Sanet.st.Computeractive_-_Issue_664,_1629_August_2023 (2)

Learn something new in every issue ISSUE 664 ❘ 16 – 29 AUGUST 2023 SOFTWARE You’ll NEVER Have To Pay For Use Google’s superb new tool SHARE FILES FASTER BETWEEN PHONE & PC STOP AI SCAMMERS STEALING YOUR INFO SWITCH YOUR AD BLOCKER NOW! How to redact personal data The old favourites no longer work p62 X Musks the spot – page 49 FAKE PHONE ADVERT Make sure YOU don’t – page 21 WE FELL FOR THIS PLUS PHOTOS CHEAPER PRINT Avoid rip-off ink and slash running costs No hidden fees No paid-for tools No restrictions page 38 p35 Fantastic programs that are 100% FREE! p50 p60 BEST PC

3 WELCOME We use snipcas to turn long URLs that are hard to type into ones that are short and simple. They aren’t websites themselves, which means they won’t be recognised if you type them into Google. Instead, you need to type them into your browser address bar, then press Enter. Doing this will take you to the correct website. HOW TO USE SNIPCA URLs THIS ISSUE IN NUMBERS From the Editor Computeractive Printed in the UK Future plc is a public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange (symbol: FUTR) www.futureplc.com Chief Executive Officer Jon Steinberg Non-Executive Chairman Richard Huntingford Chief Financial and Strategy Officer Penny Ladkin-Brand Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244 EDITORIAL Group Editor in Chief Graham Barlow Group Editor Daniel Booth Deputy Editor Robert Irvine Production Editor Graham Brown Art Editor Katie Peat Contributors Keumars Afifi-Sabet, Judith Batchelor, Dinah Greek, Jonathan Parkyn, Nik Rawlinson, Andy Shaw ADVERTISING Advertising Manager Alexandra Thomas MARKETING AND CIRCULATION Subscriptions Juber Ahmed For subscription enquiries ring 0330 333 9493 PRODUCTION Head of Production Stephen Catherall Senior Production Manager Lawrence Brookes INTERNATIONAL LICENSING AND SYNDICATION Computeractive is available for licensing and syndication. To find out more contact us at [email protected] or view our available content at www.futurecontenthub.com. Head of Print Licensing Rachel Shaw ONWARD RESALE This publication may not be resold or otherwise distributed, whether at, below or above face value. Nor can this publication be advertised for sale, transfer or distribution. PERMISSIONS Material may not be reproduced in any form without the written consent of the publisher. Please address such requests to [email protected]. LIABILITY While every care was taken preparing this magazine, the publishers cannot be held responsible for the accuracy of the information or any consequence arising from it. All judgments are based on equipment available to Computeractive at the time of review. Computeractive takes no responsibility for the content of external websites whose addresses are published in the magazine. © Copyright Future PLC 2022. All rights reserved Images from Alamy and Getty Images Computeractive is a registered trademark. Neither the whole of this publication nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers SUBSCRIPTION DELAYS We rely on various delivery companies to get your magazine to you - many of whom continue to be affected by Covid. We kindly ask you allow up to 7 days before contacting us about late delivery: [email protected]. Distributed by Marketforce Average sales, Jan-Dec 2022 59,617 copies per issue. Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 £45 Price of Amazon’s new Echo Pop smart speaker - p26 29% Proportion of email scams worldwide that impersonate Microsoft - p11 One of the most depressing trends in software is companies using ‘bait-andswitch’ tactics to lure you with the promise of a free tool, then – when you’re hooked – moving it to the paid-for version. LastPass is one of the worst offenders. In 2021 it changed its free plan to one type of device, triggering an exodus of users (I switched to Bitwarden and haven’t regretted it). CCleaner has tried similar tricks, and there are many other examples. It’s become such a problem recently that we decided enough is enough. In his Cover Feature, Robert Irvine recommends excellent programs that will almost certainly remain free forever. How can we be so sure? Well, they’re all made by independent developers motivated not by money, but by the technical challenge in building tools to make computing easier. They all perform vital PC tasks, such as downloading YouTube videos, removing duplicate files, updating drivers and more. Please let me know your favourites. Daniel Booth [email protected] p50 p38 p62 p35 p60 p21 86 Number of drivers caught using phones by AI-powered cameras - p9

Contents 4 Reviews pxx 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 22 Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 Sleek laptop-tablet puts it all on display 23 Minisforum NPB7 Mini PC makes powerful statement 24 Lenovo Tab P11 Pro (2nd Gen) Tablet can’t ease performance pains 25 Honor 90 Phone offers a pixel-perfect camera 26 Amazon Echo Pop New smart speaker shapes up nicely 28 Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus Smart doorbell rings true Wasserstein Bird Feeder Case Camera case for filming feathered friends 29 Amazon Fire TV Omni QLED 65in Fire TV set puts heat on rivals 30 Buy It/Competition Win an Arlo Pro 5 outdoor security camera 6 News Brave now finds images without relying on Google 10 Question of the Fortnight How long until DVDs are removed from UK shelves? 11 Protect Your Tech Rise in Microsoft impersonation scams 12 Letters Took five calls over two hours to cancel Virgin 14 Consumeractive Can I get more cash from Pure if it stops a service? 16 Grow Your Family Tree Search for railway accidents 18 Best Free Software FixWin 11.1 21 Named & Shamed MyCleaner’s ‘iPhone Storage Full’ fake advert Companies to eject DVDs p10 Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 p22 Minisforum NPB7 p23

5 Workshops & Tips Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 Subscribe now! See page 58 for our special subs offer 49 What’s All the Fuss About? X 50 COVER FEATURE Best PC software you’ll never have to pay for Avoid the lure of ‘free’ programs that will charge you at a later date 60 Redact your personal info Blurring or pixellating personal info no longer guarantees your privacy – we explain why you should redact it instead 62 Switch your ad blocker Many of the most popular ad blockers have let their guard down recently. We reveal the best three options and ones you should avoid 64 Problems SolvedWhy is Thunderbird forcing me to use Gmail? 71 Reader Support Why can’t I launch DuckDuckGo? 72 Jargon Buster 74 Easy When You Know How Robert Irvine copies old audio CDs to his phone 35 How to… Print your photos as cheaply as possible 38 Share files between your phone/tablet and PC 40 Readers’ Tips Make NirLauncher easier to use 42 Browser Tips Search Google from the side panel 44 Phone and Tablet Tips Detect and locate hidden Bluetooth trackers 46 Make Windows Better Change cursor speed when using Mouse Keys 47 Make Office Better Combine data from several columns into one 48 In the Club Upload photos to Google Forms Print charming p35 p62 No hidden fees No paid-for tools No restrictions Fantastic programs that are 100% FREE! SOFTWARE You’ll NEVER Have To Pay For Switch your ad blocker BEST PC COVER FEATURE P50

News The top stories in the world of technology 6 WHAT WE THINK but not this… Rats gnawed through broadband cables, leaving thousands without internet (www.snipca.com/47128) You’ll like this… Google will soon warn you when your details appear in search results (www.snipca.com/47127) Microsoft starts to bid farewell to Cortana Microsoft is releasing a Windows update that confirms its decision to shut down Cortana. The company announced in June that it was ending support for the voice assistant, as it focuses instead on building AI tools into the operating system. At the time it said it would start ending support for Cortana in “late 2023”, but has now brought that forward to August (see www.snipca. com/47129). Once the update is installed, clicking Cortana shows a black screen with the message ‘Cortana in Windows as a standalone app is deprecated’. Microsoft uses the term ‘deprecated’ when it intends to “remove a feature or capability in a major future release”, though the feature in question “will continue to work and be fully supported until it is officially removed”. The company launched Cortana in 2014 to compete Brave now finds images without relying on Google To achieve this, Brave’s developers built their own search indexes that don’t contain results provided by Bing or Google. Since launching in early 2021, Brave Search had relied on finding images and videos from either of the two big search engines. When you searched for an image or video, you were asked whether you wanted to find the result on Bing or Google (see screenshot below). Brave claims that the move means it now offers “comprehensive independent country and safe search 2 . Brave said it will soon add advanced filters, including for aspect ratio and the licensing rights of the images and videos. The move follows Brave ending its reliance on Google and Bing’s indexes for main search results in April. When it launched about 13 per cent of its results came from the two leading search engines. Brave now lets you search for images and videos that don’t rely on results from Bing or Google, helping to make the search engine faster and more private. results, giving users a fullyfledged, privacy-preserving choice outside of Big Tech” (see www.snipca.com/47132). To search for an image or video, type your search term into https://search.brave.com, press Enter, then select either the Images or Videos tabs at the top ( 1 in our screenshot above). There are only two search filters at the moment – Will you miss Cortana? Let us know: letters@computeractive. co.uk 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 These are good times for anyone keen to go beyond Google. First, DuckDuckGo launches its long-awaited browser (see Issue 662, www.snipca.com/47139), and now Brave inches closer to full independence. Neither tool is the finished article, but they’re both excellent privacy-focused alternatives to the tech giants. Brave doesn’t collect any of your personal details when you browse the web, nor track what you search for and the links you click. You’ll still see adverts, but these aren’t based on a personal profile. with Apple’s Siri, though it has stopped developing it in recent years as AI-powered chatbots have become more powerful. It has already added Bing Chat to the Windows 11 search box, as well as to Edge and Skype. 1 2

7 IN BRIEF TOMORROW’S WORLD Most robots fail if you ask them to perform a task they’re not programmed to do. But Google has trained this one to adapt to new challenges, such as picking up a toy it has never seen before. One of its key talents is to analyse data from the web and translate it into robotic controls. Read more at www.snipca.com/47115. Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 Russian spies pose as tech-support help to hack governments highly targeted cases, advanced techniques to compromise authentication mechanisms within an organisation to expand access and evade detection”. The company said that it has “directly notified targeted or compromised customers, providing them with information needed to secure their environments”. Read more on Microsoft’s site: www.snipca.com/47123. •Sharp rise in ‘Microsoft impersonation’ scams – page 11 Russian spies targeted governments around the world by posting as tech-support staff on Microsoft Teams. Microsoft said a campaign of “highly targeted social engineering attacks” saw Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) try to hack into around 40 organisations worldwide. They chose to attack through Teams because it’s one of the most popular tools for work employees to chat with each other. The hackers, which Microsoft calls Midnight Blizzard, managed to trick victims into clicking links in messages, giving them access into the organisation’s computer systems. As well as government departments, the spies attacked charities and companies in the IT services, technology, manufacturing, and media sectors. What made the attack significant is that the hackers sent messages that appeared to come from Microsoft’s genuine tech-support team, using an email address ending in onmicrosoft.com. Microsoft said that since 2018 Midnight Blizzard’s aim has been to “collect intelligence through longstanding and dedicated espionage of foreign interests”. It added, “Their operations often involve compromise of valid accounts and, in some Elderly viewers are switching from traditional TV to streaming services at a record rate, Ofcom has found. It said that the viewing figures for over-65s watching broadcast channels such as the BBC and ITV fell by 10 per cent in 2022. Overall, the proportion of people who tune in each week was down from 83 per cent in 2021 to 79 per cent in 2022. The statistics come in Ofcom’s annual Media Nations report (www.snipca. funeral and Platinum Jubilee – both 13.2 million. By contrast, only 48 programmes on streaming services averaged more than four million TV viewers. Netflix accounted for most of these, and it remains the most popular streaming service in the UK (see box). ITVX accounted for 10 per cent of ITV’s total viewing in the first half of 2023, up from seven per cent last year. Programmes on BBC iPlayer accounted for 18 per cent of the BBC’s viewing, up from 14 per cent in 2022. com/47117), which surveys the “media habits and preferences of people across the UK”. It also found that the average time a person watches broadcast TV per day fell from two hours 59 minutes to two hours 38 minutes. The number of programmes attracting over four million viewers has more than halved over the past eight years, from 2,490 in 2014 to 1,184 in 2022. Ofcom said these declines reflect fewer people watching TV news and soap operas. However, the most watched shows in 2022 were all broadcast on traditional TV. England’s quarter-final match against France in the World Cup had the most viewers with 16.1 million, followed by the Queen’s Over-65s switch off traditional TV in record numbers THUNDERBIRD DELAYS EMAIL SYNC TOOL Thunderbird has postponed its syncing feature that was scheduled for version 115, released in July. The tool, which would let you sync Thunderbird data and settings with other email clients, is now planned for 2024. It blamed “technical blockers” for the delay – see www.snipca. com/47124. BT STREET CABINETS BECOME EV CHARGERS BT is testing whether it can convert copper-based street cabinets into chargers for electric vehicles (EV). Work will start in Northern Ireland in the autumn, before being extended across the UK over a two-year trial period. The company estimates that around two-thirds of its 90,000 cabinets may be suitable for upgrading to an EV point. Read more at www.snipca. com/47119. • Netflix 59% of homes • Amazon Prime Video 45% • Disney+ 25% • Apple 7% • Now 7% MOST POPULAR STREAMING SERVICES IN THE UK

News 8 IN BRIEF THE WORLD’S GONE MAD! NO MORE UPDATES FOR ANDROID KITKAT If you thought human ‘influencers’ were annoying, wait until the AI versions become popular. This one, called Milla Sofia, is a “24-year old robot girl living in Helsinki”. Nothing she does is real, and yet for some reason more than 100,000 people now follow her online. Is there really nothing better to do on the internet? UK 34TH IN BROADBAND SPEED TABLE The UK has risen one place to 34th in the global broadband speed table as measured by comparison site Cable.co.uk. Average speed in the UK is now 93.62Mbps, up from 72.06Mbps last year. Jersey is top with 264.52Mbps, followed by Liechtenstein and Macau. Afghanistan is bottom with 1.71Mbps. Read Cable’s full results for 2023 at www.snipca.com/47083. WATCH 14 NEW CHANNELS ON VIRGIN TV Virgin Media has added 14 new channels to its TV 360, Stream and V6 boxes at no extra cost. They are all based on either single TV shows – including Great British Menu, Homes Under the Hammer (pictured) – or themes like history, crime and wildlife. For details visit www.snipca.com/47102. Google reminds users that it will close inactive accounts Kricheli, Google’s vice president for product management, said extended periods of inactivity might indicate that the accounts have been compromised. “This is because forgotten or unattended accounts often rely on old or re-used passwords that may have been compromised, haven’t had two-factor authentication set up, and receive fewer security checks by the user,” she said. Google says it will take a “phased approach” to closing accounts, starting with those “that were created and never used again”. Before closing an account Google will email a warning to it, so users have the chance to sign in and keep it active. Visit Google’s site for more details: www.snipca. com/47096. Google has sent its second reminder to users that it plans to close inactive accounts from 1 December. It has emailed accounts warning that any which haven’t shown signs of activity for two years will be shut down, and all content in them erased. Google first contacted users in May, when it outlined criteria for deciding whether an account is active. These include reading or sending an email, using Google Drive, sharing a photo, downloading an app and using Google Search. It says that security is the main reason for closing an inactive account. Ruth Sky forces ISPs to block access to illegal content Sky has obtained a High Court order to force internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to services illegally streaming its sports coverage and TV shows. The order is similar to the one granted to the Premier League since 2019, but is intended to block a broader range of content. Sky will now be able to shut down individual pirate sites at specific times. It’s expected to use this power when it’s broadcasting a major sporting event, such as a Premier League match or England cricket international, or for a new episode of a popular show. Blocking will be carried out by a third-party group that looks for IP addresses and servers to identify the source of illegal streams. This information is then passed to ISPs, who’ll use it to block access to the sites on their network. A Sky spokesman said the court order would “help limit the supply of pirated Sky content”. In recent years the company has increased its efforts to crack down on devices and software that can illegally stream content. Earlier this year it worked with police across the UK in an operation that saw four people arrested, preventing more than 500,000 viewers from watching pirated content. Experts regard preventing access to pirated streams as one of the most effective tools in tackling illegal content. Last season the Premier League used its blocking order to block or take down over 600,000 illegal live streams. Android 4.4 won’t receive any more updates, Google has said. The operating system, nicknamed KitKat, launched in October 2013 and was promoted with Kit Kat bars in the shape of the Android robot logo. Fewer than one per cent of Android phones now run it. 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664

