Indice dei contenuti per 582 in Computeractive

In many ways I was severely unprepared for lockdown. Foolishly, I had lacked the foresight to win the Lottery and buy a 30-room mansion complete with hi-tech school, low-cost supermarket and my own panic room for when the kids start recreating Lord of the Flies in the garden. But at least I had a fast NAS drive keeping me connected as I hopped from laptop to PC to phone. When I bought the Synology DS218 last year, I thought I’d mostly use it for streaming video. Then lockdown happened, our offices closed, and the NAS became my editorial nerve centre, providing easy access to every page as it was written, designed and edited. We’ve now published six issues from home. I don’t want to think how harder it would’ve been…

Google has released an app that places a two-metre ring around you on your phone screen, helping you maintain social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic. The Sodar app, available for Android devices only, uses augmented reality to overlay a two-metre ring on top of the real world, as seen through your phone’s camera To use it, you’ll need the ‘Google Play Services for AR’ app on your phone. Many modern Android phones come with this app, but if yours doesn’t you can install it from www.snipca.com/35062. Next, open Chrome on your phone (it doesn’t work on other browsers), then visit https://sodar.withgoogle.com and tap the green Launch button. You can also visit the site by typing it into Chrome on your computer, then scanning its QR Code using your phone. Once you’re…

Microsoft has teamed up with Google to build a new spellcheck tool for both the Edge and Chrome browsers. Developers from the two companies worked together to build Windows Spellcheck, which recognises more words than the previous spellchecking tool used by the browsers (called Hunspell). In its blog (www.snipca.com/34988), Microsoft gives some examples of words that weren’t recognised by Hunspell, but are by Windows Spellcheck. This includes web addresses (https://bing.com), acronyms (Covid-19, see screenshot) and abbreviations (TBH, TBD). Windows Spellcheck can run in all browsers that are built using Google’s Chromium source code, which includes Opera and Vivaldi as well as Chrome and Edge. It’s turned on by default in version 83 of Edge, released in May, for computers running Windows 8.1 and 10. It’s not turned on yet in…

Beware ‘self-employed grant’ email I’m self-employed, so I applied for the Government’s grant during lockdown. A couple of days later I received an email saying it had been approved, and asking me to download a form. It seemed odd to me that my application would be approved so quickly, so I took a closer look. The sender’s address looked suspicious (hmrcs@hm.com), as did the subject line (‘You have a grant for 2988GBP’). I did a little research online, and found that other people had received similar emails and it had been confirmed as a scam. This example is similar to what I received: www.snipca.com/34944. Warn your fellow readers about scams at letters@computeractive.co.uk…

Judging by the number of complaints being received by the Competitions and Mergers Authority (CMA), a number of companies are using lockdown as an excuse to ignore your consumer rights. Customers have reported companies about rip-off prices, difficulties getting a refund, or finding it hard to cancel a service. In response, the CMA has set up a COVID-19 Taskforce for consumers to report a company acting unfairly in recent months. To complain, visit www.snipca.com/34940, click ‘Start now’, then choose the reason you’re reporting a company. If you can’t see your reason listed, choose ‘Other unfair behaviour’ at the bottom. Write your account in the next box, making sure you don’t reveal any personal or financial information, such as your credit-card details, then follow the rest of the process. The CMA…

AUDIO EDITOR Audacity 2.4.1 www.snipca.com/35046 What you’ll need: Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 Small, powerful and loaded with features, Audacity is by some distance our favourite audio-editing tool. Like most software, however, it’s not immune to bugs. Hours after releasing version 2.4 last month, the developers had to pull it following the discovery of a bug that corrupted audio when you had more than one Audacity window open. Impressively, version 2.4.1 (select the Audacity Windows Installer option at the URL above) was released just two days later, fixing the bug and delivering the new features promised by its short-lived predecessor. The most noticeable of these features is the larger track position indicator at the bottom right of the window (you can resize this or even undock it from the toolbar…

Ryzen fast It may not have the cute jingle, but some estimates reckon nearly half the PCs being sold now have processors from AMD, not Intel, inside. As we’ve seen in recent reviews, Intel’s latest 10th-generation processors for laptops are so dedicated to energy efficiency that their speed for many purposes has actually gone down rather than up. AMD’s new Ryzen 4000 series takes the opportunity to race ahead, bringing portable performance much closer to the equivalent desktop PC components. One of the fastest laptops you can buy, as long as you can live with its dull screen Asus has chosen the eight-core Ryzen 7 4800H for this model, and paired it with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2060 GPU – another chip that manages to deliver most of the power you’d…

