Table of contents for 639 in Computeractive

It’s hard to take seriously, but some hackers actually want us to think they have a conscience. In March 2020, as Covid started to spread around the world, the gang behind the Maze ransomware released a statement saying it would stop attacking medical organisations “until the stabilisation of the situation with virus” (www.snipca.com/43050). What did they expect in response – a thank-you card? Maze’s compassion was clearly fake, though hackers did lay off hospitals for a while in 2020. However, attacks quickly picked up again in 2021, as the pandemic eased. A report from security firm Sophos found that 66 per cent of healthcare organisations across 31 countries were hit by ransomware last year, up from 34 per cent in 2020. The figure for 2022 is likely to be much…

LAPTOP Lenovo Yoga 6 Gen 7 £699 from www.snipca.com/42509 Tested Issue 637 Lenovo’s new laptop has an amazing screen, a fast processor and lasts 15 hours on a single charge. It has all the ports you need, including two USB-C, two USB 3.0 and HDMI. At £623 it represents stunning value. ALTERNATIVE Dell XPS 13 New Intel CPUs and a taller screen make this a more powerful, all-round slim laptop. Prices start at £949 from www.snipca.com/42979 ANDROID TABLET Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 £649 from www.snipca.com/42211 Tested Issue 634 Samsung has replaced its own Tab S7+ to become our favourite Android tablet. It’s fast with a stunning 11in screen, and has a longer battery life than the iPad. This model gives you 128GB - you’ll need to pay £699 for 256GB.…

TIP OF THE FORTNIGHT Use Rufus to install Windows 11 on an old PC In Issue 637 (page 67), Cee Lewis asked whether they could upgrade their old PC to Windows 11. This should be possible without buying a new motherboard and processor. I can vouch for the effectiveness of a procedure that Computeractive explained in Issue 628 (page 38), which alone is worth the price of a subscription. It showed how to use information about using Rufus (www.snipca.com/41183) to create a bootable USB stick to install a copy of Windows 11 (see screenshot), bypassing all the hardware restrictions (processor type, TPM version and more). I followed the instructions to install Windows 11 Pro on several PCs that were deemed to be obsolete, including a couple of self-built computers dating…

What are they? Extra seconds added to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to account for the difference between precise time (as measured by atomic clocks) and ‘solar’ time, which varies due to slight changes in the Earth’s rate of rotation. This stops the planet drifting into an unsettling future where sunsets take place in the morning. What’s Coordinated Universal Time? It’s the main standard by which the world regulates clocks and time, and is considered the successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Since 1972, 27 leap seconds have been added to Coordinated Universal Time, with the most recent coming on 31 December, 2016. That gave us an extra second of excited anticipation before the start of 2017, but party-pooping computers didn’t like it one bit. Why not? Because it disrupted their…

We might live in an increasingly wireless world, but most of us still rely on cables to connect many of our devices – whether that’s to plug peripherals into our PCs, connect our routers to the internet or hook up a video connection to a monitor or TV. But what if the cable you have isn’t quite long enough for your needs? You could, of course, buy a whole new cable, but that would be a waste. Instead, you could save money by lengthening your existing connection with an extension cable. But before you buy, you’ll need to make sure you’re getting the right extension cable for the job, taking into account any potential compatibility issues or other limitations. USB When you buy a USB device it usually comes with…

First W11 Feature update ‘coming on 20 September’ Microsoft looks set to release the first Feature update for Windows 11 on Tuesday 20 September, bringing significant changes to the operating system. The date was revealed to our sister site Windows Central by sources close to Microsoft. It was later backed up by sources in contact with other sites, including The Verge. Microsoft has already revealed many of the new tools in preview builds of 22H2 released in recent months. These include creating folders for apps in the Start menu (see screenshot right) and opening a file in a specific program by dragging it to the relevant icon on the taskbar. Both are popular functions in Windows 10, but were dropped from Windows 11 when it launched last October. There’s likely…

WATCH OUT FOR… Malware in fake YouTube & WhatsApp apps What’s the threat? Scammers are placing malware in fake versions of hugely popular Android apps, including YouTube and WhatsApp, according to a report from Meta (www.snipca.com/43015). The company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, named the malware Dracarys after a battle cry for dragons in the fantasy TV series Game of Thrones. Once it infects your phone or tablet, it can access information such as your contacts list and a log of phone calls you’ve made, as well as read your text messages, install other apps without your permission, and even take photos without you knowing. Meta said the attack is being carried out by hacking group Bitter, which is suspected to operate from India and has also created fake…