9 IN BRIEF Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 VODAFONE SENDS 4G FROM CHURCH BELLS Vodafone is working with the Church of England to install 4G base stations on top of 11 church bell towers in order to spread signals across rural areas. Two of the first locations are in Brompton Regis, Somerset, and at St Michael’s & All Angels church in Ewyas Harold, Herefordshire. The rest, going live in the next few months, are in Dorset, Essex, Norfolk and Wiltshire. Watch Vodafone’s video at www. snipca.com/47058. ASDA SELLS NEW 55IN ROKU TV A new 55in 4K Polaroid Roku TV (pictured) is on sale now exclusively at Asda stores. Priced £349, it comes with most of the major streaming services, including BBC iPlayer, ITVX, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, as well as Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music. More models will be available later this year. Read more at www. snipca.com/47063 and find your nearest Asda at www. snipca.com/47064. DISCOUNT PC SITE FOR PEOPLE ON BENEFITS A new website sells discounted broadband and refurbished Windows 10 PCs in order to “close the digital divide”. Called Get Online@Home (www. getonlineathome.org), it’s run by Computer Recyclers UK in partnership with Currys, and has support from the Digital Poverty Alliance. Eligible customers include disabled people and those on benefits. Prices start at £99 for desktop PCs and £199 for laptops. Apolice camera van has used artificial intelligence (AI) to detect people using mobile phones while driving. Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary and Thames Valley Police carried out the operation between July 17 and 21 on the A34 and A303. They identified 86 motorists suspected of using a phone, and a further 273 of not wearing a seatbelt. The van uses two cameras to capture the footage. The first, set at a shallow angle, can detect a phone close to the driver’s ear. The second camera uses a steeper view to see if a phone is being used for texting. Once the AI software has identified the offences, humans check the footage before passing it to the police. This ensures that only “clear offences, which are reviewed by at least two humans, are considered for prosecution”, police say. Simon Gomer, head of the Safer Roads Unit at Hampshire Constabulary, said that the operation was a “great opportunity” to use the latest AI technology. “But the results we’ve had from just one week sadly show how prolific these offences are,” he added. “We will continue to spread the message that distracted driving kills, these offences will be punished and social habits need to change.” AI cameras catch drivers using mobile phones Sites will have to remove fake adverts ‘endorsed’ by celebrities Websites will be forced to remove fake adverts that claim to be endorsed by celebrities, under new laws to clamp down further on online scams. The move has been welcomed by MoneySavingExpert founder Martin Lewis, whose face has often been added to financial scams to make them appear legitimate. In July, he warned about a deepfake video that appeared to show him recommending an investment called ‘Quantum AI’ that was labelled as ‘Elon Musk’s new project’ (www.snipca. com/47062, pictured). Lewis said that it was “weird and pretty frightening” to have his face and voice imitated in the advert. The new rules form part of the Government’s Online Advertising Programme, which place more responsibility on tech companies to regulate adverts that appear on their sites. It also covers advertising services such as Google Ads that provide the software for The UK already has an advertising regulator – the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) – but it doesn’t have the power to tackle adverts made by scammers. Creative industries minister Sir John Whittingdale said that as online advertising has grown, the rules “have not kept pace and so we intend to strengthen them to ensure consumers are properly protected”. Read more on Gov.UK: www.snipca.com/47061. adverts to appear on sites, and ‘influencers’ on social media who get paid for promoting items. As well as false celebrity endorsements, sites will have to take down adverts promoting illegal products, such as weapons, drugs, knock-off designer clothes and fake tickets. They will also have to stop children seeing adverts for age-restricted products, including alcohol, adult-rated films and gambling sites. Credit: Hants Police

Question of the Fortnight Question of the Fortnight 10 THE FACTS Disney’s move to stop selling them in Australia could be the final nail How long until DVDs are removed from UK shelves? The death of DVDs has been long predicted ever since Blockbuster went bankrupt in 2010. Apart from a brief respite during lockdown, sales have nosedived over the past decade. And Disney may have hammered the final nail in the coffin by announcing that it will no longer release DVDs and Blu-rays in Australia. It follows the company’s decision to stop selling DVDs in some Asian and Latin American countries, and industry analysts expect the company to do the same in the UK and US. The move has huge implications because Disney is one of the world’s biggest media brands, owning the Star Wars, Indiana Jones and The Simpsons franchises, as well as National Geographic and the entire 20th Century Fox back catalogue. Disney’s last DVD down under will be the superhero film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. After that, all new Disney releases will be available only through streaming services, such as its own Disney+. It’s a milestone in the dramatic demise of DVDs. Every year between 2005 and 2009 around two billion DVDs were sold worldwide. But by 2021 sales had plummeted to 300 million, as viewers turned in increasing numbers to streaming services. By 2019, only 51 per cent of UK households owned a DVD player (down from 75 per cent in 2010), while hardly any new computers now come with a disc drive. According to new Ofcom research, 66 per cent of households subscribe to a TV-streaming service, up from 20 per cent in 2015. The figure is 75 per cent in the US. Disney+ is the third most popular service in the UK, earning a 25-per-cent market share since launching in 2020. UK revenue increased by 40 per cent in 2022 to £383 million. That’s still some way below Netflix’s £1.61 billion, but it’s catching up quickly. Given such trends, Disney’s decision to axe DVDs makes commercial sense. It’s also much easier for media companies to manage international licensing for streaming content than physical products like discs. There had been some small signs of a decline in streaming. Sixty-six per cent of households subscribing sounds impressive, but it’s actually smaller than 2022’s peak of 68 per cent. However, this fall is more to do with rising inflation squeezing family income than viewers turning away from streaming. Indeed, streaming is now the most popular way to consume other types of media, including music and games. It’s true that some physical products are making a comeback. Sales of vinyl records have increased for 17 consecutive years and have now overtaken CDs, while Kodak says it can’t “keep up with demand” for photographic film, less than a decade after the company filed for bankruptcy. There will always be some people who prefer owning a physical copy to streaming. Specialist vinyl websites have sprung up to meet this demand from music fans. But if companies as big as Disney stop making DVDs, then there will be no new products for stores to sell. Barring a ferocious backlash in Australia, it’s easy to see Disney stopping sales in the UK within the next year. But over time we expect fans of the DVD to call for its return, triggering a small revival. This probably won’t match vinyl’s renaissance, but it might be enough to persuade Disney and others to backtrack a little and release DVDs in limited numbers. So although these shiny discs are at death’s door, don’t rule out a surprising afterlife. Streaming is now the most popular way to consume films, music and games 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 • Disney will no longer release DVDs in Australia, leading some to predict it will stop selling them worldwide. • Global sales of DVDs have fallen from two billion in 2009 to under 300 million • Around 66 per cent of UK households subscribe to a streaming service, up from 20 per cent in 2015

Protect your tech WATCH OUT FOR... New tools ScamWatch Readers warn readers 11 Scams and threats to avoid, plus new security tools Microsoft’s site: www.snipca.com/47055. Also, beware of similar emails that impersonate Google and Apple, which came second and third in Check Point’s recent research, accounting for 19 and five per cent of scams respectively. See the full list at www.snipca.com/47009. What’s the threat? There’s been a surge in scammers sending emails that claim to be from Microsoft. The company was the world’s most impersonated by fraudsters between April and June, accounting for 29 per cent of scams, according to research from US security company Check Point. This was a rise from 12 per cent in the first three months of 2023, when Microsoft was the third mostspoofed company worldwide, behind US supermarket Walmart and delivery firm DHL. Check Point said the increase in scams might have been caused by a wave of ‘Unusual activity’ emails, in which fraudsters try to trick you into thinking someone unauthorised has signed into your account. The most convincing of these emails come from what sounds like a genuine Microsoft email address (‘no-reply@ microsoft.com’ – 1 in our screenshot) Rise in Microsoft impersonation scams and have plausible subject lines referring to unusual activity on your account. They also contain believable details of where and when the sign-in occurred 2 , as well as the operating system and browser used 3 . There’s usually a button at the bottom of the email to report the user 4 , or review your recent activity. Clicking it takes you to a malicious site that has nothing to do with Microsoft. How can you stay safe? What makes these scams so effective is that Microsoft does email or text you when it detects “a sign-in attempt from a new location or device”. Its emails come from account-security-noreply@ accountprotection.microsoft.com – so ignore any other addresses. Read more on £300 bank ‘withdrawal’ scam I received a call telling me £300 had been withdrawn from my bank account by card and that a banker’s draft had been received for £1,100. They asked whether this was in order. I was taken by surprise, but gave nothing away. I spoke to an adviser, but he was almost unintelligible. I asked him to repeat what he was saying, but the phone went dead. I dialled 1471 and was surprised to find the call was from a mobile. I rang the number on my credit card and discovered that no money had been taken. I then saw this scam reported on BBC Breakfast. Ken Holt Save logins to correct 1Password account Warn your fellow readers about scams at [email protected] Having multiple accounts in your password manager can be useful if you regularly go online in different situations – such as at work and at home – or if you need to keep personal and family logins separate. But it can cause problems if your password manager mixes up your accounts, saving login details in the wrong one. 1Password (https://1password.com) aims to solve this by automatically suggesting saving passwords to the correct account based on the email address you’re using at that time. So, if you’re signed in with your work email, it will advise saving it in the 1Password account you use at work. In the screenshot, 1Password uses the example of someone saving a Netflix password in their personal account, when they might prefer it saved in their family account – as shown in the alert at the bottom. If a password is saved in the wrong place, 1Password will show another alert (called a ‘Watchtower’) to warn you. Read about these and other new tools, including passkeys, on 1Password’s blog: www.snipca.com/46956. Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 1 4 3 2

Letters 12 Tell us what’s on your mind My friend tells me anyone can install spyware on iPhones, but I have a feeling you dispelled this fear recently? Alison Fletcher CA SAYS We did indeed – see Issue 658, page 67. Buy Issue 658 from www.snipca.com/47004. In which issue did you recommend the best alternatives to Plex? Mick Dempsey CA SAYS That was Issue 655, page 60. Buy it from www. snipca.com/47005. When did you last explain how to extend Wi-Fi throughout the home? Robert Phillips CA SAYS That was in Issue 635’s Cover Feature ‘Why Your Wi-Fi is Still Slow’ (read it on our Back Issue CD: www.snipca.com/44660). from networks just before boarding would be the nudge they need. Monica Ferguson Shell let me switch to social tariff without fee It’s encouraging to see Vodafone offering 73Mbps on its social tariff broadband (Issue 663, page 8). Fantastic speeds like this will be a massive help to those on benefits, especially when applying online for jobs. It’s worth noting also that some broadband providers will let you switch to a rival’s social tariff if they don’t offer one themselves. I speak from experience when, about a year ago, I was made redundant and asked Shell – my provider at the time – to release me from my contract so I could take advantage of a social tariff elsewhere. To Shell’s credit, they let me do this without paying an early-termination fee. Shell has now introduced a social tariff (www.snipca.com/47042), so perhaps they’d now move you to this, rather than let you leave. Joe Kendrick CA SAYS If you’re keen to switch to a social tariff, visit Ofcom’s site for a full list of available deals: www.snipca. com/47046. Vodafone’s new 73Mbps package (www.snipca.com/47047), which costs £20 a month, is the fastest nationwide speed. Some local providers offer 100-150Mbps. DuckDuckGo browser needs extensions I installed DuckDuckGo’s new browser after reading Issue 662’s Cover Feature (pictured left) and found it very easy to navigate. However, there’s one omission that’s not easy to overcome – and that’s not being able to add extensions. I use the Roboform Password Manager (www. roboform.com), but because DuckDuckGo doesn’t support extensions I’m unable to use Roboform’s taskbar at the bottom of pages. I can only hope that DuckDuckGo will allow extensions soon. Phil Aylward CA SAYS Phil’s right that the biggest drawback to DuckDuckGo’s browser is its lack of support for extensions. However, it has many privacy tools built in, so you don’t actually need to install extensions to block trackers and adverts. DuckDuckGo says it will allow extensions “in the future”, but even without them it’s an excellent privacyfocused alternative to the likes of Chrome and Edge. The browser downloads automatically from www.snipca. com/46663. If you missed our Cover Feature on it, buy the back issue from www.snipca.com/47044. Gumtree also has fake buyers You gave sound advice when warning your readers about criminal Facebook buyers who come to your home then trick you into thinking they’ve transferred cash using an app (Issue 663, page 11). I want to point out that fake buyers also exist on Gumtree, which might not be as popular as Facebook Marketplace, but is used by many people in the Suffolk town where I live. My elderly neighbour was nearly conned a couple of weeks ago. She had arranged to sell a tablet for a couple of hundred pounds, and agreed with the buyer that it should be paid for in cash. But when he arrived he feigned ignorance of this agreement, and instead whipped out his phone and showed her an app that appeared to be depositing money into her account. Fortunately, my neighbour had the wherewithal to knock on my door to ask for advice. She often turns to me for help with all matters of technology. I couldn’t confirm that the buyer was scamming her, but it was certainly suspicious. As soon as I asked to see the app he was using, he told us to forget about the purchase, and ran off. It was a lucky escape. Philip Weeks CA SAYS As Gumtree’s popularity grows, scammers will inevitably target it more. If you regularly buy and sell through the site, read its advice on how to stay safe: www.snipca.com/47045. Avoid roaming fees on flights Ofcom is right to put pressure on phone networks to remind customers about roaming fees (Issue 663, page 10). One place where these messages should be sent is at airports. My son once had a £20 roaming bill while flying to Egypt because his phone had connected mid-air. Most airlines do advise passengers to switch to airplane mode before take-off, but I bet many people never do. An alert 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 ? What’s the Issue…?

Email: [email protected] Facebook: www.facebook.com/computeractive (formerly Twitter): @ComputerActive www.twitter.com/computeractive 13 STAR LETTER Views expressed don’t necessarily reflect those of Computeractive The Star Letter writer wins a Computeractive mug! Took me five calls over two hours to cancel Virgin broadband I’m pleased to see that Ofcom is investigating whether Virgin Media has made it too difficult for customers to cancel their contracts (Issue 663, page 9). It took me five phone calls spread over two hours to cancel my Virgin account. Every time I rang I went through the menu to speak to the cancellation team, but each time I somehow ended up connected to the wrong department. They sounded sincere when they apologised and said they would put me through to the right people, but each time my call ended a couple of minutes later. I eventually succeeded on the fifth occasion, but even then the customer ‘agents’ I spoke to tried to persuade me to stay with a variety of offers. It then dawned on me why I’d had so much trouble getting through earlier. Virgin must employ a special team to negotiate deals with you when you try to phone to cancel. The people I had got through to earlier presumably weren’t part of this team. I expect the staff paid to persuade customers to stay are on a commission, so all calls to cancel must go to them. Ofcom should investigate this practice immediately. Ideally, they would insist on all companies providing a ‘no negotiation’ phone number which you can ring to cancel. Every employee answering these calls would have the authority to process your cancellation without feeling pressured to put you through to another department. There could also be a separate ‘negotiation’ number for customers who do want to haggle. This approach would end hours of frustration and confusion. Paul McDonnell Freevee, which is available through Amazon Prime. It has a superb collection of films (www.snipca.com/47043), and I don’t mind my viewing being disturbed every 20 minutes with adverts. But these ads appear slap bang in the middle of dialogue with no warning. It’s not like adverts in films on ITV, where they’ve been carefully placed to minimise disruption. You can often tell when there’s an advert coming. Not so on Freevee. One second you’re listening to Morgan Freeman speak, the next you’re being sold household detergent. On the plus side, though, there is a countdown showing you how long is left in the advert. Tim Bills but I’ve spotted a potential fraud opportunity for all those villains so intent on relieving us of our hardearned cash. What’s to stop them from covering over the sign requesting payment by phone with their own number? They can then sit back and reap the rewards. I’m all for technology, which is why I subscribe to Computeractive, but I do feel for people who are being left behind. These people should be catered for, not forgotten. The amount of money made from parking could surely pay for a single cash-payment machine, or another way to pay other than by phone. Shaun Drage Freevee’s ads are as bad as YouTube’s Readers who have complained recently about YouTube’s intrusive adverts should see how bad they are on We’ve abandoned Amazon over its Prime ‘tricks’ In Issue 662 (page 9) you asked whether readers felt tricked into signing up for Amazon Prime. Recently, I found some cheap metal washers on Amazon, but when I came to pay I was told: ‘We are giving you a free trial of Prime and Prime Video’. I had two choices: take both or just Prime Video. There was no option to go ahead without choosing either. As they already had my credit-card details, there was no way I was going to touch either button. So instead I paid more and ordered from another supplier. I’ve always used Amazon as it offered an easy way to buy things at good prices, but not anymore – I’m done with them. Richard Weeks When I first used Amazon I assumed I had inadvertently selected the option to sign up to Prime. I immediately went through the drawnout cancellation process. Some time later I tried again and carefully selected Standard delivery to avoid signing up for Prime. But I was immediately informed that the purchase qualified for Prime, and it was confirmed by email. Once again I cancelled Prime and the order. A few weeks later Amazon emailed me to say that my free trial was ending and they were going to take £9.99 from my account. At the bottom of this email it said ‘do not reply to this email’! Well, I did reply, saying that if they dared to take any money from my account I would see to it that they got some very bad press. Quite soon I had a reply stating that my account had been cancelled. So if anyone receives the same email, try replying to it. Trevor Taylor What I hate about Amazon is that when you put an item in your basket, it will say ‘get free delivery when you sign up to Prime’. But then when you do sign up, it sometimes says ‘this item does not qualify for free delivery’. So are they conning customers into signing up for Prime? Stevie Downs Can scammers steal your parking money? Regarding your recent articles on paying for parking using a smartphone, maybe I’m a distrustful sort Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023