Dolby On Free iOS www.snipca.com/35036 Android www.snipca.com/35037 This free recording and editing tool from one of the biggest names in high-fidelity audio will help you make high-quality recordings with your phone. This is a great option for anyone who wants to record a podcast or simply an audio log of their memories. It also includes a range of editing and enhancement tools that will help you craft a truly polished result. Google Authenticator Free iOS www.snipca.com/35034 Android www.snipca.com/35035 The new version of Google’s tool for securing your Google account and other accounts that support two factor authentication now is available for iPad users, while the Android version now has the ability to transfer data between devices, so you can continue to use it with existing accounts when you buy a…

One reason we love Command Prompt (click Start, type cmd then press Enter) is that you can tweak each command so that it works exactly as you want. To do this, you need to type switches (one or more letters preceded by a forward slash) after whatever command you’re running. For example, to see the contents of a directory, you would simply type dir, then press Enter. But if you just want to see the name of each file but no other information (such as each file’s size), add the ‘b’ switch, which means typing dir /b. And if you’re dealing with a directory containing multiple files, the ‘d’ switch (type dir /d) will show the files in columns, letting you see more of them without having to scroll up…

Set up an online survey Online surveys are commonly used by businesses and organisations to find out more about their customers and members. Because it’s so easy to use, SurveyMonkey has become one of the most popular online-survey tools. And while it’s primarily aimed at business users, there’s nothing to stop anyone who runs a local club making use of it – for example, to get feedback from new members or to find out how a recent event was received. Create your survey To get started, create a free SurveyMonkey account at www.snipca.com/35022 (the Basic plan is free but has some restrictions, which we’ll explain later). Once you’ve logged in, click the Create Survey button (top right). If you want SurveyMonkey to help you build your questionnaire, select the ‘Build…

NAS devices use RAID to combine two or more drives into a single-storage volume, while reserving some capacity on each drive to store backup copies from the other drives. This is known as data redundancy and means that if one drive fails, all your data will remain intact. The drawback of this system is that you’ll lose a certain amount of overall storage capacity. When you set up your NAS, you’ll usually be asked what type of volume you want to create – it’s here that you can choose from the several RAID modes. RAID 1, for example, requires at least two drives and effectively mirrors the contents of one drive on the other. RAID 5, on the other hand, requires three or more drives and spreads what’s known as…

Upgrading my laptop’s hard drive and memory made it noticeably faster, but I was curious to find out exactly by how much. Before carrying out the upgrades, I ran the free benchmarking tool Novabench (www.novabench.com). This returned an overall score of 327 (200 in the CPU test, 107 for RAM and 20 for the hard drive, while the integrated graphics refused to run the GPU test). Upgrading just the memory boosted the RAM score to 149, while the other test scores remained the same. However, the SSD upgrade boosted the Disk score to 52 and got my laptop to run the GPU test for the first time, with a score of 99. This pushed the overall score to 501 (see screenshot) - a 53 per cent increase on my original…

Why are my film scans blue? Q I’ve been wondering what to do with the many film negatives I’ve collected over more than 40 years, so I was pleased to see your Workshop in Issue 576 about using Kodak Mobile Film Scanner and a smartphone to digitise old negatives. I downloaded the app and tried it, but nearly all my scans have a blue cast, some very strong – even with the adjustment slider fully to the left. Further editing in Photoshop Elements helps, but it’s a process of trial and error. I’m using a small LED light panel as a back light and my Samsung A3 2017 phone, which otherwise does a pretty good job. Am I missing something? Andrew Herbert A We don’t think so. We did warn…

ZOOM ENCRYPTS CALLS? IF THEY’RE PAID FO Zoom is adding end-to-end encryption to video calls, but only for paid-for accounts. This kind of encryption means nobody outside the video call will ever be able to access it. The company said it won’t add this to free calls because it wants to work with local police forces “in case some people use Zoom for a bad purpose”. This would help police seeking evidence for a crime. WATCH SHOWS WITH OTHERS ON PLEX You can now watch videos on the media player Plex at the same time as other people. Its new Watch Together feature works in the ‘Movies & TV’ streaming service, as well as with any personal videos you have saved on the Plex Media Server. Plex says it’ll remain…

My daughter had a small laptop, so I thought I would treat her to an Acer C22-960 All-in-One PC, which has a 21.5in screen. I thought it would be a great help to her as she spent lockdown with her family. I bought it from Currys’ website (www.snipca.com/34937, pictured) on Friday 1 May at 2pm, and it arrived by DPD the next day at 1pm. I think this is a first-class service, considering it came from Currys’ warehouse up country, not in Cornwall where we live. Over the years I’ve bought two laptops and three All-in-Ones (screen sizes 21in, 24in and 27in) from their Truro store, and always found their staff helpful. Tony Martin Contact Currys PC World Coronavirus update www.snipca.com/34941 Phone 0344 561 1234…

