Table of contents for 725 in Computeractive

I’ve not counted them all but there must be at least 379 more exciting New Year resolutions than vowing to remove junk from your PC. Yet it tops my list every year. After 26 issues writing about tools, programs and browser extensions my PC resembles a software equivalent of landfill. Robert Irvine has started his resolution earlier this year by identifying all the rubbish you can safely uninstall. As well as the type of trash I mention above, his Cover Feature reveals TV apps and built-in Windows tools you no longer need. Perhaps more usefully, he explains how to rid your browser of all the AI dross that tech giants automatically assume you want. At its best AI makes difficult tasks easy; at its worst it simply interferes with jobs…

ChatGPT will soon start showing adverts, according to leaked code for the chatbot. The code includes references to an ‘ads feature’ with ‘bazaar content’, ‘search ad’ and ‘search ads carousel’ (see screenshot 1). OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, would need to apply this code to the chatbot in order for it to show adverts. The code suggests ads will appear only when ChatGPT shows results from the internet, rather than unprompted during a chat. One ChatGPT user has already reported seeing adverts. Yuchen Jin wrote on X that the ad ‘Find a fitness class, Connect Peloton’ appeared while he was discussing with the chatbot a Podcast interview with Elon Musk (www.snipca.com/57330, see screenshot 2). Roughly 800 million people use ChatGPT every week, up from 100 million in November 2023 and 300…

Ofcom has fined Virgin Media £23.8m for failing to protect vulnerable telecare customers as they moved them from copper-based landlines to digital phones. The telecoms regulator investigated Virgin after the company reported “a number of serious incidents related to the migration of telecare customers in November and December 2023”. Ofcom’s subsequent investigation “uncovered serious systemic failures in Virgin Media’s migration process between August 2022 and December 2023”. It added that Virgin failed properly to “identify and record the status of telecare customers”. This meant those affected “did not receive the appropriate level of tailored support through the migration process”. Virgin also put “thousands of vulnerable customers” at risk of harm when disconnecting them because it prevented their telecare systems from connecting to alarm-monitoring centres. Ofcom said that when deciding how…

Signal is probably the most private messaging app. It uses end-to-end encryption (E2EE) by default for all messages and calls, and doesn’t store any metadata. In September, it launched Secure Backups for Android devices, letting you back up your message history using E2EE, and has now added it to iPhones and iPads. The feature means you won’t lose your messages should you lose your phone or if it’s stolen. To access your backup Signal generates a 64-character recovery key. It’s vital you keep this safe because Signal can’t help you find it if you lose it. It’s free for 100MB of text messages (more than enough) along with the past 45 days’ worth of photos, videos and files. You can extend this indefinitely, and get a 100GB limit, for $1.99…

LEAD CASE I’ve switched to Vodafone, so why is Virgin still charging me? Q I decided to move my broadband from Virgin to Vodafone because it was cheaper. I used Ofcom’s One Touch Switch (OTS) process (www.snipca.com/57195) and hoped everything would go smoothly. I returned Virgin’s set-top box and router as requested, but it kept billing me. I paid £140 because I was worried about the legal implications if I didn’t, but the bills keep coming. Can you help? Peter McGinley A We spoke to Virgin Media on Peter’s behalf and the matter’s now been fully resolved. It has refunded the payments Peter made and cancelled his contract. We can understand why Peter was frustrated with Virgin, but the fault might lie with Vodafone. When switching Ofcom’s OTS system puts…

How can I keep track of my family? Q I need to track my family member’s phones just to make sure they are safe and sound. Is there a program or app that does this? I have an Android phone. Alan Buxton A This isn’t difficult, though you should get your family’s permission first. The best advanced option is the app Life360 (Android www.snipca.com/57068; iOS www.snipca.com/57069, pictured below left), which has a free basic plan. Every family member installs the app and joins a family ‘circle’. They can then all keep track of each other’s whereabouts. The free version tracks family members while they’re driving, and notifies you when they get home. However, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid-for plan for crash notifications and for more than two locations…