Consumeractive We stand up for your legal rights LEAD CASE 14 CASE UPDATE O2 says sorry for poor service and gives reader £20 O2 has paid £20 to a customer to apologise for how badly he was treated by staff. It relates to Judith Rowbotham’s case (Issue 662), in which she paid £20 through the site On Top Up (https://ontopup.com) to top up an old Nokia phone owned by her cousin Tim. When this payment didn’t appear on his account, Tim visited O2’s store in Kensington, west London. Its staff told him the problem was that his phone’s SIM card was faulty. Judith then phoned O2, which told her that she should never have used On Top Up. Staff repeatedly hung up on her when she phoned back for clarification. We’re still not sure what happened to the £20 that Judith paid. O2 couldn’t find it on its system, but accepted Judith’s receipt which showed she had bought it. It promptly credited the amount to her cousin’s phone, so he now has the money Judith bought as well as an extra £20 from O2 to say sorry. We’re satisfied by this outcome, even if we didn’t find out what went wrong initially. Our hunch is that the fault lay with the system for crediting accounts rather than human error, though that doesn’t excuse the inadequate customer service provided by O2. As for On Top Up, we remain concerned by its poor customer rating on Trustpilot, where 40 per cent of reviews are for one star (www.snipca.com/47088). I can’t access my Norton account – can I get refund? Q Norton has taken £19.99 from my payment card, but I can’t access my account. I keep being asked for another payment method. Can I get my money back and cancel any ongoing subscription? Ted Drury A Yes, Ted can get his money back, and cancel any rolling subscriptions. We don’t know what the problem is, but it makes no difference because he hasn’t downloaded the antivirus software – which means under the Consumer Contract Regulations he has 14 days to cancel. However, because he can’t sign into his account Ted is worried that he’s been scammed. If the money has been taken from his debit or credit card, he should tell his bank that the transaction is unauthorised. Although banks differ about how they implement refunds, under UK law Ted’s bank must stop any further transactions. If he has problems, he should ask the Financial Ombudsman (www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk) to investigate. Banks must comply with its decisions. Q Some time ago I bought a Pure One Flow radio (pictured) specifically because it supported the Flow internet radio service. Pure axed this service on 9 May, telling us only a few weeks earlier: www.snipca. com/46933. I feel this has left me with a device that’s not fit for purpose. Pure is offering a paltry £30 towards a new device, or a 30-per-cent discount. Can I ask for more? David Taylor A David can ask, but companies ending a service doesn’t automatically mean that a device has become unfit for purpose. Under law, services aren’t expected to last forever. Even the term ‘lifetime guarantee’ has no watertight legal meaning. Companies usually argue that ‘lifetime’ means for how long a device can receive updates to work properly. We don’t know when David bought the radio, but Pure released the device in 2011 and launched the Flow service at the same time. But since then superior audio technologies like HLS Streaming have Can I get more cash from Pure if it stops a service? emerged, and they’re not supported by older Pure One Flow radios. When a technology becomes obsolete is an open question. You could take a company to court for using this as an excuse for axing a service, but your chances of winning diminish the more time has passed from the service launching. We’d expect a judge to consider that 12 years is long enough for a service to work before being superseded by more modern technology. Still, it’s worth David asking for more money from Pure. Any extra money he gets would be only a goodwill gesture though. 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 CASE CLOSED CASE ONGOING

Email: [email protected] Please include your name, phone number and address. Contact us so we can investigate your case 15 Has a company impressed you with its customer service? Please let us know: [email protected] CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE CASE CLOSED Can I sue for loss over faulty solar panels? Contact Zen Internet • Phone 01706 902000 All companies make mistakes, so I’ve always judged their customer service on how they deal with these hiccups. I want honesty when they explain the problem, no passing of the buck. So I’d like to applaud Zen Internet for how they dealt with a few problems at the start of my contract. The fault for these lies with Openreach. It cancelled several appointments to install my broadband. But Zen didn’t shrug its shoulders and expect me to deal with Openreach alone. Its friendly support team kept me fully informed when the installation dates changed. They chased the engineers and stressed the importance of connecting me (I’m considered a vulnerable customer). Zen kept me informed during Openreach delays A Possibly, but Don first needs to know who to sue for damages. It would be relatively easy to make a claim if only one company was involved in selling and installing the panels. But if two companies are involved, then he’d have to prove that the installing firm didn’t pay due care when carrying out the service. Alternatively, if the panels Q I had solar panels and batteries installed on my house and discovered after six months that two of the panels weren’t working. Would I be entitled to pursue for lost earnings (from selling excess electricity to the grid) or for having to buy electricity that the panels could have provided? Don Sellick were inherently faulty, then the retailer would be responsible. Don also told us the company he reported the fault to has a monitor for checking the performance of the panels. He wonders whether this means it should have picked up the fault earlier, potentially saving him money in lost earnings. But we think it probably can’t be expected to monitor panels around the clock and then contact customers if it detects faults However, if Don can work out how much this failure has cost him then he’d be able to pursue a claim under the Consumer Rights Act because he shouldn’t be out of pocket. The onus is on him to prove this and by how much. Can Currys insist on another laptop repair? Q I bought an Acer Swift laptop from Currys for £799. The keyboard developed a fault after 70 days, so Currys picked it up for repair. This had been fixed when Currys returned the laptop, but now the speakers don’t work. I was offered a replacement, but I wanted a refund, which Currys refused. According to Currys’ complaints department, the Consumer Rights Act (CRA) states that “a laptop must develop three faults to trigger an alternate solution”. Is this the case? Paul Fowler A No, it’s not the case. We have no idea why Currys thinks that. Perhaps it has rewritten the CRA without telling anyone. It’s true that Currys was entitled to attempt a repair once 30 days had passed since purchase. But it was allowed to try this only once. Repeated repairs were banned in 2015. If the first repair fails, retailers have to refund the customer. This must be a full refund within six months of purchase, and can be partial after that. If ever a retailer tries to pull the same trick with you, quote Chapter 2, Provision 24, section 5 (a) of the CRA: www.snipca. com/46932. We’ll send this to Currys and ask why it got the law so wrong. We’ll also make it clear that it needs to refund Paul in full. Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 Once installed, Zen talked me through setting it up. Again, they were helpful, patient and amiable. They even told me I was due compensation for the delays, without me asking for any. Matthew Gregory CASE ONGOING

Family Tree Grow Your Your Genealogy Problems Solved 16 Next issue: Discover whether your Irish ancestors owned land Have a genealogy question for Judith? Email [email protected] with ‘Grow Your Family Tree’ in the subject line. Search for railway accidents If you think your ancestors were hurt working on the trains, follow Judith Batchelor’s advice to… My great-grandfather spent the 1890s and early 1900s working in Spain, but I can’t find out where. Is there a Spanish census I can check? Rachel Marks Most Spanish records are held at a local level so you will need to know the province where he lived. Check whether there are any letters, postcards or annotated photographs in the family that might mention his whereabouts. An obituary may also contain some clues, so search the British Newspaper Archive (www.snipca.com/46840). If he had any children while living in Spain, their births may have been registered with British authorities. Search the ‘British Armed Forces and Overseas Birth Indexes’ on Findmypast: www.snipca. com/46839. Many of our ancestors worked in dangerous occupations where health and safety was a low priority. Those employed in the railway industry, who worked in a hazardous environment of shunting trucks and steaming locomotives, were particularly at risk from injury and even death. Narrow your search using dropdown menus If your ancestor was involved in an accident, search a new database recording railway accidents in Britain and Ireland from 1888 to 1939. Created by the University of Portsmouth, the National Railway Museum and the Modern Railways Centre at the University of Warwick, it currently contains details of nearly click a dropdown menu, so untick that to clear all the boxes below. You can then tick those you want to search for. In our screenshot above, we clicked the Surname menu 1 , then unticked Select All (so a black square replaces the tick 2 ). Searching for the surname Algar 3 narrowed the results to just one entry – a platelayer 4 who was injured at Chelmsford station in 1916. Look through newspaper reports Try searching newspaper reports for more details of an accident, or if you think it happened before 1888. The most comprehensive source is the British Newspaper Archive (BNA), which costs £12.99 for a month, or £86.04 a year (www.snipca.com/46909). It’s free for Findmypast subscribers. In my own family, there was a story of a relative who had lost an arm. I thought it may have been my great-great-grandfather, Josiah David Bullock, who worked for Great Western Railway. His employment records show that he was off “ill” in March 1888 while working at Maiden Newton station in Dorset. I searched for him on the BNA and found a newspaper report explaining how his arm needed to be amputated as the result of an accident. You can read more on my blog: www. snipca.com/46874. 50,000 incidents. The information is available to download as an Excel spreadsheet – visit www.snipca. com/46875 and click the green ‘Download Now’ button at the bottom. Sheet one covers the Railway Inspectorate Reports ( 1 in our screenshot below left); sheets two to seven are transcriptions of the different funds and union support given by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (ASRS) and the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) 2 . Sheet eight is a full transcription of the contents of the ASRS’s legal book, which records court cases and compensation won. The final sheet contains the full details of workers injured and making applications to the benevolent fund of the Great Eastern Railway Company between 1913-1923. Use the dropdown menu at the top of each column to filter your search. You’ll see that ‘Select All’ is ticked when you 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 The spreadsheet contains Railway Inspectorate Reports, and funds and union support Untick ‘Select All’ then narrow your search by surname 1 2 1 4 2 3

Best FreeSoftware Robert Irvine recommends new programs that won’t cost you a thing 18 4 In the Additional Fixes section, you’ll find solutions to less common problems, such as corrupted icons and Aero Shake not working. Click the Quick Settings tab to reset different Windows tools including Microsoft Defender and the Settings app. 3 The Troubleshooters section gives you one-click access to 18 troubleshooting tools, to identify and fix problems with Windows software and hardware. You can download additional troubleshooters from FixWin’s developer, TheWindowsClub. 2 Click ‘System Fixes’ to browse a wide range of common PC problems, including tools that won’t open, updates that fail and specific error messages. Click the question mark next to an entry for an explanation, then click the Fix button. 1 FixWin automatically detects your Windows version and other system info so it can provide relevant fixes. To view further details, such as your processor speed and available RAM, click System Tools, then Advanced System Information. SYSTEM TOOL You can fix many problems with Windows by tweaking the registry or running special commands, but unless you know what you’re doing, you could further mess up your PC. FixWin provides one-click repairs for dozens of common issues and annoyances, in an attractive, easy-to-understand interface, and it works with both Windows 10 and 11. The program’s Welcome screen provides handy shortcuts to run the System File Checker (SFC) and DISM commands, which are often all you need to fix PC errors, as well as the option to create a system restore point before you make any changes. If these don’t help, you can explore its range of fixes, which are organised into logical categories, such as File Explorer, Internet & Connectivity and System Fixes. Rather than baffle you with jargon, FixWin uses plain English to explain problems you may be experiencing, such as ‘Recycle Bin icon is missing from Desktop’, ‘Cannot connect to internet’ and ‘Start menu doesn’t open’, as well as error messages like ‘Task Manager has been disabled by your administrator’. Before you click the Fix button to repair a problem, click the question-mark icon to learn exactly what FixWin will do, such as delete a specific registry key or run a particular command. Fixes are applied instantly, though you may need to restart your PC for them to take effect. The Troubleshooters section gives you one-click access to the various troubleshooters tucked away in the Windows Settings app, including tools to fix problems affecting your printer, network adapter and PC sound. There are also quick fixes for resetting different aspects of Windows, such as your Windows Update history. FixWin couldn’t be easier to use and this latest version fixes a few bugs in the program itself. Note that, because it makes changes to your PC, FixWin may trigger a Microsoft Defender SmartScreen warning, but it’s safe to use so click ‘More info’ then ‘Run anyway’. 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 www.snipca.com/47106 What you need: Windows 10 or 11 FixWin 11.1 2 1 3 4

Choose the right version of software SHOULD I PAY FOR…? PrivaZer is the one of the best free tools for safely deleting traces of your PC and web activities. But it also has a paid-for Pro version – alternatively known as the Donors edition – which offers several extra features. Unusually, PrivaZer Pro lets you decide how much you want to pay for it – the default amount is £49, but you can go as low as £10. This buys you a licence key that you enter in the standard program to unlock its full range of tools. The main advantage to upgrading is automatic cleanup of your data, to ensure nothing that could compromise your privacy is ever left behind. Select ‘Automatic cleanups’ in PrivaZer’s left-hand menu and tick the ‘Internet activity’ box (see screenshot). You can decide whether to wipe data automatically when you close your browser or be notified first. Tick ‘At PC startup’ and ‘Always run a cleanup’ to begin each Windows session with a clean slate. It’s not difficult to scan for and delete this data manually, but these options provide a safety net in case you forget. The other Pro-only options are less enticing. A year’s worth of automatic updates is hardly an incentive when you can easily update PrivaZer yourself – indeed, it usually informs you when a new version is available. Priority support will only come in useful if something goes seriously wrong with the program, and the ability to run PrivaZer from the command line is a feature only tech boffins will appreciate. OUR VERDICT: Don’t pay for it The free version of PrivaZer has all the tools you need to erase your private data, so the only real reason to upgrade to Pro is to support the program’s development. Automatic cleanup is handy but it’s not essential, and probably not worth a tenner. PrivaZer Pro www.snipca.com/47104 Price: From £10 Free trial: N/A What you need: Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 19 BACKUP TOOL SOFTWARE UPDATER SyncBackFree 11 www.snipca.com/47103 What you need: Windows 7, 8.1, 10 or 11 This free backup tool has been updated with a host of new options and improvements that make it easier to back up and restore files. Particularly useful is the ability to test the copying process before you perform it properly, to ensure you’ve selected the right files and folders. Simply right-click a backup in your profile and choose Simulated Run (see screenshot) – or Simulated Restore to copy in the other direction. In the Differences window that opens, you can filter files by name or extension to find specific items faster, and decide which action to take if two files are detected to be identical, such as deleting the copy or ignoring it. SyncBackFree’s backup log now includes a bar chart showing how many files were copied in the previous seven runs, and you can set up a keyboard shortcut to instantly launch the program from the system tray. UpdateHub 2.1 www.snipca.com/47101 What you need: Windows 10 or 11 UpdateHub makes it easier to keep all your software updated, to protect your PC from security threats and performance bugs. Rather than update tools manually or wait for automatic updates, click the ‘Check for update’ button (see screenshot) to see which installed programs and Microsoft Store apps have updates available. Click a tool’s Update button to download and install the latest version. The ‘Recently Updated’ tab lets you keep track of which software has been updated and roll back to the previous version if you have any problems. UpdateHub itself is updated automatically and this release makes several improvements. These include speeding up the search facility, fixing the Ignore button (which dismisses updates) and showing the download size for update files – go into Settings to enable this option. You can also switch to dark mode with a single click.

