Table of contents for 551 in Computeractive

Over the years, many ‘experts’ have forecast the demise of the TV, predicting we’ll swap the big screen in the corner of the living room for the smaller screen held in our hands. But the TV is the great survivor of home devices. It has adapted to take advantage of the rise in streaming, keen to remind us that it has moved on and grown up since the days when it used to shut down for a few hours in the afternoon. Nik Rawlinson is old enough to remember that, so he appreciates the modern wonder of streaming everything bar your breakfast to your TV: films, photos, podcasts, radio, Skype and more. As he explains in our Cover Feature (page 50), all this is possible once you buy a Chromecast…

Amazon order is a scam In the past month I’ve received three emails purporting to come from Amazon, telling me my order couldn’t be processed. These were easy scams for me to spot because I haven’t shopped on Amazon for ages. But to a less ‘with it’ person, they would seem convincing. They might be tricked into clicking the link to complete the purchase. Action Fraud says it’s received “hundreds” of reports about these scams (www.snipca.com/31029). To monitor your Amazon account click Your Account on the site’s homepage. That tells you whether your purchases have gone through. Warn your fellow readers about scams at letters@computeractive.co.uk…

In the O2 phone shop I spoke clearly: “I want a cheap smartphone without any contracts on your pay-as-you-go deal. At this stage I need to make and receive phone calls and texts and maybe take the odd photo. I do not do social media”. Less than 50 words in plain, simple English. I left with my wallet 50 pounds lighter and a new phone. But to my horror, the damn thing was using my £20 top-up at just over £1 a day, even though I wasn’t actually using the phone. Eventually I spoke with a very helpful person at O2’s customer services who explained that I had been sold a special bundle that had a few hundred minutes of calls and some megabytes of data. Happily, I could buy…

I recently got a new phone that immediately rendered all my USB cables obsolete, so I decided to buy a couple of spares. I bought some from Syncwire International Direct on eBay that looked robust so was disappointed when they would only work one way up and hardly ever transmitted data. I complained and got an immediate pair of replacements as quick as humanly possible. Unfortunately, I had the same problem with these, so I investigated further and found it was my new case that was causing the problem. Once I enlarged the case’s holes all four cables were perfect. So I wrote to Syncwire and told them of my stupidity and offered to pay for the additional two new leads. I don’t know if this surprised them but they…

ASTRONOMY TOOL Stellarium 0.19 www.snipca.com/31156 What you need: Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 Whether you’re an amateur astronomer or just enjoy gazing at the night sky, Stellarium will broaden your horizons. This open-source gem of a program will tell you precisely what you’re looking at and let you explore the outer reaches of known space. You’ll discover the names and positions of millions of stars, and be able to view them as they look from Earth or from other planets nearby. With your left mouse button, you can shift the field of view, while zooming in and out with your scroll wheel. Alternatively, you can use your keyboard’s arrow keys - holding down the Shift key slows your movement, while holding Ctrl lets you zoom using the up and down…

WARNING: JUNK AHEAD Junk offender EaseUS Todo Backup Free In Issue 550, we had a good old moan about FileZilla – a once-great free FTP tool that I now find all but impossible to recommend because the developers decided to cram its installer full of junk. Now it seems another of my one-time favourite free tools has suffered a similar fate: EaseUS Todo Backup Free (www.snipca.com/31155). Thanks to its comprehensive range of backup options, including file-and-folder backup, system imaging and scheduling tools, I’ve recommended EaseUS on numerous occasions. And I’m not the only one who has sung its praises – search for ‘best free backup’ on Google and you’ll find the program at the top of a number of tech-review lists. However, when I attempted to install the program on…

Wait. You mean a smart watch? No. A smart watch connects to your smartphone. The Nubia Alpha (pictured) is a smartphone that wraps around your wrist. What does it do? Essentially the same things as a topend smart watch, but without you having the hassle of carrying a phone as well. When you look where you’d expect to see a watch face, you will see one, displaying the time, fitness-tracking data, notifications and so on. But the 192x960-pixel touchscreen continues above and below this, curving flexibly around your wrist, to show a customisable user interface that you can tap and swipe to access all the device’s functions. You can also wave your hand to operate it by gesture, or use voice commands. A built-in eSIM means you can connect it…

