Table of contents for 618 in Computeractive

Have you upgraded to Windows 11 yet? I don’t blame you if you haven’t. With Windows 10 running so smoothly (the equal of Windows 7 for many – me included), upgrading requires considerable thought. It’s not as obvious a switch as from Vista to 7 (yes please!) or from 8 to10 (do it now!). What you need are detailed, informed reviews that scythe through Microsoft’s hype and tell you precisely what you need to know. I’ve read plenty online in the past few weeks, but they all seem to skip the important details that Nik Rawlinson highlights in this issue. His verdict: more positive than I was expecting, and less positive than Microsoft was hoping. Please tell me if it swayed your decision one way or the other. By the…

Apple has announced a cheaper version of its Apple Music iPhone app that works only if you search for songs using its voice-activated assistant Siri. Called Apple Music Voice (www.snipca.com/39851), it costs £4.99 a month, half the price of the Individual plan. To use it, you have to say “Hey, Siri” before naming the track you want to play. Apple says it gives you access to 90 million songs, and tens of thousands of playlists. As examples, Apple says you could ask Siri to “play the dinner party playlist,” “play something chill,” or even “play more like this”. You can also ask it to play Apple Music Radio. You can subscribe to Apple Music Voice by saying “Hey Siri, start my Apple Music Voice trial,” or by signing up through…

BBC CHANGES iPLAYER LOGO IN REDESIGN The BBC has changed the iPlayer logo (pictured) as part of a major redesign of its branding. It has also introduced new logos for the Sounds app, and for online weather, news and sport, as well as the TV idents for its channels. The change was promoted by research that found viewers regard the BBC as “old fashioned and out of date”. Read more at www.snipca.com/39816. RODENTS CHEW THROUGH BROADBAND CABLES Openreach has fixed broadband cables that rodents chewed through in north Devon, cutting connections for nearly 2,000 homes and businesses. The company said that repairing the cables was made more difficult because the cables were full of silt and were filling with rain more quickly than engineers could drain them. Visit Openreach’s site…

Hat-trick of supermarket scams I got a hat-trick of supermarket email scams within a week. They were all supposed ‘gift cards’ for Asda, Morrisons and Tesco customers, which you could win by clicking a link and filling out a survey. The cards weren’t for a fortune – around £90. This relatively low prize might make more people believe them. A gift card in three figures might stretch credibility. Even so, I’d hope most people know that these surveys are now a common scam tactic. Maybe next week I’ll get Waitrose and Sainsbury’s emails and head towards a full house of supermarket scams. Warn your fellow readers about scams at letters@computeractive.co.uk…

I read Issue 616’s Cover Feature on whether you should upgrade to Windows 11, and couldn’t help but think why the writer was making things so complicated. I’m disabled and found it very easy to upgrade to 11 – just by following the instructions from Microsoft and on one other site. Windows Update (press Windows key+I then click ‘Update & Security’) will tell you if you can upgrade to Windows 11. If you can, it means you don’t have to check anything else. If your computer doesn’t meet the hardware requirements, there are instructions online you can follow to bypass these. I downloaded Windows 11 using Microsoft’s Installation Assistant (www.snipca.com/39797), and continued to work normally as it did so. Within half an hour, and one restart later, Windows 11 was…

I was rather alarmed to read online that KitSound’s KS Funk 25 True Wireless Earbuds (pictured) were being recalled due to a ‘burn risk’. When I read this, in July, I was out of the country and wanted to make sure I didn’t miss any deadlines for returning them. I spoke to Kondor, which owns the KitSound brand, and they answered all the questions I had. They explained the returns process clearly, not getting annoyed when my phone connection (in rural France) kept cutting out. They emailed me a link to more information on the problem (www.snipca.com/39755) and also to explain how to register for a refund (www.snipca.com/39756). I’m sure Kondor’s customer service team have been inundated with calls about this, but they never came across as harried when they…