Best FreeSoftware We advise you which software and apps to use What should I download? 20 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 Email us your questions at [email protected] Q I’m finally planning to do something I should have done last year, which is remove all traces of Kaspersky from my computer and switch to Microsoft Defender. But I know that antivirus programs are very stubborn and have a habit of leaving files scattered on your system. Is there a specialist tool for deleting it? Roy Heighway A Yes, you should use Kavremover, which is Kaspersky’s own tool for uninstalling the program. Visit www.snipca.com/46911, then scroll down and click the green Download button at the bottom. Once you’ve clicked the kavremvr.exe file to launch the tool, it will search for the specific Kaspersky program you have installed. Select this from the dropdown menu ( 1 in our screenshot), type the CAPTCHA code to prove you’re human 2 , then click Remove 3 . Once that’s done, double-check that Windows Security is switched on. Press the Windows key, type security, then click Windows Security. Click the ‘Turn on’ button beneath ‘Threat & virus protection’ and, when Windows asks if you want to make changes to your device, click Yes. Now click the ‘Threat & virus protection’ heading, followed by the ‘Manage settings’ link beneath the ‘Virus & threat protection settings’ header on the following page. Make sure each of the sliders on the subsequent page have been switched on, so they’re blue. Note that some may be below the bottom of the window, so be sure to scroll down to find them all. Can I remove all traces of Kaspersky? How do I use codecs? Q I’ve just been sent loads of videos that I need to convert so they’re no longer corrupted. I’ve been given a list of codecs to use, but I don’t know what they are, nor which program I should use. Can you help? Duncan Parker A Codecs are programs that shrink large video files while ensuring minimal loss of quality. Try using VLC Media Player (www.videolan.org) to convert them. Open its Media menu, then select Convert/Save and click the Add button. Choose the video file, then click the Convert/Save button and choose a codec from the Profile dropdown menu (see screenshot). Select a folder to save the file to, then click Start to convert and hopefully repair the video. Q I enjoy browsing photos of gardens and wildlife online, but I forget to bookmark sites I like. Is there a program that can jog my memory, so to speak? Harold Lynch A We don’t know any software that can remind you to bookmark sites as you browse, but NirSoft has a tool called ImageCacheViewer (www.snipca.com/46883) that scans your browser’s cache to keep a record of images you look at online. To grab a picture from the list, right-click it and choose Copy Image (see screenshot), or press Ctrl+M to copy it to your clipboard and paste it into an image viewer. How do I revisit images I look at online? 2 3 1

Named& Shamed SOFTWARE WARNING! 21 WHAT ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT? KEUMARS’ VILLAIN OF THE FORTNIGHT Facebook scammer Aaron Carter Keumars was tricked by this deviously realistic advert Most of us realise adverts are a fact of life and that they help to keep services free – or cheap enough to afford. I’ll tolerate them and click the small ‘x’ where possible to close them. But I was caught out recently by an ad that was so manipulative it could have been the work of Hannibal Lecter. I had just installed the YouTube app on my partner’s iPhone 11 (with her permission, naturally) when I saw a message telling me that the storage was full (see screenshot 1 ). It looked like the genuine message Apple shows when you’re out of storage, so I tapped ‘OK’. However, instead of seeing files I could delete, I was taken to the Apple App Store and a listing for MyCleaner (www.snipca. com/46851 2 ). I’d been duped! That ‘storage full’ message was just a scarily realistic advert designed to make you tap without thinking. The words below give it away: ‘Delete unneeded photos&videos that take up your iPhone storage’. I doubt Apple would ever use a word as clumsy as ‘unneeded’, and they certainly wouldn’t squeeze ‘photos’ and ‘videos’ so tightly either side of an ampersand. You shouldn’t trust any app that uses such misleading adverts, though even if you had come across MyCleaner simply by browsing the App Store there are enough warning signs to steer well clear. Its listing says that it tracks you across other apps and the sites you visit, and can also see what you buy online. It’s made by a company called Savva Inc, which also lists MyWatch and ‘Remote TV & Universal Control’ on the store. Both have reviews from users complaining about false advertising. Avoid them like a dinner invitation from Dr Lecter, particularly if liver and fava beans are on the menu. MyCleaner’s ‘iPhone Storage Full’ fake advert Keumars Afifi-Sabet puts the boot into tech villains, jargon-spouting companies and misbehaving software WHAT THEY SAY Amber Steel, LastPass www.snipca.com/46834 “True pervasive password[less] protection reduces reliance on passwords… By adopting passwordless login methods and leveraging advanced password management solutions like LastPass, businesses can enhance their security posture, protect against data breaches, and elevate the employee authentication experience.” WHAT THEY MEAN Perhaps we should adopt a jargon[less] posture instead. We warned you about people like Aaron Carter in Issue 663’s Protect Your Tech (page 11). This delightful 22-year-old was part of a gang that used a fake NatWest banking app to ‘buy’ items being sold on Facebook Marketplace. They arranged to meet sellers in Keighley, West Yorkshire, persuaded them to hand over their items, then showed them a phone apparently transferring the money. When one victim became suspicious, he was threatened with a knife. The gang managed to get their hands on £2,600 worth of property, including designer jackets, jewellery and a Gucci hat. Carter won’t be wearing them around town though because he’s now serving 27 months behind bars. Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 Tapping the ad took Keumars to the MyCleaner app, which he has no intention of installing 1 2

New products tested by our experts 22 Reviews New products tested by our experts 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 VERDICT A laptop-tablet with a stunning screen and a very high build quality ★★★★★ ALTERNATIVE Acer Swift 3 14in £1,049 A more affordable model with similar performance – watch for price falls that make it a real bargain SPECIFICATIONS 14-core Intel Core i7-1360P processor • 16GB RAM • Intel Iris Xe graphics • 14in 2880x1800-pixel resolution OLED screen • 512GB SSD • Wi-Fi 6E • 3x USB-C ports • 1x USB 3.0 port • 1x 3.5mm audio jack • Windows 11 Home • 15.2x318x230mm (HxWxD) • 1.4kg • One-year warranty www.snipca.com/46914 This device looks stunning. It’s slim, attractive, and available in a subtle Oatmeal shade (pictured) or a more subdued grey. It has a high-quality OLED screen that easily matches the quality of the overall design, and can be flipped all the way back to convert into tablet mode. Indeed, in terms of its appearance it makes our current favourite laptop, the Acer Swift 3 14in (£1,049 from www.snipca.com/44367 – see page 30), look positively humdrum. However, despite Lenovo fitting the Yoga 9i with an Intel Core i7-1360P processor, which is a newer-generation chip than the Swift’s i7-1260P, performance levels were pretty similar. The newer processor ran only five per cent faster in our benchmark tests that push the processor to its limits. Interestingly, when it came to gaming, the Yoga 9i actually fell behind the Swift. Again, the difference was small at just over four per cent, and poses the question why should anyone spend almost £150 more on this laptop than Acer’s. One reason is its 14in OLED screen, which is one of the best we’ve seen in a laptop. It’s glossy and has a resolution of 2880x1880 pixels and a 90Hz refresh rate. It’s a wonderful screen for watching watch films and TV and supports Dolby Vision, so what you’re seeing is as close as possible to how the A stunning device with a sleek design and one of the best screens we’ve ever seen filmmaker intended. It can reproduce 200 per cent of the sRGB colour standard and 142 per cent of DCI-P3. It lacks a little in brightness, only reaching 350cd/m2 in our tests. However, the high contrast of the OLED technology keeps everything crystal clear, even on brighter days. The overall design is extremely high quality. The keyboard is lit from below and offers plenty of space, spanning the width of the laptop. It’s comfortable and satisfying to type on, making it ideal if you tend to work long hours at a time. The trackpad is also decent – large, responsive, accurate and pleasant to the touch. To quickly sign into Windows there’s a fingerprint scanner or facial recognition via the webcam. Both methods are fast and responsive, and much simpler than typing a password. The built-in webcam records at resolutions up to 1080p, and proved to be surprisingly good quality on our test calls. We were also happy to see that the laptop come with a stylus, which you can use to write directly on to the touchscreen to make handwritten notes, sign documents or sketch pictures. One problem we often encounter in laptops with OLED screens is that the battery drains too quickly. Here, however, we managed over 10 hours of general use from one charge, compared with only eight hours with the non-OLED Swift. Both laptops should do a day’s work, but the Yoga 9i’s battery will keep going afterwards. There’s a lot to be said for this laptop, then. If you can afford to spend the extra, then it’s probably worth it. The screen is a delight, the design is more flexible than the Swift and the overall build quality is superb. That said, its performance is only a tad better, so if you don’t want to pay for its little luxuries, then the Acer Swift is the laptop to choose. Keep in mind, too, that the price of the Swift is fluctuating significantly at the moment, and has dropped as low as £899 in recent weeks. Keep your eye on its price and you could grab yourself a bargain. LAPTOP-TABLET | £1,293 from Lenovo www.snipca.com/46914 Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 8 Screen star

23 HOW WE TEST Computeractive is owned by Future PLC, which employs a team of specialist technical reviewers. 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 phone and tablet in exactly the same way. This makes our reviews authoritative, rigorous and accurate. Future PLC also owns the magazines Maximum PC, PC Pro and T3, and the websites Laptop Mag (www.laptopmag. com), TechRadar (www.techradar.com) and Windows Central (www.windows central.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 product that gets five stars our Buy It! stamp of approval. It means we were extremely impressed by the product, and we think you will be too. Every product that gets a four-star review is given the Recommended award. We highly recommend these products, although they just fail to meet the high standard of our Buy It! winners. PRICES Our reviews contain a link to the best price we found online at the time of press. Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 SPECIFICATIONS 14-core Intel Core i7-13500H processor • 16GB RAM • Intel Iris Xe graphics • 512GB SSD • 2x 2.5Gigabit Ethernet ports • 3x USB-C ports • 4x USB 3.0 ports • 2x HDMI ports • Windows 11 Pro • 56x128x126mm (HxWxD) • One-year warranty www.snipca. com/46890 The last Minisforum mini PC we reviewed was the tall MC560 (£283 from www.snipca.com/46260) in Issue 660. This NPB7 model has a more traditionally squat design – wider and deeper. Instead of an AMD Ryzen 5 processor, it has a current-generation Intel i7-13700H chip, alongside 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. This is closer in specification and price to our current favourite mini PC, the Beelink SER6 Pro 7753HS (£594 from www.snipca.com/46416, reviewed in Issue 661), which has an AMD processor – the Ryzen 7 7735HS. The SER6 Pro also has twice the memory of the NPB7 – a compromise that allows the latter to squeeze in its more expensive processor. This made for interesting results in the benchmark tests we use to compare respective speeds. In terms of raw processing power, the i7 in the NPB7 is significantly more powerful than the SER6 Pro’s Ryzen 7, running almost 40 per cent faster when pushing the processor to its limits. This is largely thanks to its greater number of cores (14 as opposed to eight). MINI PC | £609 from Minisforum www.snipca.com/46890 Minisforum NPB7 Core blimey! VERDICT A powerful mini PC with a great selection of ports and easy access to internal components, but cheaper alternatives outperform it in Windows ★★★★★ ALTERNATIVE Beelink SER6 Pro 7753HS £594 A slightly more affordable mini PC that actually runs Windows faster Much quicker than our favourite mini PC when carrying out resource-heavy jobs However, you may only notice this if you carry out resource-intensive work. For more everyday tasks, such as web browsing and office activities, the test results told a different story. In fact, perhaps because of its extra memory, the SER6 Pro was faster when simply running Windows. We wouldn’t recommend either PC if you’re serious about gaming, but our tests showed the NPB7 was also better here – anything from between 10 to 30 per cent faster. Where this PC stands out is in its wide selection of ports. In total it has three USB-C, four USB 3.0 ports, two HDMI (which makes it ideal for running two screens at once) and two 2.5GB Ethernet ports. The latter is arguably overkill, but overall it probably has more connection options than most laptops and desktop PCs. It’s also very easy to access, if you happen to be the tinkering type. It comes with a host of useful accessories, including a VESA mounting plate and screws (so you can attach it to the back of your monitor), an HDMI cable and a selection of internal cables for installing component upgrades, such as an additional hard drive. The case lid lifts off by releasing catches, without the need for a screwdriver, and from here you can access the RAM and storage.

24 Reviews 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 SPECIFICATIONS Eight-core MediaTek K1300T processor • 8GB RAM • 256GB storage • 11.2in 2560x1536-pixel resolution OLED touchscreen • 13-megapixel rear camera • 8-megapixel front camera • Wi-Fi 6 • Bluetooth 5.1 • 1x USB-C port • 264x167x6.8mm (HxWxD) • 480g • One-year warranty www.snipca.com/46882 Given that most interaction with a tablet is via its screen, it could be argued that it’s the most important element of the device. That certainly seems to have been the reasoning behind the superb screen of this Lenovo Tab P11 Pro model. Its 11.2in screen with a 2560x1536-pixel resolution uses OLED technology, which means its contrast is superb – providing very deep, dark blacks and bright whites. We measured the accuracy of the screen using a colorimeter and it reproduced 129.6 per cent of the DCI-P3 colour palette on its Bright setting. This is vastly superior to similarly priced non-OLED rivals such as the latest basic iPad (72 per cent) and the OnePlus Pad (79 per cent). The brightness level was also fairly impressive, managing an average of 416cd/m2 on the default settings, but this is lower than the iPad (504cd/m2) and The best screen we’ve seen on a tablet so far, but its battery life and performance are a huge letdown VERDICT A brilliant screen that outshines those on more expensive tablets, but performance has been sacrificed and its ageing version of Android is disappointing ★★★★★ ALTERNATIVE Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 £599 More expensive but a much better all-round Android experience devices to come with Android 13. That leaves us with a device that at first glance looked very promising but ends up leaving a lot to be desired. Of course, if all you’re likely to do is watch TV and films, you may not be too fussed – the Tab P11 Pro has the best screen we’ve seen to date for video streaming. But, with its mediocre performance and dated version of Android, it lacks the overall performance we’d expect from a tablet of this price. OnePlus Pad (465cd/m2). That said, the Tab P11 Pro makes films and TV series look as good as we’ve seen on any tablet. It’s powered by the MediaTek K1300T processor and has 8GB of memory and 256GB of storage. The two accessories you’ll want – the touchscreen stylus and attachable keyboard – cost around £50 and £109 respectively. So, if the screen is so good, why have we awarded only three stars? It comes down to three key failings. First, it’s just too slow. In our benchmark tests it fell behind rivals in this price range. It ran around 44 per cent slower than the basic iPad, and around 17 per cent slower than the OnePlus Pad. There were similar results in gaming tests, where the Tab P11 Pro averaged around 26 frames per second (fps), well behind the iPad’s 47fps. Second, its battery life is also disappointing, especially at its default settings, where it lags behind the iPad by a couple of hours. However, the biggest letdown is that it comes installed with Android 12 rather than 13, and Lenovo hasn’t released an update to bring it up to speed. At this stage it seems unlikely that it ever will. While Android 12 is fine, we’d really expect all new TABLET | From £549 from Lenovo www.snipca.com/46989 Lenovo Tab P11 Pro (2nd Gen) Contrasting results

25 CHOOSE THE RIGHT SPECS Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 Motherboard size SPECIFICATIONS Eight-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 processor • 8GB or 12GB RAM • 256GB or 512GB storage • 6.7in 120Hz 2664x1200-pixel AMOLED screen • 200-megapixel rear camera • 12-megapixel wide camera • 50-megapixel front camera • MagicOS (based on Android 13) • 162x74x7.8mm • 183g • One-year warranty www.snipca.com/47060 What is it? The motherboard is the main circuit board in a computer and houses the processor, memory and all the other major components. Desktop PC motherboards come in a range of sizes, which are often determined by the size of the case used by the PC manufacturer. How does it work? Motherboards are crammed with ports and connectors that the components plug into. The larger boards are able to accommodate more expansion ports, RAM modules and storage devices. What are the specs? Most desktop PCs will come with a Standard-ATX motherboard (pictured below), which measures 305x244mm. This is the largest size available and has slots for four or more expansion cards and four memory modules. Smaller desktop PCs may have the Micro-ATX board (244x244mm or 244x205mm), which has fewer expansion options – often only enough room for a single graphics card, and a couple of RAM modules. Mini PCs that follow Intel’s NUC specification use motherboards measuring just 101x101mm. They’re so small that there’s rarely much room for adding anything more than extra RAM and storage. Can I change it later? You can change a PC’s motherboard, but because you’d need to remove – and possibly replace – a good proportion of your PC’s most important components (including the processor and memory), it often makes more sense to buy a new computer instead. SMARTPHONE | From £449 from Honor www.snipca.com/47060 Honor 90 Snap judgment Instead, the Honor 90 has a Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 processor, albeit an overclocked ‘accelerated edition’. While we’d have preferred to see the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor, this didn’t turn out to be a deal-breaker for us as we managed to keep several Chrome tabs open at once with no problems. It also ran our test games pretty well. As usual, Honor has opted for its own MagicOS system (based on Android 13), but there’s little to distinguish it from Google’s operating system and it provides access to the Play Store and all the most popular apps. The impressive 5,000mAh battery can be fast-charged using 66W, which takes it from 0 to 20-per-cent charge in five minutes. In our video-playback tests, it lasted for 13 hours 30 minutes from full, which is more than enough to get you through a working day. VERDICT A decent phone for the price, with a larger screen than the Pixel 7a, but it lacks the processing power to provide a smooth user experience ★★★★★ ALTERNATIVE Google Pixel 7a £449 Google’s basic phone has a smaller screen but is slicker and more responsive With the same price, the Honor 90 is gunning straight for our current favourite Android smartphone, the Google Pixel 7a (£449 from www.snipca.com/46332, reviewed in Issue 660). The Honor 90 is a sleek-looking device, weighing just 183g and sliding easily into your pocket at just 7.8mm thick. This is 11g lighter and 1.2mm thinner than the Pixel 7a. In your hand, however, you can feel that the rear is made from plastic. The touchscreen looks perfectly fine, but it doesn’t feel particularly responsive. As for the image, the large 6.7in AMOLED panel offers a crisp 2664x1200-pixel resolution, with a 120Hz dynamic refresh rate (beating the Pixel 7a’s 90Hz). At 1,600cd/m2 its impressive brightness levels means it’s easy to see in all lighting conditions, and it performed well in our colour tests. Its headline feature is a 200-megapixel main camera. While that’s an impressive figure, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s superior to cameras with fewer. For example, it only has an x2 optical zoom, though the digital zoom can also help if you need to frame your pictures better. The camera on the Pixel 7a, on the other hand, uses features built into Google’s Tensa 2 processor to generate superior images – an option that the Honor 90 lacks. A sleek, lightweight device with a large, crisp screen and durable battery

