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I thought I looked so cool with my Nokia N90 phone back in 2006. It had a flip-out screen for recording video (see www.snipca.com/51389), making me feel like a cross between Buck Rogers and Steven Spielberg. In reality, it was an expensive monstrosity, soon to be outshone by every phone made in the next few years. I remembered that unfortunate purchase while reading Robert Irvine’s Cover Feature on the best free apps for your videos, music and photos. I was happy back then to capture a grainy 30-second clip. Now you can record at 4K, add special effects and enhance using AI. Similarly, music apps have improved to let you remove background noise and fade tracks, while photo apps now have a range of lenses and advanced filters. We’ve come…

Emergency services are asking people to download the What3Words phone app over the summer holidays so they can be found should they get into trouble. What3Words works by dividing the world into three-metre squares and giving each a unique combination of three random words. For example, Stonehenge visitor centre is ‘trifling. branch.fresh’, the Angel of the North statue is ‘penned. handicaps.nearly’, and the Giant’s Causeway is ‘operation.races.carriage’. Quoting these words to the emergency services can pinpoint your location more accurately when you’re in a remote area, or you can’t see which street you’re on. To use the app, install it by searching on the Google Play or Apple App stores, or by clicking the links at www.snipca.com/51370. Open it, allow it to access your device’s location, then create an account.…

‘Invalid’ Amazon Prime payment I signed up to Amazon Prime last year because the savings I’d make from delivery would easily outstrip the £95 annual cost. So when I received an email saying my payment details were “invalid”, I took notice. But then I noticed something odd. It claimed my annual membership was due for renewal, but I knew that couldn’t be correct because I initially signed up in November last year. The email read: “To update the default payment method or choose a new one for your membership, please click on the button below and follow the on-screen instructions”. It came from the ‘Amazon Prime Team’. Warn your fellow readers about scams at letters@computeractive.co.uk…

Do I need to convince HP my printer is faulty? LEAD CASE Q Early in April 2024, I bought an HP Smart Tank 7005e all-in-one printer (pictured) directly from HP’s website for £199.99. I have a massive project underway involving the printing of over 1,100 pages of mostly black-and-white web screenshots with a royal blue band. However, the band’s colour is washed out and appears pink/lilac. Other colours are also washed out. HP is refusing to believe there’s a problem. Can you help? Alan Ingrey A We’ll try. While Alan admits he’s been doing a lot of printing, the coloured ink tanks have not been heavily used. For them to produce faded colours in the first few pages suggests something is wrong. It’s impossible for us to know whether the…

Can I remove scratches from negatives? Q I’ve digitised hundreds of negatives from 35 years ago, but is there an AI-supported image software package that will remove scratches and enhance them? Nothing I’ve looked at does what I want. Ken Nellist A The best tool for this job is the full version of Photoshop (www.snipca.com/51068). You can download a seven-day trial to see how its powerful Photo Restoration tool works, but you’ll be prompted to sign up with payment details for a subscription (£9.98 for the first three months, then £21.98 a month). Make sure you cancel before the trial expires. Open your image in Photoshop, then open the Filter menu and choose ‘Neural Filters…’. A new panel will open on the right – select Photo Restoration at the bottom…

Q I am planning to replace my ageing desktop PC and the Palicomp AMD Cobra (£400 from Palicomp at www.snipca.com/43515, pictured – see page 30) seems an absolute bargain and meets my budget. As it has been your favourite for some time, I was wondering – is it still a decent option and can it be upgraded to Windows 12 if and when it arrives? Neil Howells A The Palicomp AMD Cobra was launched at the end of 2022, so it has been around for a while. Also, its AMD Ryzen 5 5600G processor is slower than AMD’s latest chips, so the Cobra’s performance will lag behind PCs launched this year. However, the latest processors rarely come in £400 desktop PCs, and the Cobra remains perfectly capable of running standard…

Winner of a Recommended award in Issue 686 (page 28), Majority’s Bluetooth MP3 Player is a cutting-edge device designed for the ultimate music experience on the go. It amplifies the richness and depth of your music, helping you to immerse yourself in every intricate note. It comes with premium wired earphones, or you can connect wirelesssly to your own Bluetooth headphones. It weighs just 33 grams, has a sports clip for convenience and has a playtime of 34 hours. 16GB of storage is included, letting you save up to 4,000 songs, but you can expand this to 128GB by buying an SD card. Charge it and transfer music through USB-C, then smoothly navigate your library with the 1.9in HD colour screen. You can also record audio notes, use a stopwatch…

