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What do Sherlock Holmes, Alfred Hitchcock, Ronnie Corbett and Wallace and Gromit have in common? They’re all downloadable for free in one form or another, as revealed in Robert Irvine’s marvellous Cover Feature. You’ll find them on pages 55-56, in the Entertainment section. Before that, Robert recommends 10 new or updated programs and apps that are essential for the year ahead. I’m particularly excited about Microsoft’s PC Manager, which eventually might evolve into a PC-cleaning tool so thorough that you won’t need to use third-party software. If that’s Microsoft’s good news, the bad news is that adverts are becoming more common in Windows. We explain how to switch them off on page 62, while on page 60 we tackle another modern annoyance: software and services that renew automatically, taking your…

Queen Elizabeth II’s death dominated Google searches in the UK and around the world in 2022, as revealed by the company’s annual ‘Year in Search’ report. It was the most searched-for news event in the UK, while ‘Is the Queen dead?’ topped the UK’s Questions list, followed by ‘When is the Queen’s funeral?’. Globally, the Queen’s death was second in the news category behind the war in Ukraine. However, the most searched-for term overall – in the UK and across the world – was Wordle (www.snipca.com/44415). The word game became suddenly popular at the start of the year, prompting New York Times to buy it for an undisclosed sum believed to be around $3m. Other popular searches in the UK included Quordle (www.quordle.com), a Wordle spin-off that challenges you to…

Ofcom has given the BBC permission to add more older shows and complete series to iPlayer, making it more of a comprehensive streaming service than a simple catch-up tool. Currently, the BBC can keep shows on iPlayer for only 12 months after they’ve been added, and is restricted to a limited number of old series. These measures are designed to ensure healthy competition with rival services such as Netflix and BritBox. The BBC has long wanted to increase the amount of content it can provide through iPlayer, and earlier this year proposed to Ofcom that it should ease the existing restrictions (www.snipca.com/44387). One of its main aims is to add more previous series of shows to coincide with new series that are being broadcast. It also wants to dig “deeper…

BT has said that without money from the Government it will struggle to afford offering discounted broadband deals to people on benefits. Ministers and Ofcom have urged internet providers to offer social tariffs for customers who receive Universal Credit, Pension Credit and other benefits. These are significantly cheaper than normal packages. BT’s Home Essentials, for example, costs from £15 a month (for 36Mbps, www.snipca.com/44335), while Virgin Media’s Essential plan starts at £12.50 (for 15Mbps, www.snipca.com/44336). BT says it believes “everyone should be able to use the internet or pick up a phone to keep in touch”. However, Marc Allera, head of BT’s consumer division, said that the current model for social tariffs is “unsustainable” because of how many people the Government wants to sign up. He told the Guardian that…

VIDEO PLAYER FreeTube 0.18 www.snipca.com/44339 What you need: Windows 7, 8.1. 10 or 11, macOS or Linux Watch videos on YouTube and you’ll be watched yourself. This is because Google tracks your viewing habits and targets you with adverts. FreeTube solves both these problems by providing an alternative front-end for YouTube that lets you stream videos privately on your desktop without having to sit through endless ads. This open-source program has a simple, streamlined design that lets you quickly find videos on YouTube or browse its ‘trending’ and most popular content. When you first run FreeTube, you’ll see an empty Subscriptions page, but you can ignore this and start searching for something to watch. Your search results can be filtered by upload date, duration, view count and other criteria, and…

Q My great-grandson plays a lot of games online against his friends. He has a basic desktop PC that can no longer keep up with the latest games they’re playing. I gather it is mainly due to the graphics card. I have looked around and can’t find much under £1,000. Can you suggest a gaming machine that will fulfil his needs without me taking out a mortgage? Mick Jago A We’d suggest trying one of the online custom PC builders we often recommend in the pages of Computeractive and browse through their most affordable gaming PCs. For example, PCSpecialist offers the Aurora Nova gaming PC, which costs £570 in its most basic configuration (www.snipca.com/4420, pictured). What this allows you to do, if you can afford it, is upgrade to a…

It’s been 15 years since Amazon launched its first Kindle, and this new version of its smallest, most basic model shows how far it’s come. The new Kindle isn’t overwhelmed with extras, but it makes for a simple, reliable ebook reader you can sling in a bag and take anywhere. Ideal for travelling, it has a sharp, non-reflective screen and improved battery It’s now smaller and lighter than ever before, weighing just 158g and measuring 158x109x8mm (HxWxD), so is ideal for travelling. However, it’s possibly a little too small for comfortable reading, so it’s not the right model if you’re looking for a luxurious device to keep at home. The design is minimalist, with a single power button and a USB-C port for charging (an upgrade on the old Mini-USB…

