Table of contents for 524 in Computeractive

For years, backing up my PC was on my list of ‘things I’ll get round to one day’, just below clearing out the garage, insulating the loft and finally working out what causes that strange clanking noise in the middle of the night (suggestions on an email please). Then I became a father, and suddenly I had something worth backing up. I couldn’t bear losing the photos and videos I took of my little ones, so I quickly set up an elaborate, multilevel backup strategy involving hard drives, USB sticks, system images, online storage and encrypted folders. It’s never let me down. To devise a method suiting your needs, read the advice in this issue’s Cover Feature. Jonathan Parkyn reveals clever ways to reclaim lost space on your PC, then…

Hackers could kill patients by attacking life-supporting devices that are connected to the web, leading engineers have warned. The Royal Academy of Engineering has published two reports (www.snipca.com/27291) on the dangers of web-connected technology, known collectively as the ‘Internet of Things’. More specifically it claims that the number of vulnerable medical devices is growing. It says pacemakers, drug pumps and MRI scanners are particularly at risk, and calls for the Government to introduce regulation that ensures all web-connected equipment is safe. Professor Nick Jennings, author of the ‘Cyber safety and resilience’ study, says that measures are needed to “strengthen the safety and resilience of all connected systems, particularly the critical infrastructure on which much of our society now depends”. In 2013 former US Vice President Dick Cheney revealed that he…

Amazon has told customers to return power packs sold on its site because they might catch fire. The retail giant said six models of AmazonBasics packs are unsafe. These have the codes: B00LRK8EVO, B00LRK8HJ8, B00LRK8I7O, B00LRK8IV0, B00LRK8JDC and B00ZQ4JQAA, which are printed on the back of the units. It has emailed customers advising them to “cease using the product”. Clicking a link in the email takes customers to instructions on how they can safely dispose of the pack. To compensate, the company is offering a refund in the form of a gift card. Amazon’s decision follows a notice posted by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) warning that the packs, made by the Guoguang Electric Company in China, could “overheat and ignite, posing fire and burn hazards”. The company…

It saddens me that children addicted to iPads are losing the finger strength to hold pencils (Issue 523, News, page 9), but it doesn’t surprise me. In fact, I’m writing this after a day out with the family in our local park. Nearby was another family with three youngish children. The kids hardly ever stopped playing with their phones and tablets, ignoring the pencil case and colouring books next to them. Perhaps they are so addled by screens they’ve never even learnt how to pick up a pencil or turn a page. At no point did the parents encourage them to switch off their infernal devices. It was a very sad sight, particularly because other families in the park were having fun playing games like frisbee, football and chase. My…

“Totally unacceptable”. When a company’s executive uses those damning words to describe how a reader has been treated, you know a good outcome is likely. And so it proved with David Brown’s case against Origin Broadband (see Issue 523). Six weeks after paying the company £96.98 for fibre broadband, Origin told David it couldn’t actually provide the service. During this time he remained with BT on a higher tariff because he didn’t want to sign up to a new contract. Origin repeatedly promised to refund David, but the money never materialised. So after a year, exasperated with the company, he turned to us. We spoke to Origin marketing executive Michael Haughian, who said: “For a situation like the one you describe to exist is totally unacceptable. I can assure you…

PHONE|£200 from Honor www.snipca.com/27194 We’ve been wondering for a while where all the good budget phones had gone, and now at last there’s a new one. Motorola led this field for a while with its Moto G series, but recent examples have been less impressive. Its parent company, Lenovo, poked its own head round the door last year with the brilliant P2, but almost immediately withdrew it again. This time it’s Huawei’s turn. This phone is related to the Honor 9 (see our review, Issue 521), which has sold at prices all the way from £300 to £400, settling at around £350. That’s not a bad deal for a curved-glass phone with dual rear cameras and a fingerprint reader, but let down somewhat by a medium-sized, medium-quality screen, limited battery…

This bundle of powerful multimedia tools gives you fast, precise editing, incredible special effects, audio mastering, music creation and more. You can perfect your productions using 30 premium-quality project templates, boost your video quality with sophisticated film-style plug-ins from BorisFX, and compose your own music with Music Maker. The Suite also comes with 13 excellent plugins from HitFilm, experts in special effects. Once you’ve finished your video, you can share it in all the popular formats. Upload it to YouTube and Facebook, or burn it to disc. To enter the competition, email your address to cacomp@dennis.co.uk with ‘vegas’ in the subject line by midnight 10 April. VEGAS Movie Studio 15 Suite is available to buy now from www.vegascreativesoftware.com priced £99.99. There are also Standard (£39.99) and Platinum (£59.99) versions available.…