Email us your tips: letters@computeractive.co.uk TIP OF THE FORTNIGHT Bookmark cities in Weawow weather app I took your advice and switched from the BBC’s inadequate weather app to Weawow (Android www.snipca.com/51027; iOS www.snipca.com/51028). I like its design and accuracy, and have bookmarked five cities that I travel to regularly. To do this, tap the search magnifying-glass icon at the top right, then search for a location in the bar above the map. Tap to choose the correct entry from the dropdown menu (there will probably be lots of destinations from outside the UK). You’ll then be shown the weather there. Now tap the magnifying-glass icon again and you’ll see what you searched for in the ‘Search history’. Tap the blue plus sign next to it (1 in our screenshot) and…

WINDOWS 11 INSIDER Access jump lists in the Start menu Microsoft is adding Windows 10’s jump lists to Windows 11. These let you access recent files for each program you’ve pinned to the Start menu when you right-click their icon in the taskbar. In our example, we’ve clicked the Windows icon bottom left, followed by the PowerPoint icon in the Start menu to bring up recent presentations (see screenshot below). These jump lists are available to Windows Insiders in the Beta channel running the Preview Build 22635.3785, and will hopefully be added to the final version of Windows 11 soon. WINDOWS 10 & 11 Rename multiple files with random characters Version 0.82 of Microsoft’s PowerToys improves the PowerRename tool to let you rename files with random characters. This would be…

Video Editor & Video Maker This app is not only stuffed with ads and in-app purchases, but may also steal your data. Its Chinese developer, Coocent, was last year accused of exploiting device permissions to spy on its users (see www.snipca.com/51330). Video Lite for Android The iOS version of this app (www.snipca.com/51288) lets you watch YouTube videos without ads, but – because Google doesn’t allow YouTube ad blockers in the Play Store – the Android version doesn’t, even if you pay for a subscription. Audio Editor – Ringtone Maker As mentioned on page 53, ringtone makers are among the most junk-filled apps and this is one of the worst. It’s slow, full of trackers and has a hard-to-read interface, and to remove its ads you need to pay a ridiculous…

Delete messages from your iPhone or iPad Tech giants often reinterpret what words mean, confusing us mere mortals in the process. Apple’s use of ‘Delete’ is a case in point. You can delete a message from your iPhone/iPad by opening the Messages app, long-pressing a message’s bubble or attachment, then tapping More. You then need to select what you want to remove, and tap the bin (Delete) icon. You can also wipe a whole conversation by going to the ‘Messages conversation’ list on your device, then either swiping left on the conversation and tapping the bin, or long-pressing it and tapping Delete. To remove multiple conversations, tap Edit top left, then the More button (three horizontal dots) top right. Now tap Select Messages, choose the conversations you want to delete,…

Currys has given reader David Wirth a partial refund for insurance he forgot he was paying (see Issue 688). He signed up for the company’s Whatever Happens plan 10 years ago after buying an HP laptop, paying £7.99 a month. He estimated he has paid £800 since then, and was annoyed Currys hadn’t reminded him he was still signed up to the scheme. We took his case to Currys, which agreed to give him £462 back. It didn’t have to refund him in full, so we think this is a decent outcome. Companies must send customers reminders that their subscription is set to be renewed, but it would have been hard – if not impossible – for David to prove he hadn’t received these from Currys. Also, customers do bear…

IMAGE EDITOR PhotoDemon 2024.7 www.snipca.com/51394 What you need: Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 There are lots of excellent free image-editing programs for keen photographers who can’t afford Adobe Photoshop, but some – such as GIMP – have so many options that they take a while to master. PhotoDemon provides the perfect balance between expert features and simplicity, with an intuitive interface that makes all its tools easy to access. Version 2024.7 – the first to be named after its release date – expands and improves the program with several useful new features. These include the ability to import PDFs as images, so you can edit them in PhotoDemon. This lets you add annotations and highlights; change the background colour and transparency; crop and resize the document; and make other…