What can I use to touch up old photos? Q I recently converted some old slides I found into digital format in order to preserve them. While the photo scanner I used has done a relatively decent job, some of the images have blemishes and odd spots of colour, probably because they are over 40 years old. Can you recommend a free program that can perform simple photo editing and retouching? Chris Hesketh A Our favourite free program for editing and touching up photos is Paint. NET (www.getpaint.net), which recently released a new version that’s much faster to use (see Issue 617, page 19). It’s packed with useful features, including several that will help you fix the problems with your converted slides. For example, to remove blemishes and scratches from…

Imagine popping out for a bit and coming back to find that Openreach had installed a 27ft telegraph pole in your front garden. That’s what faced Ian and Allison Brown from Clackmannanshire, when returning from visiting her terminally ill mother. Mr Brown told the Daily Record (www.snipca.com/39712) that they were horrified and angry, and knew nothing about it. To be fair to Openreach, it seems there was once some confusion over whether the land was private property or owned by the council. On the other hand, Openreach didn’t even bother to write to the couple to tell them they were planning to erect a pole yards from their windows. They then took over eight weeks to respond to the couple’s complaints. Openreach has since apologised and promised to relocate the…

What does it do? High Dynamic Range (HDR) is a group of standards that control the contrast of images on TV screens – the difference between the brightest whites, the darkest blacks, and everything between. The higher the range, the more realistic images look. How does it work? HDR information is encoded into the program so that compatible TVs and streaming devices recreate the contrast settings that the film or programme maker intended. Depending on the HDR standard, this changes scene by scene or even as frequently as frame by frame. What are the specs? Confusingly, there are four active HDR standards: HDR10, HDR10+, HLG and Dolby Vision. HDR10 is the most common, and is compatible with Amazon, Netflix, Disney+, Apple and the Blu-ray Disc Association. It adapts the contrast…

TIP OF THE FORTNIGHT Get RAW files to practise editing photos My lovely children bought me a £500 camera as a retirement present. It was probably my wife’s idea – encouraging me to go outside and take photos! I want to do this new hobby justice, so I’ve found some RAW files online that you can download for free – these let me practise photo editing. They’re on a site called Signature Edits (www.snipca.com/39698). I’ve not found a search tool (maybe another reader can email about this), so I just scroll down until I find something I like then click the top-right Download arrow (see screenshot). You can then make changes using your preferred editing program. The photos on the site are a mixed bag. There are lots of attractive…

VIVALDI Capture and resize screenshots Version 4.3 of Vivaldi (https://vivaldi.com) adds a host of useful features that make the innovative browser even better. We were already big fans of its screenshot tool, which lets you capture the contents of web pages without needing to install an extension, and this has now been expanded with the option to resize your screenshots. Click the ‘Capture this page’ camera icon on Vivaldi’s Status Bar (along the bottom of the browser window) and choose Selection, then click the page and drag the selection box over the area you want to capture. You can resize the borders of the box by dragging its edges or corners to get the perfect screenshot – previously, you needed to start a new capture if you didn’t select the…

ANDROID Subscribe to RSS feeds in Chrome for Android RSS readers, which let you stay up to date with your favourite websites by receiving a ‘feed’ of their latest content, were once very popular, but were eventually superseded by social media. Google scrapped its much-loved Google Reader tool in 2013, but perhaps it’s realised the error of its ways, because it’s now revived RSS support in the Android version of its Chrome browser. This means you can subscribe to website feeds, just like in the old days, and explore new articles on Chrome’s New Tab page. The RSS function is already available in the Chrome Android app, but only for some users. To check if you have it, tap the browser’s three-dot menu button when viewing a site and look…

WINDOWS 10 & 11 Check historical weather data for your area You can see historical weather data for your area in the Windows Weather app. Click Start, search for weather then click the app entry to launch it. Next, click the top-left menu icon, followed by Historical Weather. If you have location services switched on (Microsoft explains how at www.snipca.com/39800), your local town or city will appear. Click the top-right search button to find more locations. You can now view average and high and low temperatures (as well as average rainfall) for your area for each month, going back to the early 1990s. Switch between months of the year using the dropdown menu (1 in our screenshot below) or click a month in the chart 2. WINDOWS 10 & 11…