ANDROID & iOS Make video and audio calls using your tablet You can now make audio and video calls on your tablet using Amazon’s Alexa app. Install and open the app (Android www.snipca.com/27271; iOS www.snipca.com/27272; Kindle Fire – default), then log in using your Amazon account. Tap the Home tab (bottom left), Settings, then tap Allow to give the app access to your contacts. Next, tap the speech-bubble icon at the bottom, then the notepad icon at the top right. You’ll see a list of all your contacts that also have the app installed. Select the person you want to contact. Tap the call icon (see screenshot below left), then tap Video Call or Audio Call to make a call. Tap the keyboard icon to send a text message. Tap…

WINDOWS 7, 8.1, 10 Add programs to your ‘Open with’ menu Right-clicking any file displays the context menu. Moving your cursor to the ‘Open with’ option reveals all the programs and apps that can be used to open that particular file. By default, Microsoft prioritises its own programs and apps. So, for example, if you move your cursor to the ‘Open with’ option after right-clicking an image, you’ll see options to open it using Paint, Paint 3D or the Photos app. However, you can add any downloaded program (such as PicPick or Paint.NET) to this list. In the ‘Open with’ options screen click ‘Choose another app’. Next, scroll to the bottom of the pop-up menu that opens, click ‘More apps’, scroll to the bottom again, then click ‘Look for another…

A few years ago, I visited my grandmother carrying only my iPad. As the family historian, I was entrusted with her photo collection, but took the opportunity to sit down with her to go through a selection as I snapped them using JoyFlips. She revealed lots of useful information about the people she could identify and even passed on details about where one of her grandfathers had been buried. Using this information, we were able to track down a photo of his headstone using the BillionGraves app. Later, shortly before she died, I was able to show her an interactive story (‘A cockney in the outback’, www.snipca.com/27186) I’d made of her early life in Australia based on her parents’ photos and memoirs. I designed it using the excellent free software…

Why are Registry Editor options greyed out? Q I was particularly interested in Issue 522’s Cover Feature, about the Windows registry. I tried to follow two of the sections, starting with the removal of the startup delay time. However, it was a no-go for me. I found the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\ Explorer CurrentVersion\Explorer entry, as instructed, but that’s where I come unstuck. Right-clicking in the right-hand pane opens a pop-up menu, and I point to New – but all the options on the submenu are greyed out. I’m running the latest version of Windows 10, with the Fall Creators Update (1709). Any ideas? Nigel MacLeod A This is because you’ve used the left-hand pane to navigate to the necessary key, but haven’t actually selected it (with a left-click). As such, the…

GOOGLE MAPS ADDS WHEELCHAIR INFO Google Maps has added information on wheelchair accessibility to several major cities around the world, including London, covering the Underground, buses and trams. It’s available on the desktop version of Maps, and will be added to Android and iOS soon. New York, Tokyo, Sydney, Boston and Mexico City are also included. Google hopes to add more later. Read instructions on its blog: www.snipca.com/27293. FASTER RASPBERRY PI LAUNCHED A new Raspberry Pi has been launched with a more powerful processor and faster Wi-Fi. The chip inside the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ has an improved clock speed of 1.4GHz, and it now supports Gigabit Ethernet, although speeds peak at around 300Mbps. It’s available through several sites, priced around £34. Visit the official site for more details:…

Broadband adverts promoting so-called ‘fake fibre’ services will be banned, if a legal challenge is successful. CityFibre, an ISP specialising in fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband, has called for the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to prevent companies from using the word ‘fibre’ to describe services that end in a streetside cabinet, from where older and slower copper cables take over. This type of broadband, called fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC), is considerably slower than FTTH. Last November, the ASA decided to allow ISPs to advertise FTTC as ‘fibre broadband’, a move CityFibre wants reversed to “right this consumer wrong”. At the time the ASA said research showed customers didn’t notice fibre claims in adverts, and they didn’t change their buying decision when the difference between FTTC and FTTH was explained to them. But CityFibre claims…