26 Reviews VERDICT A new shape for Echo devices and a wide selection of new colours, but it’s not much cheaper than an Echo Dot while lacking some of its most interesting features ★★★★★ ALTERNATIVE Google Nest Mini £49 The Nest Mini is a similar device that uses Google Assistant instead of Amazon Alexa The Echo Pop replaces the Echo Dot as the most affordable device in Amazon’s range of smart speakers. It’s a decent alternative to the company’s more expensive speakers, but the lower price means some compromise in sound quality, which is fine at lower volumes but starts to distort if you turn it up. The new design looks like an Echo Dot that’s had the front sliced off at an angle. Above the front-facing speaker is a curved LED bar that lights up when Alexa is active. Behind that are three microphones for picking up voice commands and three buttons: volume up and down and a mute button. The power socket is at the rear of the unit and connects to the included power supply. As with the most recent Echo Dots, there’s no audio jack, but the device is Bluetooth enabled so can play music from a phone or tablet. As a smart-home device, the Pop offers a few pros and cons. On the plus side, it’s a responsive little smart speaker, picking up voice commands accurately and quickly. And it’s easy to set up, even for those who aren’t technically inclined. On the downside, it’s missing some of the best features found in recent Echo devices – namely temperature sensors and motion detection. This omission won’t be a deal breaker if you’re just looking for the basic Alexa experience. However, if you’re setting up more advanced automations that require temperature or motion triggers, you’ll be better off spending slightly more on the Echo Dot. Otherwise, the Echo Pop can do anything its stablemates can do, with Alexa built in for answering your questions. It will assist you around the home with reminders, shopping lists and timers, and integrates effortlessly with other smart devices. At £45 it’s probably a little overpriced – it’s only £10 cheaper than the Echo Dot SPECIFICATIONS 49.5mm front-firing speaker • Compatible with 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks • Wi-Fi 5 • 91x99x83mm (HxWxD) • 196g • One-year warranty www.snipca. com/46944 (Generation 5), which offers marginally superior sound and has all the latest features. Plus, the Dot is regularly discounted to less than the price of the Pop. SMART SPEAKER ❘£45 from Amazon www.snipca.com/46944 Amazon Echo Pop Slice and easy Can you suggest an MP3 player that powers itself off? Q I recently lost a Philips GoGear SA3115 MP3 player. One great feature of this player was that it would power off at the end off a CD. I liked this because I used the device to go to sleep. Could you recommend a sub-£40 replacement that also has this feature? Capacity is of Do you need advice on what you should buy? Email us at [email protected] no concern – 8GB would be plenty. William Hickman A Sadly, Philips no longer makes MP3 players, so you’ll have to look elsewhere. For your budget, we like the look of the Mechen M3 (£33 from Amazon at www. snipca.com/46948, pictured). It has 32GB of storage space, and with nearly 2,500 reviews it’s averaging four stars. We’ve checked the manual (which you can have a look at yourself at www.snipca.com/46951) and it confirms that the M3 has a ‘single cycle’ playback mode, which should ensure that it switches off at the end of an album. WHAT SHOULD I BUY? We solve your buying dilemmas 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664

28 Reviews 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 SPECIFICATIONS Compatible with some Blink, Wyze and Ring cameras • Holds 750g of food • Additional protection for outdoor cameras • Optional solar charger available • Bluetooth 5.2 • 229x178x203mm • 1kg • One-year warranty www.snipca.com/46929 BIRD FEEDER | £66 from Amazon www.snipca.com/46929 Wasserstein Bird Feeder Camera Case Carrion filming don’t already have one of those cameras. That still works out more affordable than rivals that come with cameras, such as the £199 Netvue Birdfy Lite (www.snipca. com/46931). It’s easy to put together. We installed a camera into the case in less than a minute. We mounted it to a tree using the included strap, which was a simple process. A wall mounting bracket is also included. Picture quality will depend on which camera you use. We tried it with Ring and Blink models, and both worked reasonably well, relying on their own apps to detect motion and send video footage. Security cameras are designed to capture people at a greater distance, and we found the birds were a little too close This is an intriguing proposition for bird enthusiasts – a seed feeding tray that can house an outdoor security camera (not included) to provide you with a close-up view of your garden’s winged visitors. The case can take a variety of squareshaped cameras, with the manufacturer claiming full compatibility with the Blink Outdoor Camera, Wyze Cam V3, Wyze Cam V3 Pro, Wyze Cam Outdoor and Ring Stick Up Cam. You’ll need to factor in spending another £80 or so if you SPECIFICATIONS 1536p video resolution • 2.4GHz Wi-Fi connectivity • Removable rechargeable battery • Amazon Alexacompatible • 128x62x28mm (HxWxD) • One-year warranty www.snipca.com/46930 times better than previous models, so you won’t have to recharge it as often. However, these upgrades mean that some features available on previous products have been dropped. This includes pre-roll – which saves video for four seconds before motion is detected – and compatibility with 5GHz Wi-Fi networks. The Doorbell Plus isn’t cheap, with Google currently offering its rival wireless doorbell for £130 (www.snipca.com/39474, reviewed in Issue 616). However, Ring is the best option if you have filled your home with Amazon Echo smart speakers, rather than Google’s. You’ll need a Ring subscription (£35 a year), if you want to get the most from the device, which is worth factoring in when you’re considering how much you want to spend overall. If you don’t like SMART DOORBELL | £160 from Amazon www.snipca.com/46930 Ring Battery Video Doorbell Plus In full view Breaking with Ring’s tradition of numbering its doorbells, the Battery Video Doorbell Plus is the first addition to the range since the Video Doorbell 4 was released in 2021. On the outside, this latest model looks much the same as its predecessors, but it has been significantly upgraded inside. For starters, it’s the first of Ring’s wireless doorbells to offer a full-width, head-to-toe view of visitors, with a 150-degree field of view vertically and horizontally. The camera has a resolution of 2048x1536 pixels and offers colour night vision for added clarity in the dark. Ring also claims the battery life is three the idea of a subscription, the Imou DB60 (£110 from www.snipca.com/46127, reviewed in Issue 659) is a decent alternative with no additional fees. VERDICT The best doorbell for those with Amazon Echo devices to connect it to, but it’s pricey and requires an additional subscription ★★★★★ ALTERNATIVE Imou DB60 £110 A cheaper alternative that doesn’t need a subscription to access its best features to be perfectly focused. The Blink camera was marginally better at this, but this is more about capturing interesting footage and identifying birds than high-quality wildlife photography. VERDICT A cost-effective way of capturing footage of garden birds, especially if you can use a camera you already own ★★★★★ ALTERNATIVE Netvue Birdfy Lite £199 An all-inone system that comes with both the feeder and a camera

Reviews 29 NEXT ISSUE These and much more... Subscribe to Computeractive at www.getcomputeractive.co.uk DO I REALLY NEED... Asus RT-AXE7800 Wi-Fi 6E router with speeds up to 7.8Gbps Honor MagicBook X 16 2023 A 16in laptop that’s fast, well-built and affordable On Sale Weds 30 Aug SPECIFICATIONS 4K 3840x2160-pixel resolution • 65in QLED screen • Supports HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, Dolby Vision • 4x HDMI ports • 2x USB ports • 1x Ethernet port • 853x1451x87mm (HxWxD) • 21.2kg • One-year warranty www.snipca.com/47091 VERDICT A thoughtfully designed TV that delivers decent pictures and all the smart TV apps you could want at an affordable price ★★★★★ ALTERNATIVE RCA RR32HD1 £132 A smaller, more affordable TV with Roku’s smart TV technology built in A 98in TV screen? What is it? Chinese TV manufacturer TCL has made a giant leap in the size of its screens, with a new 98in 4K TV, called the P745 (pictured), due out in the UK by early September. What does it do? This massive TV is significantly larger than most 4K TVs, but is likely to cost around £2,400. That sounds a lot, but most similar-sized models cost well over £3,000. It runs version 11 of the Google TV operating system. What’s the catch? £2,400 is still a lot of money, even if it’s cheaper than rivals. You also need the space to accommodate it – expect the width to be well over two metres. It’s unlikely to fit on your existing TV stand so you will definitely need to find an expansive wall to hang it on. So can I do without it? Yes, unless your budget stretches to it and you live in a house with a huge living room that allows you to sit a long way from your TV. SMART TV | From £330 from Amazon www.snipca.com/47091 Amazon Fire TV Omni QLED Voice box Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 microphones on the TV itself. These microphones can be turned off if you prefer. Unsurprisingly, it has a more basic design than pricier models from Samsung or LG. However, its silver plastic and metal construction looks sleek, particularly when viewed from across a room, and the colour-matching feet keep the design simple and clean. Picture performance also isn’t in the same league as top-range sets, but the colour quality and balance is impressive for the price. Tones are vibrant and punchy when they need to be in sunlit scenarios, but subtle and pale in more atmospheric scenes. It doesn’t have the brightness levels that will do complete justice to the latest more spectacular films, but it still works well within its limitations. However, while detail levels are decent, they could be better, even at this price. That deficit is exaggerated in darker images, where picture information is frequently lost in the shadows. Amazon’s Fire TV devices usually convert non-smart TVs into smart models, or upgrade older smart TVs with improved features. Amazon has previously produced sets with built-in Fire TV software in collaboration with big-name TV manufacturers, but this is the first TV to be branded as an Amazon product. There are four models in the range – a 43in model for £330, 50in (£430), 55in (£480) and 65in (£680). We reviewed the 65in set, which is already being heavily discounted, having launched at £1,000. Having the Fire TV software built in means you get an interface that’s easy to use and a home screen that’s packed with apps. These include the usual streaming suspects, such as Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV and Amazon Prime Video, along with slightly less common fare such as Now and BT Sport. There are catchup apps for all UK terrestrial channels and a proper Freeview tuner for those who prefer to watch their TV the old-fashioned way. Thanks to the TV’s support for all current HDR standards (HLG, HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision), all apps deliver high-quality content. As you might expect, Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant is also included, and you can navigate the entire operating system using voice commands via the included Alexa Voice Remote or the far-field

Buy It Our pick of products that have won the Buy It award 30 Find out which other products we liked. Buy our new 2022 Back Issue CD: £17 from www.snipca.com/44660 Google Pixel 7a £449 from www.snipca.com/46332 Tested Issue 660 ANDROID PHONE Apple iPhone 13 £749 from www.snipca.com/43498 TestedIssue 627 APPLE iPHONE Apple iPad 10.2in £369 from www.snipca.com/36178 Tested Issue 623 APPLE iPAD The 9th-generation of the basic iPad, released in 2021, is now the best-value Apple tablet. The 2022 version looks better and has a faster processor, but it’s not worth paying £130 extra for. ALTERNATIVE iPad Mini With an even better, but smaller, screen than the 10.2in iPad, the Mini also supports the Pencil and has 64GB of storage. £569 from www.snipca.com/33050 A cheaper version of Google’s flagship phone, this uses AI to add clarity to photos, and lasts an impressive 10 hours. Has a fast processor and 8GB RAM to supercharge performance. ALTERNATIVEXiaomi Poco F3 This remains an excellent phone, with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage. The only phone under £450 that’s faster is the iPhone SE. £259 from www.snipca.com/44553 DESKTOP PC Palicomp AMD Cobra £400 from www.snipca.com/43515 Tested Issue 643 This fast PC is a mouth-watering bargain, with 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and a six-core processor – though it lacks USB-C ports and built-in Wi-Fi. ALTERNATIVE Wired2Fire Ultima WS Home Office Workstation Blisteringly fast PC, powered by an overclocked eight-core processor and 1TB SSD. £604 from www.snipca.com/41500 Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 £749 from www.snipca.com/42211 Tested Issue 634 ANDROID TABLET Samsung has replaced its own Tab S7+ to become our favourite Android tablet. It’s fast with a stunning 11in screen, and has a longer battery life than the iPad. This model gives you 128GB – you’ll need to pay around £649 for 256GB. ALTERNATIVE Lenovo Tab P11 Pro It’s slower than the Tab S8 and the screen is duller, but has a detachable keyboard so you can use it as a laptop. £372 from www.snipca.com/45244 NEW! Now £30 cheaper than its 2021 launch price, the iPhone 13 has a superb screen, long battery life and an excellent camera - particularly for taking quick snaps without blurring. You could pay £100 more for the newer iPhone 14, but we’re not convinced it’s worth the extra money. ALTERNATIVE iPhone SE With a single camera and smaller screen but the same powerful A13 processor and 64GB storage as the iPhone 11, it’s great value. £449 from www.snipca.com/34773 LAPTOP Acer Swift 3 14in £849 from www.snipca.com/44367 Tested Issue 648 Comes with a powerful 12th-generation Intel processor and 1TB SSD to make Windows tasks feel incredibly fast. Also has a decent 2560x1440-pixel IPS screen and comes with plenty of ports, including two Thunderbolt 4-compatible USB-C. ALTERNATIVE Lenovo Yoga 6 Gen 7 Has a slower processor, and half the storage and RAM, but remains a good laptop for the price. £549 from www.snipca.com/44950 PRICE DROP 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664

Buy It Kobo Libra 2 £169 from www.snipca.com/40645 Tested Issue 624 Iiyama ProLite XU2492HSU-B1 £109 from www.snipca.com/39701 Tested Issue 618 Logitech C925e Business Webcam £65 from www.snipca.com/41104 Tested Issue 608 EBOOK READER PC MONITOR WEBCAM Norton 360 Premium £19.99 from www.snipca.com/33247 Tested Issue 629 SECURITY SOFTWARE Norton has always performed strongly in our antivirus tests, regularly making the top three. Owned by US firm NortonLifeLock, it’s available at a discount on our Software Store. Click the link above for a 10-device, two-year licence. Other versions are available, including Norton 360 for Gamers. ALTERNATIVE Bitdefender Total Security Another top performer that we’re offering at a discount. £29.99 from www.snipca.com/41141 32 Our pick of products that have won the Buy It award Synology WRX560 £233 from www.snipca.com/44696 Tested Issue 650 PRINTER Epson EcoTank ET-1810 £150 from www.snipca.com/41232 Tested Issue 628 ROUTER An inkjet printer that comes with enough ink to print 4,500 mono and 7,500 colour pages, making it exceptionally cheap to run. It’s not the fastest printer, but quality is good, especially on photo paper – we’ve never seen better on an inkjet. ALTERNATIVEBrother DCP-J1140DW Compact multifunction model with rare features at this price, including double-sided printing. £145 from www.snipca.com/43670 With a blistering top speed of 791.5Mbps, this is up there with the fastest routers we’ve ever tested. Even two rooms away, it managed an exceptional 375Mbps. You can add more units to set up mesh Wi-Fi around your home. ALTERNATIVE Netgear Nighthawk RAX80 Our previous favourite remains extremely fast, delivering speeds of 520Mbps. Has four spare Ethernet ports and two for USB. £185 from www.snipca.com/45102 A fantastic 7in screen, 32GB of storage and Bluetooth connectivity make this a rival to Amazon’s Oasis ebook reader, yet it’s much cheaper. Battery life is superb – we managed 54 hours of use per charge. It supports OverDrive, so you can borrow ebooks from libraries. ALTERNATIVE Amazon Kindle This lowcost option is a good choice, especially now it has 16GB of storage. £85 from www.snipca.com/44221 This 23.8in screen is superb value, with a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels. Colour is good, covering 88 per cent of the sRGB colour range. Connect your computer via HDMI, DisplayPort or VGA, and there’s a USB hub to connect your mouse and keyboard. ALTERNATIVEAOC 27P2C This also has a 1920x1080 resolution but it’s 27 inches, so pixel density is lower. But you’ll only notice if you look really closely. £242 from www.snipca.com/41609 Despite the name, this webcam is also great for home users. Its standout feature is automatically adjusting itself to keep your picture looking sharp. It offers a 78-degree field of view, which is fine for everyday video chats with one person in front of the camera. ALTERNATIVE Anker PowerConf C300 Good image quality, crisp audio and lots of features. £70 from www.snipca. com/41105 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 PRICE DROP