Videos can always enhance a PowerPoint presentation, but to make it look even better you can use videos as slide backgrounds. In PowerPoint 2010 and later, click Insert on the ribbon bar, then click Video. Depending on your PowerPoint version, select ‘Video from file’, ‘Video on My PC’ or This Device. If you’re using a later version, you can also choose to search online for videos, or select from a collection of stock videos. Find the video you want to add, then click Insert. Once you’ve added the video to a slide, resize it to fill the full slide area. Next, select the video, then click Playback at the top right. Make sure that the ‘Loop until Stopped’ box at the top is ticked. Right-click the video, then click ‘Send…

Windows 11 has arrived, in all its round-cornered glory. And, spoiler alert, we quite like it – though maybe not as much as Microsoft would like. Over the next few pages, we’ll explain why it’s made such a good impression, while guiding you through each of its most significant changes. You may be surprised that Windows 11 exists at all. When Microsoft’s Jerry Nixon discussed its predecessor in 2015, his remark that “Windows 10 is the last version of Windows” (skip to the 15-minute mark of this video www.snipca.com/39807) caused quite a stir. At the time, Microsoft was redefining Windows, changing it from a product to a service, after which it would evolve through updates only. So, the fact we now have Windows 11 hints at the importance of this…

The trackpads - or touchpads - built into laptops save you needing to use a mouse at all, which is useful for working away from home, such as in a café or on a train. They free you from repetitive clicking and scrolling, and let your fingers move more flexibly within their rectangular areas. However, this convenience comes at the expense of precision, as trackpads make it harder to position your pointer exactly where you want, especially when dragging and dropping items or selecting text, and it’s easier to send your cursor astray when you brush against them. Also, the tapping and double-tapping gestures that replicate left and right clicks can prove as repetitive and sore on your fingers as clicking mouse buttons – if not more so. For these…

Q This might sound like an odd question, but I’ve often wondered why it seems to take longer for my PC to copy files than to move them – and sometimes by quite a lot. As an experiment just before sending this email I tried moving a folder containing some old videos. That took just a few moments. However, copying the same folder took several minutes. The computer was doing nothing else. Why is one operation so much slower than the other? Jeremy Naughton A Yes, there is a good reason for this. As we’ll explain, this will increasingly be seen as a historical problem – but you’ve asked the question, so we’re happy to answer. In short, when you ask Windows to ‘move’ a file or folder, it actually…

Amazon, Apple and Google should be forced to keep British radio stations on their smart speakers, according to a new report commissioned by the Government. The Radio and Audio Review’ (www.snipca.com/39852) found that a third of adults now have a smart speaker such as an Amazon Echo (pictured), Apple HomePod or Google Home, and they play a “central role” in many lives. Research shows that 64 per cent of all audio listened to on a smart speaker is live radio, and yet there are no rules preventing manufacturers from removing or limiting access to UK radio stations. The report, which had input from commercial radio groups and the BBC among other interested bodies, said stations should be “protected” on smart speakers to make sure listeners can still access their favourite…

I’ve lost trust in Microsoft I know the concept of trust no longer seems to apply in modern commerce, but Microsoft did tell us again and again and again – that Windows 10 would be the final version of the operating system. It was the key message behind the system, and how they persuaded so many people to upgrade from Windows 7: “upgrade for free and you’ll never have to learn another system ever again”. They must have known back then that they’d eventually need to release a Windows 11, but they pretended otherwise in order to come up with a cynical marketing hook that would grab headlines. I’m happy with Windows 10, but I now question every claim Microsoft makes. Eventually that erosion of trust will cost them many…

Will my bank refund me if I’m scammed? LEAD CASE Q I’ve filled in a marketing survey on Facebook, promising a £100 gift card to use in Aldi, but a friend said it’s probably bogus. I handed over personal details including my email and address, so I’m worried the scammers may access my bank account. Will my bank refund me if I lose money? Sara Price A Whether a bank returns your money when you’ve been scammed depends on its policy, and how responsible you were for falling for it. Financial scams are rising sharply, so refunding customers could get very expensive for banks. They can argue that the victim acted carelessly or with gross negligence, and therefore isn’t entitled to get their money back. However, the Financial Ombudsman Services…