I’ve been reading Simon Brew’s ‘Keep Your Brain Active’ column with interest (see page 74). I’ve seen first-hand the pain and pressure that dementia can cause in families, so I’m determined to try everything to keep my own brain healthy, and prevent myself being a burden to my children and siblings. I live on a daily diet of numbers and letters. I start every morning by playing several sudoku games online, then move on to Scrabble through Facebook. I have no scientific proof that this is boosting my mental agility, but it certainly makes me feel more alert. If nothing else, playing Scrabble has boosted my vocabulary. I take great pride in knowing and using obscure words in everyday conversation. Would Computeractive be able to dig a bit deeper into…

Santa brought my two young sons an Xbox each for Christmas. I didn’t want to buy each one the same games, so I read up on ‘game sharing’, but was confused by contradictory advice. I messaged Xbox Support via Twitter and they answered soon after. They were so helpful, explaining that ‘box sharing’ or ‘game sharing’ was possible. They ‘talked’ me through the whole process so I was ready for Christmas Day. When the big day came, with the help of my boys, we did what was necessary, but I’d messed up with email addresses. Twitter and Xbox Support again came to my rescue. A month after Christmas, the Live Gold membership ran out on one of the consoles. I could have sworn I’d entered the code for three months.…

Can I replace Secunia PSI? Q Until recently, I was using a very useful free program called Secunia PSI to keep all my software up to date. But I’ve heard that the program is to be discontinued. If so, will I still be able to use Secunia PSI? If not, is there a free replacement I can use? C Boyce A Sadly, Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI) is indeed being scrapped. According to the program’s website (www.snipca.com/27282), the tool “is reaching End-of-life on April 20, 2018” and that “existing installations of PSI will no longer function and should be uninstalled”. Keeping your software up to date is important, as unpatched programs can be exploited by malware and hackers. Secunia PSI scanned your PC for out-of-date and vulnerable software and alerted…

Computeractive is owned by Dennis Publishing, which owns a hi-tech facility for testing the latest technology. You’ll often read references to our benchmark testing, which is a method of assessing products using the same criteria. For example, we test the speed of every PC and the battery life of every tablet in exactly the same way. This makes our reviews authoritative, rigorous and accurate. Dennis Publishing also owns the magazines PC Pro, Computer Shopper and Web User and the websites Expert Reviews (www.expertreviews.co.uk) and Alphr (www.alphr.com). This means we can test thousands of products before choosing the most relevant for Computeractive. FAIR AND IMPARTIAL Our writers follow strict guidelines to ensure the reviews are fair and impartial. The manufacturer has no involvement in our tests. OUR AWARDS We award every…

FITNESS TRACKER|£249 from Amazon www.snipca.com/27252 We’ve previously recommended Garmin’s Vivosmart HR+ (£130, see our review, Issue 479), a GPS-equipped fitness-tracking band. The Vivoactive is a more advanced device that looks like a traditional watch and competes with Fitbit’s slightly cheaper Ionic (see Issue 519). Both cost around £100 less than the latest Apple Watch Series 3, which also has built-in GPS, so you can record where and how far you ran or cycled even if you don’t take your phone with you. But they don’t share the Apple Watch 3’s ability to connect directly to the internet. You’ll still need a smartphone to make the Vivoactive 3 usable, and unlike the Apple Watch and Samsung’s Gear Sport it can’t store or play music independently. It does support contactless payment, which…

What you need: Android phone or iPhone Time required: 20 minutes If you often worry about the wellbeing and whereabouts of certain family members, you should install the brilliant free app Family Locator. It lets you create a group (or ‘circle’) of members whose location you can track on a map in real time. Group members can notify you of their exact location with just a few taps. You can also set alerts that tell you when they’ve reached or left a particular place. STEP 1 Install and open the Family Locator app on your phone (Android www.snipca.com/27255; iOS www.snipca.com/27256 – called Find My Family on iOS). You need to provide your phone number, email address, name, and profile photo, set a password, then switch on your device’s location service.…