How often do you take a photo of a piece of text with the intention of reading it later? Whether it’s a notice in a shop window, a newspaper article or a list of instructions, next time try using Google Keep instead of your phone’s camera app (download Keep for Android or iOS at www.google.com/keep). Not only will this mean those images won’t clutter your phone’s photo gallery, but they’ll also be much easier to find at a later date. I primarily use Keep to store digital copies of my receipts. Capturing them is easy enough. I open Keep, tap the photo button at the bottom (see screenshot right), then select ‘Take photo’ and point my phone at the receipt. What’s really impressive is that Keep performs optical character recognition…

Plain sight This is the first monitor we’ve seen with a lizard-skin finish and a triangular screen. Got your attention, didn’t it? This is how tech marketing works: add a pointless new feature, put it in the blurb and wait for the money to roll in. We’re kidding, of course. That’s not, in fact, what AOC have done here. They’ve just made a basic monitor with nothing special about it, and it’s great. Exceptional colour accuracy and wide angle viewing The matt black plastic case has an elegantly simple curved back, partly achieved by leaving out the power transformer, which comes in a mains adapter brick. This will only be annoying if you lose it. On the front, there’s a narrow bezel around the top, left and right, with just…

MUSIC Rename your MP3s in seconds Like Will Stapley, I use Mp3tag (Issue 580, page 20, www.mp3tag. de/en) to organise my digital music collection. One thing he didn’t mention is that Mp3tag is great if you want to rename your MP3s. Years of digitising CDs and vinyl records left me with a large but inconsistently named collection of MP3s. Some used only the song title, while others were a combination of the song, album and artist’s name. Mp3tag sorted this out for me in seconds. I pressed Ctrl+A to select all my tracks, then selected ‘Tag - Filename’ from the Convert menu. In the window that opens, you can choose how you want your MP3 files named based on their tags. I wanted to name my files using a ‘track…

Touchnote Free iOS www.snipca.com/35039 Android www.snipca.com/35040 Finding a postcard that perfectly encapsulates a great holiday can be difficult. Touchnote lets you put one of your own photos from your phone’s camera roll on the front of the card and write your greeting on the back. Touchnote also handles the printing, applying postage and sending the card, for you, so you don’t need to learn the word for ‘stamp’ wherever you happen to be on holiday. Postcards cost between £1.39 and £2.60 including postage depending on whether you’re buying them individually or signed up to a plan. Best For Sending holiday postcards Moonpig Free iOS www.snipca.com/35043 Android www.snipca.com/35044 This easy-to-use personalised cards service also lets you send presents like chocolates and flowers, which is handy if you don’t have the time…

LIBREOFFICE CALC Compress images in Calc Adding images to spreadsheets can liven up what is otherwise a daunting deluge of data. However, if you add several images, you’ll find the file size of your spreadsheet rapidly increases, meaning it will take longer to load. Instead of removing these images, you can compress them. In most cases, they’ll look exactly the same on screen, though you may notice a slight drop in quality if you print your spreadsheet. To compress an image in LibreOffice Calc, first resize it to whatever size you want by clicking and dragging its corners. Next, right-click it, then select ‘Compress…’. In the window that opens, you can choose to reduce the resolution of the image in line with how much you resized it (bear in mind…

What is it? Microsoft’s new technology to make it easier for people to work together online on documents, spreadsheets and presentations in real time. The idea is that everything is ‘fluid’, so you can seamlessly move things between Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint, editing them as you go. Things? What kind of things? Pie charts, tables, lists, graphs - the kind of things you can create in office software. In a video (www.snipca.com/34928), Microsoft gives the example of someone creating a pie chart in Teams (its workbased collaboration tool), then dragging it into a Word document, an Excel spreadsheet (see screenshot) and a PowerPoint presentation, before discussing it with colleagues on a video chat. It looks slick and attractive, though the effect is slightly let down by Microsoft’s typically pretentious…

I like to work wherever the mood takes me, so I’ve always favoured smaller laptops. I split my time between a Dell Inspiron 3000 with single USB and USB-C ports, and a MacBook, which has just one USB-C port for peripherals and charging. Where possible, I use a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, but when this isn’t practical I make sure I have a Lenovo USB-C hub in my bag. It’s small enough to take anywhere, and flexible enough to let me connect standard USB devices and monitors. It can also charge the MacBook (the Dell uses a regular charging cable and separate socket). Buying a computer that featured all of the hub’s ports might not have been any more expensive than the smaller laptops I chose, but it would have…