Create a genogram chart Sometimes a simple family chart doesn’t tell the full story. More complex relationships involving marriages, divorces, adoptions and step-families are difficult to display using a traditional ancestor or descendant chart. The solution is to visualise these in a genogram. This is a chart that uses symbols and lines to represent information. Typically, males are listed in a square and females in a circle, while relationships are defined by colour-coded lines and dotted lines (Wikipedia explains more at www.snipca.com/39651). Let Family Echo create a genogram To quickly create a genogram using your existing tree, export it in GEDCOM format using your genealogy software – for example, in Family Tree Maker you’d select File, Export then choose GEDCOM under the ‘Output format’ dropdown menu. For a more detailed…

Command Prompt has been a major part of Windows since the early days, but its usefulness has been dwindling over the years. Microsoft is now prioritising its successor PowerShell, which is a more powerful-command-line interface. As well as being able to process simple Command Prompt instructions (like winver to show your current Windows version, and ipconfig to show your IP address), it can run special ‘cmdlets’ (PowerShell commands) that can be chained together to make complex scripts. There are several versions of PowerShell. Version 5.1 comes with Windows 10, but I’ve upgraded to 7.1, which in time will become the new default. To upgrade PowerShell, visit www.snipca.com/39728, scroll to the ‘Get PowerShell’ heading, then click on the. msi link under Downloads (stable) next to ‘Windows (x64)’ if you have a…

Q My friend is not connected to the internet and needs a new printer. She’s tried an HP model, but had to send it back because it required an internet connection to set it up. She wants a colour all-in-one device with a copier function, that can print on both sides of a sheet automatically, can print from a PC via USB and costs £100 or less. I also need to be able to set it up without connecting to the internet. Alan Russell A It seems to be the ability to print on both sides of a sheet of paper that pushes up the price of printers. This is because they use a mechanical process to flip the paper over, and a printer without those parts can be made…

What is it? Kobo has launched the Kobo Sage (pictured), a new 8in ebook reader that’s compatible with the Kobo Stylus. What does it do? You can use the stylus to circle, underline and scribble notes in your ebooks. It also has a separate notebook function for making notes on a blank page, and can convert them into typed text. What’s the catch? You don’t actually get the pen with the £250 Sage, so you have to buy it separately for another £40. So can I do without it? You can add notes to books in a Kobo by highlighting the words you want to annotate and typing them in, so it’s not an essential accessory. However, this is a cumbersome way to do it, and we love the idea…

There are many reasons why you might need a second mobile line. A disposable number for forms and delivery drivers is one. Another would be separate lines for business and personal use. Or perhaps a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) SIM for calls, plus a cheap but generous contract with a rival provider for data alone, would best suit your lifestyle and the way you use your phone. One solution is to use a phone with a dual-SIM slot, but these aren’t common. A better solution is to use a dual-line phone, which comes with an eSIM. These are circuits that are built into the phone. They can’t be removed, but they can be programmed to work just like a standard SIM. As far as the phone’s concerned, there’s no difference between them,…

WinZip In my old job I used to pay for WinZip and claim it back on expenses. I work in a different industry now, and have lost that little perk. And what I use instead… I feared I wouldn’t find anything as comprehensive as WinZip, but was pleasantly surprised by the features in PeaZip (www.snipca.com/39550), in particular that it works with Linux as well as Windows (I have computers running both systems). It’s helpful that it can convert files zipped in WinRAR. I had some ancient files in this format that it managed to rescue. Each updated version seems to add exactly the kind of new tools I want, such as displaying how many items are stored in a folder (see screenshot). Tell us why you stopped using a website,…

MicCheck Free Android www.snipca.com/39776 MicCheck makes it easy to record audio on your Android phone or tablet, and keep your recordings organised. It lets you tag your audio files with descriptive keywords, group them into themed albums and add timestamps so that you can quickly jump to specific moments. You can also split recordings into clips. Disney Wonderful Worlds Free* Android www.snipca.com/39782 iOS www.snipca.com/39781 This fun game invites you to build your own Disney theme park by solving tile-matching puzzles to unlock tools, decorations and attractions, as well as Disney and Pixar characters. There are 300 levels to complete, which is more than enough to keep grandkids and big kids entertained. Project Activate Free Android www.snipca.com/39778 Google has created this app to help people who are unable to speak or…