Buy It 33 Corsair MP600 Pro LPX 500GB £52 from www.snipca.com/41547 Tested Issue 630 SOLID-STATE DRIVE In our tests, this M.2 SSD hit speeds of 7,364MB/s and 6,870MB/s when reading and writing data – astonishingly fast scores. It’s compatible with the new PCIe 4.0 standard, which is twice as fast as PCIe 3.0. The 1TB model costs £75; 2TB costs £155. ALTERNATIVE Crucial MX500 500GB As fast as an SSD can get in the traditional 2.5in SATA format, this is a great-value upgrade. £32 from www.snipca.com/37304 Google Nest Audio £90 from www.snipca.com/36475 Tested Issue 593 SMART SPEAKER Samsung Q60B £440 from www.snipca.com/45083 Tested Issue 652 SMART TV With our former favourite – the TCL 55RP620K out of stock – Samsung’s 43in set is our new pick. It has excellent colour reproduction in well-lit scenes, and the picture is wonderfully sharp – especially in 4K. ALTERNATIVE LG OLED42C2 LG’s 42in TV is three times the price, but unlike TCL’s model it has an OLED screen, boosting picture quality considerably. £1,200 from www.snipca. com/43718 COMPETITION Produces a rich, clear sound, and better understands your questions than Amazon’s Echo devices. You can use Google’s app to control audio from other units around your home (pair two of them for £130). The clever Ambient IQ tool increases the volume if it detects external noise, such as a hairdryer. ALTERNATIVE Amazon Echo (4th generation) The latest version of the Echo changes the shape from a cylinder to a ball, which improves sound quality – though the Nest’s is still superior. £80 from www.snipca.com/41111 Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 COMPETITION via your Amazon Echo and Google Assistant smart speakers. The app also gives you power-management options that let you prioritise battery life or video quality, or go for an optimised mixture of the two. It connects to dual-band Wi-Fi (2.4GHz and 5GHz), and automatically switches to the stronger network for the best possible connection. Battery life is 30-per-cent longer than previous models. To enter this competition, answer the question at www.snipca. com/46867 and submit your details. Win 1 of 2 Winner of our Recommended award in Issue 662 (page 26), the Arlo Pro 5 security camera records crystal-clear 2k video, delivered straight to your smartphone. Its powerful image sensor captures over 60 billion colours, even at night – that’s 100 times better than the human eye. Its wide-angle 160-degree field of view will leave no part of your home uncovered. It has a powerful siren that can scare away intruders, and a spotlight that illuminates faces from seven metres away. You can view the video on your phone using the Arlo Secure app, or The competition ends at midnight on Tuesday 29 August. Good luck! You can buy the Arlo Pro 5 for £210 from Amazon (www.snipca. com/46658). For info on other Arlo products, including video doorbells, routers and wall mounts, visit www. arlo.com and follow @ArloEU on Twitter. Unlock premium access and features with an Arlo Secure subscription, including unlimited Cloud Storage for a safer way to save your videos and Theft Protection Insurance – so if your camera is stolen we’ll replace it for free. Arlo Pro 5 outdoor security cameras

ON SALE NOW! Buy the Stick from us at www.snipca.com/44976 Computeractive 2022 Back Issue CD & USB Stick Buy the CD from us at www.snipca.com/44660 Both the CD and Stick contain all 26 issues from 2022 NEW!

14 pages of easy-to-follow workshops and expert tips Workshops & Tips HOW TO... 35 PLUS Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 What you need: Specialist photo printer or inkjet printer Time required: Depends on how much and where you print Print your photos as cheaply as possible We may live in a digital age, but photo-printing is far from dead. In fact, the market is thriving, with numerous companies such as Shutterfly, Moonpig and Photobox all eager to turn your digital images into glossy, colourful hard copies. Sending your pictures to a printing service is one option, but current inkjet printers can produce stunning results at home. So perhaps it’s not surprising that the inkjet market is predicted to grow by more than 40 per cent in the next five years. So if you still like to print and display your favourite photos, you’re far from alone. The question is, should you be looking to print them for yourself, or is it better to send your pictures away for printing? Here we’ll explain the most affordable options for both methods. 1 Make sure your photos look their best If you want high-quality prints, your original images need to look good. As a rule, it’s best to apply a light touch when editing shots for printing: adjustments that look fine on a screen often look unnatural on photo paper. Think about dimensions. Typically, modern phones and digital cameras capture enough megapixels that you can print your images at any size you’re likely to want. But if you’re working with small pictures – or want to make particularly large prints – you’ll want to ensure that your images don’t come out looking pixelated. The industry standard for top-quality prints is 300dpi (dots per inch), so if an For office printing you can generally use any paper you like, as long as it’s not too thin. But for photo printing you should stick with the printer manufacturer’s recommended photo paper because it will have been designed specifically to work with the manufacturer’s ink. 2 Print your own photos using an inkjet There are several portable photo printers on the market that output to snapshot-sized photo packs – see box on page 36. These produce prints that are similar to the ones you used to get from the chemist, albeit often smaller. Just be aware that these printers typically use their own paper, locking you into a image is 3,000 pixels across, it means you can print it at up to 10 inches with no loss in quality. Don’t think of 300dpi as a line that can't be crossed, however. You can blow up the image to, say, 15 inches across, for an effective dot density of 200dpi. A picture printed at this resolution may appear a little softer close up, but the difference won’t be noticeable from a typical viewing distance of a few feet away, so it’s fine if you want to hang it on a wall. Conversely, if you opt for smaller prints, the effective resolution will be higher, but in practice you almost certainly won’t notice any benefit once you go beyond 300dpi – the human eye just isn’t sharp enough to distinguish. Pull Out & Keep Issue 664 44 Phone & Tablet Tips 46 Make Windows Better 47 Make Office Better 48 In the Club: Upload photos to Google Forms 35 Print your photos as cheaply as possible 38 Share files between your PC and phone 40 Readers’ Tips 42 Browser Tips: Search Google from the side panel by Nik Rawlinson

36 BEST PORTABLE PHOTO PRINTERS Fujifilm’s Instax Mini Link 2 £100 from www. snipca.com/46973 This is a batterypowered pocket device designed for printing directly from a smartphone. It connects via Bluetooth, and produces creditcard sized 62x46mm photos. Packs cost around 75p per print when bought online (www.snipca.com/46976). 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 Our favourite printer, Epson’s EcoTank ET-1810, is an excellent choice for printing photos particular manufacturer for the life of the device. If that doesn’t appeal, there’s nothing stopping you from using a standard printer – perhaps one you already own. Laser printers aren’t suitable for photos because their solid toner doesn’t lend itself to fine colour blending, and it won’t print reliably on to glossy photo paper. Most inkjets, however, have the resolution, colour range and paperhandling capabilities you need. Just bear in mind that a standard A4 printer obviously won’t be able to produce poster-sized prints. Regular office printers are also rarely able to print all the way to the edge of the page, so you’ll need to trim your prints down if you don’t want a white border around the edges. Another option is to buy a desktop printer that’s designed to handle both regular documents and high-quality photos. Our current favourite, Epson’s EcoTank ET-1810 (pictured below), is an excellent choice. You can buy it for £150 from www.snipca.com/41232 – see page 32. Whichever inkjet you buy, keep an eye on the running costs: the ink can quickly outstrip the purchase price of the printer. How do you manage your printing requirements? Please let us know: [email protected] How I print I have two printers: an A4 HP device for documents and an A3 Epson for photos and cyanotype transparencies. That means I need two different kinds of ink. So, rather than risk one running out unexpectedly, I’ve signed up each to an ink subscription: HP Instant Ink and Epson ReadyPrint respectively. That way, the manufacturer can keep an eye on my levels and dispatch new cartridges when required. This helps with budgeting, as I’ve selected plans that should cover what I’m going to print each month. Nik Rawlinson And if you only use the printer rarely you may find that you waste a lot of ink by having to repeatedly unclog gummed-up nozzles. You can reduce running costs by choosing a device with an ink tank. Rather than using disposable or recyclable cartridges, these printers have integrated reservoirs that can be refilled when they run low. The refills have fewer single-use parts, so are cheaper to make and buy, and should be less harmful to the environment. HP’s HP 31 yellow ink bottle costs £10.49 (www.snipca.com/46983), and should last for around 8,000 pages. An HP 364 yellow ink cartridge, for comparison, runs for around 300 pages and costs £14.59 (www.snipca. com/46984). Canon offers a ‘Total Cost of Ownership’ (TCO) calculator (www.snipca.com/46878), which highlights the savings you can make long term. Using an ink tankbased Canon Maxify GX3050 to print 150 colour pages a month over five years, for example, will save you £598 compared with the cartridge-based Canon Pixma MG3650S. Per-page costs work out to 0.2p and 0.6p for mono and colour respectively; on the cartridge printer it’s 11.4p and 25.5p. 3 Choose dye or pigment ink To make prints last, you need to consider what sort of ink to use. With dye-based ink, the colour sinks into the upper layers of the paper, whereas with pigment-based inks the colour is solid and sits on top of the paper as it dries. This means pigment tends to dry faster, fades more slowly and can withstand damp and spills more effectively. Which one you use may depend on your choice of printer, but it doesn’t have to be an either/or decision. Some printer manufacturers use pigment ink to produce solid blacks, and combine it with dye-based inks for cyan, magenta HP Sprocket Plus £130 from www.snipca.com/46979 Produces photos measuring 86x58mm, with a sticky-back option for creating instant decorations. The per-print price works out to around 65p, based on a cost of £12.99 for a 20-print pack at www. snipca.com/46982. Kodak Mini 2 £88 from www.snipca.com/46977 Prints larger than the Instax Mini Link 2, measuring 86x53mm. You can buy two media cartridges that last for 60 sheets, for £23.99 (www.snipca.com/46981), which works out at a little under 40p per shot. Also available in white and black.

37 Print your photos as cheaply as possible Next issue: Make Thunderbird better using the best add-ons Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 Install the HP Print Service Plugin app to use Wi-Fi Direct on an Android device Use Epson’s Smart Panel app to scan and print through the internet and yellow. Where the printhead and tank are an integrated unit, you may even have the option of switching between them, as long as the driver caters for both. However, if the printhead and ink chamber are separate components, you’ll probably have to stick to a single ink type: running pigment ink through a printhead designed solely for dye-based paper and ink could cause blockages. 4 Print wirelessly from your phone or tablet Another consideration is ease of use. If you don’t want to edit and process images on a computer, look for a printer with support for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or Apple AirPrint, as this will let you print directly from your phone. A media card slot can also be handy for quick printing from a dedicated camera. Another option is Wi-Fi Direct, a feature found on many printers released in the past 10 years. This lets devices connect to the printer as if it were a wireless router, and then directly send images for printing. You can do this easily on an iPhone or iPad, but if you’re using Android you may need a plug-in, such as the HP Print Service Plugin app (www. snipca.com/46879, pictured above right). If you’re using a network-connected printer then you can normally print to it from any device that’s connected to the same network. And many manufacturers support internet printing, so you can send images to your home printer even when you’re out and about. Epson Smart Panel (www.snipca.com/46985, pictured above right) for Android and iOS, for instance, lets you perform a wide range of printing tasks from your phone or tablet, such as scan documents or photos and use a range of artistic templates. 5 Get photos printed on the high street Home printing is convenient, but check out the high street for more options. Photo-printing shops such as Snappy Snaps still provide self-serve photo-printing machines, with slots for all the most popular media card formats, plus USB and Wi-Fi support for phones and tablets. If you’re not in a hurry, online photoprinting services offer even more sizes and styles – and they’re normally much cheaper. Some even offer a certain number of free prints every month, charging only for postage and packing. Install the Snapfish app (www.snipca. com/46988), for example, and you’ll get 50 free prints a month for your first year, with postage from £1.49. Photobox (www.photobox.co.uk/app) similarly offers 50 free 6x4in prints a month through its app if you use the code 50FREE6X4 and pay the postage. Choosing which service to use might come down to the number and size of prints you’re looking for. See our table below left for your options. 6 Print traditional film photos The vast majority of images captured today are digital, but some enthusiasts still shoot on film – and there are others who may want to create new prints from old, treasured negatives. Boots, once one of the biggest names in high-street photo processing, still runs a film-printing service through its stores. The same-day service is long gone though: nowadays your film will be sent off to a central processing hub, and you’ll have to wait up to nine days to collect the prints. You can print up to 27 shots, costing £12.99 for 6x4in prints or £14.99 for 7x5in – see www.snipca.com/46945 for details. Timpsons is another high-street printing service, though its 21-day turnaround is slower (www.snipca.com/46946). Snappy Snaps, in addition to its print-it-yourself stations, still offers a one-hour filmprocessing service at selected stores (www.snipca.com/46947), as does Max Spielmann (www.snipca.com/46987). 6 x 4in 7 x 5in 8 x 10in Postage Asda Photo 1 to 99 – 11p 100 to 499 – 9p 1 to 99 – 18p 10 to 499 – 15p 95p £2 for up to 99 prints Bonusprint 18p 34p n/a £3.99 Boots Photo 1 to 99 – 17p 100 to 499 – 12p 1 to 19 – 22p 20 to 199 – 18p £1.35 £2.25 for up to 49 prints; collect in store for £1.50 Jessops 22p 32p £1.39 £2.99 or collect in store for free Photobox 1 to 59 – 19p 60 to 119 – 17p 31p £1.59 From £3.49 Snapfish 11p 21p £1.25 From £1.49 for one to 14 prints Tesco 1 to 25 – 55p 26 to 50 – 50p 1 to 25 – 60p 26 to 50 – 55p £4.50 From £4.99 or collect in store for free POPULAR PHOTO-PRINTING SERVICES

38 Workshop 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 STEP 2 You’ll also need to enable Bluetooth and Location Services on your phone. Swipe down from the top of the screen, then tap the cog to open Settings. Tap ‘Location’, and make sure the slider next to ‘Use location’ is on (so it’s to the right) 1 . Now swipe down from the top of the screen again and make sure the Bluetooth chip is illuminated to signify that Bluetooth is on. If not, tap it to enable it. STEP 3 By now, the Nearby Share installer will have thrown up a login prompt. Click ‘Sign in’ 1 if you’d like to have control over your sharing preferences. If you do, you’ll be able to specify who can share items with your computer. We’d recommend this as an additional security measure – especially if you’re going to use your computer in a public location like a coffee shop. Google will ask you to ‘Make sure that you downloaded this app from Google’. If you did, click ‘Sign in’ again, then close the login window. Share files between your phone/tablet and PC What you need: Nearby Share; Phone or tablet running Android 6.0 or later Time required: 30 minutes There are several ways to share files between your phone/tablet and PC, but few are as quick and easy as Google’s Nearby Share. Install it on your PC, and you can use Android’s built-in Nearby Share to send files to your computer without a cable. Neither will you need to use clumsy alternatives, like emails and attachments, or syncing via online storage. All transfers are encrypted, and it also works in reverse, so it’s just as easy to send files from your PC back to your phone. A recent update has moved it out of beta, and it can now estimate how long a file transfer will take, as well as preview images before sending. STEP 1 Download the Nearby Share program by clicking the ‘Get started’ button at www.snipca.com/46969. Nearby Share relies on broadband, Bluetooth and (optionally) a Google account. Assuming you’re connected to your home network, check that you have Bluetooth turned on. Click the Wi-Fi icon 1 on the Windows 11 taskbar and, if the Bluetooth icon isn’t blue 2 , click it to turn it on. On Windows 10, open Settings by pressing Windows key+I, then click Devices followed by ‘Bluetooth & other devices’ and make sure the Bluetooth slider is set to On. 2 1 1 1

Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 39 STEP 7 Transfers in the opposite direction are just as easy. Click the ‘Select files’ or ‘Select folders’ link in the Nearby Share program on your computer, then select the item you want to transfer. The file or folder will shrink to a thumbnail and Nearby Share will search for available recipients. Click the device to which you want to send it. To restrict who can send files to your Android device, swipe down from the top of your tablet or phone, then swipe again to reveal the full set of options. Swipe from right to left, then tap Nearby Share. Select Everyone, Contacts or ‘Your devices’ 1 , as appropriate. STEP 6 To send a file from your Android device to your computer, open it on your device, or find and select it by browsing in the Files app. Tap the Share button, which looks like a < symbol with dots on each point. Android will shrink the selected item or image to a thumbnail and place a Nearby button below it. Tap this and it will search for devices with which it can share. When it finds your computer, tap its icon 1 to start the transfer. The file will be sent to your PC’s Downloads folder. STEP 5 Alternatively, you can limit sharing so only devices logged into the same Google account as your PC can send files to the computer. To access these settings, click the blue box mentioned in Step 4, then change the preselected menu item from Contacts to ‘Your devices’ 1 . Once you’ve made the changes you need for Step 4 and/or Step 5, click the left-pointing arrow at the top of the window 2 . Optionally deselect the option to automatically send usage info and crash reports to Google if you don’t want to share this information. Finally, click Done. STEP 4 The Nearby Share program will now be running, even though its window will be minimised to the taskbar. Click it to open it. It will have already detected the name of your PC 1 , but you can change this by replacing the text below ‘Visible to others as’. By default, any of your contacts can share files with your PC if they’re also using Nearby Share. To change this, click the blue box in the Receiving panel 2 . To only be visible to specific contacts, turn off the slider beside ‘Visible to all contacts’, then use the individual sliders beside each contact to only enable those you want. Next issue: Use tab islands in Opera 1 1 2 1 2 1

