https://insider.windows.com). In its blog (www.snipca.com/35941), Microsoft said it lets you “type effortlessly with your voice wherever there’s a text field on your PC”. It has a “modern design” to make it work better with touchscreen keyboards, and also comes with ‘Auto-punctuation’ which automatically adds question marks and full stops as you speak. In addition, you can stop and start typing using your voice, rather than by clicking an icon, and also edit documents, including commands to delete or select certain parts of the text.…

What’s the threat? Hackers have created a new version of the deadly Emotet malware called Red Dawn that arrives in your inbox as a “protected document” and asks you to click a button to open it. The email has a Microsoft and Office 365 heading, making it look genuine. It tells you that previewing is not available for protected documents, and that you have to ‘press “ENABLE EDITING” and “ENABLE CONTENT” buttons to preview this content’. In the example shown, the white ‘Enable Content’ button is at the top of the message (see screenshot). Next to this button is a ‘SECURITY WARNING’ telling you that ‘Macros have been disabled’. A macro is a series of instructions that act as a single command in order to perform a task automatically, particularly…

LEAD CASE Can a German company refuse to refund me? Q On 23 July, I ordered DDR4 memory from a German website called Alternate (www.alternate. de). It should have been delivered by UPS on 28 July, but hasn’t arrived. Alternate wants me to sign an affidavit confirming that the memory hasn’t arrived, but will only offer me a replacement or credit note, not a refund of the £70.80. What are my legal rights? Are they different because I bought from a German site, not British? John Platt A At the moment, your rights for goods bought online are pretty much the same whether you’re buying from within the EU or the UK. In short, this means Alternate can’t fob John off with an unwanted replacement or credit note – it…

Find ancestors in old phone books The telephone directory no longer has pride of place in our hallways, but it’s still a useful resource for family historians because it provides exact street addresses for anyone who owned a phone and wasn’t ex-directory. If you’re wondering where your ancestors lived in the 20th century – particularly after World War 2 – then being able to thumb through old phone books is a must. Thanks to Ancestry’s (www.ancestry.co.uk) digitised collection of British phone books from 1880-1984, you don’t even need to leave your sofa. It’s available through Ancestry’s cheapest subscription, Key UK Census Records Only, which costs £10.99 per month, or £54.99 for six months. Find potential matches Once signed into your Ancestry subscription, go to www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/1025 where you’ll be able to…

At the turn of this century, I spent more hours than I care to recall digitising my entire CD collection. The MP3 revolution was in full swing, and I was determined to be part of it. A few years later, low-cost streaming services started to appear, and I wondered whether my heroic CD-ripping efforts were all for nothing. However, although I enjoy using Amazon Prime, which gives me access to over two million tracks, it doesn’t contain some of the more niche albums in my MP3 collection (instead it nags me to upgrade to its Music Unlimited service if I want to listen to them). I therefore still make regular use of my MP3 library, and thanks to a free tool called Plex I can access it from any device,…

What is it? Made by the sci-fi-sounding Guangzhou Puppy Robotics Beijing Branch, the Hachi Infinite M1 (pictured) is a short-throw portable projector. What sets it apart is its ability to project a tablet-like user interface, equivalent to a 23in screen, that you can interact with, tapping and dragging with your fingers on whatever surface it’s projected on to. Originally crowdfunded as the Puppy Cube, it’s now on sale at $999 (about £750 ex VAT, see www.snipca.com/35892). What does it do? It’s actually an Android 9 device, and although it doesn’t have access to the Google Play Store, an alternative app store, UpToDown, makes a lot of popular apps available. You can also browse the web. The ‘screen’ is projected on to any flat surface, with automatic straightening, and sensors detect…

SOFTWARE Check files are identical before backing up ✓ Until recently, I would’ve echoed Phil Hughes’ excellent advice (Readers’ Tips, Issue 586): make backups and update them regularly. Then reality stepped in. The demons of file corruption do not always raise a flag to say they’ve called. I suffered corruption in some of the music files in my master copy, then I overwrote my backups with the newly corrupted data. When I discovered the corruption, it was already too late. File corruption can’t be avoided. Even the most secure RAID array can suffer corruption, though it is less likely. So now, before I back up, I run a verification program to check that my files are as they should be. The verification software I use is Microsoft’s File Checksum Integrity…

Video Compress Free iOS www.snipca.com/35864 You can’t get simpler than this app: Video Compress has just one control – a single slider which lets you set the compression ratio as a percentage of the original. There’s a live estimate of the resulting file size, and you can preview it before processing. By default, it saves the processed file as an MP4, but you can change this to Apple’s QuickTime format in the settings if you prefer. Best For Simple compression Compress Videos & Resize Video Free iOS www.snipca.com/35863 This app works very quickly, shrinking videos to the resolution you specify, at the frame rate of your choice. A breeze to use, everything is controlled by a pair of sliders and, when it’s finished, it offers to delete the original, helping…

