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One advantage Google will always have over DuckDuckGo is that it’s easier to use as a verb. If millions of people start saying “I’ll just DuckDuckGo it” when searching online, then cover me in white feathers, stick me in a sailor suit and call me Donald. But that’s not going to dent the rise of DuckDuckGo, nor other excellent Google alternatives like Brave Search and Startpage. As Robert Irvine reveals in our Cover Feature, they offer accurate results without tracking what you search for, and provide clever tools for improving the browsing experience. We also explain what’s gone wrong with Google Search. Most damning is that its results just aren’t as relevant as they used to be. I now use DuckDuckGo and Brave Search not just for privacy reasons (compelling…

MICROSOFT SHOWS OFF MOUSE FOR DISABLED Microsoft has unveiled a new range of ‘adaptive’ devices for people with disabilities to replace conventional mice and keyboards. The mouse core (pictured) can be combined with programmable buttons to perform actions on a PC, such as send emails and open browser tabs. Read more on Microsoft’s blog: www.snipca.com/41965. MORE CHANNEL 4 SHOWS COMING TO YOUTUBE Channel 4 is making over 1,000 hours of shows available on YouTube to watch on demand, in the biggest deal so far between the site and any UK broadcaster. Programmes will include 8 Out Of 10 Cats, SAS: Who Dares Wins and Location, Location, Location. All the shows are free, and you don’t need a TV licence to watch them. THE WORLD’S GONE MAD! This is 38-year-old Akihiko…

I share your exasperation that it has taken Google so long to offer you ways to request the removal of your home address and telephone number (Issue 631, page 6). In part, this has been a fault of the authorities. Lawmakers should’ve forced Google and other search engines to introduce these measures years ago, though the international nature of the internet makes such rules hard to implement. It makes me think of something that rarely gets talked about or used these days: the BT phone book. It used to be a permanent fixture on the hallway desks of every home. If you didn’t want your number to appear in it, you could simply ask to be ex-directory. I always did that, year after year. When information was collated on paper…

As a subscriber to Computeractive, I’ve been following the arguments for and against Windows 11. Your recent articles provided me with the impetus to see whether my desktop PC – bought for £700 from Punch Technology (www.punchtechnology.co.uk) two years ago – would be compatible. I contacted Punch support, and they sent a detailed reply. Basically, I had to perform a BIOS update before installing TPM 2.0. I contacted a local computer store, who estimated a cost of between £120 and £150. So, I went back to Punch support, who patiently guided me through all the stages getting the PC ready for an update to Windows 11. That will be the next step, and one I’ll perform with fingers crossed. Barry Pugh Has a company impressed you with its customer service?…

As we explored in Issue 631’s Cover Feature, VPNs are a great way to watch what you want wherever you are in the world, beating international restrictions. I don’t usually bother accessing content from the US, but when I’m on holiday or on a work trip, I do sometimes catch up on UK TV using a VPN. I was pleased to see ExpressVPN win Computeractive’s Gold Award. I love not only its speed and ease of use, but also because it’s available for all Fire TV Stick devices from the 2nd generation onwards, including my Fire TV Stick 4K Max (£55 from www.snipca.com/41839). I can plug it into any TV, hook it up to the local Wi-Fi, and watch content that would otherwise be blocked, such as BBC iPlayer. It…

In contrast to the Acer Aspire XC-1660 opposite, the Cyberpower Infinity X123 RTX is an exercise in seeing how much you can stuff into a PC case and still keep it to a reasonable price of £1,000. The headline inclusion is an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card, which at the time of writing would cost around £350 to buy on its own. “For those who want high-quality visuals, this is great value for money” That equates to over one third of the overall price, so if you like to crank up the visual settings when you next load up Microsoft Flight Simulator, for example, it will be a godsend. In our tests, it ran games at an average frame rate of more than 60fps at 1080p resolution, with the…

What are they? All inkjet printer ink used to be supplied in cartridges. They were small, expensive and didn’t hold much. In the last few years, some manufacturers, including Epson and Canon, have replaced cartridges with ink tanks on many of their recent models. These make running costs much cheaper, working out at around 0.2p per mono page, or 0.4p for colour. Standard inkjet printers will typically cost at least 2p per mono page and 5p for colour. How do they work? Ink tanks hold significantly more ink than cartridges. The ink is supplied in large plastic bottles, which are cheap and easily recycled. Ink-tank printers typically use four colours (black, cyan, magenta and yellow) and come with sufficient ink to print thousands of pages. To fill the tanks you…