Create flyers from your own images Whether you’re promoting a club event or looking to bring in more members, you’ll occasionally need to create posters and flyers. While you can do this by hand or use Microsoft Word, a design tool like Adobe Spark (www.adobe.com/express) will produce more professional results. We showed you how to make posters using Spark’s free templates back in Issue 583 (read this on our Back Issue CD, www.snipca.com/38164), but here we’ll dig deeper to explain how to make your own from scratch. Before we start, have a think about which photo or image you want to use, and make sure it’s saved on your computer. Add images and text Start by clicking the blue plus button (as you would when using a template), then selecting…

The most controversial aspect of Windows 11 is its requirement that – for security reasons – computers must have TPM 2.0 (Trusted Platform Module) enabled on their motherboard. Many readers are angry that it has left their computers permanently stuck on Windows 11, while others praise Microsoft for prioritising security. Here, two Computeractive writers on either side of the argument give their opinion. YES Readers of a certain age will remember why debit cards have raised digits. They’re not for the visually impaired, but because ‘swiping’ a card meant clipping it into a machine and sliding a roller across it to make a physical impression. Those machines are long gone, and we’re all more secure as a result. The same is true of leaded fuel, which is now sold only…

The cookies that websites leave behind aren’t just a privacy concern – they’re also a security hazard. Hackers use a technique called ‘cookie poisoning’ to modify cookies so they can steal sensitive information that’s been stored about you. They can also forge cookies to impersonate you and log into your online accounts. Websites should prevent this by encrypting their cookies and securing them with a digital signature to ensure they can share data only between you and the site. Blocking cookie pop-ups doesn’t increase your risk of being infected by a poisoned cookie, but it’s important to check which cookies are installed and regularly delete unnecessary ones. Adhere to the advice about entering data only on HTTPS sites and keeping security software up to date, and you should avoid a…

Microsoft has revealed a new PowerToys tool that helps you find where your mouse cursor is. The tool, yet to be named, darkens the screen except for the area around your cursor, isolating it in a brighter circle (see screenshot). It was demonstrated in a video (www.snipca.com/39860) on Twitter by Clint Rutkas, the lead developer of PowerToys. He said it would be helpful if you use multiple ultra-wide monitors that have a high resolution. He added that the tool finds your cursor more effectively than the current option in Windows. To use this, open Settings, then click Devices, followed by Mouse. Next, scroll down and click ‘Additional mouse settings’, then click the Pointer Options tab and tick the ‘Show location…’ box at the bottom. The new tool will probably be…

TESCO OPENS FIRST STORE WITHOUT CHECKOUT Tesco has opened its first store without a checkout, letting customers pay automatically through its phone app (pictured). The branch, in High Holborn, London, has been fitted with cameras and weight sensors to establish which items a customer picks up. They are charged through the app when they leave the shop. Read more on Tesco’s site: www.snipca.com/39839. 4K TV BOX COMING TO TALKTALK CUSTOMERS Talk Talk looks set to offer its 4.2 million customers a new 4K TV service, after teaming up with TV provider Netgem. The service, expected to launch next year, is likely to be a set-top box offering nearly 300 channels, and letting you record, pause and rewind programmes. Existing Netgem boxes let you watch-catch-up TV from services like BBC iPlayer…

Almost a million people in the UK followed instructions given to them by scammers over the summer, leaving them open to having their money and personal details stolen. The figures come from new Ofcom research, which found that nearly 45 million adults had been targeted by scam calls, emails and phone messages between June and September. How scammers target people seems to depend on the age of the intended victim. Overall, text scams are most common, with three quarters of 16 to 34-year-olds targeted, while 60 per cent of over-75s received a suspicious call to their landline. More than four in 10 (44 per cent) who had received a suspicious text message said they get such scams at least once a week. Just over half of people who received a…