Yes, nine hundred quid for a phone is a lot. Then again, it’s £200 less than Apple wants for its comparable iPhone XS Max with half the storage (64GB). And we have to admit, you get a very nice bit of hardware for your money. First of all, the S10+ is arguably the best attempt yet at a phone that’s nothing but screen. The ‘notch’ for the front cameras has been reduced to a Tic Tac-shaped blob at the top-right corner, leaving almost all of the huge 6.4in screen clear. Attention is drawn, though, when it’s looking for your face to unlock the phone: a snake of light chases around the lenses – just one of many touches that elevates a nice-looking design to something really quite exquisite. That screen…

What was it? After Apple released the iPhone in 2007, with Android rivals following, an obvious next step for the industry was a full-size touchscreen tablet. In 2008, tech investor Michael Arrington announced a plan to create a “dead simple web tablet” that would sell for $200 (around £100 at the time). Prototypes developed over the following year with Singapore company Fusion Garage ran open-source software based on Ubuntu Linux. Why did it die? Just as the CrunchPad was ready to go into production, Fusion Garage announced it didn’t need Arrington and would launch the product by itself. Arrington countered that he, instead, would launch it alone. Since neither had the rights to do so without the other, both failed. Although Fusion Garage did deliver a few tablets, branded JooJoo…

The data you store on your PC is more valuable than the computer itself. It's packed with contact details and emails that link us to a network of other people; online shopping receipts that reveal how, when and how much we’ve been spending; and our own personal financial accounts. They’re quite literally a treasure trove for identity thieves far and wide. Microsoft understands this, which is why it’s been building an encryption tool called BitLocker into professional and education versions of Windows since Vista. Here, we’re going to use it to encrypt an external hard drive, which we’ll set as the default location for new documents stored on our PC. If you’re running Windows Home, don’t worry: we’ll outline some alternatives for you. If you’re not sure which version of…

Issue 547’s Cover Feature on downloading the web’s best-kept secrets was great, and gave me loads of ideas. I particularly appreciated the advice on creating offline Ordnance Survey maps (page 55). In the tip, Will Stapley mentions that you can’t use Bing Maps to view Ordnance Survey maps on smartphones. Although this is true for the main Bing Maps website, I recently found a useful workaround. Go to www.snipca.com/31023 in your phone’s browser – this takes you to Microsoft’s Bing Maps page for software developers. Next, select Getting Started, Map, then ‘Load map (async)’ – this is at the top of the list. Bing Maps will now appear, complete with the option to change viewing mode (there are five of these: Road, Aerial, ‘Bird’s eye’, Streetside or Ordnance Survey –…

ANDROID & iOS Get an instant translation as you type Typing multilingual messages to friends and family overseas has just got much easier on iOS, thanks to a Gboard update that adds real-time translation to Google’s free keyboard app. Built-in Google Translate – which instantly translates your words as you type – has finally been added to Gboard for iOS (www.snipca.com/31111), two years after it arrived in the app’s Android version (www.snipca.com/31112). If you’ve never used it, or you hadn’t realised it was available on Android, here’s a quick primer. Launch the keyboard then tap the multi-coloured G icon followed by the Google Translate icon (ringed in our screenshot below left), then OK. Google automatically detects which language you’re using, but you can select a source language from the top-left dropdown…

WINDOWS 7, 8.1, 10 Make Command Prompt easier to see By default, Command Prompt opens in a black window with white text. If you find this difficult to see, there’s an easy way to reverse the colours. Press the Windows key+R to open the Run box, type cmd into it, then press Enter to open Command Prompt. Now right-click its header, click Defaults, then click the Colors tab. Here, select Screen Background, then choose the white tile from the colour panel (see screenshot above). Next, select Screen Text, then choose the black tile. Click OK, then close and reopen Command Prompt to see the new white interface. WINDOWS 7, 8.1 OR 10 Speed up your solid-state drive Most PCs are programmed to work with hard-disk drives (HDDs), so if you use a…