TIP OF THE FORTNIGHT Use dupeGuru to remove duplicate music tracks I agree with your recommendation to use dupeGuru (www.snipca.com/43800) to find and remove duplicate photos (Issue 645, page 20). Over the years it’s helped me to eradicate thousands of replicated photos. What you perhaps didn’t have room to mention is that dupeGuru can also find and remove duplicate audio tracks. I called upon this feature recently when I finally got fed up with my chaotic music library. The way to do this is to select Music in the ‘Application mode’ heading (1 in our screenshot), and then click More Options for ways to narrow what the software is looking for. Some boxes are pre-ticked – Artist, Album and Title – so dupeGuru will look for these by default. You…

WINDOWS 10 & 11 Disable the Insert button to prevent overwriting text It’s easy to accidentally press the Insert button on a PC keyboard and find yourself overwriting text as you type. If you have no need for the Insert button, try disabling it using the Registry Editor – though, as always, back up your computer first in case anything goes wrong. Press Windows key+R then type regedit and press Enter. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout in the address bar (or copy and paste it from our Pastebin account at www.snipca.com/44410). Next, rightclick Keyboard Layout, then select New and click Binary Value. Type inside the ‘New Value #1’ box to give this command a suitable name, such as ‘Disable Insert’ (1 in our screenshot below). Now double-click this and…

What is it? What was it, you mean. How quickly we forget! Released on 24 August 1995, Windows 95 was probably the most successful version of Windows ever, selling one million copies in its first week, and 40 million by the end of the year. No wonder it made Bill Gates boogie (see www.snipca.com/44371). Why was it so popular? Because it marked the dawn of modern operating systems. Before Windows 95, you had to buy MS-DOS and Windows separately, and then install the latter on top of the former. Once that was done, you had to boot into MS-DOS before running Windows, and perform tasks by typing commands. Windows 95 simplified everything by using a graphical interface, letting you open tools by moving your cursor over them and clicking. Just…

3G/4G/5G Technologies that deliver faster mobile broadband. 4K Video with a resolution of at least 3840x2160 pixels. 64bit A technology that processes information in larger chunks. Most modern computers are 64bit. 8K Video with a resolution of 7680x4320 pixels. Currently the highest resolution available. Admin mode Allows you to make changes to a computer that will affect other people who use it. Administrator Someone who can make changes to a computer that will affect others who also use it. AI Artificial Intelligence. Intelligence demonstrated by a machine rather than a human being. Often used to describe technology that can perform human-like tasks. AMOLED Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode. An alternative technology to LCD for creating flat-panel displays. Architecture A set of rules and language that govern how hardware and software work.…

Exploding batteries in discarded devices such as phones and laptops cause about 700 fires a year in bin lorries and recycling centres, local authorities say. The figure comes from research by non-profit organisation Material Focus, which campaigns to “stop electricals being hoarded and thrown away, and ensure they’re reused and recycled instead”. It has launched a new ‘Stop Battery Fires’ campaign to raise awareness of how the public can safely recycle their batteries and electricals, claiming that 45 per cent of householders are unaware of the dangers. The lithium-ion batteries found in small, rechargeable devices have become more powerful in recent years. Ninety per cent of the local authorities Material Focus spoke to said fires caused by batteries are an increasing problem. When batteries are crushed in the waste or…

Can I get refund for automatic renewal? Q A year ago, I cancelled an automatic £14.68 subscription paid to IObit for the software Advanced SystemCare (pictured), paid via PayPal. I received an email from payment-transaction service 2Checkout confirming this. Then this year 2Checkout emailed me again saying the subscription was being renewed and immediately took £88.41 from my account. I raised a dispute with PayPal and showed them the original email from 2Checkout, but they’ve dismissed my case. What do I do now? John Wafford A John should immediately contact IObit, which makes Advanced SystemCare, because under the Consumer Contract Regulations he has 14 days to cancel the subscription. This applies both to new subscriptions and automatic renewals. It’s also worth John contacting Verifone – the new name for 2Checkout…