SOFTWARE WARNING! MyCleanPC’s pop-ups and ‘expert’ chat windows My first mistake was leaving my annual PC spring-clean so late this year that it became a summer-clean. My second was searching on Google for a program to do the job. Top of the results was an advert for a Mac cleaner – no use to me. Next was an ad for a Windows tool called MyCleanPC (see screenshot right), which sounded familiar – though I couldn’t remember whether it was meant to be any good. I took a chance and downloaded it – cue my third mistake. It buried my desktop under an avalanche of pop-ups, then opened a web page promoting a paid-for subscription (1 in our screenshot right). It also showed two chat windows in which “experts” Kevin and…

What are they? Copilot+ (www.snipca.com/51226) is a new initiative from Microsoft that specifies a PC configuration that’s designed to get the most from new Windows features. A Copilot+ PC must have a processor with a built-in NPU (neural processing unit) that’s capable of at least 40 TOPS (trillions of operations per second). It also needs at least 16GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. How do they work? An NPU is a separate core built into a processor that performs simple instructions at phenomenal speeds. It’s a bit like how a GPU helps a processor by doing the hard work needed to render 3D graphics on screen – only here it’s all about doing AI-based tasks. What are the specs? At the moment the only processor with an NPU powerful enough…

What is it? Philips has launched the 5000 Series Smart Deadbolt (www.snipca.com/51254, pictured) – a smart lock that can be fitted to a door in place of a regular lock. What does it do? There are a number of ways it can unlock a door, but the most interesting is that you can wave your hand in front of the sensor on the lock and it will open for anyone it recognises. This works by scanning the veins in your hand. You can also set schedules, so certain people can only access at specific times and set it to open with a PIN code or by using the Philips Home phone app. What’s the catch? At the moment it’s only available in the US, where it costs $360 (£280). So…

What you need: Darktable Time required: One hour When you tweak a photo in a standard image editor, you can easily undo any mistakes – but only if you haven’t saved and closed it. As soon as you do, those changes are baked in, and the next time you open it you’ll only be able to apply edits on top of the changes you made last time. Do this too many times, and you’ll probably end up with a worse picture than you started with. The alternative is non-destructive editing. Here’s how it works. I’m writing this in my south-facing office on a scorching day in June. It’s hot and bright and I can’t work elsewhere in my home. How could I make things more comfortable? Well, I could remove…

FIREFOX Delete your browsing data more easily Firefox has several privacy features that Chrome lacks, including Enhanced Tracking Protection, which automatically blocks hidden trackers, and Total Cookie Protection, which stops cookies following you from site to site. However, it’s long offered only basic and disparate options for clearing your cookies and site data, cached web content and browsing history. Version 128 of the browser, released 9 July, addresses this weakness by introducing more sophisticated controls for deleting your browsing data. It brings all the settings together in one place, and – like Chrome – lets you choose to only clear data from a specific time range. To access the improved options, click Firefox’s three-line menu button and choose Settings then ‘Privacy & Security’. Scroll down to the ‘Cookies and Site…

MICROSOFT EXCEL Show minimum and maximum values in bar charts You can use colours in Excel bar charts to highlight the highest and lowest values. First, enter your data into a table and create three additional columns with the headings Maximum, Minimum and Other. In our example, we typed =IF(B5=MAX($B$5:$B$11),B5,"") in cell C5, which is in the Maximum column. This checks whether cell B5 shows the highest temperature in the range B5 to B11. If so, the maximum will appear in C5. If not, it will be left blank. We then repeated this in cell C6, changing B5 at the end and beginning to B6 (for example, =IF(B6=MAX($B$5:$B$11),B6,""), and so on down column C. We did the same in the D column (Minimum), changing MAX to MIN (for example, =IF(B5=MIN($B$5:$B$11),B5,"").…

Over the past 20 years, smartphones and tablets have gradually replaced standalone cameras and audio recorders. After all, why carry around three gadgets when one does everything you need and fits snugly into your pocket? As the quality of phone cameras and microphones has increased, so has the number of apps designed to help you make the most of your mobile device’s capabilities. This is particularly true of photo, music and video tools, which are now among the most popular in the Google Play and Apple App stores. Last October, consumer-insights company Statista reported that four in 10 of us regularly use photo-editing apps (www.snipca.com/51337) – way ahead of news, fitness and dating apps. However, for every good app, there are thousands of awful ones that are more interested in…