Order overseas BMD records As well as records from England and Wales, the General Register Office (GRO) and the National Archives hold records of births, marriages and deaths (BMD) of British civilians born overseas on territory controlled by Britain. These include registers from the armed forces, high commissions and embassies, events recorded at sea, and civil registration records for areas formerly under British control (eg, the Greek Ionian islands from 1815 to 1862). Several of the registers predate the start of civil registration in England and Wales in 1837, such as the Regimental Birth Indices, which date back to 1761. Filter your search on Findmypast All these records can be searched on Findmypast (www.findmypast.co.uk). Note that it has a separate collection for Roman Catholics, sourced from the Bishopric of the…

D for desirable Those whose budget doesn’t stretch to a luxury laptop such as the LG Gram 16 reviewed on page 23 might be more inclined toward the Huawei MateBook D 16. Huawei now offers a wide range of laptops for all kinds of needs and budgets, but the MateBook D series is its most affordable. This doesn’t mean cheap and cheerful – its design is similar to the company’s more expensive machines – but it makes sensible compromises to bring the price down to a reasonable level. "Performs well in everyday tasks and holds its own with more demanding software" There are two versions of the MateBook D 16. The chassis, build quality, storage (a 512GB SSD) and 16in screen are the same in both models. However, the £750…

What you need: Keeper Password Manager Time required: 30 minutes Do you worry where your shared files might end up? When you upload a file to online storage, then share a link to it, there’s often very little to prevent the link being forwarded on. Just as worryingly, what’s to stop anyone who’s snooping on the recipient’s inbox – or even your Sent folder – from following the link themselves? That’s why our ears pricked up when we heard about a new feature in Keeper Security’s Password Manager. As well as storing passwords, it incorporates a file vault, with the option to set any links you share from there to work once – and only once – and to expire after a set period. There are some limits on its…

Drivers are an essential element of your PC. Without them none of your internal or external devices would work. But as with most ‘under the bonnet’ technology – from cars to computers – you don’t usually need to worry about them until a vital feature stops working or your system becomes slower or crashes. This happens more frequently than you might think. Microsoft says that 70 per cent of blue screen of death errors are caused by third-party driver code (see www.snipca.com/42992). Ensuring your drivers are up to date and functioning properly will keep your system running smoothly, though it’s not a task you need to perform every week like a virus scan. Windows 10 and 11 generally do a good job of automatically updating drivers in the background. However,…

PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT Why does my IP address show the wrong location? Q I make use of the What Is whatismyipaddress.com, which shows that my IP address changes. Sometimes it says I’m in London, but I live in south Wales. When I use the Update My IP Location option, I correct my location to south Wales. However, when I check again later the IP address is still shown as London. What is going on? Steve Hughes A What’s going on is that your These can change at any time on the ISP’s command, typically once a week, or once a day. Moreover, while an ISP will generally try to assign individual subscribers with IP addresses that at least approximate their real-world location, this is by no means a given. If…

Install Brave on a smart TV The first web browser I ever used was Netscape Navigator 3, back in 1997. As my window to the exciting new world of the internet, I have fond memories of waiting for it to slowly load poorly designed pages piece by piece, before crashing and taking my Mac with it. Once I moved to a Windows 98 PC, I became a devoted Internet Explorer user – which was the style at the time – and stuck with it until IE7, which I still maintain was a great browser, even if it did copy most of its features from Firefox. Nowadays, I switch between eight or nine different browsers on my computer, phone and tablet, and the idea of limiting myself to one would be…

SPOTIFY EXTENDS FREE TRIAL TO 3 MONTHS Spotify has extended the free trial of its Premium service (www.snipca.com/43027), which for £9.99 a month lets you listen to music without adverts and download any track. Anyone signing up before 11 September will get the first three months free, up from one month. It’s available to new customers and those on the free version, while anyone who cancelled their Premium subscription before 15 July can get three months for £9.99 in total. UPGRADE TO THUNDERBIRD 102 Thunderbird users can now upgrade to version 102 from within the program itself. To do so, select the threeline menu, then Help, About Thunderbird, and click the update button (see screenshot below). Until now you’ve only been able to upgrade by downloading the latest version from…