Trading Standards and police are to investigate sales of a USB stick (pictured) that claims to protect you from the supposed dangers of 5G signals. BioShield Distribution, which is selling the 5GBioShield for £283, says the stick has “quantum holographic catalyzer technology” to shield you from “electric fog induced by all devices such as laptops, cordless phones, wlan, tablets, etc”. The site (https://5gbioshield.com) claims the stick “restores the coherence of the geometry of the atoms, which allows a perfect induction for life forces, by (re-)creating a cardiac coherence, via plasmic support and interactivity”. But security experts who have examined the 5GBioShield say it’s merely basic 128GB stick with an engraved crystal holder, and should cost no more than £5. Researchers at the website PenTestPartners (www.snipca.com/35021) removed the holder and found…

A Dutch grandmother has been ordered to delete photos of her three grandchildren that she posted online without the permission of their parents. They took her to court after she refused requests to take down the photos, which she had uploaded to Facebook and Pinterest. The judge in the Dutch province of Gelderland ruled that the case broke the EU’s privacy rules as set in the GDPR. In the Netherlands, the law dictates that posting pictures of children under 16 requires permission from their legal guardians The case is thought to be the first in which GDPR has been used to solve a family dispute, rather than restricting how much information companies can collect about you. The judge said that although GDPR doesn’t apply to how data is used on…

A lot can happen in 30 minutes. Around 7,500 babies are born. More than 4.4 million emails are sent. And scam websites can change their domains to avoid being blocked. Google doesn’t have a problem with the first two, but it has taken action to fight the third. In Chrome 83, released in May, you can turn on Enhanced Safe Browsing to protect yourself against a list of dodgy sites that’s updated every half hour. By turning it on, you’re giving Google permission to know in real time (ie, as you do it) what you’re visiting online. Google explains in its blog (www.snipca.com/34949) that this data is linked with your Google account to provide “the most precise protection without unnecessary warnings”. After a short while the information is “anonymised” so…

Currys ignored faulty TV – what can I do? Q A JVC TV I bought from Currys at the beginning of April 2019 stopped working with only days remaining on the 12-month warranty. Currys kept emailing me to say they’d contact me about fixing it, but never did. I’ve since had to buy a new TV so don’t want a repair now, but am I entitled to anything from Currys? John Gilson A It depends whether John can prove the TV is inherently faulty. If so, then under the Consumer Rights Act (CRA) he can ask Currys to take action. The retailer would be allowed to inspect the TV, and also attempt one repair. If this failed, it would have to refund John His rights under the CRA trump anything…

Split your research into multiple parts Reader David Roberts got in touch with the following question: “I have a large number of people in my Family Tree Maker 2019 (FTM) tree and would like to section parts of it off into new trees. How do I detach people to make individual trees from them?” The good news is that Family Tree Maker 2019 has a tool to make the process a straightforward one. It assumes you want to take a single individual and produce a tree containing their direct blood relations – basically themselves, their siblings and ancestors, plus all blood descendants. Spouses are also included, but spousal ancestral lines (your husband’s/wife’s parents, for example) are excluded. Create a new standard tree To create such a tree, open the Person…

WARNING: JUNK AHEAD Junk offender: GOM Audio Ihave a love-hate relationship with iTunes. Actually, it’s more hate than love. Apple’s music player is so bloated and full of bugs that, occasionally, I’ll get fed up and look for an alternative. In one moment of weakness, I thought I might give GOM Audio (www.snipca.com/35049) a go. All I can say is that I’m grateful I always try new software on an easy-to-wipe-clean virtual PC first before inflicting it on my non-virtual computer. It wasn’t long before GOM Audio’s installer was trying to trick me into installing the first unwanted tool – Avast Free Antivirus – via a deceptive screen with the Accept button in exactly the same place that the Next button would normally be (see screenshot 1), presumably to fool…

Find out what other products we liked. Buy our new 2019 Back Issue CD: £15 from www.snipca.com/33711 LAPTOP HP Envy 13 (2019) £950 from www.snipca.com/34945 Tested Issue 568 Thanks to eighth-gen Intel processors and dedicated Nvidia MX250 graphics, this sleek aluminium laptop offers a practical combination of all-round processing power and portability, topped off by 8 hours 30 minutes battery life – and the touchscreen is now excellent too. ALTERNATIVE Dell XPS 13 Gets the most out of Intel CPUs, now tenthgen, but there’s no GPU option and the cheapest sensible configuration is £1050 from www.snipca.com/33309 ANDROID TABLET Samsung Galaxy S6 £619 from www.snipca.com/34752 Tested Issue 571 Although it resembles the iPad Pro, this competes more directly with the basic iPad and, considering the included S Pen stylus and generous…