All Office programs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote) have tabs containing groups (sections) of options. For example, Word’s Home tab has a Font group that lets you customise your font and add formatting changes to it. For convenience, it’s a good idea to create your own tab with groups of options you use most often. We’ll show you how to do this in Word, but the process is the same in other Office programs. Right-click any blank area inside your Ribbon, then click ‘Customize the Ribbon’. In the window that opens, you’ll see two sections – a Popular Commands dropdown menu on the left and Main Tabs on the right. Expanding any of the tabs on the right (by clicking the crosshairs icon) reveals their groups, and expanding these…

The days of four channels and a schedule are over. Whether they have a built-in tuner or not, 2019 TVs really aren’t much more than screens you can use to show your own choice of media. Whether it’s YouTube videos, family photos or even a feed from the security camera posted at your front door, it’s up to you what you watch – and when you watch it. We’ve already looked at the best ways to stream live TV to your screen (see our 'Ditch your TV in 2019' Cover Feature, Issue 543), so we’re going to cover the lesser known possibilities here. Step aside iPlayer, and make way for podcasts, relaxing moving wallpapers, radio from around the world, and countless happy memories from holidays recent and old. To achieve…

Chromecast Rewind a few decades, and the post-holiday slideshow was a familiar (often dreaded) event. Even 10 years ago, it was more common to upload your snapshots to Flickr or a self-hosted online album. Friends and family who wanted to see what you’d been up to on your travels would then have to click through your pics all alone. That’s all changed thanks to Chromecast, which lets you broadcast your photos to your TV so that friends and family can catch up together. Moreover, you can re-live your happiest holiday moments whenever you choose from the comfort of your favourite chair. 1Download the Google Photos app for iOS (www.snipca.com/31027) or Android (www.snipca.com/31028). Even if you never plan to stream your photos or films to your TV, it’s still worth signing…

Microsoft rolls out Feature updates gradually, starting with newer PCs that are likely to experience fewer problems. However, as soon as the April 2019 update is released, you can jump the queue and install it yourself using Windows Update Assistant (www.snipca.com/31145). But it’s not something we advise - at least not straight away. While this update has a number of useful new features, none warrant an immediate upgrade. Instead, wait at least a week and let others do the testing for you. You can further delay the update in Windows 10 Pro by going to Settings, ‘Update & Security’, then ‘Advanced options’. Under the ‘A feature update includes…’ section, you can choose to delay Feature updates for up to 365 days. If you’re running the Home edition, this option isn’t…

1080p Common type of high-definition video: 1920x1080 pixels. 32bit/64bit A measure of how much data a PC can process at once. Most older computers are 32bit, more modern ones are 64bit. 3G/4G/5G Technologies that deliver faster mobile broadband. 4K Video with a resolution of at least 3840x2160 pixels. 720p A common resolution of high-definition video: 1280x720 pixels. 802.11ac A standard for wireless networks that allows for much higher transfer speeds than 802.11n. Action camera Camera designed to record action while attached to a person’s body or equipment. Add-in Microsoft’s name for tools that can be added to Office software. Alexa skill Apps for Amazon’s Echo that perform voice-activated tasks. AMOLED Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode. Technology for flat-panel screens. Biometric Using measurable personal characteristics, such as fingerprints, for identification. BIOS Basic…

Turn off live-streaming to stop copycat attacks I was shocked to read in Issue 550’s ‘Question of the Fortnight’ that Facebook allowed the Christchurch mosque shooter (I shan’t say his name) to stream his rampage live online. For me, the answer is simple: turn off the live-streaming feature. It astonishes me that nobody realised it could be used for such evil intent. Tech monstrosities like Facebook need to realise that they can’t spew technologies on to the public without taking responsibility for how they might be abused. I can imagine what they think: we’ve invented live-streaming, therefore we must let the public use it. This always happens when websites get very big very quickly. Facebook used to be a friendly place to share photos and updates on everyday life –…