What are they? Cable manufacturer Club 3D (www.club-3d.com) has announced a new range of USB-C cables, capable of delivering 240 watts of charging power to devices. They’re faster, too, offering transfer speeds up to 40Gbps. What do they do? They let you charge even the most power-hungry laptop from a compatible USB-C port, so they don’t need separate power sockets and chunky power adapters. What’s the catch? Currently, there are no 240-watt charging blocks to plug these cables into. However, we expect this will be resolved soon. Also, at the time of writing there’s been no confirmation of price or launch date. So can I do without them? If your laptop can’t be charged with a USB-C cable, you’ll already have an alternative. It might leave you carrying more than…

Compass Orientation GPS Map Free* iOS www.snipca.com/41894 Compass apps can be fiddly to use, but this one makes it easy to see where you’re going. Hold your iPhone up and it switches to a mode that overlays a compass on the view in front of you. Lower your device and it shows a GPS map to give you a broader view of the area, and the direction you’re travelling. The full version costs £9.99. Knotwords Free* Android www.snipca.com/41905 iOS www.snipca.com/41906 This addictive new game is a cross between Wordle and a crossword. Instead of working out which words to fill in by solving clues, you have to guess them using the set of letters provided, and make them interlock with other words in the grid. You can play one Knotwords…

LIBREOFFICE IMPRESS & MICROSOFT POWERPOINT Make animations apply across all items You can group objects in a presentation so the same animation can be applied to them all, saving you the hassle of adding them one at a time. To do this in PowerPoint, click all the objects while pressing down the Ctrl key. Once they’re selected, right-click them and hover over Group in the menu, then click Group again (see screenshot). You’ll now see the lines around the objects combine into one. It’s a similar process in LibreOffice Impress, though you have to press Shift when selecting the objects. Alternatively, you can group objects by pressing the shortcut Ctrl+Shift+G. Visit www.snipca.com/41878 for more Impress shortcuts. LIBREOFFICE WRITER & MICROSOFT WORD Tweak your highlighted words and characters It’s quite easy…

Back in March, DuckDuckGo was criticised by some users for ‘down-ranking’ websites that published disinformation about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The search engine was accused of straying from its promise to provide only “unbiased results”. DuckDuckGo’s CEO and founder, Gabriel Weinberg, responded to the backlash by stating that: “We are not ‘purging’ any media outlets from results. Anyone can verify this by searching for an outlet and see it come up in results” (www.snipca.com/41867). He also said that the nature of sites disseminating state-sponsored Russian content made them “inherently more spammy relative to independent media outlets”, which is why DuckDuckGo down-ranked – but didn’t remove – them. It’s possible that the decision to down-rank these sites was actually made by Microsoft, which announced in February (www.snipca.com/41869) that Bing (which DuckDuckGo…

The UK has four mobile-phone networks: EE, O2, Three and Vodafone. All the other networks – such as Giffgaff, Tesco Mobile and BT Mobile – are Mobile Virtual Network Operators, or MVNOs. They buy data, texts and calls from the big four networks at a discount, and pass on this saving to their customers. Switch to an MVNO from one of the big four and you’ll start paying less from day one. MVNOs are like utility companies. When you switch to a new energy provider, not much happens in the background. Electricity continues flowing from the same grid, but someone else will be responsible for sending you bills and providing customer service. It’s the same with an MVNO. Unless your phone is locked to a specific network, you can carry…

Can Dell cancel my order after email confirmation? LEAD CASE Q On 10 April I spent £14.53 on a Dell 3D mouse that normally costs around £34.99. I received three emails confirming my order, and then one cancelling it three days later with no explanation. Perhaps the mouse was mispriced, but if so why did it take Dell so long to cancel the order? What are my rights? Tony Gurney A Tony probably doesn’t have any rights, but we understand why he might think otherwise. We suspect that by ‘3D mouse’ Tony means a mouse that works with 3D-imaging software. Dell sells several such items made by German company 3Dconnexion (see www.snipca.com/41853, pictured), but the cheapest is £102, nearly three times the price Tony said the mouse normally costs, and…