TV GOLD NOW ON FREESAT-JUST LIKE THAT! Free sat viewers can now watch Tommy Cooper, Kenny Everett, Mike Yarwood and other stars of the past on the nostalgia channel That’s TV Gold (www.thats.tv), on channel 178. It’s been available to Freeview customers since July (channel 91), and Sky Q and Sky+ HD viewers (channel 187). VIRGIN HITS 2.2GBPS FOR THIRD TIME Virgin Media has run its third trial of 2.2Gbps broadband, double what it currently offers to the public, and 43 times the national average. Its latest tests, carried out in Birmingham and Edinburgh, follow trials in Manchester, Southampton and Thatcham in Berkshire. Virgin says the trials show it can hit higher speeds on existing cables. PLAY SNAKE ON NOKIA’S NEW 6310 PHONE Nokia has released a modern version of…

A site may use HTTPS encryption, but that doesn’t mean everything you download from it will be similarly protected. Any file downloaded over an insecure HTTP connection is unencrypted, leaving it exposed in clear text, ready for a hacker to intercept, read and steal. Mozilla hopes Firefox 93 will plug this security hole. If while on an HTTPS site you start downloading a file over HTTP, you’ll see the warning that the file could be “corrupted or tampered with”, giving you the option to allow the download, or remove the file (see screenshot). This is explained in Mozilla’s blog (www.snipca.com/39777), where you can also read what else is new in Firefox 93. To find out which version you’re on, click the top-right menu icon (three horizontal lines), then Help followed…

I’ve been looking for a phone for under £100, and seem to recall you reviewing a Nokia device that cheap recently. Am I right? Carole Flynn CA SAYS Yes you are-it was the Nokia 1.4 in Issue 607, page 25. You can buy it from Amazon for £90 (www.snipca.com/39741). But also turn to page 9 (of this issue) for news of the Nokia 6310. I’m not sure I’m getting the full allocation of Freeview channels. In which issue did you mention the site that lists them? Howard Graham CA SAYS It was in Issue 611’s feature on boosting your TV signal with an indoor aerial (pages 62-63). The site you want is www.snipca.com/38929. Didn’t a reader recently explain how to combine MP3s using Command Prompt? I now need to do this. Duncan…

John Lewis has finally admitted that it should never have attempted to repair Gary Cragg’s HP laptop nine times (see Issue 616), and has now refunded him the £300 he paid for the device in January. Gary didn’t realise that under the Consumer Rights Act (CRA), John Lewis was allowed only to attempt one repair, and was then obliged to offer him a replacement or a refund. Instead, he continued to push for repairs under the company’s warranty. We find it hard to believe that no one at John Lewis ever advised him to use the CRA. Worse, it misled him by saying that it could work only “within HP’s warranty standards”. The time taken for the repeated repairs meant more than six months have passed since purchase. John Lewis…

DUPLICATE FILE CLEANER AllDup 4.5 www.snipca.com/39806 What you need: Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 Duplicate files both make your hard drive look messy and take up valuable space. After all, how many copies of the same item do you need? AllDup provides an effective solution to this problem by finding duplicate files across all the drives on or connected to your PC, including USB sticks, and letting you delete all unwanted copies with a couple of clicks. Unlike similar tools, it’s completely free and the latest version makes it more useful than ever. Several of the new features in AllDup 4.5 use checksums, which identify duplicates based on the data they contain, rather than their file names, dates or sizes (though the program also covers those criteria). When you…

SOFTWARE WARNING IObit Uninstaller’s junk Call me a grumbling pedant, but when a piece of software is billed as an ‘uninstaller’, I don’t expect it to install unwanted software. It’s a bit like getting a new Dyson out of the box and it spewing dust all over your carpet before it starts cleaning. Enter the ‘free’ version of IObit Uninstaller, which doesn’t miss a chance to drop a little something extra on your computer – a habit this column has seen before in IObit software. The installer for IObit Uninstaller 11 (as reader Brian Ady spotted) has two pre-ticked boxes (see screenshot) which will plonk iTop VPN Free and iTop Screen Recorder Free on your computer if you just hit the big green ‘Install’ button without looking. The sales pitch…