How can I close Amazon account following scam? LEAD CASE Q In December a fraudulent account was set up on Amazon.com, using my name and bank details. Three pairs of football boots costing $399 (£325) were bought by someone in the US and charged to my bank account. My bank refunded this. I now want to close my genuine Amazon account, but I can’t use the email address I opened it with or remember my password. Can you help? John Elliot A We don’t blame John for assuming he can’t close his Amazon account without his email address or password, but actually he can. Be warned, though: it requires a lot of clicking. Take a deep breath, then click Your Account at the top right of Amazon’s homepage. Scroll down…

Master birth, marriage and death records The birth, marriage and death (BMD) indexes are a core part of any family historian’s research. They’re freely available through FreeBMD (www.freebmd.org.uk), but finding the right person can be tricky, so here we’ll suggest expert techniques. These tips are designed for FreeBMD, but should work in other genealogy sites too, such as FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.co.uk. Search using mother’s maiden name When searching the indexes, how do you determine which of the many matches is the right person? One tactic is to cross-reference results with records held elsewhere, such as FamilySearch’s census records for people born before 1911. You can also make use of the data in the BMD indexes themselves. For example, from 1911 all birth records contain the mother’s original surname next to…

How do I convert video on Android? Q What’s the best app for converting video footage shot on an action camera on my ageing Samsung Galaxy Tab E tablet? I’m currently using Rierie501 Audio/Video Converter, but it’s very slow and I find it complicated to use. Like my tablet, I too am getting on a bit! Don Mackay A You’re not alone in finding your chosen app unwieldy. Recent reviews on the Google Play Store are pretty damning (www.snipca.com/31119). Our advice is to ditch it and switch to a more reliable app. If you only want to watch your footage, look no further than VLC. Although the array of menus and controls on the desktop version can be confusing, VLC for Android (from the same developers) is easy to use,…

I can’t shake the nagging sensation that all the data I store online could suddenly go up in smoke. It’s a worry that was validated by MySpace in March, when it confirmed it had ‘lost’ millions of music and photo files uploaded to the site between 2003 and 2015. Though largely forgotten these days, MySpace was a social-media pioneer of its day, helping (for better or for worse) to launch the careers of a number of pop stars. It’s still used by a largely music-based community to showcase work. A laughably tiny message on its homepage (https://myspace.com) reads ‘we apologize for the inconvenience’. But the loss of users’ data on such a staggering scale is a huge blunder that proves we shouldn’t blindly trust social media sites and online-storage services…

For a complete all-round PC with a mid-range processor and a fairly decent graphics card, anything under about £750 is considered ‘budget’. Here, then, is a budget PC. If you don’t tell anyone that, though, they’ll never guess, gawping at its tinted glass panels (pictured below) through which blue-lit sideways-mounted fans can be seen pinwheeling away the heat from the microATX Asus Prime motherboard and AMD Radeon RX 570 graphics card. “A budget PC that looks pricier and offers decent all-round options” The two ports on the front are proper USB 3.1, so you can copy from memory drives at full speed without reaching around the back. And at the back are four more USB 3.1 sockets, two USB 2.0, HDMI and DVI monitor outputs as well as no fewer…

While the prices of flagship phones – like Nasa’s Voyager probes – drift off beyond the heliosphere, there are many more down-to-Earth options. Even the S10+ comes in two cheaper versions: the £799 S10, almost identical except for a smaller 6.1in screen and a single front camera, and the 5.8in S10e, which loses a camera from the rear as well and costs £669. Although Apple’s latest X-series iPhones are even pricier, it still sells the 4.7in iPhone 7 from just £449, albeit with single cameras and only 32GB of storage. At £100 more with 128GB, it has stiff competition from Android rivals like the OnePlus 6T (£499 from www.snipca.com/29844, see Issue 543, pictured), the Honor View 20 (£498 from www.snipca.com/31090, see Issue 522) and the upcoming Xiaomi Mi 9. Even…