Driver Reviver’s PUP-like tickboxes Reader Virginia McGovern got a bit of a shock when she downloaded Driver Reviver – from respectable software outfit Corel, no less – and was warned by Windows that it contained malware. Virginia told us that she downloaded the program from the company’s official website (www.reviversoft.com) and both Windows and Malwarebytes flagged it as containing the Win32/Caypnamer.A!ml Trojan – a piece of malware that can be very tricky to remove. And she’s not the only one. A Google search revealed others had found the same file lurking in the software. A spokesperson for Corel told me that the reported malware was a false positive, which can “sometimes happen if the specific antivirus software being used takes a hard stance on system utilities apps”. In the name…

I have two wireless chargers: one beside the bed, and one on my desk. I use them to charge a Google Pixel 5 phone, and also a pair of Google Pixel Buds that need turning upside down on the bedside stand to align the case’s internal coil with the charging coil in the stand. Sadly, my car is 2010 vintage, which not only lacks a sunroof, aircon or Bluetooth, but also has no Qi-compatible charging mat, forcing me to fall back on a USB adapter plugged into the cigarette lighter. How do you use wireless charging? Please let us know: letters@computeractive.co.uk…

Libby by Overdrive Free Android www.snipca.com/41925 iOS www.snipca.com/41926 Why pay for ebooks when you can borrow them for free from your local library using Libby? Simply sign in with your library card – or request one – to browse available titles, then download them to your phone or tablet to read in the app. Libby alerts you when your loan period is about to expire so you can return ebooks and borrow more. Best For Borrowing ebooks to read for free FBReader Free* Android www.snipca.com/41923 iOS www.snipca.com/41924 Although FBReader doesn’t have its own ebook store, it lets you download and read free stories in formats including EPUB, RTF, HTML, MOBI and (via a plug-in) PDF. You can tweak text fonts, size and colour, use custom backgrounds and day/night colour schemes,…

Pass on members’ contact details Members’ contact details are vital for the efficient running of any club, but what happens when one secretary leaves and another starts? That was the question posed by reader Henry Smith, who asked us how he could transfer his list of email addresses to the incoming club secretary. Transferring contacts is fairly straightforward, and all email services let you export and import contacts between different services. Henry uses Gmail, so we’ll explain how to do it using that service, though there are similar options in Outlook. Add labels to your contacts First, you need to go to your Google contacts by typing https://contacts.google.com into a browser. If your contacts contain both personal and club entries, you should add a label to the latter, so you…

We searched for the same five queries using each search engine to discover the relevance and variety of the top results, the speed they were returned, the clarity of presentation and if they provided any useful additional content. Here are the search terms we used and why… Windows 11 system requirements To find the latest information about the operating system from reliable tech sources, preferably Microsoft itself. Train from London to St Ives To see how the search engines handled a travel query involving UK destinations, such as suggesting ticket-booking sites. Cottage pie recipe Recipe sites are often accused of using SEO tricks to boost their rankings, but would these search engines fall for them? World Cup 2022 start date Google provides the kick-off date above its search results, so…

We know from your emails that many of you have switched to new security software in the past few months. Some have uninstalled Russian antivirus Kaspersky as a moral response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It remains safe for individuals to use, according to Ian Levy, technical director of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre – though he said that people may need to switch if Kaspersky “becomes subject to sanctions, since the AV product would likely stop getting updates” (see www.snipca.com/41927). Other readers have moved simply to save money, prompted by the improved performance of the free Microsoft Defender. It came second in Issue 629’s antivirus group test (behind Norton 360), a result that we’d have thought impossible back in 2013 when Microsoft admitted its antivirus provided only “basic”…

GET £250 FOR SWITCHING TO THREE Phone network Three will give you up to £250 on a prepaid Mastercard if you join from another network by 7 July. The amount you get depends on the plan you sign up to, with the biggest cashback coming for packages with Apple, Samsung, Honor and Xiaomi phones. The offer is also available for its 24-month unlimited SIM-only deal, which gives you £100. For details visit www.snipca.com/41938. NEW SITE SHOWS QUEEN’S HISTORICAL VISITS You can see historical photos of the Queen’s visits across England on a map (www.snipca.com/41940) launched to celebrate her Platinum Jubilee. Made by Historic England, the ‘Story Map’ shows the Queen visiting 220 sites (including unveiling the statue of Eric Morecambe, pictured), stretching back to 1932 when she was just six…