LAPTOP ❘ £993 from Box www.snipca.com/39724 The Dynabook Tecra A40-J-11J is built around Intel’s Corei7-1165G7 processor, which we’ve seen on a variety of laptops at around this price recently, including the Acer Swift 3, (see Issue 617). The Dynabook has a similar specification, including the same generous 16GB of RAM, though it has onlya512GB SSD instead of the Acer’s 1TB drive. A poor screen, but good battery life and room to upgrade Performance-wise, the Dynabook lags behind the Acer Swift 3, with lower scores in our benchmark tests that assess how quickly a processor can run tasks. Both laptops use the processor’s built-in Iris Xe graphics hardware, so neither model is recommended for gamers, though it can handle some casual gaming as long as you don’t want maximum detail at…

TABLET ❘ £369 from Xiaomi www.snipca.com/39762 For a while, Android tablets were thin on the ground, with manufacturers seemingly unable to compete with the high quality threshold of Apple’s cheapest iPads. However, recent launches from Samsung and Lenovo now offer serious competition (see our Buy It recommendations on page 30), and Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi has joined in with the Pad 5. The tablet has an 11in LCD display with a resolution of 1600x2560 pixels. It has a 16:10 aspect ratio and a 120Hz refresh rate, making it great for watching movies and scrolling through apps and web pages. It’s richly coloured, vibrant and bright enough for viewing in a well lit room. Fast, bright, with a good battery, but is slower than a basic iPad The tablet is fitted with…

FITNESS WATCH ❘ £155 from Amazon www.snipca.com/39751 The Fitbit Charge 5 is an impressive fitness watch that combines the best features of Fitbit’s other devices. It offers GPS for tracking runs and walks, contactless payments and sleep tracking – all in a simple interface that’s easy to use, even if you’ve never owned a Fitbit before. It’s slim, with a colour AMOLED screen that’s a huge upgrade from the mono screen on the previous model, the Charge 4. It’s crisp and bright, with smooth scrolling and animations. The watch pairs with your phone and lets you know when you’ve got messages or incoming calls, while still handling the Fitbit basics of counting your steps and letting you know if you’ve been sitting still too long. On the downside, the Charge 5…

LAPTOP Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (256GB) £599 from www.snipca.com/39635  Tested Issue 601 Weighing just 1.16kg, this is an excellent lightweight laptop with a great screen and an AMD processor faster than many Intel rivals. It has two USB-C ports, two USB 3.0 ports and a microSD card reader. Battery lasts nearly 16 hours. ALTERNATIVE Dell XPS 13 New Intel CPUs and a taller screen make this amore powerful, all-round slim laptop. Prices start at £1,149 from www.snipca.com/36642 ANDROID TABLET LenovoTab P11 Pro £600 from www.snipca.com/38585  Tested Issue 609 A fast tablet that comes with a magnetic stand and keyboard that means you can also use it as a laptop. It has an outstanding screen, 128GB storage and a 17-hour battery life, while its excellent dual mics make you sound clear in…

What you need: Windows 10; Minimum 8GB USB stick Time required: Two hours The launch of Windows 11 has been overshadowed by controversy about its minimum system requirements. Initially, Microsoft said only PCs with TPM 2.0 enabled could run Windows 11, and that certain processors wouldn’t support it. But Microsoft has now suggested a workaround that lets you install Windows 11 on PCs with an older version of TPM and an unsupported processor. However, it also says that if you use this workaround and upgrade directly from Windows 10, you’ll no longer receive Windows updates (including security fixes). But if you perform a clean install, all your current files and settings will be wiped – so make sure you back up everything important. STEP 1 Before you start tweaking settings…

TP-Link RE505X £50 from Amazon www.snipca.com/38875 Both my phone, laptop and router have Wi-Fi 6, so I’ve been keen to get extenders to take advantage of this around my home. I was struggling to find anything affordable, but then read your review of these units (Issue 611, page 24) and for 50 quid they seemed worth trying. I was tempted by your point that the extenders can send signals to a “far-flung corner” of your home. My far-flung corner is in the loft, where I usually work on my laptop, and where the signal sometimes fades. I’ve had no such ‘fades’ since plugging in the RE505X in the loft. The difference was instant – I got the blessed blue light indicating a healthy signal. Some of my older relatives are…