Which password manager works with Kaspersky? Q I’m having a conflict between Kaspersky and RoboForm. Can you recommend a password manager that won’t clash with Kaspersky? Alan Shine A Antivirus software sometimes blocks password managers, mistaking their ability to auto-fill forms as potentially malicious. We checked the latest version of RoboForm on VirusTotal (www.virustotal.com) and none of the 58 virus engines it uses (including Kaspersky’s) flagged the password manager as malicious. Kaspersky’s own online virus scanner (www.snipca.com/44170) also gave RoboForm a clean bill of health. It could be that Kaspersky simply didn’t recognise the latest version of RoboForm, released in November, and flagged it as unsafe as a precaution. Problems like this are usually short-lived because antivirus tools constantly update their virus databases as new software is released, so if…

What you need: VirtualBox and Ubuntu Time required: Two hours Web browsers are getting increasingly better at bolstering your security when scouring the internet. InPrivate mode (Edge), Incognito mode (Chrome), Private Browsing (Firefox), and equivalent privacy modes in other browsers, obscure your identity, prevent details of sites you’ve visited showing up in your browsing history, and stop cookies from lingering on your system after you’ve closed the browser window. These tools are great for users, but not so good for web developers, who will need to find other ways to track and identify you (as we explained in Issue 646’s Cover Feature ‘Don’t Get Tracked in 2023’). Some developers may use font fingerprinting, for example, whereby a developer will extract a list of all the fonts installed on your computer.…

CHROME Conserve your laptop’s battery power Chrome 108, which was released on 29 November, introduced a useful feature to prolong your laptop’s battery life when it’s unplugged from the mains. Similar to Edge’s ‘Efficiency mode’, the new ‘Energy saver’ option minimises the browser’s power usage by limiting background activity and visual effects. As is often the case with Chrome, the new feature is currently an experiment that you need to activate manually. Type chrome:flags into the browser’s address bar and press Enter to load the Experiments page. Find the entry Enable the battery saver mode feature in the settings, choose Enabled in the dropdown menu next to it and relaunch Chrome. When the browser reopens, click the three-line menu button and select Settings. In the list on the left, you’ll…

LIBREOFFICE DRAW & MICROSOFT POWERPOINT Customise drop shadows for text It’s easy to add a drop shadow to text in PowerPoint – simply select the words, then click the Home tab followed by the Text Shadow icon (an ‘S’) in the Font section. However, this is a basic option that doesn’t let you customise the shadow. For more control, click Shape Format at the top right (1 in our screenshot), then the Shape Effects dropdown menu, followed by Shadow 2. Now click Shadow Options at the bottom 3, then Text Options in the panel on the right 4. You’ll now see several ways to change the appearance of the drop shadow, including size, colours and transparency sliders. You’ll see these changes being applied as you make them. To see similar…

WHAT YOU CAN DO • Remove hidden PC junk using Microsoft’s new clean-up tool • Back up files and drives without paying for premium options • Try Thunderbird’s new Android app before anyone else • Legally download thousands of classic books for free • Download high-quality films to watch over the next year • Save old radio shows to your PC or phone to play offline • Download free music from YouTube to use however you want After a stressful year in which almost everything has become more expensive, most of us will be watching our finances carefully in 2023. When you’re struggling to pay for energy, food and other household bills, spending even a few pounds on a program, mobile app or book can seem an extravagant and unnecessary…

PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT Can I transfer an old iPhone app? Q I have an iPhone 6 that I’ve kept as a spare. On it is an app that’s no longer available in the App Store. Well, it is, but later versions of this app redirect one to another app, which is not as good. Is there a way I can copy the app from my old iPhone to my new one? I have to ensure the App Store does not update this app on my iPhone 6, because if it does, there is no other way of getting it back (to my knowledge). Any help would be appreciated. Howard Martin A This is an interesting question, and one that reveals how the tight controls Apple applies to the App…

APPLE AND GOOGLE NAME APPS OF THE YEAR Apple has named note-taking app GoodNotes 5 (pictured) as its iPad app of 2022, and photo-sharing app BeReal as the top tool for iPhone. Google’s top Android app of the year is ‘Dream by WOMBO’, which uses AI to create artwork from suggestions you type. See all of the apps Apple and Google honoured in 2022 at www.snipca.com/44419 and www.snipca.com/44420 respectively. MUSK’S SATELLITES CONNECT RURAL UK The Government is to test satellite broadband provided by Starlink, which is owned by Twitter’s new boss Elon Musk. More than 3,000 low-Earth orbit satellites will be used to connect over a dozen places that are “very hard to reach”. Locations include Rievaulx Abbey in the North York Moors National Park and Wasdale Head in the…