Readers’ Tips TIP OF THE FORTNIGHT 40 Why I stopped using… Tell us why you stopped using a website, app or program: [email protected] Julian wins a copy of our 2022 Back Issue CD Buy it from us at www.snipca.com/44660 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 Make NirLauncher easier to use Google Nearby Share I tried using Google Nearby Share to transfer files between my Android devices and my PC as Robert Irvine suggested in Issue 658 (page 74), but found the whole process too fiddly. Also, I wasn’t keen on having to create a Google account. And what I use instead... I prefer services that work across different operating systems and don’t require you to sign up with an account. OFFICE Reset Outlook to its original layout I was feeling adventurous one day and decided to resize the columns in my Outlook inbox. I soon wished I hadn’t – it just didn’t look right. I wanted to find a ‘go back to what you had before’ button, and after some speculative clicking I located it in the View tab ( 1 in our screenshot below). Click this and then click Reset View 2 in the ‘Current View’ section. You just then have to click Yes to confirm. It instantly reverted to the original view, which I’m now going to stick with. Thomas Lowe BROADBAND Connect old and new phone extension leads In response to your answer to Bob Evans (‘Would broadband replace my phone sockets?’, Issue 661, page 64), for once I beg to differ with your excellent advice you give in the magazine. I had a similar problem to Bob. My broadband router is at the front of my house. My cordless base station phone is on a wired extension in the kitchen at the back. When my supplier (Virgin) changed to a fibre phone service they gave me a small adapter. At one end it was Ethernet male (to plug into the router socket), with a female phone socket at the other. I was told my copper-based extension sockets were dead and I would either have to move the base station to plug into the adapter near the router or somehow install a new lead from the adapter to the kitchen. But I wasn’t keen on this idea, so instead I bought a short phone extension lead and cut the female socket off. Then, once the phone supply had changed to fibre phone and the copper connection was dead, I cut the extension cable wires coming out of the master socket. Using chocolate block connectors (such as these at www.snipca.com/46801) I joined both the new green and red As a long-time user of NirLauncher (www.snipca.com/46479), I was delighted by Issue 662’s Workshop (page 38) revealing both new and hidden tools in the program. Your tips were very handy, but I’m guessing you didn’t have time to explain ways to tweak NirLauncher’s design to make it easier to navigate. Please allow me to do so instead! Once you’re running NirLauncher, click View and select ‘Mark Odd/Even Rows’. This alternates the rows by white and grey ( 1 in our screenshot). Next, click Options and select Show Description Text. This will bring up a pale yellow box at the top which explains what each program does when you click it 2 . I also create my own groups to store NirLauncher’s software. One such group has the self-explanatory title ‘Updated since 2022’ 3 . To create a group, click Launcher at the top then select Insert New Group 4 . Name your group and it’ll appear as a grey button at the top. You can now drag and drop a NirLauncher tool from your extracted folder to this new group. Julian Davison That’s what attracted me to Snapdrop (https://snapdrop. net). It all works online, with nothing to download, though your devices must be connected to the same Wi-Fi network for any files to be transferred. When you’ve opened Snapdrop in your browser on both devices, you’ll see a small blue Wi-Fi icon on the screens. The screenshot shows Snapdrop on my iPhone connecting to the Chrome browser on my Windows PC – which Snapdrop names Salmon Smelt ( 1 in our screenshot). Use these names to check you’re connecting to the right device. Snapdrop called my iPhone Azure Bobcat 2 . Peter Hutton 1 2 1 2 3 4 1 2

Handy hints and tips from your fellow readers Email us your tips: [email protected] 41 Reader recommends… Want to recommend hardware or software to fellow readers? Email [email protected] MeLE PCG02 Mini PC Stick £220 from www.snipca.com/46820 Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 In your answer to Dave Bancroft’s question asking whether mini PCs are noisy (Letters, Issue 663), you recommended the Quieter3C model from Chinese company MeLE (www. snipca.com/46819). I’ve not seen it myself and at £240 it looks like decent value. But I’d like to recommend an even smaller – and probably even quieter – mini PC by MeLE: the PCG02. It comes with Windows 11 Pro and has a powerful Intel Celeron processor that’s handled everything I’ve thrown at it. RAM is 8GB and storage is 128GB, though there’s a slot for a microSD card up to 1TB. It supports dual-band Wi-Fi and connects seamlessly to my mice, keyboards and printers via Bluetooth 4.2. There are also two USB 3.0 ports. Its makers seem to be marketing the stick to businesses, though I think it’s an excellent choice for home users too. Just plug it into your monitor’s HDMI slot and you’ll never notice it’s there. Eric Bratby extension leads to the old blue-and-white cable. I had to take great care with this because the wires are very thin. I then plugged the extension lead into the fibre phone adapter. The existing copper-based extension sockets now all work. Phil Solly HARDWARE Buy refurbished BT 4600 phone Ethel Trueman is right to recommend BT’s 4600 phone (Letters, Issue 663). I bought one recently and it seems to be blocking all my nuisance calls. But what Ethel and other readers may not know is that you can buy a cheap refurbished (or ‘renewed’) model from Amazon. I found one for just £30 from www.snipca.com/46802 (pictured above). I was slightly unsure about buying it, but Amazon’s one-year guarantee made up my mind. Until I came across it, I had assumed the only refurbished phones you could buy were smartphones. Richard Dunn OFFICE Add formatting shortcuts for LibreOffice Writer While following your tip to disable hyperlinks in LibreOffice Writer (Issue 662, page 47), I noticed another useful option in the AutoCorrect menu. You can use it to make words bold or italicised as you type, without having to select these buttons in the top toolbar. Start by opening a Writer document then click the Tools at the top, followed by AutoCorrect, then Autocorrect Options. In the box that appears click the Options tab, then in both the [M] and [T] columns tick the boxes for ‘Automatic *bold*...’ ( 1 in our screenshot below left). The description in this line tells you how you need to type a word to apply the formatting. So to type something in bold use an asterisk on either side of the word. To type in italics, add forward slashes – for example, /italics/. The other two options are -strikeout- and _underline_. In the screenshot you can see what you need to type at the top 2 , and the result when you do below 3 . Dave Kenwright INTERNET Save your bookmarks in a spreadsheet I use several different browsers, including Brave, Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera and Vivaldi – plus other browsers on my Android tablets. What’s frustrating is there’s no way to sync all my bookmarks, so when I create one I add it to an Excel spreadsheet. When I want to visit that bookmark, I just copy and paste it from Excel into whichever browser I’m using at that time. I also sync all my devices to a folder on my Synology NAS drive. This contains a few other files as well as the bookmarks spreadsheet. Brian Steer OFFICE Export Word documents to your Kindle I liked Sam Hutton’s tip to email Word documents to your Kindle and typing convert in the subject line (Issue 663, page 40). Another option – if you subscribe to Microsoft 365 – is to click File in a document then choose Export followed by ‘Send to Kindle’. On the next screen select ‘Like a Kindle book’ (so you can change the font size and page layouts – 1 in our screenshot above) or ‘Like a printed document’ (which keeps these elements the same as your Word doc) 2 . At this point you may also have to sign into your Amazon account. Finally, click Send. Chris Welby 1 3 2 1 2

Browser Tips 42 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 WORKSHOP Disable Chrome extensions on specific sites 1 Type chrome://flags into Chrome’s address bar and press Enter to load the Experiments page. Search for the Extensions Menu Access Control entry 1 , select ‘Enabled’ in its dropdown menu 2 and relaunch the browser. 3Alternatively, click the slider next to an extension 1 to always disable it on the current site. Click the Reload button to refresh the page and save your changes. Pin the extension to Chrome’s toolbar 2 to run it manually by clicking its button. 2When Chrome reopens, visit a website you want to disable extensions on and click the Extensions button on the toolbar 1 . In the menu that opens, click the slider in the top-right corner 2 to turn off all your extensions in one go. CHROME Search Google from the side panel Chrome 115, which was released in July, adds a couple of new features to the browser’s side panel. One of these is Reading Mode, which we wrote about in Issue 662 (page 42), and the other is called ‘Google Search side panel’. As you can guess from the name, this lets you search Google directly from the side panel without needing to open a new tab or leave the web page you’re currently viewing. When you click a result, it will load in the main browser window. To use the feature, click the ‘Show side panel’ button on Chrome’s toolbar to open the panel then choose ‘google.com’ (see screenshot below). If you don’t see the option, search Google in the main window, select a result and click the ‘Open search in side panel’ icon in the address bar – this looks like the ‘G’ in the Google logo. Another new feature in Chrome lets you disable certain extensions on specific websites, if you experience any problems loading them or you’re asked to switch off your ad blocker. This expands the experiment we wrote about in Issue 658 (page 42), which allows you to turn all your extensions on or off in one click. See our Workshop below to learn how to use the new option. BRAVE Create your own keyboard shortcuts The latest version of Brave, 1.56 (released in July), adds the useful ability to modify the keyboard shortcuts you use to control the browser. You can also assign your own shortcuts to actions that don’t already have them. To view Brave’s current range of keyboard shortcuts, click the three-line menu button and select Settings, then System. Click ‘Shortcuts’ at the top of the page to view the full list. Click the Add button next to a command ( 1 in our screenshot above right) for example Reload, ‘New tab’ or ‘New private window’, then press the key or combination of keys you want to use to perform that action. Click ‘Save’ to confirm. You can remove an existing shortcut by hovering your cursor over it and clicking the minus sign 2 , though Brave lets you assign multiple shortcuts to the same command, so you shouldn’t need to. It will also warn you if your chosen shortcut is already in use. Click ‘Reset’ to undo any changes you make and revert to Brave’s default shortcuts. FIREFOX Perform quick actions from the address bar Firefox 116, released 1 August, introduces a time-saving feature called Quick Actions. This lets you perform common tasks and access specific features directly from the address bar, rather than digging into the browser’s menus and settings. Firefox suggests Quick Actions automatically when you start typing a query into the address bar, preceded by a 2 1 2 1 1 2 2 1

Secret settings and the best extensions Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 43 BEST EXTENSION FOR… Downloading online videos Video Downloader Online Chromium www.snipca.com/46965 For obvious business reasons, Google won’t allow extensions that download YouTube videos in the Chrome Web Store, but there are plenty of tools for saving videos from other sites. Our favourite is Video Downloader Online, which automatically detects videos on the page you’re viewing and lets you download them with a couple of clicks. Simply choose your preferred file format and size, then click the blue Download button (see screenshot) to save the video to your computer to watch offline. Although the extension doesn’t work on YouTube or Reddit, it’s compatible with other video sites including Vimeo, Dailymotion and Instagram, though you sometimes need to refresh the page to detect video content. Some users have also used the add-on to save clips from Twitter and Facebook, but it didn’t find any videos for us to download. If you don’t like that, try… Video Downloader Pro Chromium www.snipca.com/46966 This extension also scans web pages – including Twitter – for videos and lets you easily download them to your PC. However, it often detects video previews and GIFs that aren’t proper clips. ‘>’ (chevron/greater than) symbol and a space. For example, when you type >m, the feature will display matching actions including ‘Manage bookmarks’, ‘Manage extensions’ and ‘Manage passwords’. Click the button for an action to jump straight to the relevant task or feature. To view all the Quick Actions shortcuts, click the address bar to open its dropdown menu, then click the new Actions icon at the end of the ‘This time, search with:’ section (see screenshot above). The options include Clear History, Restart Firefox and ‘Print page’. If you’d prefer not to see Quick Actions suggestions, you can turn them off. Click Firefox’s three-line menu button and choose Settings then ‘Privacy & Security’. Scroll down to the Address Bar section and untick the Quick Actions box. If you can’t see Quick Actions yet, you can enable them manually. Type about:config into the address bar, press Enter and click ‘Accept the Risk and Continue’. Search for the preference browser.urlbar.quickactions.enabled and click the plus button next to it. Do the same for the preference browser.urlbar.shortcuts.quickactions then restart Firefox. EDGE Restore your profile icon to its original position Not content with making unnecessary changes to Windows (see our Cover Feature in Issue 663), Microsoft keeps messing around with Edge. Its latest tweak to the browser, in Edge 115 (released in July), is to move your profile icon from its traditional position on the toolbar in the top-right corner to the title bar in the top-left corner ( 1 in our screenshot above). This means that when you want to switch profiles or manage your profile settings, you’ll no longer find the icon in its usual place. The apparent reason for the relocation is that the toolbar was becoming cluttered with new options such as ‘Split screen’ and ‘Browser essentials’, but it’s likely to confuse many users. Thankfully, in this instance, Microsoft has made it easy to undo this change. Click the menu button and choose Settings then Appearance, and switch off the ‘Show profile icon in the title bar’ option 2 . Click ‘Restart’ 3 and when Edge reopens, your profile icon will be back in its familiar position in the top-right corner. CHROMIUM Highlight paywalled sites in Google search results It can be very frustrating when you click through to a website only to find that its content is locked behind a paywall. To avoid such sites, and save yourself time and disappointment, install the new Chrome extension Paywall Sentry (www.snipca.com/46968). This handy tool highlights Google search results that require you to pay for a subscription or buy credits to view their content. Sites with a ‘soft’ paywall (meaning you can only read a limited number of articles for free) are marked with a ‘[!]’, while those with a hard paywall are marked with an ‘[X]’ (see screenshot left). You can add further paywalled websites to its list. 3 1 2

Phone and Tablet Tips 44 What you should install this fortnight ChatGPT Free Android www.snipca.com/47067 The official ChatGPT app is now available for Android devices, following the release of the iOS version in May (www.snipca. com/47068). Sign up for a free OpenAI account to interact with the chatbot by asking it questions about any topic. You can also make ChatGPT generate content based on text prompts Sky Go Free iOS www.snipca.com/47069 The Sky Go app for iOS now lets you control your Sky Q box, by turning your iPhone or iPad into a remote control. To activate the feature, tap the settings cog in the top-left corner and switch on Sky Q Remote. Functions include Home, Search, Channel up and down, Play/Pause, Rewind and Fast Forward. 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 BEST NEW APPS Artifact: Intelligent News Free Android www.snipca.com/47066 iOS www.snipca.com/47065 This personalised news app, which we first wrote about in Issue 657 (page 44), has added an AI-powered feature that lets you listen to articles read aloud in a naturalsounding voice. Tap the play button on the toolbar and choose a voice, accent and playback speed. Voice options include actor Gwyneth Paltrow and rapper Snoop Dogg. ANDROID Detect and locate hidden Bluetooth trackers Bluetooth trackers such as Apple AirTags and Tile devices are a handy way to protect your valuables. Stick one to your wallet, keys or bag, and you’ll be able to find that item using Bluetooth if it’s lost or stolen. However, these trackers can also be secretly attached to your belongings and used to stalk you without your knowledge, so Google has added new security features to Android to keep you safe. ‘Unknown tracker’ alerts will now notify you when a Bluetooth tracker is separated from its owner and detected to be travelling with you. The option should be enabled by default on your Android phone, but it’s worth checking to make sure. In Android 12 or later, open the Settings app, tap ‘Safety & emergency’ and select ‘Unknown tracker alerts’. In Android 11 or earlier, open Settings and choose Google then ‘Personal safety’ and select ‘Unknown tracker alerts’. Ensure that the ‘Allow alerts’ option is switched on ( 1 in our screenshot below). When you receive an alert, tap the notification to learn more about the tracker and view a map showing its location. Tap ‘Play sound’ and the device will make a noise to help you locate it without the owner of the tracker knowing. Once you’ve found it, bring the tracker near the back of your phone to see additional information such as the serial number or the last four digits of the owner’s phone number. You may also be able to disable it by looking up instructions online. To scan for nearby trackers without receiving an alert, press ‘Scan now’ 2 under ‘Manual scan’. Unknown alerts are currently only available for Apple AirTags, but Google plans to add support for further devices soon. See www.snipca. com/47059 for more information. On an iPhone or iPad, you can scan for Bluetooth trackers through the ‘Find My’ app. Press the Items tab and select Items That Can Track Me. Apple will notify you when an unknown AirTag appears to be moving with you. ANDROID & iOS Record and send video messages in WhatsApp WhatsApp has long offered the ability to send voice messages to your friends and family when you don’t have time for a phone call. It has now added the option to record and send video messages too. These clips can be up to 60 seconds long and are protected using end-to-end encryption, so nobody but you and the recipient can watch them. To record a video message, open a WhatsApp chat and tap the microphone button in the bottom-right corner to switch to video-recording mode (this changes the icon to a camcorder – see screenshot above). Press and hold the button to activate your phone’s camera and capture your message – the app usefully provides a three-second countdown. You can also swipe up to lock and record the video hands-free. When you release the button (or press it again in hands-free mode), your video message will be sent to the other person – or other people in a group chat. Videos will play automatically on mute when they’re opened in a chat; tapping the video will start the sound. 1 2