EARBUDS | £219 from Apple www.snipca.com/57252 Apple’s latest high-end AirPods are less a pair of headphones than an auditory Swiss army knife – at the ready for taking calls, protecting your hearing or simply enjoying music while you’re out. Apple promised longer battery life and improved active noise cancellation (ANC), and has delivered on both. They now last for up to eight hours of listening time with ANC turned on – two hours longer than the previous AirPods – with a further 16 hours of charge from the case. In practice, with all features turned on, this can drop to 5.5 hours, but it’s still a significant improvement. Noise cancellation is now exceptional, with even fewer outside sounds creeping through than on the AirPods Pro 2. For best results, a…

TV STREAMING STICK | £50 from Amazon www.snipca.com/57247 Amazon pitches the Fire TV Stick 4K Select as an option for ‘essential 4K streaming’, slotting in between the basic Fire TV Stick HD and the Fire TV Stick 4K. The £10 saving over the latter means losing support for Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, but the bigger story here is that the Select ditches Amazon’s old Android-based Fire OS software in favour of the new Linux-based Vega OS. “It’s less flexible and lacks the features of previous versions” Physically, there’s not much difference between the Stick 4K and Stick 4K Select. It’s another slim dongle with rounded corners (14mm thick and 99mm long) with a microUSB port for connecting the external power supply and an HDMI connector for plugging into your…

What you need: PDFgear Time required: 30 minutes PDF gear is one of our favourite free tools. It’s a PDF reader, creator and editor all in one, and it’s just received a significant update (version 2.1.13). This latest release introduces smart tools that let you redact sensitive information and re-save the PDF so that data can’t be retrieved by anyoneyou share it with. This will come in very handy whenever you need to share documents that contain details of online accounts, banking data, medical informationandmore. To follow our Workshop explaining how to do this, first download a copy of PDFgear from www.pdfgear.com 1 STEP To redact text that you don’t want others to read, open the file you want to edit, then click Protect 1. Next, click Redact 2 and PDFgear…

CHATGPT Apply personality to all your chats OpenAI has improved ChatGPT’s Personalization controls, which adjust the tone of the chatbot’s responses to your queries. There are now seven personalities to choose from in addition to the default tone: Friendly, Efficient, Professional, Candid, Quirky, Cynical and Nerdy. What’s more, the personality you choose will shape all your ChatGPT conversations. Previously, the change only applied to any new chats, but it now includes past interactions. So when you resume an existing chat, the AI assistant will answer your questions using the new tone. To switch ChatGPT’s personality, click or tap your account name and choose Personalization. Click the ‘Base style and tone’ menu (on the website – see screenshot below) or tap ChatGPT Personality (in the mobile app) and select your preferred…

LIBREOFFICE CALC Remove unwanted text in cells LibreOffice 25.8, released in August, adds the TEXTBEFORE and TEXTAFTER formulas to Calc. These let you chop unwanted text from cells: TEXTBEFORE keeps only the text before a specified character or word, while TEXTAFTER keeps only the text after this point. In our example, we have a list of email addresses, but we want to keep only the username – in other words, the text before the ‘@’ symbol. With our first email address in cell A2, in B2 we type =TEXTBEFORE(A2,"@") – 1 in our screenshot below. This leaves only the first part of the email address (the person’s name) in cell B2 2. If we wanted to keep only the domain name (for example, ‘gmail.com’), we’d use the TEXTAFTER formula: =TEXTAFTER(A2,"@").…

LOWEST-EVER PRICE! We’re delighted to announce our lowest-ever price for Norton 360 Deluxe. For just £9.99, you’ll protect 3 devices for 15 months. Available both for new customers and existing Norton users wanting to renew. WHAT YOU GET • Real-time malware protection • Secure VPN • 25GB PC Cloud Backup PLUS Monitors the dark web for your personal information Norton is made by NortonLifeLock Inc – a standalone company dedicated to consumer cyber safety. It has always performed strongly in Computeractive antivirus tests, so we highly recommend it. 3 devices for 15 months NOW ONLY £9.99* Normally £29.99 Buy it from our Software Store at www.snipca.com/56927 * while stocks last…