2018 CD ON SALE NOW! Find out what other products we liked. Buy our new 2018 Back Issue CD: £15 from www.snipca.com/30307 LAPTOP HP Envy 13 £850 from www.snipca.com/29555 Tested Issue 539 The combination of an eighth-generation quad-core i5 chip and MX 150 graphics makes this an excellent all-round laptop, let down only by the poor colour reproduction of its Full HD touchscreen. Seven-hour battery life is adequate, and it’s nicely made. ALTERNATIVE Dell XPS 13 This premium laptop starts at £1,200, but the best deal is with the brand new quad-core i7-8550 and QHD touchscreen. £1,300 from www.snipca.com/26796 PRICE DROP ANDROID TABLET Samsung Galaxy Tab S3 9.7 £390 from www.snipca.com/30707 Tested Issue 501 Now discounted and with a stylus included, this full-size HDR tablet is a better deal than…

I’m not paranoid, but neither do I believe in making things easy for anyone who wants to steal my personal data. Encrypted drives give me confidence that my data will be kept safe from prying eyes. I’ve devised a system that lets me have unique but easily remembered passwords for every device or website I log into, so I know that should a website breach mean my details fall into someone else’s hands, they shouldn’t be able to unlock my drives. Whether you encrypt or not, what are your tips for keeping your data safe? Let us know: letters@computeractive.co.uk…

DoNotSpy10 If you use a tool to boost your privacy in Windows 10, you’d expect it to adhere to high moral standards itself. So when I installed DoNotSpy10 (https://pxc-coding.com/donotspy10) on a new PC (after using it happily on my old machine), I was appalled that it tried to add unwanted programs. Shouldn’t it be a junk offender in your ‘Named & Shamed’ column (page 21)? And what I use instead… Based on Computeractive’s recommendation, I now use O&O ShutUp10 (www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10). It gives me an at-a-glance look at Microsoft’s privacy settings, making it easy to click a slider to turn them on or off as desired (see screenshot). It’s free and – get this – doesn’t have to be installed! It just runs instantly on your PC. Why can’t all aspects…

Smart Compass Android www.snipca.com/31099 Find out which way you’re facing and how to reach your destination using this new compass app, which automatically reads your location then lets you overlay this data on a zoomable Google Map. No in-app purchases, but the full-screen launch advert is a pain. OH Web Browser* Free Android www.snipca.com/31096 The minimalist interface of this new easy-to-manage browser is designed to be used one-handed (well, one-thumbed), but it’s ideal for anyone who struggles with cluttered screens and sore fingers. You can also adjust text size so it’s easier to read and use. Adverts and trackers are blocked by default. Serial Box* Free Android www.snipca.com/31097 iOS www.snipca.com/31098 Get your next favourite ebook or audiobook delivered in serialised chunks by this app – new to Android. Stories are…

Last year, Microsoft released the source code of Windows 3.0’s File Manager, which you may remember if you used a Windows PC in the early 1990s. This is now available as a free app that you can use to emulate a retro-looking but completely functional File Explorer. It even has some useful features that you won’t find in Windows 10’s File Explorer. To install the app, open your browser, go to www.snipca.com/30873, then click the Get button. You’ll be prompted to open the app within the Microsoft Store on your PC. After doing that, click Install, wait until that’s done, then click the Launch button. You’ll now see Windows 3.0’s File Manager. Folders you open on the left display their items on the right (see screenshot). Click the File tab…

Whether you want to organise court time for a local tennis club or book meetings with members, trying to sort out appointments via email or phone can be a real headache. Why not automate the whole process instead? You can do this with Google Calendar’s appointment feature, but it’s only available with a paid-for Google account, which start at £3.30 per month per user (see www.snipca.com/31072). Thankfully, there are free alternatives and our favourite is Calendly. It’s aimed primarily at business users and will try to tempt you into upgrading to a paid-for option, but there’s no need. The free version works perfectly well for setting up club meeting slots and appointments. And if you have one, Calendly integrates with your club’s existing Google calendar (see Issue 544’s In The…