PC | £1,199 from Currys www.snipca.com/42769 Acer Predator Orion 3000 Power player If you’re looking for a new computer with enough graphics power to get the most out of demanding games like Microsoft Flight Simulator, your best bet is a PC with a separate graphics card. This takes the load of creating realistic 3D graphics off your processor and puts it on to the graphics hardware, which significantly improves the performance of such games. The downside is that the standalone graphics card can beef up the price of a PC considerably. "Worth the money if you intend to use it for playing games" Back in Issue 637 we reviewed the Cyberpower Infinity X123 Pro, which now costs £1,000 (from www.snipca.com/42532), up from £905 when we tested it. That’s still good…

Six shooter As more laptops and smartphones arrive on the market with Wi-Fi 6 built in, you might be wondering if it’s time to upgrade your home network to this new wireless technology. The Linksys Hydra Pro 6 is one of the easiest and most affordable ways we’ve seen for providing this kind of boost. It won’t get you the fastest Wi-Fi 6, but it’s a step up from Wi-Fi 5 and is certainly affordable. “Brings faster Wi-Fi 6 to your entire home and is easy to set up” One reason it doesn’t cost more is because it’s restricted to dual-band, so uses one 2.4GHz radio (for older devices) and one 5GHz Wi-Fi 6 radio. If you have a lot of devices to connect and your network spreads over a…

What you need: SmartSystemMenu; NET Framework 4.0 Time required: 10 minutes You’re probably familiar with the system menu in Windows even if you don’t know its official name. It’s the menu that opens when you right-click the title bar of a program or folder window, which contains the options Move, Size, Minimise, Maximise and Close. You can make this menu much more interesting and useful using the free program SmartSystemMenu, which expands it with 19 new options for performing various tasks for the current window. These include making it ‘always on top’, turning it transparent, capturing a screenshot of its contents, launching other programs and more. You can also customise the menu to add and remove options. SmartSystemMenu doesn’t require installation but it does need NET Framework 4.0 or later…

Add a ‘donate’ button to your site Clubs often live on the generosity of their members, but actively asking for donations can feel awkward. A more delicate option is to add a ‘Donate’ button to your website, letting visitors donate in their own time. There are plenty of options for doing this, but the easiest is using PayPal, as we’ll explain. Choose your donation amounts To begin, you’ll need a PayPal account. If your club has its own bank account, you can sign up for a business, charity or not-for-profit account. Otherwise, you’ll have to use a personal account (as we do in this example). Once you’ve got an account, you can create a button by visiting www.snipca.com/42822. The bottom-left ‘Get a link’ option lets you create a landing page…

If 2020 was the year of subscribing, 2022 is becoming the year of cancelling. When lockdown began in March 2020, millions of people signed up to online services not just for entertainment (like Netflix), but so they could get essential products without visiting the shops. Remember the rush for toilet rolls and hand sanitiser? One of the main beneficiaries was Amazon. Its Prime service was already popular before the pandemic, but lockdown helped boost the number of UK households subscribing to around 13.3 million – that’s a staggering 53 per cent. Times are different now. With inflation soaring, customers are cancelling those lockdown subscriptions. Netflix has been the most high-profile casualty, losing 1.2 million subscribers this year. But Prime’s growth might also be at risk following Amazon’s decision to increase…

How can I convert ebooks in Calibre? Q Following your recommendation of Calibre 6.1 (www.snipca.com/42716) in Issue 637 (page 18), I find it impossible to convert Kindle ebooks so I can add them to Calibre’s library. Also, the text-to-speech function sounds great, but I can’t use it with many books. Can you help? Hilary Munday A It is possible to convert Kindle ebooks to other formats using Calibre. However, it involves installing a third-party plug-in designed to strip out the Digital Rights Management (DRM) used to protect Amazon’s ebook files, and this would break copyright law. As for Calibre’s Read Aloud function, this relies on Windows’ own text-tospeech feature and whether this has been configured correctly. To check, click Start, Settings, ‘Time & Language’, then Speech and make sure ‘English…