Consumer review site Trustpilot removed 2.7 million fake reviews in 2021 – nearly six per cent of the total submitted by the public. In total, 46.7 million reviews were submitted to the site last year, representing a quarter of all reviews since it launched in 2007. Trustpilot revealed the figures in its annual Transparency Report (www.snipca.com/41962), saying it has invested heavily in automated software that speeds up the detection and removal of fake reviews. It claims that of the 2.7 million reviews taken down, around 1.8 million were caught by the software – a rise of 19 per cent from 2020. It also said that the software boosted its attempts to take action against businesses attempting to manipulate reviews, such as by incentivising customers to leave positive feedback. The company…

THUNDERBIRD PHONE APP ‘COMING SOON’ A version of Thunderbird for phones is “coming soon”, according to its product and business development manager Ryan Lee Sipes. He tweeted the news on 2 May (www.snipca.com/41857), adding that it was his second priority after fixing the email client’s user interface. Currently, Thunderbird works on computers only. APPLE MAKING OLD iPADS OBSOLETE Apple has added the iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 2 (pictured) to its list of ‘vintage’ products, which means it may be hard to find spare parts for them. It labels products as vintage between five and seven years after it stopped selling them. After seven years, products become ‘obsolete’ and Apple ends all support. The iPad Mini 2 launched in November 2013, with the Air 2 following a year later.…

AVG says it will refund reader Colin Moore once he contacts the company with his new email address, which currently isn’t on its system. As we reported in Issue 628, Colin was annoyed that AVG had charged him £74.99 for an automatically renewed subscription despite not having used the antivirus software since 2016. The payment was processed by Digital River on behalf of of AVG, and the money was taken through Colin’s PayPal account. This prompted Colin to ask whether the latter was responsible for providing a refund. The card that Colin linked to his PayPal account for that original subscription had expired, but the payment still went through because he had added a new card. However, the fault lies with AVG, not PayPal. For some reason, AVG’s systems triggered…

www.snipca.com/41952 What you need: Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 Like CCleaner, but without that program’s oft-reported problems, Privacy Eraser frees up space on your hard drive and protects your privacy by deleting details of your Windows and web activities. At first, we were slightly sceptical of its generic name and its interface’s similarity to dubious IObit products. We also assumed that many features would be restricted to the Pro version, which costs $19.95 (£16.20) a year. Happily, our fears were unfounded and Privacy Eraser Free lacks only three options from the paid-for version: automatic updates, technical support and secure overwriting of deleted data. The program is very easy to use: simply click the big Scan button on the home screen to detect junk files on your PC and discover…

Q I use several web browsers, including Chrome, Edge and Firefox, and have extensions installed in all of them. I often read about interesting extensions in Computeractive, only to find I’ve previously installed, disabled and forgotten about them. Is there any program that can tell me all the extensions currently installed across all my browsers? Peter Hill A Your browsers will each have an Extensions or Add-ons Manager that lists all your installed extensions – in Chrome, for example, click the three-dot menu button and choose Extensions from the ‘More tools’ sub-menu. However, if you frequently switch between different browsers, it’s much more useful to have a single overview of all your add-ons. That’s the idea behind BrowserAddonsView, a simple free tool from the prolific software developer NirSoft. Download the…

Hefty PC towers can eat into your home-office space, but not everyone has that much available room on or around their desk. This Acer model is more compact than most, measuring just 295x100x330mm (HxWxD). Compare that with the Cyberpower Infinity opposite (460x210x428mm) and you’ll wonder how Acer has managed to squeeze everything in. “A solid Windows PC for those struggling for space, but it won’t win prizes for its graphics” The truth is Acer hasn’t bothered to fit everything in. There’s no graphics card, for example, though there is enough room for a slimline model should you decide to add one in future. We wouldn’t bother, though, because this PC isn’t aimed at gamers, but instead at those wanting an affordable desktop PC that’s good enough to run office tools…

This Linksys Wi-Fi 6 mesh router looks a lot like the company’s previous mesh products, which went under the Velop brand. However, this more affordable new range only uses dual-band Wi-Fi – one basic 2.4GHz network and a second faster 5GHz network. As there’s no third band, the 5GHz channel ferries both the communication between the mesh devices and the data sent and received by your Wi-Fi-connected devices. This is a compromise, but keeps prices at a more affordable level. Linksys claims the three-unit set can cover an area of up to 750m2, which is far larger than the average UK home. For three bedrooms or fewer you can make do with a twin-pack (£200 from Box at www.snipca.com/41951). The set also lets you connect multiple wired devices, with four…