Cast a CCTV feed to your TV If you followed our How To guide in Issue 536 (page 36) to set up a network-connected security camera, you can take it further by streaming the output to your Chromecast or Fire TV. This lets you keep an eye on the outside world without logging in through a browser or waiting for motion-detection features to alert you to an intruder. The apps that enable this take over your full screen, so you can’t have your security-camera feed in a floating window in one corner while you watch something else – unless your TV has a picture-in-picture feature. ‘Baby Monitor for IP Camera’ for iOS (www.snipca.com/31046, see screenshot right), and ‘tinyCam Monitor for Android’ (www.snipca.com/31047) can both detect network-connected cameras and stream their…

Let’s face it, passwords have always been a deeply flawed way of protecting our data. Generally speaking, they fall into two categories: easy for criminals to crack or easy for you to forget. You can use a secure password manager to generate and save random, unique passwords for each account, but even hard-to-guess passwords can be stolen via keyloggers or data breaches. And if you use the same password for more than one login, it only takes one data breach to expose multiple accounts to data thieves. Despite this, most of us still routinely use passwords to protect our devices, online accounts and more. There is an alternative. Once a staple of cinematic sci-fi, the concept of using unique biometric information to authenticate our identity has long been a reality.…

NEW BUDGET KINDLE HAS BACKLIGHT Amazon has added a backlight to the new version of its cheapest Kindle model - called the ‘All-new Kindle’ - letting you read ebooks in bed or outside at night. Previously the backlight was only part of the more expensive Oasis, Paperwhite and Voyage Kindles. It costs £70, which is £10 more expensive than the 2018 version, and has the same 4GB storage, letting you store around 2,200 ebooks. It’s available for pre-order before going on sale on 10 April: www.snipca.com/31076. OFCOM PROBES POST OFFICE ‘TEXT RELAY’ FEES Ofcom is investigating whether the Post Office has overcharged customers for its text-relay service, which lets deaf people communicate using telephones or textphones. Ofcom says it has information indicating that the Post Office didn’t use a discounted…

Google is worried. It fears it has grown so big that the US government will break it up to increase competition. To prevent this from happening, it’s doing two things: one is to spend more money lobbying US authorities than any other company - $21.2m in 2018 (about £16m). The other is to make it easier for people to use rival services, hoping to persuade lawmakers that it’s not a destructive monopoly. To this end, Google now lets you add DuckDuckGo (https://duckduckgo.com) as the default search engine in Chrome. DuckDuckGo relies on advertising, just like Google, but doesn’t store your personal data. It still shows you adverts in your search results, but doesn’t remember your data the next time you use it, which means adverts won’t follow you around the…

Now I’ve read it all - a ‘smart’ toothbrush (Issue 550, page 26)?! It makes you wonder what other ordinary items can be made to sound exciting by attaching the word ‘smart’ to them. How about smart dentures that vibrate when you’re about to eat something that’ll stick to them? Or smart trousers too small for you that laugh mockingly when you try to squeeze into them (‘Smarty pants’ perhaps)? I remember thinking the future had arrived when I got my first digital watch 40 years ago! Everything else since has felt a little superfluous. Gareth Williams CA SAYS After putting in his smart dentures and wriggling into his smart trousers, Gareth should slip into Nike’s new smart shoes (see page 49). Life’s too short to lace up your own…

It looks like reader George Reid might take his internet service provider (ISP) Plusnet to the small claims court after failing to resolve a dispute that perplexed us when we wrote about in Issue 545. He had ended up owing Plusnet £90 after the ISP stopped taking his monthly direct debit. At the time, Plusnet claimed it needed George to pay his bill by phone, which he refused to do for security reasons. Plusnet then cut off his phone and broadband, leaving George with no way to pay. Plusnet has since told us that a problem with its new billing system caused it to stop accepting George’s direct debit, and it should never have insisted he pay by phone. This made us hopeful of a positive outcome, but things have…

Could you tell me the cheapest sites for looking at census lists, births and so on? I’d stopped doing my family tree because of the growing costs on Ancestry. Dennis England Ancestry, The Genealogist and Find My Past all offer cheap starter packages, but most of the records included in these basic subscriptions can be found for free at FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org), including all UK censuses from 1841-1911. Both Find My Past (£12.95 a month; £120 a year) and The Genealogist (£24.95 a quarter; £78.95 a year) offer more expensive packages with additional UK records. Have a genealogy question for Nick? Email letters@computeractive.co.uk with ‘Grow Your Family Tree’ in the subject line.…