Otter Free* Android www.snipca.com/39786 iOS www.snipca.com/39787 Otter records and transcribes the audio from meetings, so you don’t need to worry about missing anything important – or even paying attention. It identifies summary keywords and integrates with your calendar to work automatically. The free version lets you transcribe 600 minutes a month, and record for up to 40 minutes at a time. Best For Taking the minutes in meetings Live Transcribe Free Android www.snipca.com/39785 This Google app transcribes conversations in real time using automatic speech recognition and lets you save them on your phone for three days. You can set it to vibrate your device when someone says your name or resumes speaking after a 10-second pause, and have it show labels for sounds such as laughter, applause and music. Best…

MICROSOFT WORD Add Excel formulas to tables in Word Word lets you use Excel-style formulas and calculations in your documents. First, click Insert, then Table. In the dropdown menu, select a table of suitable size or choose a ‘1x1’ table to create a single box. Select the whole table, or one of the table’s cells. Next, select the Layout tab, at the far right of the ribbon bar (not the Layout tab in the centre). Click ‘Formula’ in the Data section, then click Formula again. In the Formula box that appears, type your formula or calculation (1 in our screenshot below), select a number format (for example, ‘0%’ for percentages 2), then click OK. The formula or result will appear in the table. Select the result, then click the Formula…

What is it? A new website that imagines what the internet might look like in 2046. It’s not pretty. What’s wrong with it? Regulation. Censorship. Paywalls. Governmental interference. Massive pop-ups blocking you from visiting your favourite sites. Doesn’t sound good. Is that what’s going to happen? Quite possibly – according to the Internet Archive anyway. You may know its Wayback Machine (https://archive.org/web), which captures old web pages for posterity (619 billion and counting). To celebrate its 25th anniversary the Internet Archive travelled forward 25 years to imagine a time when the internet has suffered so much regulation that it’s become unusable. It’s less a forecast, more a warning, akin to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. How can I see this dystopian future? Visit https://wayforward.archive.org and type the URL of a popular…

Each issue of Computeractive will be delivered directly to your device each fortnight. SEE NEXT PAGE FOR SET-UP INSTRUCTIONS HOW TO SUBSCRIBE… … on an iPad or iPhone STEP 1 Return to the Computeractive Library STEP 2 Choose your subscription term and tap twice on the 'price' box STEP 3 Choose whether to create an optional PixelMags account STEP 4 Enter your Apple ID password to confirm … on a Kindle Fire Kindle Fire subscriptions come with a FREE one month trial. STEP 1 Tap 'Free Trial Subscrfptlon' In the Computeractive library STEP 2 Chose your subscnption term from the drop down menu on the popup that appears STEP 3 Tap 'Subscribe' … on an Android device STEP 1 Open the Google Play Store homepage and navigate to the Newsstand…

Why can’t I change this Outlook option? Q I was very interested your reply to Jane Marshall in Issue 615’s Problems Solved section (page 69), where you explained that unticking ‘CTRL+ENTER sends a message’ in the Outlook Options box would disable this shortcut. However, when I did this and tried to click OK I saw a message that said: “The end date you entered occurs before the start date”. When I then exited the Outlook Options box the ‘CTRL+ENTER’ box was ticked again. What’s the problem? Martin Wilkins A The only setting in the Outlook Options box that causes this is actually on the Calendar tab in the ‘Work time’ section. Here, if the ‘End time’ clock is set to be earlier than the ‘Start time’ then you’ll see the…

Like most people, as I get older I find myself forgetting more things, and spending more time fretting about things I might have forgotten. Did I water the plants? Is it somebody’s birthday? When is my column for Computeractive due? Whereas once I could answer at least half the questions correctly on The Chase, I’d now be roundly humiliated by Mark ‘The Beast’ Labbett and Anne ‘The Governess’ Hegerty, Failing memory is no laughing matter, so I’ll resist the urge to joke about losing my glasses and finding them on my head, and focus instead on my PC’s recent misbehaviour. It’s frequently been freezing and crashing while performing the simplest of everyday tasks, such as playing online videos, installing updates and opening dozens of tabs across three different browsers (okay,…