Ofcom is investigating whether broadband providers clearly explained to customers that their prices would rise during their contracts. The regulator is concerned that customers who signed up to contracts between March 2021 and 16 June 2022 may not have been given “sufficiently clear information about in-contract price rises”. Some providers such as BT, EE, Plusnet and TalkTalk now increase prices every year by the rate of inflation plus 3-4 per cent. With inflation at a 40-year high, this could lead to double-digit increases in 2023. Ofcom’s rules state that future price rises must be set out “prominently and transparently at the point of sale”. It says that if a customer hadn’t agreed to those terms because they weren’t made aware of them, providers should have offered them the option to…

WATCH OUT FOR… Links to documents containing malware What’s the threat? Cyber-criminals are beating Windows security by tricking people into downloading malicious files that don’t trigger the usual safety warnings. Normally, when you try to download a file from what Windows considers to be an untrusted source, it will ask whether you’re sure you want to open it (see screenshot 1). To do this, Microsoft uses ‘Mark of the Web’, which is a piece of code added to a web page to indicate its origin, for security purposes. The hackers behind the recent attack have managed to bypass these warnings, allowing them to install the malware QBot (also called Qakbot), which has been stealing bank-account details from victims since 2007. How can you stay safe? Like most attacks, this hack…

See ancestors’ homes on old maps One of TheGenealogist’s best features is its Map Explorer, which shows on maps of the time where people recorded in the 1891-1911 UK censuses and the 1939 National Identity Register lived. It covers most of London, as well as several other towns and cities – though it’s a work in progress, so keep checking to see whether the area you’re interested in has been added. Previously, Map Explorer was open only to Diamond subscribers, paying £139.95 a year, but TheGenealogist has now extended access further to the cheaper Starter and Gold subscriptions (compare them at www.snipca.com/44103). Search a census to find an entry To find a property, you first need to search a census. Here, I’ll look for my great-great-uncle James Paton, recorded in…

SOFTWARE WARNING! RealPlayer’s unpleasant blast from the past I’ll square with you, I’d forgotten RealPlayer (www.real.com) even existed. I reckon the last time I thought about it was about 20 years ago. But recently I found myself checking out the latest features of CCleaner (www.snipca.com/44203) – itself a regular star of this column – and spotted that it claims to wipe the long-lost media player. After making sure I hadn’t fallen into a 1998 wormhole, I decided to fire up my PC and see what RealPlayer does these days. It didn’t have the greatest reputation back when PCs were little more than beige boxes. Sadly, it hasn’t improved with time. It starts by hiding pre-ticked boxes in its installer, forcing you to click a tiny ‘Options’ link to discover it’s…

ANDROID & iOS Find and contact businesses in WhatsApp Lots of companies now let you contact them via WhatsApp rather than phoning their customersupport lines. A welcome update to the messaging app makes it easy to find businesses that offer this option and chat to them directly. To use the new feature, tap the Chat icon in the bottom-right corner of WhatsApp’s Chats screen and select Businesses in the Discover section of your contacts list. You may be prompted to give WhatsApp permission to use your location, so it can show you local businesses - choose ‘While using app’ or ‘Allow once’ to stop it tracking you all the time. Type the name of a business or organisation in the search box at the top of the screen (see screenshot…

Make a membership form with OnlyOffice You’ve probably come across plenty of PDF forms online that contain editable fields that you can fill out using PDF readers such as Adobe Reader. They tend to be used for application forms, particularly in official documents. They combine the advantages of PDF (the text that’s part of the form is locked and cannot be changed, and they open on a wide range of devices) with the ability to let others enter data. These are perfect for creating your club’s online membership form, and if you use OnlyOffice (www.onlyoffice.com), the process is very easy – as we’ll explain. Open a form and add membership details If you’re not already familiar with it, OnlyOffice is a brilliant free alternative to Microsoft Office, containing editing tools…

Should you rely on OneDrive as your only backup? Q In Issue 645 (page 65), reader Graeme Neale says, “I know that I shouldn’t rely on OneDrive as my sole backup storage”. Is that right? I use OneDrive as my sole storage, and only download stuff to my computer when I need it. I was hoping Microsoft would perform any necessary backing up. Nigel Ogilvie A We have to agree with Mr Neale. OneDrive provides a safe and simple backup, but it’s far from infallible. We recommend applying the 3-2-1 strategy to your backup regime. That means maintaining three copies of your files (the original and two backup copies) on two different storage devices, one of which you keep ‘offsite’ – in other words, not in your home. You could,…