LIBREOFFICE WRITER Protect your documents LibreOffice 7 launched last month and, among other improvements (see Issue 588, page 18), it now has a new tool to prevent sections of your documents being deleted. Specifically, it stops anyone else changing your document’s fields (used to display the page number, date, time and so on) and bookmarks (both of which can be added via the Insert menu). To protect these elements, click the new Protect Document option within the Tools menu, then the Protect Fields and Protect Bookmarks options (see screenshot below). With both options selected, no one will be able to modify or delete any fields or bookmarks within your document, although they will be able to add new ones. Bear in mind it’s not a particularly secure feature (they only…

What are they? Right-click an icon on your Windows taskbar. See the menu of options that appears? That’s a jump list – so named because it ‘jumps’ from the icon (as in our main screenshot). However, according to one Google employee these lists don’t so much jump as stagger. Why’s that? They take far too long to pop up. Bruce Dawson, a developer on Chrome, has complained to Microsoft that there’s a delay of 200 to 250 milliseconds (ms) between the mouse button being pressed and the menu appearing. Isn’t that still very fast? Yes. One millisecond is a thousandth of a second, so 250 milliseconds is a quarter of a second. In everyday life, that feels fairly quick. But it’s still enough time for Usain Bolt to run 8.6…

If you’ve ever had the sneaking suspicion that you’re unwittingly paying for stuff you don’t need every month, then it might be time to carry out a subscription audit. Annoyingly, there’s no reliable way of automating this process. There are several apps and services that promise to track down your subscriptions for you, but these tend to involve linking to either your bank account (such as Truebill, www.truebill.com, pictured left or your email account (such as Outflow, http://outflowapp.com), neither of which we feel comfortable recommending. Most services of this type are US-only anyway while some, such as TrackMySubs (www.trackmysubs.com), charge their own subscription fees, which kind of defeats the point. Instead, you could start by checking your mobile device, which keeps a handy list of any services you’ve subscribed to…

Q I subscribe to your excellent magazine. I am 78 and log on to BBC News, at www.bbc.co.uk/news, every day. Unfortunately, the site includes stories from Radio 1 Newsbeat, which I don’t want. The BBC site is not helpful as to how to remove it. Can you help or otherwise suggest a plain UK news site? Phil Storry A We’re not terribly interested in what some Instagram ‘influencer’ might have had for breakfast this morning either, so we feel your pain. Unfortunately, though, where once the BBC allowed logged-in users to personalise the layout of what they’d see on their own Beeb home page, that feature was removed several years ago. The organisation did not explain why. As such, if you visit www.bbc.co. uk/news then you’re going to see whatever…

Q I sometimes see terms like latency, lag and ping and wonder what they mean. I think I understand that ping is how long it takes my router to send a signal to the internet, but I don’t really understand how this differs from latency and lag, or how any of these might affect my internet speeds. I suspect your experts would be good at explaining what’s what in simple terms. John Collier A You’re more or less correct in your thinking that ping describes the amount of time it takes for a signal from your computer to reach another somewhere else on the internet. It’s also the literal name of a command that performs this test. On a Windows PC, for example, you can use a Command Prompt window…

Is Firefox safe on an encrypted USB stick? Q Having read the ‘Keep Your USB Sticks 100 Per Cent Safe’ cover feature in Issue 585, I have a question regarding the security of files. If I download the portable version of Firefox to an encrypted USB stick, is that file safe from hackers and scammers while in use on my desktop PC? Or is it only the data stored on disk that is safe? Reg Jones A This is an interesting idea but we think you might be confusing different concepts. Let’s start with an encrypted USB stick, be it the whole stick or part of its total storage capacity that you’re using as an encrypted vault file. Anything you put on to this stick or in the vault file…

Sixteen English councils – plus Borderlands across the north of England and south of Scotland – have given £22.2m to the Government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme, meaning rural homes and businesses will be able to apply for more money to get faster speeds. Under the scheme, residents and business owners can apply for up to £1,500 and £3,500 respectively. This amount will increase in the areas given the extra ‘top up’ money. Dorset, for example, has given £1m, which increases the amount homes and businesses can apply for to £2,500 and £6,000 respectively. Kent County Council has pledged the most (£4.8m), followed by Borderlands (£4m) – see the full list at www.snipca.com/36008. The Government says the extra money will cover 250,000 premises. Councils in Wales have also said they’ll give…