Trips by Lonely Planet Free Android: www.snipca.com/27258 iOS: www.snipca.com/27259 New to Android, Trips is a great way to chronicle your travels and share your experiences. You can create a travel diary with descriptions, photos and videos. The Discover section will give you inspiration for your next holiday. Textto Free Android: www.snipca.com/27260 This app lets you read and reply to text messages from your PC. You can even send photos and reply to group messages. To set it up on your PC, go to www.textto.io, then log in using the Gmail account you use on your phone. Anchor Free Android: www.snipca.com/27261 iOS: www.snipca.com/27262 Anchor’s audio-recording app previously only let you record audio, which was automatically deleted after 24 hours. The app now lets you create, upload and listen to podcasts that…

The Government has delayed the introduction of a controversial scheme that forces porn sites to check visitors are 18 or over. It will now start “later in the year”, rather than in April as planned. The British Board of Film Classification, in charge of regulating the scheme, has yet to release guidance to porn sites. A spokesman for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport said postponing the law would give it “time to make sure we get it right”. He added that the guidelines will be open to a public consultation with interested parties, and must be voted on by MPs, raising the possibility they could be watered down. The law, part of last year’s Digital Economy Act, aims to stop children “stumbling upon” sexually explicit content online.…

Block eBay buyers without credit cards I would like to echo your advice in Issue 523’s Cover Feature (‘Sell Your Stuff On eBay and Amazon’) to block sellers with no credit card on file (see screenshot below). With my wife I make and sell crafting items. It gives us a little pocket money to supplement our pension. Then suddenly, about a year ago, we had several incidents of people with zero feedback buying our items. None of them actually paid up. I remember one week in particular when on five consecutive purchases the buyers were fake. This was driving us nuts, and we were on the verge of abandoning eBay. Then after some research online we read about this scam, and how it can be thwarted by blocking sellers without…

Am I due a refund from TomTom? Q I paid TomTom £23.97 for annual updates for my Start 25 sat-nav on 14 December 2017. I’ve received no updates and been told I won’t get any because this model will no longer be updated. Am I entitled to my money back? John Murthwaite A Yes, TomTom must refund John. It promised updates that it’s now unable to provide. The company angered users in January by announcing it will stop updating older models with new maps (see News, Issue 521, page 7), including John’s Start 25 (see the full list at www.snipca.com/26897). We’ve told TomTom to refund John. But what about getting a refund for the sat-nav itself? This is unlikely. TomTom marketed many devices saying they would last a ‘lifetime’. Customers…

WATCH OUT FOR… New wave of Apple App Store scams What’s the threat? Apple has released advice on how to spot a new wave of scam emails, which are among the most sophisticated phishing attacks ever seen. In particular, scammers are sending emails that claim you’ve paid a large amount of money to subscribe to something on the Apple App Store. The fraudsters hope you’ll think ‘hang on, that doesn’t look right’, then click the Cancel Subscription link. Doing so takes you to a web page where you’re asked to submit your Apple ID login, credit-card details, and other private information. Scammers know that the higher the price they claim you’ve paid, the more likely you’ll click that Cancel link without thinking. You’ll see this tactic being used in our…

PC|£999 from PC Specialist www.snipca.com/26306 What is it about 99s? Not the ice creams with flakey sticks – their popularity is easily explained by the delicious vanilla and chocolatey taste. No, we mean the 99s on the end of prices. According to legend, they were introduced by shopkeepers who wanted to make sure their assistants would always have to open the till to give change, thus removing the temptation to slip round-numbered banknotes straight into their own pockets. “Has the perfect specification for a do-it-all system at a sensible price” This, of course, makes absolutely no sense: they could just as easily open the till, hand back the penny and palm the note up their sleeve. Clearly, the truth is that those shopkeepers realised they could trick unsuspecting customers into…

Q We prefer not to use Wi-Fi, but now that it’s so popular, not many new computers come with an Ethernet port. Can you recommend any that do? Fiona Kay A It’s true that Ethernet ports aren’t used as much as they once were, but it’s still a more common feature than you may think. In fact, almost every desktop PC we see still comes with an Ethernet port. And they now support Gigabit speed (1000Mbps), so your Ethernet connection won’t limit, for example, access to very fast broadband. We recommend everyone connects their main PC to their internet router with a Gigabit Ethernet cable if possible. Laptops are a different matter. Those aimed at business users often have Gigabit Ethernet, including the HP 250 G6 reviewed on page 21,…