We don’t have much sympathy for an unnamed UK man who is suing Apple for not completely deleting messages he sent to prostitutes (see Issue 687, page 8). He wiped them from his iPhone, but didn’t realise Apple’s ‘iCloud for Messages’ automatically syncs them with other Apple devices. This means anyone else can read them if they’re signed in with the same Apple ID. So his wife got a terrible shock when she signed into the family iMac and read his messages. It led to a £5m divorce, which is the amount he wants Apple to pay him in compensation. But you don’t have to be a cheating husband to want to stop Apple syncing your messages. There are more wholesome reasons, such as removing messages relating to presents or…

1080p High-definition video: 1920x1080 pixels. 3G/4G/5G Technologies that deliver faster mobile broadband. 4K Video with a resolution of at least 3840x2160 pixels. 8K Video with a resolution of 7680x4320 pixels. Currently the highest resolution available. AI Artificial intelligence. Intelligence demonstrated by a machine rather than a human being. ARC Audio return channel. A feature on TVs that lets audio signals travel both to and from the TV via a single HDMI cable. ARM Advanced RISC Machine. Processors that are more energy-efficient and used in more devices than those made by AMD and Intel. Aspect ratio A measurement of the shape of a screen. Traditional PC screens are 4:3. Widescreen displays are 16:9 or 16:10. AVI Audio Video Interleave. A type of video file. AVI is known as a container format,…

Thankfully, nothing too serious. Just made sure I had lots of change because my local Wetherspoon wasn’t taking card payments. Simon Grenville Couldn’t transfer money from my bank. George Hill Had flight from Edinburgh to London cancelled. Tried to book a train, but they were cancelled too. Mick Bradley I was due to go to Brighton, but seeing that the trains were delayed, and that shops would be unable to take any payments, I cancelled it. Gavin Green Unable to order repeat medication. Derek Johnson Web pages unavailable, unable to save documents, and email delays. Sandie Forshaw…

PLAY YOUTUBE APP ON EE TV BOXES EE has finally added the YouTube app to its TV Box Pro and TV Box Mini (pictured below), years after it appeared on rival devices. It sits in the Featured Apps menu, alongside streaming services including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+. It was already available to EE customers signed up to the Apple TV 4K bundle. USE MICROSOFT DESIGNER WINDOWS APP Microsoft has released its Designer tool as a downloadable app for Windows, Android and iOS. Sign in with a Microsoft account and you can use it to create designs such as posters, flyers and postcards from scratch, or by asking it to generate AI images. Previously, it was available online only at www.snipca.com/51426. Read Microsoft’s blog for more details (www.snipca.com/51400)…

WATCH OUT FOR… Fake celebrity pages on Facebook What’s the threat? Scammers are creating fake Facebook pages for celebrities to steal money from unsuspecting fans. In one recent example, a woman from Felixstowe, Suffolk, lost money after a page asked her to buy two £100 Apple gift cards to become an “official fan” of US actor Kevin Costner. Eileen Leeks, 63, told the BBC that the page said she’d have a chance of meeting Costner if she bought the gift cards. She was then told she had been scammed and would actually have to buy a VIP membership card for over £1,000 to meet him. “I thought you’re joking – he’s a millionaire,” she said. She later received a video call from someone who claimed to be Costner. However, the…

I was pleased to read that mobile coverage in rural areas is improving (‘Question of the Fortnight’, Issue 688), but we should be aware that not every inch of the countryside needs to be plastered with phone masts. I live near Beacon Fell Country Park, north of Preston, Lancashire. Like many residents, I was horrified to read about plans by telecoms firm Cornerstone to erect a tower in the middle of this beautiful area. It would have been taller than the trees surrounding it, and some would have needed chopping down. Photos of the proposed mast showed no effort had been made to make it blend in with the environment. Thankfully, locals campaigned against this, and Preston City Council rejected planning permission earlier this year. The irony is that mobile…