TAKE SCREENSHOTS IN EDGE MORE EASILY You may soon be able to take screenshots of websites in Edge without having to use browser extensions. Microsoft is testing a ‘Web Capture’ tool in the Canary version of Edge (www.snipca.com/35964) which takes full or cropped screenshots that you can copy to your clipboard. Watch it being used at www.snipca.com/35963. MICROSOFT LAUNCHES FOLDING PHONE Microsoft has launched the Surface Duo folding phone (pictured below), though only in the US for now. Priced $1,399 (around £1,160), it’s a dual-screen device that adapts to how you want to use it. Hold it like a book and you can have two apps open side by side, one on each screen. It runs Android 10 with Microsoft 365 installed. Visit www.snipca.com/35984 for more details. TOMORROW’S WORLD It’s…

Microsoft has confirmed that from the end of December it will no longer release security updates for Adobe’s Flash plug-in in its Internet Explorer and Edge browsers. It will disable Flash by default from January and all versions older than KB4561600 released in June 2020 will be blocked. Adobe itself will stop supporting the plug-in at the end of the year, as websites move to more reliable and safer technologies like HTML5 and WebAssembly. Writing online (www.snipca.com/35945), Microsoft said it will soon release an update called ‘Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player’. Installing this permanently removes Flash as a part of software, such as browsers, that run on Windows computers. Adobe announced in 2017 (www.snipca.com/35946) that it would be discontinuing Flash at the end of 2020. Launched in 1996…

GET BT SPORT ON AMAZON FIRE & ROKU The BT Sport app is now available on Amazon Fire TV devices that support 4K, as well as on Android TV and Roku players. You can already access BT Sport on a range of other devices, including Samsung’s smart TV, Sky’s Now TV and Google Chromecast. Visit BT’s site for more details: at www.snipca.com/35962. ANDROID 11 STOPS APPS TRACKING YOU Google has released the 11th version of Android, though most phones and tablets will have to wait several months before getting it. It will have built-in screen-recording, and stops apps having perpetual access to your microphone, camera and location. Google says its Pixel devices will get Android 11 first, followed soon after by OnePlus, Xiaomi, Oppo and RealMe. Samsung, Huawei and LG…

BBC without news would lose its backbone I usually defend the BBC in debates with friends, who mostly think it’s out of date or biased. But even I wouldn’t be able to defend the idea of cutting two of the three daily news bulletins (‘Question of the Fortnight’, Issue 588, pictured). To me, news has always been the backbone of the BBC. Without regular bulletins, it would lose a vital part of its purpose. Add the three news programmes together and what do you get? It’s only 90 minutes, which is a fraction of the daily schedule. And what would they be replaced with? Yet more cookery and property programmes, no doubt. The good thing about having bulletins spread through the day is that they provide news for people who…

We’ve had so many cases recently about items not being delivered that we thought we should remind you what your rights are when this happens. What’s worrying is that many companies don’t realise it’s their responsibility to track down items that go missing. They have a duty to deliver your items, and so it logically (and legally) follows that they also have a duty to find it when it goes astray. They can’t simply shrug their shoulders and tell you to seek it. What’s more, you couldn’t get information about the delivery even if you wanted to because you don’t have a contract with the courier, only the retailer selling the items. If the goods haven’t arrived, they’ve never been in your possession, so you don’t own them. In effect,…

PHOTO EDITING PhotoDemon 8.0 https://photodemon.org What you need: Windows 7, 8/8.1 or 10 There’s certainly no shortage of excellent free image-editing programs out there – Paint.net and Gimp are among our longstanding favourites. But the lesser-known PhotoDemon distinguishes itself in a couple of interesting ways. Firstly, it’s open source, meaning not only is it free, but also anyone can download and amend its source code to suit their needs. Better still is the fact that PhotoDemon is a portable program, so you don’t need to install it on your PC; instead simply run it from a USB stick. Just download the ZIP file, then extract it and run the EXE file. Don’t worry if you see a Windows SmartScreen warning when you run the tool – the program is safe…

WARNING: JUNK AHEAD Junk offender: PDF Shaper Free On a recent search for a PDF converter (I needed to save a photo that was embedded in a PDF file), I came across PDF Shaper Free (www.pdfshaper.com). Version 10.3 has just been released, which promises – among other things – a new delete tool that removes selected items from PDF documents, and a new option to extract background images from PDFs. It sounded like just the thing I needed. Having never heard of PDF Shaper or its developer (BurnAware) before, I approached installation with my usual caution (regular readers will know that I always install new software in a sandbox tool or virtual PC before letting it anywhere near my ‘real’ computer). When I went through the installation process, I was…