After years of using desktop PCs, I recently bought my first laptop. I opted for a Dell machine with an 11in screen, which I now realise was a mistake. I should have bought one with a much bigger screen, because now I find it hard to place my mouse cursor on Windows’ narrow scroll bars. Thankfully, I’ve found a solution. In Issue 580’s Best Free Software (page 19), you recommended Winaero Tweaker for making little changes to Windows. I installed it, and under the Advanced Appearance Settings heading I saw an option for ‘Scrollbars’. I clicked it, and it presented two sliders - one for changing the width of scroll bars and the other for making buttons bigger. I changed the ‘width’ slider to 55, clicked Apply Changes, then restarted…

ANDROID & iOS Scan documents directly to PDF for free Upgrade to the latest versions of Microsoft’s OneDrive apps for iOS (www.snipca.com/35029) and Android (www.snipca.com/35030) and you’ll get free access to what was once a paid-for feature. That feature is scanning multi-page documents as PDFs, which are automatically saved to your online storage, so they’ll sync to the OneDrive folder on your PC. Launch the app and tap the camera button at the centre at the bottom, then make sure Document is selected at the bottom of the screen (see screenshot below left). Hold the phone over the page you want to capture and OneDrive will automatically detect its edges, then tap the shutter button to take the picture. When OneDrive shows you a preview of what it’s captured, either…

WINDOWS 7, 8.1 & 10 Use Edge with Google search engine We love Microsoft’s revamped Edge browser (find out how to use its latest tools in our Workshop on page 38). However, by default it’s set to use Microsoft’s Bing search engine when you use the browser’s address bar. If you’d like to switch to Edge, but want to use Google as your search engine, here’s how to change the setting. First, open Edge, click the Menu button (three horizontal dots, top right), then Settings. Select ‘Privacy and services’ from the options on the left, then scroll down to the bottom of the section on the right and click ‘Address bar’. From here, click the box to the right of ‘Search engine used in the address bar’ and select Google…

Trend lines are great if you’re using Excel or Calc to plot a sequence of data, such as the change in temperature over a period of time. To add a trend line to a chart in LibreOffice Calc, double-click your chart, then select the data sequence by clicking one of the bars (when you do this, each bar will display a small box, indicating they’re selected). Next, click the Insert menu at the top, then select ‘Trend line’. In the window that appears, you can choose the type of trend line you want (in our example, we’ve opted for a Moving Average trend line – see screenshot). If you want to change the style of the trend line (including its colour and width), click the Line tab. When you’ve made…

WHAT YOU CAN DO • Access your all your files, even when you’re away from home • Add extra services and features with free apps • Encrypt your most sensitive files • Build your own NAS for free How often do you hop from one room to another to copy files between computers? Whether you want to continue working on a document elsewhere, or copy a film to a USB stick to watch on your TV, having a central storage location for all your files can make life so much easier. And while Windows includes tools that let you share folders between computers on your home network, it has one major drawback: the computer storing files you want to access has to be up and running. That’s where network attached…

GOLD Synology DS218+ £305 from Amazon www.snipca.com/34999 Synology has an excellent track record of producing high-quality NAS drives. Better still, they come with easy-to-use software and lots of added extras. The DS218+ is no exception. Powered by an Intel Celeron J3355 processor and 2GB of RAM (you can add more memory if needed), it keeps things moving quickly. The two drive bays are empty as standard, so you’ll need to provide your own. Alternatively, you can buy versions that come with hard drives (including 2TB for £488 from www.snipca.com/35013, or 16TB for £807 from www.snipca.com/35014). Using its built-in media tool, Synology claims the DS218+ can stream 4K video to devices on your network without buffering, though we found it struggled at times. Streaming HD video is fine, however, which is…

32bit/64bit A measure of how much data a PC can process at once. Most older computers are 32bit, more modern ones are 64bit. 3G/4G/5G Technologies that deliver faster mobile broadband. 4K Video with a resolution of at least 3840x2160 pixels. AMOLED Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode. An alternative technology to LCD for creating flat-panel displays. aptX A codec is used to compress audio so it can be transmitted over Bluetooth with minimal loss in quality. Augmented reality Lets you view the real world on a digital display and add digital elements. AVI Audio Video Interleave. A type of video file. AVI is known as a container format, as it can hold many types of audio and video. Bandwidth A measure of how much data can be transferred through a connection at…