Having been happy with my own computer that I’d bought from Quiet PC, when it came to upgrading my wife’s machine I had no hesitation in ordering again from the company. Unfortunately, after eight months it went into a ‘Creating automatic repair’ loop that I couldn’t resolve. I contacted Quiet PC and they sent instructions as to how I should use the recovery USB drive that came with the system. Sadly, that didn’t work so they said I should send it back. Alas, I had junked the original box and packaging, but Quiet PC sent a large box, complete with packaging, which arrived the next day. A day later they’d arranged for its collection, and it was back in my house working fine a few days after that. I was…

Hasleo WinToUSB Professional www.snipca.com/51381 Price: £28.95 Free trial: N/A What you need: Windows 10 or 11 Hasleo WinToUSB lets you install a fully functional version of Windows on a USB stick, so you can carry it around with you and boot it on any PC. Unlike rival tools for this purpose, it’s straightforward to use and offers free and paid-for editions. From the home screen, you can either clone your current Windows installation to a USB stick using ‘Windows To Go’ (see screenshot), download an official ISO file from Microsoft or use a system-image file from another source – such as one created using Hasleo’s own free Backup Suite (www.snipca.com/51384). Simply select the installation source and the destination drive (or the save location if you’re downloading an ISO), and specify…

Most eBay sellers are content making a few bob flogging unwanted books, clothes or gadgets. Not so Heidi Bucknall. She organised charity trips for sick children to theme parks across the East Midlands, then sold the tickets online to the highest bidder. The 32-year-old from Bestwood, Nottingham, made around £30,000 between 2015 and 2021, receiving payments in a PayPal account belonging to one of her relatives. She was only caught when one of the companies donating the tickets spotted them for sale. Bucknall is now serving two years and four months in jail. The charity she worked for, PASIC (Parents Association for Seriously Ill Children), said it has put checks in place to avoid similar fraud in future.…

ANDROID & iOS Create events in WhatsApp group chats WhatsApp has added the option to create events in group chats, so you can plan meetings, parties and other get-togethers with the people you’re talking to. Previously, this feature was limited to WhatsApp community groups, though it’s long been available from WhatsApp’s Meta stablemate, Facebook. To create an event in a group chat (it’s not possible in one-to-one conversations), tap the paper-clip (in Android) or plus- sign (in iOS) button in the message box, and choose Event in the panel that opens. Enter a name for the event, the proposed date, time and location (see screenshot below), and an optional description. If it’s a virtual event, you can also add a call link. Tap the Send button to share your event…

The popularity of video, music and photo apps makes them especially lucrative for advertising and marketing companies – through hidden trackers. Many apps we tested for this feature showed the same privacy pop-up, asking for consent to share our data with nearly 200 ‘vendors’ and ad partners. Although some had a ‘Do not consent’ button, others didn’t, hoping we’d tap Consent just to close the pop-up and access the app. Instead, you should always choose ‘Manage options’ and switch off every setting that shares your data with third parties. This won’t prevent ads, but it will stop them being personalised based on your interests. You can block trackers in apps using the App Tracking Protection feature in the DuckDuckGo Private Browser for Android (www.snipca.com/50131). Switch this on in the browser’s…

Email us your problem and we’ll try to help: noproblem@computeractive.co.uk PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT Will I need to pay for a new landline? Q We got rid of Virgin TV because it was expensive, and the TiVo box that came with it was difficult to use. We still have a Virgin phone line, but we get our internet through a mobile-broadband setup, which is both cheap and convenient. Does this mean that when the copper phone network is switched off, we’ll need a separate router and subscription just to have a landline? On another subject, several websites, mostly in the US, display errors when I try to access them. The Internet Archive (https://archive.org) is one example. I think it started when I switched my antivirus software from Kaspersky to Norton,…

Since I cancelled my subscriptions to Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, following the introduction of their ‘pay to watch with ads’ and ‘pay even more to watch without ads’ plans, I’ve spent a lot of time moaning that there’s never anything good on (free) TV. If it wasn’t for the Freeview channels That’s TV and ‘Great! TV’ showing classic series from yesteryear, there’d be very slim pickings among the endless antiques, cookery and property shows that dominate the electronic programme guide. “Would Google be fooled by my change in location, from Hampshire to Texas?” So I was intrigued to read that Google recently added 10 new – and free – channels to its Google TV platform for smart TVs and ‘Chromecast with Google TV’ dongle (www.snipca.com/51218). This means you can…