Winner of a ‘Recommended’ award in Issue 631, TerraMaster’s D4-300 is a DAS enclosure with four drive bays that accept both 2.5in and 3.5in drives. This means you can install either mechanical drives or SSDs. It can take drives up to 18TB each, giving it a total capacity of 72TB. This makes it ideal for tasks such as editing videos, backing up photos, preserving technical documents, creating a music library, and archiving your financial records. It has the USB-C 3.1 (Gen1, 5Gbps) interface. It supports Windows, Mac and Linux, and can be used with any computer, TV set, server, and set-top TV box, as well as other devices. The fan speed changes according to the temperature of the hard drive, preventing the enclosure from overheating. To enter this competition, answer…

The Qi standard was established in 2008, and has been revised several times since, most recently in January 2021. However, the underlying technology – electromagnetic induction – is older than you might imagine. Indeed, the principles were first described by Michael Faraday (pictured) in 1831. Faraday created two metal coils, one of which he connected to a meter that would show the level of energy passing through it. He then connected the second coil to a battery. Even though there was no direct connection between the two coils, the meter plugged into the first coil twitched at the moment the battery was connected to its neighbour, and did it again when the battery was disconnected. Clearly, the energy flowing through the second coil was interacting with the first, which was,…

CHROME View search results in a side panel Exploring search results until you find the page you’re looking for can involve a lot of clicking back and forth, unless you right-click links to open them in new tabs. Chrome version 102, released 24 May, solves this problem by displaying your search results in a side panel that you can view alongside the pages they open. This lets you navigate results without clicking back and forth and find relevant content more quickly. The new feature is currently a hidden ‘flag’ that you need to activate manually. Type chrome://flags into the address bar and press Enter to load Chrome’s Experiments page. Search for the entries Side search and Side search DSE support, select Enabled in their dropdown menus and relaunch Chrome. Type…

ANDROID Change unsafe passwords using Google Assistant Google has added a useful security feature to the Chrome app for Android that lets you use Google Assistant to change passwords that have been exposed in data breaches. This saves you needing to reset logins manually – though you can still do so – and makes it easier to secure unsafe accounts. To use the new option, tap the three-dot menu icon in the top-right corner of the mobile browser and choose Settings, then Passwords. Tap ‘Check passwords’ and Chrome will scan your saved login details and tell you which passwords have been exposed in a data breach or “entered on a deceptive site”. If it finds any, look for a message below the ‘Change password’ button that says ‘Let Google Assistant…

WINDOWS 10 & 11 Convert HEIC image files In 2017 Apple adopted HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format) as its default image format, calling it HEIC when introduced in iOS 11. It uses a more advanced method for compressing files that takes up less storage space. Windows doesn’t support HEIC files, but you can install apps from the Microsoft Store to convert them into JPEGs and other formats. One of the best is ‘iMazing HEIC Converter’, which is ideal when you have many photos to convert. Search for it on the Microsoft Store (or visit www.snipca.com/41954), then click the blue Get button. Once you’ve opened it, just drag and drop into it the files you want to convert. You can choose between JPEG (1 in our screenshot above) and PNG…

What is it? Short for electronic publication, it’s the format ebooks come in for phones, tablets and computers. It’s also used by ebook readers. Well, all except one. You’ve probably heard of it. Amazon’s Kindle, by any chance? Yes, by far the world’s best-selling ebook reader. Since launching in 2007 it has used its own version of the MOBI format, beginning with AZW, which later evolved into KF8/AZW3 before becoming KFX. So Amazon has never supported EPUB? Correct. It favours a ‘locked’ system where Kindle readers have no choice but to buy ebooks only from Amazon. The main workaround until now has been to use Calibre (https://calibre-ebook.com) to convert EPUB ebooks to MOBI, letting you read titles bought for other devices – such as Kobos – on Kindles. However, surprisingly,…

Does Avira need to unblock Windscribe VPN? Q Thanks for answering my question in Issue 630 (page 71) – I can now get 10GB a month using Windscribe (www.snipca.com/41004). But now my anti-virus, Avira Antivirus Pro, shows the warning message ‘hosts file blocked’. Do I need to change something in Avira? Trevor Bunce A Avira is showing this warning because Windscribe is attempting to modify something called the hosts file, which manages IP addresses. By default, Avira blocks anything from changing this file, as it perceives this as untrusted behaviour. One solution would be to disable Avira’s hosts file protection (under General, then Security in the main ‘Real-time protection’ options), but we wouldn’t recommend this, as it would mean other (potentially unauthorised) programs gaining access to the hosts file. Instead,…