1080p High-definition video: 1920x1080 pixels. 3G/4G/5G Technologies that deliver faster mobile broadband. Active noise cancelling Method for reducing unwanted sound by adding a second sound. Aspect ratio A measurement of the shape of a screen.  Authenticator An app that generates time-sensitive, one-time codes for two-factor authentication (2FA). Bandwidth A measure of how much data can be transferred through a connection at one time. Beta A version of software that’s being tested. Browser-engine wrapper A simple tool that lets apps show web pages without running a full browser. Calibration The process of checking that colours are accurate on a monitor. Captcha Distorted text you have to type to prove you’re a human.  Cast To send content from your PC, phone or tablet to your TV. cd/m2 Candela per square metre. Standard…

Charlie Kirk topped Google’s trending UK searches in 2025 following the assassination of the US political activist in September. Kirk was shot while speaking at Utah Valley University. Tyler Robinson, 22, from Washington, Utah, has been charged with the murder. The deaths of three other people appear in Google’s top 10 – rock star Ozzy Osbourne, Liverpool and Portugal footballer Diego Jota and boxer Ricky Hatton (see box left for full list). Google’s annual ‘Year of Search’ roundup also reveals that ‘When is Easter?’ was the UK’s most popular ‘When is’ question, while ‘How to verify age on X?’ topped the ‘How to’ chart. See all the UK results at www.snipca.com/57353. Globally the top search term was Gemini, referring to Google’s AI tool. The results show searches that had the…

Fake Google One subscription To the best of my knowledge I’ve never given Google a penny, so I was surprised to learn that I had ‘made a subscription purchase from Google Commerce Limited on Google Play’. This came in an email supposedly from no-reply@official-mailing.com. A quick search online revealed it to be fake. The email said I’d been signed into a yearly subscription for 2TB storage at Google One, and that it would cost me €99.99 a year. I only had two days to cancel this. It was a reasonably convincing scam, with the proper Google Play logo and it even mentioned my correct email address. Warn your fellow readers about scams at letters@computeractive.co.uk…

Virgin Media has refunded reader Andrew Higgins for the period his phone wasn’t working (see Issue 720), though it took him more effort than it should have. In July, his Virgin landline went dead. Callers could hear ringing at their end, but the phone never rang in his house. Virgin initially refused a refund for this period because Andrew hadn’t reported it sooner, but this was irrelevant. By the time Virgin offered to fix the fault Andrew had had enough and wanted to cancel his landline. This complicated things a little, but we still advised Andrew to ask Virgin for a deadlock letter, which would have strengthened his case against the company were he to report it to the Communications Ombudsman (www.snipca.com/57262). We also phoned Virgin to ask why he…

VIDEO CONVERTER Any Video Converter Free 9.1.5 www.snipca.com/57260 What you need: Windows 10 or 11 The last time we included Any Video Converter (AVC) Free in this section (Issue 717, page 18), we explained how to use its new browser for downloading videos. We were less pleased that it had started prompting you to upgrade to its Pro and Ultimate versions before performing certain actions. Sadly, those nags still appear in version 9.1.5, but AVC has again offset our annoyance by adding several genuinely useful features. The upgrade prompts are easy to dismiss by clicking Continue – unlike in some freemium programs (see our Cover Feature on page 50), they’re not aggressive. The biggest new addition is a timeline for AVC’s Merge Video and Trim Video tools. This brings it…

SOFTWARE WARNING! IObit’s memory-cleaning baloney Take a look at the three screenshots on the far right. They show different results for the amount of memory IObit’s new SystemCare Ultimate 18 claimed it could free up on my PC. You might expect such different results days or weeks apart, but these were all taken within five minutes. Such suspicious results didn’t surprise me. Most programs that magically claim to declutter your PC are utterly pointless, and you should certainly never pay for any. IObit wants $26 (about £20) a year for SystemCare Ultimate 18 (www.snipca.com/57185). Spend the money on mince pies instead. This is about IObit’s 563rd appearance in ‘Named & Shamed’. Each time it has devised a new trick for annoying users. The latest is the Performance Monitor widget that…