I don’t know what it is about maps, but I can stare at them for hours. Printed or digital, I find them utterly captivating. So it’s no surprise that I’m often found poring over Google Maps - whether it’s on my computer (www.google.com/maps) or while out and about on my phone (Android www.snipca.com/31094; iOS www.snipca.com/31095). I can go from exploring detailed satellite images of the remote South Pacific island of Tatakoto, to using Street View to navigate a route to a shop I’m planning to visit at lunch. I only recently discovered a Street View trick that lets you peek back at previous photos taken by Google’s fleet of camera vans. Open Street View by dragging the yellow person icon in the bottom-right corner on to the map, then click…

Kasa, TP-Link’s home-automation range, includes accessories like lightbulbs, smart plugs and this security camera. Like rival models from Nest, Hive, Cocoon and so on (see our round-up, Issue 527), it connects directly, via Wi-Fi, to your broadband. You control it from an iOS or Android app, which works whether you’re at home or anywhere else on the internet. “Simple set-up, convenient control and wide angles, but be ready for false alarms” The KC120 is a neat black cone on a tiltable silver base, which you can either stand on a flat surface or fix to a wall with the supplied sticky-backed magnetic plate, bearing in mind you’ll need a nearby mains socket. The 130-degree wide-angle lens should be able to cover a whole room, although whether one camera is enough…

Q Which laptop would be a good choice for editing photos? I used to use a PC, but at the moment I attend hospital three times a week for five hours at a time, and I’d like to spend the time productively. I have a budget of around £700. Terence Angell A Seems like a plan. There are certainly decent laptops under £700, but what may be difficult is finding one in this price range with good colour accuracy. Assuming you want to organise your photo collection and tweak pictures to optimise their tone and colour, that’ll be important. With a typical budget screen that only shows 80-odd percent of the sRGB colour range, you can’t be confident that your edits will end up looking as expected when printed or…

Amazon used to sell two TV streamers, the Fire TV box and the cheaper Fire TV Stick. When the box was updated to 4K, however, it became a dongle that dangled from your TV’s USB port. Now it’s superseded by the even smaller Fire TV Stick 4K, which becomes the top Fire TV option, with the 1080p Full HD Fire TV Stick available for a tenner less. “High-quality visuals, Alexa commands and improved controls” Besides a 4K TV, you’ll need fast broadband and good Wi-Fi signal. If your router is close enough to connect to it with a cable, you can use Amazon’s £14 Ethernet Adapter (www.snipca.com/31160). Unlike a Google Chromecast (£30 from www.snipca.com/31151, see our review, Issue 542), Fire TV Sticks get content directly from the internet over your…

Although BitLocker can’t encrypt individual drives on Windows Home, users on that operating system who log into up-todate hardware using a Microsoft account can opt for device encryption, which will encrypt their whole PC. To check whether your PC is encrypted, open the Start menu and type system information. Right-click the result and select ‘Run as administrator’. Click Yes when Windows asks if you’re happy to make changes to your system. In the ‘Find what’ box at the bottom search for device encryption and check that the line it highlights says ‘Meets pre-requisites’ (see screenshot). If so, make sure you’re signed into Windows using a Microsoft account, then click Start, followed by Settings (cog). Next, select ‘Update & Security’ followed by ‘Device encryption’. If you can’t use either BitLocker or…

Infinite Flight* £4.49/£4.99 Android www.snipca.com/31100 iOS www.snipca.com/31101 The closest you’ll get to a paid-for PC simulator on your phone or tablet, this lets you pilot stunningly detailed aircraft across world regions, rendered in superb high definition. Scrutinise your flights with advanced camera options, replay mode and a logbook. Best For: HD graphics Flight Sim 2018* Free Android www.snipca.com/31104 iOS www.snipca.com/31105 This app - recently updated despite the ‘2018’ tag - is probably the best free alternative to Infinite Flight. Its best feature is a huge 1:1-scale world map that lets you fly over real cities and land at real airports, battling gruelling weather as you go. Best For: A free world tour Gunship Sequel: WW2* Free Android www.snipca.com/31102 iOS www.snipca.com/31103 Choose your World War II plane (from Spitfires to B-25s),…