Brilliant things to do on your device 45 BEST APPS FOR... Monitoring air quality Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 *Contains in-app purchases IQAir AirVisual Free Android www.snipca.com/47073 iOS www.snipca.com/47072 If you’re concerned about pollution in your area, or at a place you plan to visit, you can check the air quality using this app. IQAir uses locally sourced data to provide an AQI (air-quality index) rating and weather forecast for the next seven days, as well as an area map, pollution-exposure graph and AQI alerts. Best For Viewing air-pollution data My Pollen Forecast Free iOS www.snipca.com/47075 This app helps you reduce the severity of hay-fever symptoms by providing a pollen forecast for the next five days and a map of areas with high pollen counts. You can track the types of pollen you’re most allergic to and receive pollen-level alerts. For Android, there’s the similar Klarify app (www.snipca.com/47074). Best For Tracking the pollen count BreezoMeter Free* Android www.snipca.com/47076 iOS www.snipca.com/47077 BreezoMeter combines air-quality data – using the UK’s Daily Air Quality Index (DAQI) system – and pollen forecasts. We particularly like its colour-coded maps of airborne hazards and how it details exactly which chemicals you’ll be breathing when you go outside. Some features require a £2.79-a-month subscription. Best For Avoiding breathing hazards iOS Perform instant calculations using Gboard For obvious business reasons, Google’s own apps for Android devices invariably have more features than their iOS equivalents. One exception is the Gboard keyboard app for iPhone and iPad (www.snipca.com/47070), which has just added a handy calculator function that isn’t available in the Android version. This lets you perform calculations directly from the keyboard without needing to open a separate app. To use the new feature, you first need to set Gboard as the default keyboard for iOS. Open the Settings app and choose Keyboard then Keyboards, and tap Add New Keyboard. Select ‘Gboard’, turn on Allow Full Access then tap Allow. Open the standard keyboard in an app, then tap the globe icon to switch to using Gboard. When you type a calculation, such as 86+44+77 or 283*52, Gboard will instantly display the answer on the toolbar above the keyboard (see screenshot above). Tap it to enter the number in the message or document you’re writing. Gboard can also convert measurements – for example, type 115m and the app will tell you the distance in feet and yards. It’s unclear why Google is currently offering the calculator feature only to iPhone and iPad users, but hopefully it will soon be added to Gboard for Android (www.snipca.com/47071). ANDROID & iOS Access your favourite Netflix content faster Netflix has made some unpopular decisions this year, including banning users from sharing their passwords with people from outside their household, and scrapping its £6.99-a-month Basic plan. To give something back to viewers, the streaming service has redesigned its mobile app with a new feature called My Netflix. This provides a dedicated space for all the content you’ve accessed on Netflix, including films, TV shows and trailers you’ve watched; programmes you’ve downloaded; and series and movies you’ve added to your watchlist. My Netflix also keeps a record of which content you’ve ‘liked’, so you can see why the service is making particular recommendations. It’s a useful way to quickly revisit things you’ve previously seen or saved on Netflix, though it could compromise your privacy if someone else picks up your phone or tablet. The new My Netflix option appears in the bottom-right corner of the app (see screenshot left), replacing the old Downloads tab.

Make Windows Better Expert tips for every version 46 Change cursor speed when using Mouse Keys The ‘Mouse Keys’ feature in Windows lets you press number keys on your keyboard to move your mouse cursor, but its speed might be too fast or slow when you first use it. To tailor its speed to your liking, first search for and then open Mouse Keys, then click the slider to On ( 1 in our screenshot). You’ll now be able to move the cursor using numbers 1-9 (except 5), with each key corresponding with one of eight directions. Next, tick the ‘Hold the Ctrl key to speed up and the Shift key to slow down’ 2 box. Now move the sliders below to adjust both the cursor speed 3 and its acceleration 4 – which is how quickly it starts and stops when you begin to use Mouse Keys. WINDOWS 10 & 11 End PC resources using the Xbox Game Bar The Xbox Game Bar is designed for gamers, but it includes widgets that anyone will find useful. One of these is the Resources widget, which shows how much of your PC’s resources your running programs are consuming. Seeing this info in the Game Bar is quicker than opening Task Manager. First, press Windows key+G to open the Game Bar. If the Resources widget isn’t already open, click the bar-chart icon ( 1 in our screenshot below) to activate it. From here, click the X button next to any service to stop it running 2 . You can also click ‘Show More’ to get more detail on which resources your programs are consuming under the headings CPU, GPU, RAM and DISK. Click the Pin button 3 to stick the Resources widget to your desktop, so it remains there when you close the Game Bar. WINDOWS 10 & 11 Make your PC shut down after installing updates The easiest way to install Windows updates is to select the ‘Update and shut down’ option from the Power button in the Start menu. But recently many users are reporting that their PCs reboot once the update has been installed, rather than shut down. This happens because Windows regards ‘Update and shut down’ as a statement of preference rather than an instruction, and so sometimes may choose to boot you into the login screen, meaning you have to log back in and manually shut down your machine. One way to fix this bug is by running the Windows Module Installer (WMI), which helps to keep your computer up to date. You’ll need to do this in Command Prompt, so search for ‘Command’, then click ‘Run as administrator’. In the Command Prompt, type SC config trustedinstaller start=auto ( 1 in our screenshot below) and press Enter. This will trigger WMI to run in the background and check for updates. You will now receive the message [SC] ChangeServiceConfig SUCCESS 2 if the command was entered successfully. Now exit Command Prompt, and select ‘Update and shut down’ to see if the fix has worked. WINDOWS 11 INSIDER See more details in File Explorer A recent preview version of Windows 11 (Build 21361.2050), available to Windows Insiders on the Beta Channel, added more information to File Explorer when you preview your documents. To see this info, select a document, then press the keyboard shortcut Shift+Alt+P and it will appear on the right. As well as existing info like file title and size, you’ll see whether it has been shared online ( 1 in screenshot above left), and if anyone has commented on the document. To become a Windows Insider, sign up at www.snipca.com/47105 – bear in mind that preview versions will contain bugs. 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 WINDOWS 10 & 11 1 1 3 2 3 4 2 2 1 1

Make Office Better Top tips for the best office programs 47 Combine data from several columns into one When making a table, you may decide you want to combine data from two different columns into a new one. Rather than spending ages typing your text into a new cell, create a formula to do the job using the ampersand (&) operator. In our example, we’re putting together a guest list for a summer party. We want to combine first names from column A with surnames in column B. We want these to appear in column C, so we clicked in cell C4 and typed =A4&" "&B4 ( 1 in our screenshot). The space between the quotation marks separates the two cells. This produces our first guests’ full name in column C4 2 . If instead we wanted to list guests with their surnames first, we’d type =B2&", "&A2. After typing the formula we selected MICROSOFT WORD & LIBREOFFICE WRITER Hide white spaces in Print Layout mode If you’re writing in Word’s Print Layout mode, regardless of whether you’re actually planning to print your document, your pages will always appear with white spaces at the top and bottom, and a grey gap between them. Sentences that spill over pages will be divided by inches of empty space. To hide these spaces, click File, then Options to open the Word Options box. Click ‘Display’ ( 1 in our screenshot below) then under ‘Page display options’ untick ‘Show white space between pages in print layout view’ 2 . The blank spaces will now disappear, and pages will be separated by a line 3 . To do the same in LibreOffice Writer, click View on the toolbar and select ‘Hide white space’. Note that LibreOffice Writer won’t show a dotted line to separate one page from another – you’ll need to click ‘Show white space’ to revert to your original view. ONLYOFFICE Use radar charts as a comparison tool When you have multiple types of data to compare in a spreadsheet, consider showing them on a radar chart. These are suitable when you have multiple variables, making it easier to see strengths and weaknesses at a glance. Radar charts are one of the standout new tools in OnlyOffice 7.4, released 13 June. In our example we want to compare several criteria for three laptops we’re choosing between. Start by highlighting the cells containing the data J3:O6 ( 1 in our screenshot below). Next, click Insert on the toolbar, followed by Chart 2 , then pick one of the Radar options 3 . There are three types of chart to choose – the basic Radar, ‘Radar with markers’ or ‘Filled radar’. Selecting one will turn your data into a radar chart 4 . You can then change its colours, font, text size and title. Laptop B, represented by the orange line, takes up most space in the chart, so overall that’s our top choice. LIBREOFFICE Move objects more precisely You can use arrow keys to move an object, and the cursor to resize its frame, but the free PixelPosSize (PPS) extension for LibreOffice adds a pop-up window that lets you do both – with more precision. Download it by visiting www.snipca. com/46803 then clicking ‘Download latest’. In any LibreOffice program, click Tools then ‘Extension Manager…’. Now click Add and find the PixelPosSize file you’ve just downloaded. Click ‘Open’ to add the extension. This will add PPS to your toolbar ( 1 in our screenshot below). Once you’ve created an object, click PPS then select PixelPosSize 2 to open the controls. Use the arrows to move an object or change values in the X and Y categories. To resize an object, change the values in W and H. If you have multiple objects, click the navigation icon 3 to open the Drawpage Navigator 4 . Here, you can view all elements in your document, and choose which you’d like to manipulate. Press the Esc key to close PixelPosSize. Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 MICROSOFT EXCEL C4 and tapped Ctrl+C. We then highlighted cells C5 to the bottom and pressed Ctrl+V to paste the formula into the whole of column C. 1 2 1 2 1 3 4 2 1 4 3 2 3

48 In The Club Run a club or society? Here's how your tech can make it easier Next issue: Master Zoom’s new ‘Continuous Meeting’ tool Upload photos to Google Forms One of the easiest ways of running a photo competition is to ask club members to upload their photos to Google Forms. To create a form you’ll need a Google account. If you haven’t got one, follow Google’s instructions at www. snipca.com/47051, then visit https://docs. google.com/forms. You’ll see some form templates here that might be suitable for your club, including event feedback and order forms. But for uploading a photo it’s better to start from scratch, so click the ‘Start a new form’ option. Set your questions Now give your form a title – we’ve gone for ‘Upload a photo’ ( 1 in our screenshot below) – and enter a description below. You’ll need to know the name and email address of the person submitting the photo, so call the first question ‘First and last name’ 2 . Next, click the dropdown menu on the right and choose the answer type as ‘Short answer’ 3 . This will allow members to type their responses. Now click the ‘Add question’ button at the top of the menu on the right 4 and add another question. This time call it ‘Email address’, and make it a ‘Short answer’ again. Click the dropdown menu once more and this time choose ‘File upload’. You’ll now be asked if you’d like to give other people access to your Drive. Drive is the storage area in Google Docs, so you don’t want just anybody uploading a file to your personal area. Make sure you only share this form with people you trust. When you view the responses to your form, you always have the option of viewing the folder where the files are stored in Drive, so it’s easy to delete anything you don’t want to keep. Click ‘Continue’ then type a heading such as ‘Upload file’ ( 1 in our screenshot above). Now you can set which file types you’ll allow for submissions. As we’re running a photo competition, we’re permitting only image files 2 . Next, set the maximum number of files that members can upload 3 , and the maximum file size 4 . We’d recommend keeping the default 10MB, because the next smallest size – 1MB – will probably be too small. Publish the form Now you’re ready to go. To publish your form, simply click the Send button at the top right. You can choose to email the form to members or share a link to the form, which you can publish however you like – for example, by sharing it on your Facebook group. Copy and paste the link into a browser window if you’d like to see how your finished form looks. Open uploaded files To see what your members have submitted, click the Responses tab at the top of the page( 1 in our screenshot below), then click the file at the bottom. You’ll see that the ‘Accepting responses’ slider is turned on 2 . Turn this off when the competition has finished to let members know not to upload any more photos. We’ve shown you how to create a form in Google Forms, but the process for doing this in Microsoft forms is essentially the same – just head over to https://forms.office.com. 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 Set questions on your form and make each response a ‘Short answer’ Click the Responses tab at the top to see what files your members have uploaded Select which file types you want members to upload, and the maximum file size 3 1 1 2 4 1 2 3 4 2

What’s All the FussAbout... 49 net), which gained 100 million users within five days of launching in July, but had lost more than a half just a few weeks later. By contrast, X has around 350 million active users. Will the name change be successful? Depends how you judge success. It has certainly generated plenty of publicity, both good and bad. On the plus side, Apple has allowed X to have a one-letter name in its App Store (www. snipca.com/47097) – previously all apps needed at least two letters. On the negative side, Musk had to remove the flashing X logo from the top of the company’s San Francisco headquarters following complaints from locals. He’ll now be charged the cost of building permits for its installation and removal, though as the world’s richest person (worth $219bn/£185bn) he won’t struggle to afford it. So X is here to stay? Probably. Musk made such a big deal of the change that it would be humiliating to go back. However, X is such a less distinctive name than Twitter that it might not catch on. Don’t completely rule out a U-turn to rival Royal Mail’s disastrous interlude as Consignia. What is it? It’s the new name for Twitter. The socialmedia site’s owner Elon Musk announced the change in late July, saying that the 24th letter of the alphabet embodies “the imperfections in us all that make us unique”. What did he mean by that? Lord only knows. He has a habit of making cryptic statements designed to either provoke or confuse. He has also got rid of the bird logo (nicknamed Larry) – it has expired, ceased to be and joined the choir invisible. The new logo is a stylised X (pictured right). There’s a new URL too, though for now typing www.x.com still takes you to www.twitter.com. Does that mean we no longer send ‘tweets’? Yes. The ‘Tweet’ button has been replaced by ‘Post’. But ‘to tweet’ has become so commonplace that many users will continue to use it. Why so many changes? Musk wants X to become the “everything app”, capable of performing all kinds of everyday tasks rather than simply posting messages. He has previously praised the Chinese app WeChat, which combines payments, a marketplace and public posts in one tool. Musk wants X to be a Western equivalent, and thought the ‘Twitter’ brand limited this ambition. He said the old name made sense when “it was just 140-character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting – but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video”. Why did he choose the letter X? He’s always been obsessed with it. In 1999 he co-founded the online banking service X.com (it later became PayPal), and three years later formed the spacecraft business SpaceX. Then, in 2015, he launched the Tesla X electric car. But his biggest act of love to the letter came in 2020, when he named his son X Æ A-Xii, with the first X representing the unknown variable in algebra. When he announced Twitter’s name change, he proudly tweeted – sorry, posted – the photo left, with his arms crossed in an X. Is the change a reaction to Meta launching Threads? That seems unlikely. Musk had been planning to transform Twitter ever since buying it for $44bn (around £34bn) last October. He’s probably not losing too much sleep over Threads (www.threads. X Twitter is no longer Twitter, and Larry is looking for a new nest Issue 664 • 16 – 29 August 2023 Elon Musk loves the letter X so much he even named his son after it

50 16 – 29 August 2023 • Issue 664 WHAT YOU CAN DO • Find duplicate files and delete them without paying • Uninstall unwanted software and browser extensions • Detect and update outdated device drivers for free • Download YouTube videos without restrictions or upgrade nags • Edit and play audio files using open-source software • Delete text and images from PDF files for free • Save online content without using your browser Don’t get tricked by ‘free’ programs that will eventually charge you. Robert Irvine recommends the best truly free tools from independent developers you can trust I t’s always annoying when one of your favourite free programs becomes ‘freemium’. This means you have to pay to use certain features, are restricted in what you can do with the software and have to put up with nags to upgrade to the paid-for version. A recent example is Icecream Video Converter (www.snipca.com/47056), which now adds a watermark to every video you convert – unless you pay recommend the best programs that are highly unlikely to introduce paid-for plans. We’ve excluded open-source software you probably use already, such as LibreOffice, VLC Media Player and Mozilla Thunderbird, to focus on free tools you may not have heard of but we think you’ll love. Our criteria for inclusion were that the programs must have been updated in the last year, that they won’t disappear overnight and that they don’t make money by collecting and selling your data. • Because these tools are from small developers, they may trigger a SmartScreen warning from Microsoft Defender (or your other antivirus software). We’ve checked all our recommendations using VirusTotal (www.virustotal.com) to ensure they’re safe, so just click ‘More info’ then ‘Run anyway’. £19.95 a year for the Pro edition. Although companies are entitled to charge for their products, we think changing their policies once they’ve got you hooked is cynical and unfair. Thankfully, not all software makers are as devious or greedy. Many independent developers, particularly members of the open-source community, create free tools for the love of doing so as well as to benefit other people. In this feature, we SOFTWARE You’ll NEVER Have To Pay For COVER FEATURE BEST PC