£15 fromwww.snipca.com/26848 Find out what other products we liked. Buy our new 2017 Back Issue CD: LAPTOP Asus ZenBook UX410UA £590 from www.snipca.com/26789 Tested: Issue 518 With a dual-core Intel i3 processor, 4GB of memory and 128GB SSD, this slim aluminium 14in has just enough power to make Windows 10 feel smooth – and unlike Asus’s cheaper models it has a very good Full HD screen. ALTERNATIVE: Dell XPS 13 This premium laptop starts at £1,149, but the best deal is with the brand new quadcore i7-8550 and QHD touchscreen. £1,300 from www.snipca.com/26796 DESKTOP PC Palicomp AMD Gravity RYZ1 £800 from www.snipca.com/26521 Tested: Issue 518 AMD’s Ryzen 5 1600 processor is overclocked to 3.7GHz to add extra power and speed, and it also has an excellent GTX 1060 graphics card.…

Email us your tips: letters@computeractive.co.uk TIP OF THE FORTNIGHT Download free ebooks to your PC without ads In Issue 521 (see Make Windows Better, page 46), you featured Freda, the Windows 10 app that lets you download from a selection of over 50,000 out-of-copyright ebooks from Project Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org). As you mentioned, the free Freda app has adverts and you need to pay £1.49 to remove these. I have a solution that involves a little more effort to download ebooks, but means you won’t pay a penny for an ad-free experience. I personally use the free Amazon Kindle PC program, which has a more user-friendly interface than the Freda app. You can use the Kindle program to download any ebook from the Project Gutenberg website (or from Amazon’s free and…

AGES 0-5 Coral Reef by Tinybop £2.99 www.snipca.com/27263 (iOS) This game teaches your toddler about sea life through simple games, activities and animated videos. For example, they’ll learn how sunlight helps sealife and how jellyfish eat. Our favourite games involve saving crabs from a shrimp and finding octopuses. AGES 6-10 Just 2 Pics* Free www.snipca.com/27264 (Android) Free www.snipca.com/27265 (iOS) In this word puzzle game, your child will see two images that combine to form a word or a phrase. For example, they may see images of a horse and a shoe. There are over 350 puzzles available. AGES 11-16 Bury me, my Love £2.99 www.snipca.com/27266 (Android) £2.99 www.snipca.com/27267 (iOS) In this game, you play as a Syrian refugee helping his wife emigrate to Europe safely. Via a series of text…

Turn off automatic updating Many apps are regularly updated with new features and fixes for any problems. The auto-update feature makes this process straightforward, but not all updates are welcome. If you’d like more control, you can disable automatic updating for specific apps by tapping the top-right three-dot menu on the app’s page in the Play Store, then unticking the ‘Enable auto-update’ box. To turn off auto-updates for all apps, tap Settings in the general menu, then ‘Auto-update apps’ and select ‘Do not auto-update apps’. Create wishlists It’s not unusual to find an app, film, book or album that you want to investigate at a future date. This is where the Wishlist function comes in handy. If you see something you’re interested in, tap the Wishlist icon (which you should…

PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT Am I stuck with 32GB storage on my laptop? Q A friend has a new HP Stream 14 laptop that’s running out of space. I found that the total storage is just 32GB, with only 5GB left for her files. This was bought from PC World, apparently with no explanation about the limited capacity. A local computer-repair shop told me this was now quite common, but there’s no way to install a proper hard drive inside as there’s no room. He also said that an external drive would still be restricted by the amount of capacity available on the internal drive – so a mere 5GB. I’m surprised I haven’t seen any articles on this in Computeractive. I would appreciate your thoughts. John Mitchell A Machines…

32bit/64bit A measure of how much information a computer can process at once. Most older computers are 32bit, more modern ones are 64bit. Action camera A digital camera designed to record action while attached to a person’s body or equipment, such as a helmet or handlebars. Add-in Microsoft’s name for tools that can be added to Office software. ADSL Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. A technology that converts a standard phone line into a broadband internet connection. Band steering Detects whether a router is dual-band and, if so, directs it to 5GHz. Beta A version of software that’s being tested. Beta versions are often released so problems can be ironed out. BIOS Basic Input-Output System. Essential software built into every PC that connects the vital components. Blue screen of death Technically…