MESH ROUTER | £228 from Amazon www.snipca.com/35883 As 802.11ax, or Wi-Fi 6, takes over from 802.11ac as the wireless networking standard, we’re seeing it incorporated into new smartphones and laptops without any rise in price. The same isn’t true of routers, the boxes that transmit and receive Wi-Fi around your house: Wi-Fi 6 versions still cost more. And when it comes to mesh systems, which use two or more units to spread wireless signals better over a wider area, we’ve seen only a few pricey options, like TP-Link’s Deco X60 (£400 from Topsmarthomes www.snipca.com/35885, see our review, Issue 588, page 26) and Netgear’s Orbi RBK852 (£706 from Amazon www.snipca.com/34246, see Issue 576, page 26). Selling at £228 for the two-unit set we’re testing here (one router plus one ‘satellite’) or…

TRACKING TAG | £20 from Vodafone www.snipca.com/35916 Bluetooth-tracking tags like Tile (from £15, Amazon www.snipca.com/33163, see our review, Issue 567, page 28) attach to your valuable portable possessions and report their presence to your smartphone – which can tell you where it last saw them – and to other nearby devices enrolled in the service, so the system can spot your lost tags using other people’s phones. It’s a great idea, but if you drop an item where nobody happens to pass by, it can’t let you know where it is. Vodafone’s Curve has built-in GPS and access to the mobile network, so it can constantly check its own location and tell you over the internet. You can also set it to alert you when it leaves a geofenced area…

ANDROID Protect sensitive files with Google Safe Folder If it fell into the wrong hands, your phone could leave you vulnerable to identity theft. Increasingly, we fill our smartphones with credit-card details, sensitive personal information, phone numbers we’d rather not share, and more. Codes and biometric login using thumbprints and facial recognition can help to keep it safe, but it’s always good to have a second level of protection. Google Safe Folder, which is rolling out gradually and will work on any phone running Android 8 or later, can help. It’s built into the free ‘Files by Google’ app. If this wasn’t pre-installed on your device, you can download it from www.snipca.com/35865. Even if you think you have it already, click that link and compare the app icon to the…

WINDOWS 10 Organise your day better Microsoft To Do is a useful Windows app that lets you jot down notes and to-do items. You can access it via your browser at https://to-do.microsoft.com, as well as use the Windows, Android and iOS apps (you’ll find links for these on the To Do website). The latest version of the Windows app gives you more options in the My Day section, which you can use to manage your to-do list for that day (click the My Day link in the top-left corner of the window to open it). In the sidebar on the right-hand side of the My Day section you can now add tasks for that day – simply click the ‘+’ button next to the suggested tasks. Scroll down and you…

Large tables in documents can be difficult to fit on a single page. You can try reducing the font size, but this may not stop it spilling over two or more pages. If this happens, you can make the table easier to read by reproducing the header row on each page. In Word, right-click the top row in your table, then select ‘Table properties…’ (if you want to set two or more rows as your header, make sure they’re all selected before right-clicking). Next, tick the ‘Repeat as header row at the top of each page’ box, followed by OK. In LibreOffice Writer, right-click anywhere within your table, then select the Text Flow tab and tick the ‘Repeat heading’ box. As with Word, you can create a header over multiple…

Technology firms call them ‘free trials’. Citizens Advice Bureau calls them ‘subscription traps’ (www.snipca.com/35974). Either way, it’s all too easy to find yourself agreeing to an expensive premium subscription, under the guise of taking up the offer of a time-limited freebie, which later morphs into an ongoing financial commitment with little or no warning. Even if you’ve knowingly signed up for a subscription and you’re happy to pay at the time, you may end up losing interest at some point and forget to cancel. But the service you’re subscribing to never forgets to take that money out of your account every month, and will happily continue doing so long after you’ve stopped using it. Many of us signed up for a lot of online services during lockdown, for example –…

Q I’ve had my iPad for a few years, and nothing causes me any bother. However, recently I found that the BBC News website seems to have hijacked my browser. I use BBC News a lot but, the other day, I wanted to explore alternatives. I typed ‘news’ into the search bar and tapped Go and BBC News appeared! I tried again, and the same thing happened. It seems I can’t search for other news sources now. Is this some sneaky trick to keep me locked into BBC News? I need simple instructions, please! Esme Fuller A We’re sure the BBC would prefer you not to go elsewhere but this isn’t some underhand move by the Beeb. Rather, it’s because of a feature called Safari Suggestions. With this enabled –…

1080p Of the common types of high-definition video, this is the best quality: 1920x1080 pixels. 32bit/64bit A measure of how much data a PC can process at once. Most older computers are 32bit, more modern ones are 64bit. 4K Video with a resolution of at least 3840x2160 pixels. 6K Video with a horizontal resolution of 6144x3160 pixels. 802.11ac A standard for wireless networks that allows for much higher transfer speeds than 802.11n. 802.11ax Wi-Fi standard with speeds up to 10 times faster than 802.11ac. Also called Wi-Fi 6. Add-on A program that adds extra features to your browser. Augmented reality Lets you view the real world on a digital display and add elements from the digital world. Backhaul The process of sending data to a wired access point to reach…