SMARTPHONE | £879 from OnePlus www.snipca.com/57159 If a smartphone genie handed us three wishes for a dream phone, we’d struggle to create a device as brilliant as the new OnePlus 15. It delivers battery life that will get you through multiple days, a stunning and durable design, plus a strong selection of features, including some you won’t find on other Android phones. Throw in a great screen, an excellent camera and incredible performance, and OnePlus’s new flagship phone is hard to fault. “Charge it on Monday morning and it’ll still be working on Wednesday night” Its looks are simple but refined. There’s a prominent camera bump (pictured below), but it’s shaped and positioned to make sure that everything aligns with style. The whole thing is IP68 water- and dust-resistant, so…

Which bluetooth speakers are best for classical music? Q I recently bought Majority’s Folio Bluetooth Turntable (£169 from www.snipca.com/55096) and have been using some Bang & Olufsen earbuds with it. However, the sound produced by these and the turntable’s own speakers isn’t good enough for classical music. Are there any Bluetooth speakers you’d recommend? Do any come with tone control like my old (wired) JBL Creature II speakers? Susan Platter A The Sonos Era 100 (pictured) can really do justice to your vinyl. It’s designed for stationary use, and can connect to your turntable via Bluetooth or to streaming services through Wi-Fi. Either way you get a wide, substantial and detailed stereo sound and you can adjust the equaliser (EQ) settings in the Sonos app. It costs £199, but Amazon…

LAPTOP MSI Prestige A16 AI+ £1,056 from www.snipca.com/57323 Tested Issue 718 A powerful Copilot+ laptop with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD to guarantee fast performance. Screen is excellent too, while battery lasts an impressive 17 hours. ALTERNATIVE PCSpecialist 16 Fusion British-made laptop with superb screen and built for advanced AI tasks. £969 from www.snipca.com/55094 ANDROID TABLET OnePlus Pad 3 £549 from www.snipca.com/55302 Tested Issue 714 With an incredibly fast processor and stunning 13.2in screen, this is the best ever Android tablet, and rivals the iPad Air. At launch both the 12GB RAM/256GB and 16GB/512GB versions were £529, so grab the latter as soon as possible. ALTERNATIVE Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 Has a much brighter screen than its predecessor, making it ideal for watching TV. Also has a faster…

SECURITY Keep passwords in digital filing cabinets I was interested to read Issue 720’s Cover Feature on password managers, but was disappointed in your Gold award winner Bitwarden (https://bitwarden.com). I found it quite restrictive and inflexible, as were a couple of others you mentioned that I tried. I was also disappointed that you didn’t review my personal favourite, Splash ID Safe (www.snipca.com/57155), which I’ve used for 20 years. It offers much more than a password manager. You can use it to store details about everything in your life, from the size of your car’s tyres to the shade of paint you used to decorate a room. It’s like a digital filing cabinet in which you can customise your Categories (like the drawers in a filing cabinet) and your Types (like…

ANDROID View your recent places in Google Maps Google Maps has added a handy feature called ‘Your recent places’ (1 in our screenshot below) to the You tab 2 of its Android app. This shows places you’ve recently viewed, searched for and asked for directions to or from. ‘Your recent places’ differs from the existing Timeline feature in Google Maps, which shows places you’ve physically visited (provided Timeline is enabled in your ‘Activity controls’). By default, it shows the three most recent places – tap ‘See all’ 3 to browse the full ‘Your places’ list. You can filter your recent places by area and by category, such as ‘Food and drink’, ‘Culture’ or ‘Shopping’. Places you’ve saved in Google Maps are also listed. If you don’t want Google to store…

ADD A DISC FOR £5.95 Your PC almost certainly came with Windows 11 Home. But did you know it’s easy to upgrade to Windows 11 Pro to get advanced features like BitLocker drive encryption? There’s no need to install a new version of Windows – just take your new Professional key, go to System, Activate, then select ‘Change Product Key’. To upgrade, visit www.snipca.com/50563 and click the red Buy Now button on the right. JUST SO YOU KNOW… This offer can be used by one person only, and expires at midnight on 30 December, 2025. It’s a lifetime licence for one computer.…

PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT Can I get mobile connection for my Fire TV Stick? Q We’re fortunate enough to own a narrowboat, on which we cruise during the summer. In the evenings, we enjoy a bit of TV. Currently, we have a 12V self-tuning channel seeker on the roof of the boat, linked to the 240V TV, which is powered through an inverter from a battery. However, we only ever seem to get BBC, ITV and some other minor commercial channels. Currently we have an old 32in set with no USB port for a dongle, so I know I’ll need a new TV for any advances. Is there a way to raise a one-off internet link and pair it to a Fire TV Stick, say? Michael Rook A Yes, you…

For the past few months, Moonpig has been asking me to purchase a card online. I finally gave in when they offered me one for free – a timely offer, since I have a friend with a birthday coming up (which I’m sure they knew!). So I accepted, placed the order and everything went smoothly. Later, I decided to order four Christmas cards and paid via PayPal. I then realised I’d made a few mistakes and wanted to correct them, but discovered that once an order is completed, it can’t be updated, even though I’d set a delivery date of several weeks in the future. I spoke to its chatbot, but it simply said the office was closed. To my surprise, the next morning I received an email offering to…

Uninstall Tool www.snipca.com/57256 Price: £19.60 Free trial: 30 days What you need: Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 We’ve tested lots of software uninstallers, but until now we’d never come across the blandly named Uninstall Tool. That’s surprising because it’s been around for 20 years. A recent update brought it to our attention. Unlike most uninstallers, the program isn’t free or freemium, but has a fully functional 30-day free trial that lets you explore its features. We were impressed by how quickly it loaded and listed our installed software, but less enamoured of the Windows XP-style interface. Selecting a program displayed information in the side panel, including the version number, publisher and install date. There were also options to uninstall that tool or forcibly remove leftover traces (see screenshot). Neither prompted…

NAS DRIVE | £170 from Amazon www.snipca.com/57337 This Chinese-made NAS drive is a reasonably priced, basic model that’s ideal for backing up all data on your household’s PCs or for keeping an archive of your music, video and photos. It doesn’t do the advanced stuff you might expect from more expensive units, with no features aimed at developers or for running virtual servers. “The big surprise is the HDMI port, letting you connect it to your TV and play music and videos” You can fit two 3.5in hard drives or SATA SSDs up to 30TB in size, giving you up to 60TB of storage if capacity is your priority, or up to 30TB if you’d rather mirror (back up) the data from one drive to the other for safekeeping. The…

Home-security systems can be complicated and expensive. You can spend money on proximity and movement sensors; door and window contacts; and multiple cameras running from a central hub. But if you don’t want a full surveillance setup, you can still strengthen your security with a single camera and the right software. One camera won’t cover every entry point, but positioned well it can watch over key possessions and alert you to unexpected movement. A camera like this can be cheaper than you think, and most models come with apps that are easy to use. However, these apps may lock you into the manufacturer’s online storage or insist on saving videos to an onboard SD card that you can only access through the app. That’s not ideal if you want full…

CHROME Auto-fill more personal information Chrome can now store and auto-fill more of your personal information, including your passport, driving licence and vehicle details. This saves you having to enter that data manually in online forms. To add extra information to the browser, go to Settings then ‘Autofill and passwords’ and switch on the new ‘Enhanced autofill’ feature (1 in our screenshot below). Click the Add button 2 and choose from options including ‘Driving licence’, Passport and Vehicle. Enter the relevant details and click Save. Annoyingly, the date fields use the US-style MM/DD/YYYY format and you’re asked for your state rather than county – hopefully Google will fix this for UK users soon. Enhanced autofill information is saved on your device rather than synced online. VIVALDI Create a custom start page…

WINDOWS 10 & 11 Add more information to your scanned devices NirSoft’s WakeMeOnLan scans your network and shows which devices are switched on, making it easy to wake or manage them remotely. Version 1.95, updated in November, adds five extra columns that let you add details such as location and user for each device it finds. To download it, click www.snipca.com/57257 then scroll down to the Feedback section and click one of the download links. WakeMeOnLan is safe, so if you see a SmartScreen warning when installing it, click ‘More info’ then ‘Run anyway’. Now click File at the top left followed by Start Scanning. Once it has listed all your devices click View then Choose Columns. Now scroll down the box that appears and tick how many ‘Extra Columns’…