OUTLOOK.COM Use templates to write emails faster One of Outlook.com’s lesser-known features is a defaut My Templates add-in that comes with some email templates containing subject lines and body copy. You can customise these or create your own to write emails faster. Open a new email, click the three-dot button (to the right of the Send and Discard buttons), click My Templates, then click Continue in the right-hand pane. You’ll see three default templates – ‘I’ll reply later’, ‘I’m running late’ and ‘Lunch?’ (see screenshot below). Move your cursor to any of the templates to see options to delete or edit them. To add your own template, click the blue ‘+Template’ button at the bottom, type your subject line and body copy in the fields, then click Save. When you’re done…

Make Skype calls using your TV When the whole family wants to be involved in a Skype call, it’s usually a case of passing the phone or tablet from person to person because it’s simply impossible for everyone to get a good view at the same time. However, combining an Android phone or tablet with Chromecast lets you see the incoming video on your TV screen. If this is directly across from your sofa, you can then prop up the phone below it, gather the whole family together, and broadcast back the whole gathering in a single shot. Unfortunately, this trick doesn’t work on iPads and iPhones. If you don’t already have Skype installed on your device, download it from Google Play at www.snipca.com/31040. Launch it and sign in using…

Even Microsoft would be hard pushed to describe last year’s October update as anything other than calamitous. Days after its release, it pulled the update after users complained their files were being deleted (it only completed the roll-out last month). So we wouldn’t blame you for being nervous about the April 2019 Update (version 1903). To help you decide whether to install or postpone, we’ve tested all the new features using a Windows Insider preview release (www.snipca.com/31142). Get smoother updates and improved performance Previous Windows updates failed to check how much available hard-drive space you had before attempting to install, often resulting in a failed update. To ensure updates have enough free space to install smoothly and improve your PC’s general performance, Windows will now reserve a portion of your…

While biometric systems can offer better security than passwords, they can represent a risk to our privacy. This is not such a problem with Apple’s Face ID, which stores a copy of your face data on your device, without uploading it to any corporate servers. However, if big companies and government agencies start stockpiling people’s identifying information in vast biometric databases, perhaps we should be concerned. Heathrow Airport has been trialling face recognition (due to be rolled out in full this summer, www.snipca.com/31134), saying it will speed up journey times in the airport by reducing how often passengers need to produce ID. It’s currently optional and all data is deleted after 30 days. However, HMRC faced a backlash last year when it collected the voice ID data of millions of…

Why can’t I create a GodMode folder on my PC? Q I saw mention of GodMode on page 46 of Issue 547 and tried to use it. However, creating a Windows desktop folder named ‘{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}’ just gave me a folder with that name. Opening the folder showed it to be empty. I then tried to download the referenced God Mode Launcher, but on visiting www.snipca.com/30413 Windows Defender blocked access, claiming there was a Trojan! Martin Meadows A On the first point, we did make a mistake. The folder name needs to include ‘GodMode.’ at the beginning, so the full folder name should be ‘GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}’ (but without the single quotes - see screenshot below). To make things easier, you can copy this from our Pastebin page (www.snipca.com/31018). The second problem, though,…

Find and close old online accounts Remember MySpace? It’s getting on a bit. Well, it’s 16, but that’s ‘senior’ in internet years. So, like me, it keeps forgetting where it put things. The service recently admitted that “any photos, videos and audio files” uploaded more than three years ago “may have” vamoosed. Poor old MySpace, it was sure it had left them on the sideboard. “Other hard-to-leave sites include Netflix, which I have no intention of leaving, and Tinder, which I have no intention of joining” MySpace is not the only website I signed up with yonks ago then forgot about. I don’t just mean the vintage classics like Netscape, Geocities and AltaVista, which closed long ago. I mean sites like Medium (news), Indiegogo (crowdfunding) and Kayak (cheap flights). They’re…